The upcoming Marvel Studios crossover film Avengers: Infinity War is set to change the MCU forever, and it will include some major moments and aspects from the comics that fans have been clamoring to see. Ever since the Iron Spider suit was teased at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming, fans have been curious about what Tony Stark's latest upgrade will include and if it will be similar to the suit from the Civil War comics. A new […]
As I noted in my end-of-the-year movie wrap-up (which in addition to my top-10 list included such idiosyncratic awards as “Best Letter Writer” and “Most Successful Mushroom Recipe”), 2017 was an excellent year for film. And, for the most part, I think the Academy did a good job when it came to Oscar nominations. Four of my top five movies of the year were nominated for Best Picture, and of them I […]
The Light Phone is a cellphone that was released last year with an interesting premise: strip away all the extraneous, distracting pieces of modern smartphones — like internet, texting, email, and photography — to leave the distilled essence of a phone. It could make calls and store nine phone numbers, but that was about it. It was an interesting idea, promising a life where you could remove the distractions of a […]
Well, this isn't going to make Dwayne Johnson very happy. Walt Disney and Marvel just announced that Avengers: Infinity War will be opening everywhere, all over the world, on April 27, 2018. That's about when it was going to open in much of the world in a standard MCU overseas rollout, but the change means that North American audiences get it a week early as well. That's horrible news for A) Dwayne […]
It turns out, one of Facebook’s biggest News Feed experiments last year only made the service worse. Last October, the Guardian reported that Facebook was testing significant changes to its News Feed. For users in six countries, Facebook moved nearly all non-promoted posts from pages and publishers out of the main News Feed into a secondary feed, called the Explore Feed. Predictably, people didn’t want to have to bounce between two feeds, […]
After less than eight years of stardom, Jennifer Lawrence’s career is studded with comic triumphs and depictions of epic suffering. (Her suffering in “Winter’s Bone,” her first starring role, was stirring for being understated, unlike the spectacular trials she endured as Katniss Everdeen in “The Hunger Games” series.) No one can touch her when her gift for sparkling comedy intersects with great material, as in two of the three films she […]
Writer-director Marysia Nikitiuk's debut, a Ukrainian-Macedonian-Polish co-production, bowed in the Panorama section of the German fest. A debut feature bursting with audacity, flair and energetic promise,When the Trees Fall (Koly padayut dereva) propels 31-year-old Ukrainian writer-director Marysia Nikitiuk into the leading ranks of younger filmmakers from eastern/central Europe. Straddling several genres with aplomb — only the odd wobble here and there betrays her greenhorn status — Nikitiuk socks over a full-blooded enterprise punctuated with steamy […]
The timing couldn’t be better for “Red Sparrow” to sweep into theaters with its story of a Russian spy and an American spy trying to outwit one another. As one character in the thriller declares, “the Cold War never ended.” No kidding. Jennifer Lawrence assumes a Russian accent to play Dominika Egorova, a star ballerina whose dancing career is cut short after she suffers a sickening injury onstage. She lives […]
Canon is finally embracing 4K video with a new mirrorless camera called the M50. The petite shooter is, essentially, 2016’s Canon M5 with fewer dials and buttons and a more streamlined body. But the upgraded internals and a swivel-out screen mean this will be the company’s most video-friendly mirrorless camera to date when it ships in April. The $779 M50 uses a 24.1-megapixel APS-C sensor that’s a hair smaller than the 24.2-megapixel one found […]
