Entertainment

A really excellent essay about how Philip K. Dick predicted our current day, “filled with deranged billionaires, machines that claim consciousness, hallucinated worlds and political breakdown. Musk and his brethren seem more like escapees from this universe than the Asimovian super-geniuses they imagine themselves to be.”

Brazilian speedrunner LeKukie recently grabbed the Super Mario Bros. world record, and players are now 0.1 seconds away from a “perfect” run, according to a fascinating video reported on by Polygon.

Discovery Plus will play continuous streams of shows across its new “channels,” including 90-Day Fiancé, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, Deadliest Catch, House Hunters, and more. You’ll also be able to access livestreams and programming from NASA Plus.

Public Eye is a hidden object detective game that presents you with AI-generated visuals across a 10-episode story. It comes from Wolf Games, the same AI games studio behind the Law & Order: Clue Hunter title Peacock added to its app earlier this year.

The big sales are well deserved; House House and Panic’s excellent co-op multiplayer title, which was released last Tuesday, is my favorite game of the year so far.

Google-backed AI startup Promise has brought on Backrooms executive producer Chris White to develop Touch Grass, a dead internet theory-inspired horror about a tech worker who discovers a secret digital reality populated by strange copes of people from the real world.

Sky Sports reports that the Amazon founder is part of an investment consortium, along with Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, close to buying a roughly 30-percent stake in one of the Premier League’s most successful clubs. Saverin has tried this before — he was part of a failed 2022 attempt to buy rival team Chelsea.

Christopher Nolan’s epic has now grossed more than $289 million from IMAX screens alone (and over $1.1 billion in total), besting the $256 million lifetime IMAX gross of James Cameron’s Avatar. And releases in China and Japan are still to come. Yes, the format is worth it.

Podnews found evidence of the new ad-skipping function appearing “for Premium users in selected markets,” with the button appearing on screen as soon as ads, promos, or intros start. In a statement to the publication, Spotify noted that many people are skipping those things anyway: “We’re exploring ways to make podcast listening and viewing more intuitive for Premium subscribers based on how people use the platform.”

Shout out to subscriber Only Forward for sharing this on our post looking for your favorite bad movies. Propstore is auctioning off the original costume worn for the 2003 film, which is pretty terrifying in its own right. But somehow the empty suit is even more horrifying.

The original episode featuring Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas is one of the funniest things to ever grace a television screen. If you’ve never seen it, stop everything and watch it on YouTube now. There’s even a bonus, extremely spoilery bonus cut that’s fun as well. For the 10th anniversary, Gethard got the band back together, and it’s a blast.

Users have been unable to log in to their accounts for a few hours, simply receiving a message that reads “An error occurred. Please try again later.” But now the whole site is refusing to load for many. The company posted on Instagram that it’s working to resolve the issue.

A couple of weeks ago, I admitted to you all that I love bad movies. Don’t get me wrong — I love arthouse films and critically acclaimed blockbusters, but some of the most fun I have had watching a movie has been introducing my siblings to Troll 2 and sharing Fateful Findings with friends over Zoom during the pandemic. So I want to know: what’s your favorite so-bad-it’s-good movie that I need to check out?

Just like the orange and grey special edition of the Fitbit Air we got in May, a new leak shows the Pixel Watch 5 with a similar band, suggesting Steph Curry will be lending his name to more Google gear.

Arturia’s Pigments is my go-to synth plugin. It’s powerful, versatile, and shockingly easy to build complex patches in. It’s currently marked down to $129 from its usual price of $199. But if you’re hesitant to commit even that much, the company just launched Pigments Play, a free stripped-down version.

It will be going away in 24 hours, but to celebrate 8/08 Bjooks, the company behind Beat Gems and Pedal Crush, is making Inspire the Music — 50 Years of Roland History free to read. The company is also offering 15 percent off the hardcover version for the day.

Netflix hired a guy to sit inside a Hollywood billboard and promote its new movie, The Last House, which follows “a family mysteriously sealed inside their home.”

As Variety reports, The Odyssey has officially pulled in over $1 billion in global ticket sales, including $257 million from IMAX tickets. Within “a matter of days,” it’s expected to pass The Dark Knight Rises to become Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing film yet.

“I can say that the level of pre-orders is unprecedented and astonishing, and we’re very grateful for that,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said on Friday’s earnings call, according to Variety. An “extended look” at GTA VI will stream on August 27th.

Though there were rumblings David Fincher was developing an English language Squid Game spinoff for Netflix, The Playlist reports that those plans have been scrapped.

I’m eyeing Boatshoes, the new album from Baltimore’s Brian Ennals (who collaborated with Infinity Knives on last year’s incredible A City Drowned in God’s Black Tears) and frequent Aesop Rock producer Blockhead. Don’t forget, Bandcamp skips its cut and every penny goes directly to the artist today.

It’s the first platform to adopt Musixmatch’s new Sentinel detection service designed explicitly for generative AI. Its sizable database pulls from over 200,000 publishers, including the big three, to identify copyrighted lyrics and compositions. And importantly, it doesn’t just scan prompts and inputs, but also the resulting outputs.

He’s continuing his post-helmet media whirlwind and stopped by the Chanel Connects podcast, where the topic briefly turned toward AI. “I’m not really interested in the creative usage of artificial intelligence,” he says, noting that part of the creative process is experimentation and discovery, “The number one goal of this process is surprise.”

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is the first feature film ever shot entirely with IMAX 70mm film cameras, which is apparently a very big deal, and why it’s been harder than usual to get a ticket to see Matt Damon on the biggest screen. Now that Spider-Man is moving onto IMAX screens, it may be even harder.

Gilmore Girls turned 25 last year and that makes me feel very old. But there’s still more to come. The Wrap reports a documentary on the series is in the works at Warner Bros. and will include creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and star Lauren Graham, among others. It will either be an extremely short documentary featuring Lorelai’s signature fast-talking, or a regular-length documentary with far more words than we’re used to.

Quake: Dawn of the Machine includes 19 “all-new maps across a cohesive campaign” as well as “a brand-new soundtrack, hidden secrets, a dedicated episode hub, and an all-new deathmatch map.” It’s available now.

Warner Bros. Discovery gave a tiny update on the planned fifth Matrix film on Thursday, saying that the movie is scheduled to release sometime “beyond 2027.”

That’s Toby Fox writing about the fandom around Deltarune. He says he doesn’t follow theories because “I already know what my game is.” But he also recognizes that theorizing is part of the fun: “It’s not an exaggeration to say that thinking about this game can be just as much of the experience as playing it is. Anyone who keeps thinking about it, like I have, gets my highest blessing.“

Almost 20 years after The X-Files: I Want to Believe made its theatrical debut, c0-writer / director (and X-Files franchise creator) Chris Carter is back with a new extended, R-rated cut of the film that will pit Mulder and Scully against a kind of Frankenstein on Hulu beginning August 14th.

While none of the of vigilante influencers inspired by NBC’s To Catch a Predator have put out content worth watching, the new trailer for A24’s Primetime starring Robert Pattinson as Chris Hansen makes the movie look like it’ll be a knockout when it premieres on September 25th.