The slowing of these exports could raise prices

'It's concerning'

'But it certainly is frustrating'

'GO NOW: Do not attempt to gather belongings or protect your home'

Landon Donovan's new haircut is not easy on the eyes

'Have a safe shift'

Books book review Frenetic, Kinetic, and Wonderfully Satisfying: Wicked Problems by Max Gladstone A review of Max Gladstone’s new Craft Wars novel. By Martin Cahill | Published on June 18, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share The end of the world has been approaching for a while in Max Gladstone’s Craft series; it’s just taken a little while to get there. You see, the end of the world is taking its sweet time as it moseys in from the depths of space, ambling past constellations at its own pace. But needless to say, it is coming. As Wicked Problems begins, the second book in Max Gladstone’s Craft Wars series, the disparate agendas of various powerful factions begin to find fruition, and unfortunately, only a handful want to keep the world safe. And even those groups cannot agree on how best to do that. While Dead Country, the first book in the Craft Wars, was a very focused narrative lens for Tara Abernathy—a character study as much as it was an adventure of Craft and cunning—it is here in Wicked Problems that Gladstone lets his red conspiracy board string run wild, snarling and crisscrossing, as he brings dozens of connections, characters, bits of worldbuilding, and more to bear in this frenetic, kinetic, and wonderfully satisfying book.  At the end of Dead Country, two things happened: One, Tara Abernathy’s student and brilliant craftswoman, Dawn, merged with a force that was pure, refined Craft. The underlying truths of the universe, Craft is the name given to the magic that humanity has learned to wield, powerful enough to challenge the gods themselves. Resulting in the God Wars, the conflict has been over for some time, but not without the status quo crumbling time and again, as humanity must learn to run a world they took from the majority of gods. And in Dawn, she has merged with the most ironic form of Craft: a god born of the very nature of the practice itself, a god of magic itself.  And as she and this god of magic merged, so did their rage, resulting in them fleeing, injuring Tara in the process. And while Dawn and her newly-named being, Sybil, stay on the lam, keeping away from the eyes of Gods and craftsfolk alike, both of whom would wish to use and then destroy them, Tara needs to do the one thing she has hated doing all her life: ask for help. Because what Tara and Dawn both know is that the end of the world is walking toward them from the stars, and they wish to stop it. How they each wish to stop it… well, you’ll have to read and find out.  Buy the Book Wicked Problems Max Gladstone Buy Book Wicked Problems Max Gladstone Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget Reading this book was so much goddamn fun, I’m still grinning thinking about it! If you’ve been a reader of Gladstone’s Craft Series from the beginning, Wicked Problems feels like he’s flung open the doors of every novel that has come before, and the resulting cocktail party finds disgraced holy men rubbing elbows with divine litigators, ex-chosen ones with scars and regrets raising a glass and smoking a joint with a nervous middle-manager priest, a catty, ancient lich-king swirling a tropical, plastic umbrella with a sneer as the kids party below. Not only does Gladstone get to show his readers exactly the threads between characters we haven’t seen in some time, he also delights in showing us how each of them has grown… or not. Say what you will for the magical, monstrous, and divine, many of them are just as stubborn, ignorant, or petty as us mortals.  Even better, Gladstone begins to reveal truths behind certain elusive elements of his meticulous, years-long worldbuilding project: We learn the true power behind countries and empires; the secret immortals trapped and recently free from a mountain prison; a certain person who shares the same name, appearance, and outfit as several dozen other people, all of them called Grimwald. There is a sense of finality in this book that was not present in Dead Country. Not that Gladstone is bringing anything to this book that isn’t earned or unimportant—just that, as a reader, I could feel that this story is headed towards an ending. Will there be more Craft after the Craft Wars Series ends? I couldn’t tell you. But hey, I can hope, right? On his march to whatever ending Gladstone has in mind, it is only a credit to his talent, intelligence, and empathy that along the way we not only get that rollicking adventure, Gods and Craft and serpents at the center of the earth and spiders amongst the stars, we also get one of his most beautiful, most complex human journeys in each and every character. Tara and Dawn, Caleb and Temoc, Kai and Mal and many more characters whom we’ve met and loved and walked beside before—Gladstone does each of them justice.  If every book that starred these characters prior was that character’s spotlight, their trial by fire, their moment (heroic or shameful), Wicked Problems finds each of them as they are after those trials. And to be honest, most of them are exhausted. Scared. Angry. But one of the best parts of Wicked Problems is Gladstone showcasing that as much as each individual may be struggling, it is by working together that they not only accomplish the tasks before them, but also draw out the best in each other. Likewise, Dawn, Sybil, and the crew they assemble are just as compelling and thorny. Through them, Gladstone asks us questions of method, but never of motive or desire. I’m so fascinated to see where they go from here.  Max Gladstone has spent most of his writing career planting seeds deep into the earth. Some of them burned, others sparked, some radiated divine light. But each was purposeful in the garden of story he has been building since the beginning. In Wicked Problems, it is the height of joy to see these seeds bearing their fruit, even as they continue to weave together. There are two more books coming in the Craft Wars, and if they’re even half as good as Wicked Problems and its predecessor, I can promise you that we’re all in for a hell of a show.  [end-mark] Wicked Problems is available from Tordotcom Publishing. The post Frenetic, Kinetic, and Wonderfully Satisfying: <i>Wicked Problems</i> by Max Gladstone appeared first on Reactor.

News Resistor Will Smith Will Learn Some Wild Secrets About Technology in Resistor Would capitalism really allow for this level of hidden tech? Discuss. By Molly Templeton | Published on June 18, 2024 Screenshot: Paramount Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Screenshot: Paramount Pictures It’s back to the shiny world of science fiction for Will Smith (Gemini Man, pictured above), who is set to star in Resistor, a retitled adaptation of Daniel Suarez’s 2014 novel Influx. (Weird title change, no?) According to Deadline, this project has been in development for a while—long enough for two drafts of the script, a first one by Zak Olkewicz (Bullet Train) and the latest by Eric Singer (presumably the one who co-wrote Top Gun: Maverick, and not the drummer from Kiss). Four years ago, S.F. Wilson was attached to direct, but at present the film does not have a director. Deadline notes that the plot details are “under wraps,” but one can draw some conclusions from the book synopsis: Physicist Jon Grady and his team have discovered a device that can reflect gravity—a triumph that will revolutionize the field of physics and change the future. But instead of acclaim, Grady’s lab is locked down by a covert organization known as the Bureau of Technology Control.The bureau’s mission: suppress the truth of sudden technological progress and prevent the social upheaval it would trigger. Because the future is already here. And it’s [sic] rewards are only for a select few.When Grady refuses to join the BTC, he’s thrown into a nightmarish high-tech prison housing other doomed rebel intellects. Now, as the only hope to usher humanity out of its artificial dark age, Grady and his fellow prisoners must try to expose the secrets of an unimaginable enemy—one that wields a technological advantage half a century in the making. Resistor does not yet have a release date.[end-mark] The post Will Smith Will Learn Some Wild Secrets About Technology in <i>Resistor</i> appeared first on Reactor.

News Smile 2 Naomi Scott Tries to Grin and Bear It in Smile 2 Trailer The malevolent grinning force has attached itself to someone a little more famous this time… By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on June 18, 2024 Credit: Paramount Pictures Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Paramount Pictures Stop smiling at me! That’s what Naomi Scott screams at one point in the Smile 2 trailer released today. Her freakout is reasonable! She plays a music star named Skye who witnesses a friend start maniacally smiling as he kills himself by bashing his face in with a dumbbell weight. The film is a sequel to 2022’s Smile, which has a similar premise: some supernatural force makes people smile in decidedly creepy ways and cause harm to themselves and others. In Smile 2, the big shift seems to be that the person who this malevolent grinning force hones in on is Skye, a famous pop star, rather than an unknown doctor. Here’s the synopsis: About to embark on a new world tour, global pop sensation Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) begins experiencing increasingly terrifying and inexplicable events. Overwhelmed by the escalating horrors and the pressures of fame, Skye is forced to face her dark past to regain control of her life before it spirals out of control. In addition to Scott, Smile 2 stars Rosemarie DeWitt, Kyle Gallner, Lukas Gage, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, Peter Jacobson, Raúl Castillo, Dylan Gelula, and Ray Nicholson. It is written and directed by Parker Finn, who also brought us the first film. Smile 2 grins its way into theaters on October 18, 2024. Check out the trailer below. [end-mark] The post Naomi Scott Tries to Grin and Bear It in <i>Smile 2</i> Trailer appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV The Watchers Who Watches The Watchers? Unfortunately, Me If you’re going to take the time to make a movie, you should have some sort of reason for doing it. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on June 18, 2024 Comment 0 Share New Share This film and I got off on the wrong foot immediately, because the voiceover talks about a massive forest in the west of Ireland that lures “lost souls” in and won’t let them leave—which is a great opening to a spooky horror film, except for the fact that Ireland has been largely deforested, first because the English took most of the trees, and then just… capitalism. And sure, this forest is a magical liminal space, and I’m probably overreacting a little bit because of various bone-deep feelings about Irish history. But still: wrong foot! And also let’s be honest: all the right feet in the world couldn’t have salvaged this movie. This is the kind of movie where the main character stares into a rearview mirror so she can make Significant Eye Contact with a parrot, perched in his cage in the backseat, and tells the parrot that today is the fifteenth anniversary of her mother’s death. The parrot has no response. Later on, a seemingly happy-go-lucky person will blurt out that their dad was an abusive drunk—and that’s their character development sorted. A person will be confronted with a revenant version of a loved one, be understandably very upset about that for the duration of one scene, but then be A-OK by the next scene. And of course, a thiarna dean trocaire, Ishana Night Shyamalan has embraced the family tradition of dumbass twists. Just in case you actually want to see it for yourself, I‘ll keep to light spoilers until a clearly marked full spoiler paragraph below. The basic plot is that several people have been lured into a haunted forest that won’t let them leave, and for reasons that are never explained the forest seems to be able to target people who are living through particular trauma. (Except for the couple people who seem fine until they’re traumatized by the forest—but whatever, I’m not here to argue with haunted liminal trees that don’t exist because the English fucking took them.) If one of these lost souls is lucky, they stumble across a bunker called “The Coop”—alas, not this Co-op—and shelter there each night, as a group of creatures called “The Watchers” gather outside a two-way mirror to, well, Watch them. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures First: as I said, the acting is all fine. Dakota Fanning is believably haunted by the death of her mother, even when that is expressed by her choice to wear a brunette wig and pick up a perfectly nice-seeming dude at a bar with a story about being a professional dancer, which is then presented to the audience as a moment of dark depravity. (I’ve known way less traumatized people who have based hookups on far bigger lies—this moment comes across much more as an adolescent’s idea of what a tragic adulthood looks like.) Georgina Campbell gives a solid performance as Ciara, who I think is supposed to be spinning between shock at the disappearance of her partner, and a forced optimism that they’ll all escape The Coop soon, but the character herself is so unbelievable that it never quite works. The same issues apply to Daniel, played by Oliver Finnegan. Finnegan does a great job, but the character is supposed to be overcompensating for his fear through a sort of manic energy (this turns out to be masking trauma, naturally) but I was never sure quite how old he was meant to be. Best of the group was Olwen Fouéré as Madeline, an older woman who had been studying the Watchers before the forest captured her, and who seems to know their ways and enforces the rules that keep everyone safe. Unless, of course, she’s making those up. The creepiness of the forest is good, and the initial moments when Mina realizes she’s trapped are legitimately frightening. The inherent terror of being in a room knowing that things you can’t see are watching you through a fake mirror, and could theoretically break through that mirror at any moment and rip you to shreds—that goes a long way! And Shyamalan is initially good about not quite showing us the Watchers to maximize their unsettling, scuttling presence. But as with all of these types of movies, you eventually crash into the wall of: are these things real, or not? Is this an experiment someone conducting on unknowing test subjects? Is Madeline lying about all this, à la several of the films by Shyamalan pere? Now about The Coop! There’s a table, a couch, a TV, a record player… and a bucket. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures And it’s here that my questions truly began. This is a tiny, concrete, art gallery-looking space, and four strangers are living in it—and three of them just lost a member who disappeared into the forest right before Mina showed up. But none of them act like people in that situation. But more, you’re telling me that a traumatized girl who’s been living in Galway, a small city, alone in her own apartment, has essentially been trapped in a bunker with a giant window and she just rolls with it? That she pisses in the bucket in the corner with three strangers in the room? That the other three people are all just OK with each other? That the person whose partner has disappeared isn’t in obvious shock? That they’d be at all functional? This is basically like they’ve been put in a panopticon style prison, for no reason, with no hope of escape or release, and their every move is being watched by monsters, and this movie posits that they aren’t just shaking crying wrecks huddled on the floor? Did I mention that The Watchers don’t give them food or water? So they spend their days (while The Watchers conveniently sleep in burrows) maintaining traps for birds and squirrels, which, come to think of it, I’m not sure they can cook except over open fires in the woods before the sun goes down. But again—there’s electricity. Mina spends the nights watching the TV and DVDs The Watchers have kindly provided—they’re all old seasons of reality TV show, obviously, for maximum panopportunities—and Ciara plays music and dances for The Watchers, but none of these people spend their days trying to trace the power lines to any sort of source. A few people have tried to leave, but when you hit a certain point it seems like the edges of the forest send you back, and then once the sun goes down and The Watchers come out you’re doomed. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures They’re there for a while, but no one’s hair looks particularly greasy, their clothes don’t appear to be stained. I can’t remember seeing any toilet paper, either? Or, for that matter, any personal hygiene stuff? Which again, perhaps I’m missing a point, but I feel like if you’re going to make a film with this premise you need to go with it. There were people who got mad at Poor Things for not including scenes of Bella Baxter dealing with menstrual blood. My mileage with that was fine because the movie was already trafficking in fantasy tropes, and was kind of a fairy tale about a revivified corpse. I was willing to give it all the slack it needed to work. But here, a huge point of the film should be that these people are trapped together, No Exit style—except that unlike in No Exit they’re all living mortals, and have bodies to cope with. That’s going to create conflict and embarrassment and body horror that absolutely needed to be the ground floor of this film before it even got to the rest of its ideas. Then, partway through the film, they discover a trapdoor in the floor. They discover it by… moving a throw rug. This is not like a “John Wick has to sledgehammer through several feet of concrete floor to get to his secret storeroom” situation. It’s just a rug. This also isn’t a “this new secret door just appeared due to like magic or whatever”—the door has apparently been there the entire time. Under a rug. You’re telling me that at no point did any of the three younger, less resigned people upturn every single thing in the tiny-ass bunker looking for a way out??? A secret room???? Some sort of control panel, anything that would help them escape????? You’re telling me they didn’t find it by accident while looking for food?????? Or a hospitality basket full of tampons??????? Or a goddamn shower???????? And can I talk about that parrot for a minute? It’s really clear that none of these people have spent five minutes with a bird, because they’re noisy and messy and VERY opinionated and, oh yeah, NEED TO EAT. And, oh yeah, these people have to hunt and forage for their food. But no one suggests eating the Golden Conure that Mina has so conveniently brought into The (goddammit) Coop? And the bird isn’t, oh, I don’t know, shrieking at them all the time? Demanding attention while they try to sleep, presumably all huddled into the only bed together, which I’m sure that doesn’t get awkward at all, but please understand me when I tell you that bird would be making their lives far more of a hell than any Watcher ever could. It’s a good thing they don’t eat him, though, since he turns out to be integral to the plot and can conveniently do the thing they need him to do, and seems to understand that they need him to do it. Now maybe you’re asking yourself right now: Leah, why are you so upset? Why do you care so much about something that was clearly just meant to be a silly summer horror movie? Because there are rules. If you’re going to make a ridiculous horror movie, you have to ground it in reality so the horror can actually land. There has to be some connection to a recognizable reality or we won’t know when the horror starts! And also: we have to at least give some sort of shit about the people in the movie! Even leaving horror aside, Road House is not a great film! It’s not a smart subversive take on an action movie, it’s goddamn ridiculous, but you do actually come away caring about some of the characters in it! There’s nothing to latch onto in The Watchers, until the last couple minutes, which I’ll get into in the promised spoiler section starting… now. Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures This movie tried to do something really interesting in the last ten minutes—and no I’m not referring to the aforementioned dumbass twist. The dumbass twist is twofold: The Watchers are ancient faeries (fucking FAERIES) that live underground and used to walk among humans and even intermarry with them, creating half-human/half-faerie hybrids. Part two of the twist is that Madeline is one of these creatures, and also a clone of the dead wife of the academic who built The Coop which is why she knows all the rules and habits of The Watchers, who rejected her for being of two worlds or whatever. And like, fine—the fact that Madeline isn’t really a human is obvious from the beginning, the fact that she’s obviously connected somehow to The Professor is obvious from the moment The Professor is first mentioned. The “faerie” plot is all just a riff on the mythology of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or Tuath Dé, a race of beings who were maybe the gods of ancient Ireland, who evolved into the aes sidhe or fae as their stories were told and retold through the centuries. (Those of you who have read Wheel of Time have clocked some familiar phrases by now.) The forest itself is a riff on a “thin place” a liminal space that is half in our world and half in the realm of the fae and/or the afterworld, an idea that was probably developed by Victorians who were trying to (re)create Celtic mythology as the culture rebuilt itself after centuries of English colonization. I’m saying “maybe” and “probably” a lot both because a lot of the origins of these ideas have been lost, they’re all really murky and tangled up, and because, let’s be real, who am I to say any of it’s mythological? If you dropped me in one of the remaining Irish forests I’d believe in all of this shit the second the sun went down. But the actual interesting part comes after those twists and reveals. Mina, Ciara, and Madeline have escaped the forest at last. Mina has realized that Madeline is a hybrid. And now Madeline has attacked Mina because, say it with me, the Watchers are a superior race and they should be the ones ruling the world, humans are boring losers, Magneto wuz right, yadda yadda yadda. And Mina, in the midst of being choked out by Madeline, blurts that she agrees with her. She tells Madeline to stay with her, that they can work together, that they were a family in The Coop and there’s no reason that should change. Madeline drops her, screams like a bird, unfurls wings that suddenly… exist, and flies away. In the epilogue we learn that Madeline has been following Mina—she spots her all the time in different guises. And here we see a very different movie opening up, a movie that doesn’t concern itself with twists and half-seen shots of Watchers in the shadows, and instead talks about loving the alien and realizing that the monster isn’t a monster. Hell, if you want to really go out on a limb of a tree that doesn’t exist anymore? There’s a story about colonization and its aftermath buried in one of the underground burrows of this movie. And this is why I get mad. Horror, especially horror, has an opportunity to be about something. Even the most ridiculous horror can have depth and meaning, it can offer a mirror or a door to people who feel misunderstood by most of culture. It can also offer absurd over-the-top fun. The Watchers took two different intriguing premises, and declined to do anything with either of them.[end-mark] The post Who Watches The Watchers? Unfortunately, Me appeared first on Reactor.