Blizzard Entertainment has revealed a host of new details for its upcoming games at its annual dedicated convention in Anaheim, California. Co-founder and president Mike Morhaime opened Blizzcon 2015 with a heartfelt shoutout to the fan community, celebrating the ninth convention and Blizzard’s 25th year making games. He also highlighted the company’s future, with the recent beta launch for...
OVATION LAUNCHPAD PRO Designed for use with Ableton Live — the music production software that’s big on creative improvisation — the Launchpad Pro’s 64 pressure-sensitive pads offer RGB LED feedback. Its flexible interface can alter its layout to act as a drum controller, chromatic keyboard or eight vertical faders. Thirty-two additional buttons keep functions such as mixer controls close to hand...
Behold Awkward Moment Seal, the latest addition to the mighty pantheon of Advice Animals memes. We all know the feeling he represents: It comes when a moment of social embarrassment closes around you like a steel trap, and anything you do is certain to make things worse. Should you change the channel when your parents walk in during a graphic sex scene on TV, or silently endure it hoping that the...
Having looked at the Angry Birds Transformers app that somehow manages to successfully combine Operation Wolf gameplay with bird and pig robots in disguise, what do the related toys bring to the party? As with other “telepods” Angry Birds games, the associated toy figures and playsets unlock characters in the game when their tiny QR code is placed over the tablet or smartphone camera. Unlike...
TikTok is launching on smart TVs in France, Germany and the UK as part of a play to move into people’s living rooms and diversify its audience. The short-form video sharing platform has announced that a version of its app will be available from today on Android TV on models produced by Sony, Hisense, TCL, Skyworth, Sharp, Phillips, Xiaomi, Panasonic and Toshiba. The move, which follows the...
The starter Pokémon for the new Pokémon Sun and Moon and their first evolutions have been revealed, along with the first look at gameplay and new features for the upcoming 3DS title. Players jumping into the latest Pokémon generation will have to choose between Litten, the “Fire Cat Pokémon”; Popplio, the water-type “Sea-Lion Pokémon”; and Rowlet, a small owl referred to as the “Grass Quill...
Diane Kruger slapping Jessica Chastain across the face with a frozen fish should be funny. The scene, sadly not played for laughs, is one of many wasted opportunities in this lacklustre action thriller. Chastain’s Mace and Kruger’s Marie, along with Khadijah (Lupita Nyong’o) and Graciela (Penélope Cruz), are international spies who team up to retrieve a “deadly cybertool” that’s fallen into the...
Sally Kellerman, the Oscar and Emmy-nominated actor who played Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in director Robert Altman’s 1970 film MAS*H, has died. Kellerman died of heart failure at her home Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, her manager and publicist Alan Eichler said. She was 84. Kellerman had a career of more than 60 years in film and television. She was a regular in Altman’s films, appearing in...
For what has become his final feature film, director Roger Michell made this sweet-natured and genial comedy in the spirit of Ealing, which bobs up like a ping pong ball on a water-fountain. It is based on the true story of Kempton Bunton, the Newcastle cab driver who in 1965 appeared at the Old Bailey for stealing Goya’s portrait of the Duke of Wellington from London’s National Gallery. The...
The deeply strange tragi-romantic farce of Cyrano de Bergerac has been adapted for the movies many times, with famous versions starring Gérard Depardieu and Steve Martin. Now it is revived again as a musical, with screenwriter Erica Schmidt adapting her hit stage version of Edmond Rostand’s 1897’s play, and Joe Wright directing. As in the stage show, this stars Schmidt’s husband Peter Dinklage...