Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 73
October 2, 2017
‘Blade Runner 2049’ Rave Reviews Bolster Social Media Buzz
“Blade Runner 2049” topped social media buzz last week with 83,000 new conversations in the wake of the movie’s strong reviews, according to media-measurement firm comScore and its PreAct service.
The follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic “Blade Runner” has earned an impressive 96% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Variety’s Peter Debruge wrote in his reviewthat the film “delves deep into the existential concerns suggested by the earlier film, as screenwriters Hampton Fancher (who also co-wrote the original) and Michael Green raise evocative questions about human-android relations and the nuances that will one day be used to tell them apart.”
“Blade Runner 2049” is being distributed domestically by Warner Bros. through its output deal with Alcon Entertainment. Sony is the international distributor and production partner with Alcon Entertainment. The reboot, directed by Denis Villeneuve, stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, who reprises his role of Rick Deckard.
Early box office forecasts had projected a domestic launch of at least $40 million.
Disney-Marvel’s “Thor: Ragnarok” generated 79,000 new conversations last week as the studio revealed new artwork on Sept. 27, and an international trailer, poster, and featurette the next day. That drove the total number of new conversations to nearly 1.2 million, more than a month before its Nov. 3 opening.
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‘Blade Runner 2049’ Rave Reviews Bolster Social Media Buzz
‘The Originals’ Season 5 Spoilers News: Marcel Has a Huge Surprise for Klaus in Premiere
Marcel (Charles Michael Davis) has not forgotten his vendetta against Klaus (Joseph Morgan) in the upcoming final season of “The Originals.”
Spoilers for the new installment reveal that the former allies will once again be each other’s greatest enemy. Marcel is obviously still not over his hatred for his sire after what he and his family did to Davina (Danielle Campbell). Although their fight was put on hold because of The Hollow, it is expected to continue now that the dark force is safely locked inside the Originals’ bodies. The trailer hinted of Marcel’s next plan to take down Klaus, and it may or may not involve Elijah (Daniel Gillies).
Since Elijah was one of the Mikaelsons who holds part of The Hollow’s soul, he is supposed to stay away from the rest of his family for all eternity. He has willed himself to forget everything to stop himself from searching for them. Marcel appears to be taking advantage of his predicament. He will come to see Elijah to urge him to return to New Orleans and reunite with his brother. The promo suggests that Marcel will succeed, thus the surprise on Klaus’ face when Elijah suddenly turns up in one of the bars in the city.
Meanwhile, spoilers reveal that there is still a chance that Elijah and Hayley (Phoebe Tonkin) will end up together. Executive producer Julie Plec has revealed that they are still rooting for the couple. Although Hayley and Elijah may not be together in the first part of the final season, they may still end up with each other in the end. While waiting for that moment, Hayley will try to distract herself from negative thoughts by dating a human named Declan (Torrance Coombs).
“I love Hayley and Elijah and I do hope they can find peace in eternity,” Plec told the audience at the San Diego Comic-Con. “I don’t know how quickly that will be able to happen, but it’s not something that I take lightly.”
“The Originals” season 5 will air sometime in 2018.
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Intel makes the case for wireless PC-based high-end virtual reality
Intel recently hosted a 100-year-old man at its virtual reality lab in Hillsboro, Oregon. Lyle Becker was a big fan of the VR flight simulator, which reminded him of the planes that he flew in World War II. That kind of first-time experience evokes a sense of wonder at the immersiveness of VR, and that’s why Kim Pallister, director of VR excellence at Intel, believes so much that VR will be a transformative medium.
While VR is off to a slow start, Pallister believes that it will catch on in the long run. Intel recently pivoted away from a tech demo that it called Project Alloy, a stand-alone VR headset, to something entirely different. The first generation of VR headsets, such as the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, are connected to powerful personal computers via wires. Everybody wants those wires to go away, but how you tackle the issue matters.
Pallister said Intel tried at first to put the processing power in the headset itself so that you don’t have to connect a wire to a PC. But the company also worked on connecting the headset display to a PC via a wireless technology. Pallister thinks that will deliver a much better experience.
The WiGig wireless networking technology, which uses a short-range 60-gigahertz radio, can transfer data at fast enough rates to feed VR imagery from a PC to the display in a VR headset. With the WiGig connection, VR headset makers will be able to exploit the extra processing power available in a full desktop computer, rather than a more limited processor that has to run on battery power in a compact headset.
I recently joined a small group of journalists who jointly interviewed Pallister. We talked about Becker, the immersive nature of VR, Project Alloy, WiGig, and Intel’s partnership with Blueprint Reality on a VR presentation technology. Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
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‘Justice League’: 5 New Posters Bring Some Color to the DC World
The Justice League is here to save the day, and they’ll do it in style.
Warner Bros. has unveiled five new character posters the upcoming Justice League film, spotlighting each hero (save for Henry Cavill’s Superman) in their own vivid hue. The characters all stand in profile, looking toward the viewers’ left, with their corresponding insignias emblazoned over the Justice League one at the very bottom of the poster.
We see Jason Momoa’s Arthur Curry/Aquaman against a bright green background, Gal Gadot’s Diana Prince/Wonder Woman in a punchy yellow-orange shade, Ben Affleck’s Bruce Wayne/Batman likely showing off his smolder against royal blue (accented from behind by a golden yellow), Ray Fisher’s Victor Stone/Cyborg looking fierce in a purple-gray color, and Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen/The Flash displaying his fittingly flashy side in candy-apple red.
These colors coordinate with the ones seen in batch of previously released character posters that show Aquaman in green, Wonder Woman in orange, Batman in dark blue, Cyborg in graphite gray, and the Flash in bright red. According to ComingSoon.net, more information on these prints will be available next month.
While the DC Extended Universe (the cinematic world’s official name is still pending) has gained a reputation for being dark, gritty, and brooding over the past few years, these Justice League promo images seem to prove that the forthcoming film will take an optimistic spin on the beloved heroes. The movie’s trailer, which was released a few months ago, shows that Justice League will be tonally much lighter than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and these posters serve to bolster that claim.
Joining the fab five (plus Superman) for Justice League Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor, Willem Dafoe as Nuidis Vulko, Billy Crudup as Henry Allen, Jeremy Irons as Alfred Pennyworth, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Connie Nielsen as Queen Hippolyta, Amber Heard as Mera, Kiersey Clemons as Iris West. J.K. Simmons’ Commissioner Gordon and Amy Adams’ Lois Lane round out the cast.
Here’s the official plot synopsis for Justice League: “Fueled by his restored faith in humanity and inspired by Superman’s selfless act, Bruce Wayne enlists the help of his newfound ally, Diana Prince, to face an even greater enemy. Together, Batman and Wonder Woman work quickly to find and recruit a team of metahumans to stand against this newly awakened threat. But despite the formation of this unprecedented league of heroes—Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Cyborg and The Flash—it may already be too late to save the planet from an assault of catastrophic proportions.”
Facebook can unlock your account with facial recognition
Facebook has its own version of Apple’s Face ID. If you get locked out of your Facebook account, the company is testing a way to regain access by using your face to verify your identity. That could be especially useful if you’re somewhere that you can’t receive two-factor authentication SMS, like on a plane or while traveling abroad, or if you lose access to your email account.
Social media researcher Devesh Logendran (a pseudonym) sent a screenshot of the feature to TNW’s Matt Navarra. We asked Facebook about it and got this confirmation:
“We are testing a new feature for people who want to quickly and easily verify account ownership during the account recovery process. This optional feature is available only on devices you’ve already used to log in. It is another step, alongside two-factor authentication via SMS, that were taking to make sure account owners can confirm their identity.”
If the feature proves reliably helpful to users and isn’t fooled by hackers, Facebook could potentially roll it out to more people.
Over the years Facebook has tried a number of novel ways to help you get back into a locked account. In some cases it asks you to identify photos of your friends to prove you’re you. Or it’s tried allowing you to designate several “trusted friends” who receive a code that you can ask them for to unlock your account.
While Facebook has experienced some backlash to facial recognition for photo tag suggestions in the past, this feature would only use the technology to privately help you out. Therefore it shouldn’t engender as big of privacy concerns, though obviously anything related to biometric data can give people pause. But if it means you can get back to your messages and News Feed, or repair damage done by a hacker, many people are likely to be comfortable to use their face to Facebook.
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Facebook can unlock your account with facial recognition
How to Check If Your PC Being Pirated to Mine Bitcoin
First it was The Pirate Bay, then Showtime was caught secretly using page visitor’s processing power to mine cryptocurrency as a form of alternative revenue.
It has led to some indignation from users of such sites, as well as worry and fear about the vulnerability of users who are visiting sites and staying on them for a long time. However, there are a few things that can be done to protect yourself.
An issue with secrecy
It must be stated that the reasoning put forward, along with an apology, from The Pirate Bay was that they saw it as an alternative to banner advertising, which is tricky for what is essentially an illegal website.
Many were happy with the idea of their processor being used, but not happy with the secret nature of it all.
What can be done?
If however you are not happy with the idea of being mined, secretly or not, there are a few ways to check if you are indeed a victim of processor pirates.
Check your CPU usage
Simply by opening your resource manager on your computer, and looking at the CPU usage, it can quickly become clear if there is indeed something sucking your processing power.
A noticeable spike when visiting a certain site that should not be taxing your CPU is an obvious sign of Javascript running that is using your processing power.
Additionally, if you have everything closed but CPU usage is still super high, then you may have a crypto mining malware problem.
Ad Blockers can help
Mining hijacking can occur simply by visiting certain sites, but there have been instances where infected adverts on sites have also led to this CPU pirating. Researchers at security software vendor ESET have explained this process.
Thus, running an ad blocker can put a stop to this. Additionally, ad blocking software can also filter out known types of in-browser miners. One such mining script is called Coinhive, which isn’t necessarily malware.
Coinhive is trying to approach this as legitimately as possible and condemned Showtime for using their Javascript without alerting users that they would be utilized for mining.
There is other malware
Besides from legitimate pirate mining software, there are more sophisticated forms of malwarewhich actively penetrates the system. These are delivered through infected image files or by clicking on links leading to a malicious site.
If one of these hits you, you should open up Task Manager and identify the process that is eating up all those compute cycles and terminate it from your resource monitor.
Source:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-to-check-if-your-pc-being-pirated-to-mine-bitcoin
Stephen Paddock: Las Vegas gunman identified by police as 64-year-old white male
The suspected gunman in the mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas has been named as 64-year-old Stephen Paddock.
At least 50 people were killed and more than 200 injured at the Route 91 country music event near the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino.
It is the deadliest mass shooting in US history, with the death toll surpassing the 49 killed at a nightclub in Orlando in June 2016.
Witnesses described seeing flashes of light high up in the tower of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and a noise “like firecrackers” as a “clip after clip” was unloaded into the crowd of 40,000 people.
The shooter was believed to have been firing down at concert-goers from the 32nd floor.
A Swot team used a controlled explosion to enter the hotel room, where they shot Paddock – of Mesquite, Nevada – dead.
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Announcing the suspect’s name, Las Vegas Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said police had “located numerous firearms”, including rifles, in the hotel room and a search of Paddock’s house was due to take place shortly.
He said Paddock was born on 9 April 1953, adding: “As far as history and background we haven’t completed that part of the investigation.”
Police previously said they did not believe the suspect was connected to militant groups.
Records show Paddock lived in a three-year-old, $396,000 (£297,554) two-bedroom home in the small community of Mesquite, 80 miles north east of Las Vegas near the Arizona state border.
Local media said he had also previously lived in Reno, Nevada, California and Florida.
Sheriff Lombardo said: “We are looking at in excess of 50 individuals dead and over 200 individuals injured … Obviously this is a tragic incident and one that we have never experienced in this valley. My condolences go out to the loved ones.”
One Las Vegas police officer is among the dead, while another is in a critical condition.
The FBI – including federal crime scene investigators – were assisting in the investigation, he said, adding: “It is going to be a long and tedious investigation.”
He said police had found a person of interest, a 62-year-old female companion of the shooter called Marilou Danley.
US President Donald Trump responded to the massacre in a tweet, saying: “My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!”
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September 29, 2017
‘Once Upon a Time’: Chinese fantasy-romance features complex plot, crazy visuals
Personal identity is as complicated as the plot in “Once Upon a Time,” a CGI-heavy Chinese fantasy-romance. Heroine Bai Qian (Liu Yifei) is a goddess who can transform into a multi-tailed white fox. She’s also the exact double of Susu, the lost love of Prince Ye Hua (Yang Yang), who looks just like — well, that’s supposed to be a surprise.
The movie was directed by Zhao Xiaoding and Hollywood special-effects veteran Anthony LaMolinara (whose credits include 2004’s “Spider-Man 2”). The elaborately costumed actors travel through a computer-generated magical universe and interact with animated characters (mostly realistic, although one incongruously resembles Sprout, Green Giant’s former spokes-vegetable). The imaginative visuals upstage the battle scenes and amorous intrigues.
“Once Upon a Time” derives from a Chinese novel, “Three Lives Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms” (published in English as “To the Sky Kingdom”). The story is so involved that a recent Chinese-TV adaptation of the book ran for 58 episodes. This movie’s condensed telling is somewhat bewildering, although the essentials eventually become clear. But then they’re really just a pretext for such fairy-tale wonders as an underwater city, a living island and a hummingbird air force.
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Keanu Reeves Wants Tilda Swinton in John Wick 3
Lionsgate is already moving forward with John Wick Chapter 3, and now fans are wondering what new characters will come forth in this next installment, the final chapter in the John Wick trilogy. If Keanu Reeves has his way, it’s possible that the actor will reunite with Oscar winner Tilda Swinton, who he starred with in Constantine and Thumbsucker, both released in 2005, although he only had scenes with her in Constantine. Here’s what the actor had to say when asked if he’d like to bring Tilda Swinton on board for John Wick 3.
“You know, I had the chance to work with her, I was in two films with her, but had the chance to work with her once, I’m onboard with that. We run into each other once in a while socially out there in the world. She’s a remarkable person and actress, so I’m all aboard with that!”
While there is no indication that writer Derek Kolstad is writing a role for the actress, or if she would even be on board with the idea, this wouldn’t be the first time that the franchise reunited Keanu Reeves with one of his former co-stars. In this year’s critical and commercial hit John Wick Chapter 2, Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne were reunited, more than a decade after the stars portrayed Neo and Morpheus in the iconic Matrix trilogy. With this movie already set to be the final chapter of this trilogy, it wouldn’t be surprising if the studio pulled out all the stops to ensure this is an even bigger hit that the first two movies. They’re already taking the first step by giving this a sequel a summer release date.
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We reported earlier this month that a John Wick 3 release date has been set for May 17, 2019, and while it currently has no direct competition in that date, it’s already being surrounded by a number of highly-anticipated movies. Kicking off the 2019 summer movie season will be Marvel’s Avengers 4 on May 3, 2019, followed by STX’s Uglydoll adaptation and TriStar’s The Rosie Project on May 10. One week after John Wick 3 hits theaters, it will go up against two highly-anticipated projects on May 24, 2019, Disney’s live-action Aladdin remake and Warner Bros.’ Minecraft adaptation.
There’s even the possibility of Samuel L. Jackson joining John Wick 3, with the actor revealing in a March interview that he’d much rather star in this movie than make a stand alone Nick Fury movie for Marvel Studios. Tilda Swinton is coming off starring in a pair of Netflix original movies, War Machine, which debuted in late May, and Okja, which debuted in late June, along with her slightly-controversial role as The Ancient One in Marvel’s Doctor Strange. She will next be seen in the Suspiria remake as Madame Blanc while also lending her voice to Wes Anderson’s new film Isle of Dogs. As for a reunion with Keanu Reeves, People did report that, back in 2013, when the actress was promoting Snowpiercer, she asked in “mock frustration,” Where is Mr. Keanu Reeves by the way? I would like to see him.” Whether or not these comments on both sides lead to a reunion in John Wick 3 remains to be seen.
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http://movieweb.com/john-wick-3-tilda-swinton-keanu-reeves/
The Matrix is reportedly getting a reboot
The Matrix is getting a remake. That’s according to The Hollywood Reporter, which says that Warner Bros. is in the early stages of developing a rebooted version of the 1999 cyberpunk classic, with Creed star Michael B. Jordan as the potential headliner.
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Zak Penn is currently in talks to write a treatment for the reboot, The Hollywood Reporter claims. Penn is best known for his script work on several superhero movies, providing story assistance for other established writers on X-Men: The Last Stand, The Avengers, and Elektra. Jordan, too, has yet to formally commit to the project (which is itself in early stages), but is reportedly in talks for a major role.
Original Matrix producer Joel Silver reportedly approached Warner Bros. with the idea of creating a new film in the franchise, but The Hollywood Reporter says the studio was worried about a range of issues, including his reputation for budgetary excess, and his relationship with Matrix trilogy creators the Wachowskis. The producer was also reported to have sold his interest in the Matrix movies in 2012 for some $30 million.
The publication says that the Wachowskis — who both wrote and directed the original movie and its maligned sequels — are not currently involved in the new project, but speculates that Warner Bros. would want their approval at the very least before continuing. The siblings are seen to have more value to fans than Silver, although they may not end up taking a major role in production. Original star Keanu Reeves had indicated that he would be willing to return for another Matrix movie were the siblings involved, but THR says Warner Bros. is likely to choose another star and director — even if Michael B. Jordan does not sign on.
There’s no set date for the remake to start production yet, and like the planned Matrix TV show, the project could still get canceled. Some within Warner Bros. apparently see the property as untouchable after its monumental success, but as The Hollywood Reporter notes, the potential of a new cinematic universe built on one of the most engaging movie worlds of the last two decades could be too tempting to pass up.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/14/14930638/the-matrix-reboot-remake-movie
