Uncut Gems, the Adam Sandler thriller that generated a lot of buzz in 2019, is now available to stream on Netflix in the United States. The film has been available on Netflix in other parts of the world for months, but this is the first time it’s available to stream on the network in America.
Directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, Uncut Gems stars Sandler as a New York City jeweller in a film that scored strong reviews. In particular, critics praised Sandler’s performance in a more serious role than what he is known for. The movie also stars former NBA player Kevin Garnett, along with Idina Menzel, Lakeith Stanfield, and Julia Fox.
Coinciding with the movie’s release on Netflix, Entertainment Weekly posted an interview with Sandler and the Safdie brothers that was originally conducted in 2019 but held back to avoid spoilers. In the interview, it’s revealed that Sandler was nearly choked out by stunt performers during a scene.
“There was one take when Sandler was getting choked and he was trying to tap out, but the actor thought that he was just being Howard so he choked harder, and Adam couldn’t breathe,” Josh Safdie said.
GameSpot’s Uncut Gems review scored the movie an 8/10. Reviewer Rafael Motamayor specifically praised the movie’s stress and tension. “This is not a feel-good movie, but one that leaves you with the sensation that you just experienced two filmmakers and a star at the height of their craft,” Motamayor said. “Uncut Gems will get your heart pumping from 0 to 80 in seconds, and it will be hard to forget such an achievement.”
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Chris Evans’ portrayal of Steve Rogers in the Captain America series is the role he is most famous for, but he almost did not take it. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter as part of their Award Chatter podcast, Evans has opened up about his casting in the role, why he almost rejected it, and what convinced him to take up the shield.
Evans recalls playing a superhero, Johnny Storm, in Sony’s Fantastic Four movies in 2005 and 2007. As the sequel released, though, he started to suffer from severe anxiety, as he felt that the better movies he was starring in (like Danny Boyle’s Sunshine) were flying under the radar. When he experienced panic attacks on the set of 2010’s Puncture, he started to worry that acting might not be for him.
When Marvel Studios contacted him about testing for the part of Steve Rogers, and potentially locking into a nine-film deal if he did well, Evans initially declined to come in and test for the part. “My suffering would be my own,” he recalls thinking, worrying that his anxiety would grow worse. Although he was offered a modified deal, involving fewer films and more money if he came in for a screen test, Evans continued to turn it down, worrying that the pressure of fame would get the better of him.
The thing that changed Evans’ mind was, ultimately, Marvel’s insistence, as they eventually offered him the part without conducting a screen test. After talking to Robert Downey Jr. (who plays Iron Man), a therapist, and several friends and family, Evans eventually decided that he should embrace the opportunity. “It was the best decision I ever made,” he says, saying that he’s grateful to Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige “for being persistent and helping me avoid making a giant mistake.”
Ultimately, Evans’ fears did not come to pass, and he says “I fell in love with Steve Rogers pretty quick.” He says that the friendship of his fellow Avengers actors, and seeing Chris Hemsworth also dealing with newfound fame, helped him through the experience.
Chris Evans is now finished playing Captain America, and recently starred in the Apple TV+ series Defending Jacob. Fans of the character can look forward to the new Marvel’s Avengers video game coming to PS4, Xbox One, and PC on September 1.
Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.
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The games will be released on Valve’s digital storefront on June 18, Quantic Dream has announced. If you’re interested in the games but not sure you want to buy them, each game has a free demo available on Steam right now.
Quantic Dream Games On Steam
Quantic Dream originally released these games as exclusives for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 but the French studio was never owned by Sony. The company is now developing multiplatform games and is seeking to also become a “boutique publisher.”
The latest game, Detroit, features an array of famous actors performing the lead roles, including Jesse Williams (Grey’s Anatomy) and Clancy Brown (SpongeBob SquarePants). Detroit recently added a new Twitch extension that allows streamers to send out polls to their viewers related to the decisions posed by the game’s branching narrative.
Starting June 1, GameSpot will be hosting Play For All–a celebration of all things gaming. Join us as we bring you the summer’s hottest news, previews, interviews, features, and videos, as well as raise money for COVID-19 relief efforts with the help of our friends from around the gaming world.
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The Bourne franchise, which consists of four films starring Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, amnesiac special agent, could return–but Damon will not be playing the character again. A reboot of the franchise is being planned, and it’ll be separate from both those films and the 2012 spin-off The Bourne Legacy, which starred Jeremy Renner.
In an interview with Collider, producer Frank Marshall has discussed plans to bring Bourne back to the big screen with a new creative team. “I do like the Bourne series, and I do think that’s an opportunity for different filmmakers to come in now,” he said. “So, I’m hoping that we can find a new story for Bourne and a new filmmaker. We are looking.”
While this doesn’t necessarily mean that a new Bourne film will definitely happen, planning is, at least, underway.
The last movie in the previous Bourne franchise, simply titled Jason Bourne, released in 2016, and there were no plans for more. A spin-off TV series, Treadstone, was announced in 2018; it eventually launched to little fanfare, and was cancelled after one season. Combined, the five Bourne films have earned over $1.6 billion worldwide at the box office.
A new firmware update for Nintendo Switch has arrived. Version 10.0.3. is out now, and it’s not a very notable or substantial update.
The patch notes are one line long. The update provides, “General system stability improvements to enhance the user’s experience.”
This update follows the 10.0.2 patch that was released on April 30. This update also included general stability improvements along with a fix for an issue with the Pro Controller. Before that, version 10.0.1 was released, and it did almost nothing.
Switch firmware updates are automatically downloaded if your console is connected to the internet. You can visit the System Settings menu to confirm that you’re running the latest firmware.
For nearly 20 years, Frogwares has been the premier developer of games based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Following the release of 2019’s The Sinking City, an open-world adventure game inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, the developer jumped straight to work on its follow-up–this time bringing their most well-known character back to his roots in a large setting to explore. In an exclusive with GameSpot, the developers at Frogwares have revealed that is developing and self-publishing Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One, a prequel that will focus on the early exploits of the gentleman sleuth.
Set for release in 2021 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and next-gen consoles, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One takes cues from The Sinking City, bringing players into an explorable open-world city filled with characters to meet, disguises to wear, and mysteries to solve. Set in the early years of the detective’s career, the game casts you as a 21-year-old Sherlock Holmes who returns to his Mediterranean island hometown following his mother’s death. After reacquainting himself with the island, his family manor, and the enigmatic companion Jonathan–who is definitely not Watson–he’ll discover that the town has got some secrets, and he’ll use his budding yet still brilliant detective skills to uncover a larger conspiracy at work.
Before the reveal, I spoke with Frogwares producer and community manager Sergey Oganesyan and lead feature designer Yaroslav Martyniuk about what’s to come in the next Sherlock Holmes game. As a prequel, Chapter One is set many years before the detective’s other cases in games like Crime and Punishment and The Devil’s Daughter. Similar to Batman: Year One, Chapter One reframes the early years of the detective and his world, doubling as a prequel to the narrative arc from Frogwares’ previous Sherlock games, and a gateway for newcomers to jump into the series.
“What we want to do with Chapter One is that we want to explore this other side of the character, and how he became the great detective that we know,” said Oganesyan. “Our version of Sherlock is not a traditional character. He has this raw talent [for discovering the truth] that’s sort of untamed. He’s more arrogant, and much more volatile in this game compared to [other] versions. He has more fun playing with the truth, and he has no problem lying to somebody to get to the bottom of his investigation. But at the same time, he is still young. He will experience some of the things that a young man, 21 years of age, may not be ready to process in this game. This will have certain consequences on his character. Our goal is to show the events that will shape Sherlock as a great detective.”
Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One is one of the rare games in the series that takes place outside of London, which gave Frogwares more flexibility for the story. In the debut trailer, we see Sherlock return to his family manor with his companion Jonathan, but things aren’t as they seem when he enters, leading to one of many mysteries in the game that ties directly to Sherlock. The trailer does set the tone for the game, which looks to be something of an emotional, yet surreal journey for the budding detective as he explores the island town where everyone seems to have something to hide.
Frogwares’ previous effort with The Sinking City was a departure for the studio, moving away from the fiction of Sherlock Holmes and into a more elaborate adventure game where you explored a city filled with monsters and shady individuals with ties to a dark cult. It was a fascinating experiment in how it brought the developer’s established detective gameplay from the Sherlock Holmes games into a horror-filled open world. But in retrospect, the developers stated they learned some explicit lessons on how to approach that style of gameplay going forward, specifically in exploring an open city and making the activities therein more engaging and less of a hassle. Chapter One’s setting is smaller in scope by comparison, yet it is much denser, with more buildings to enter and more people to interact with. The devs described Chapter One’s setting as an open city; the island town encompasses different districts. Using disguises, you’ll blend in and make your way to different areas of the city that you may not be able to enter.
Our goal is to show the events that will shape Sherlock as a great detective.
Building upon the detective work from The Sinking City and Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter, Chapter One has an open-ended approach to solving mysteries that allows you to uncover clues and suspects in your way. Described as “Global Investigation,” the developers explained that the city would feature different avenues to discover many secrets and events, all of which can lead back to your current investigation, sometimes in unexpected ways. Using these clues, along with some advice from Jonathan, Sherlock will be able to use his mind palace–an internal nexus of all the clues and research–to piece together the evidence to close the case.
“The main principles that we try to instill and develop in our games is the investigation principle, where all the details, minor or otherwise, are presented to the player,” said Martyniuk. “So there are a lot of places in this city which contain different information on different matters. This can be used in the investigation to define and formulate which evidence you want to search for to build your evidence. This free investigation [format] is for you to decide where to go on your own. Our intent is that players who understand [the world] will feel connected to the game’s investigation–[getting players] to feel smart and active within the investigation is very critical in getting into the game’s story.”
In addition to taking on different investigations throughout the city, Sherlock will also run afoul of some of the city’s more unsavory individuals. While combat is a crucial part of Chapter One, it won’t be as pronounced as it was in The Sinking City, which featured gunfights in the city streets against eldritch monsters and cultists. Chapter One’s combat system has been completely revamped and focuses more on hand-to-hand engagements that lean into Sherlock’s particular skill set. In a fight, Sherlock will be able to use his deductive skills to pinpoint weak points on enemies to end battles easily. According to the devs, battles take place where they make sense, and certain areas of town will have individuals looking for a scrap.
Following the Nintendo Switch release of The Sinking City, Sherlock Holmes: Chapter One will be Frogwares’ next attempt at self-publishing. Producer Oganesyan stated that pushing for self-publishing allows the developers to have more control of the project thanks to the rise of the digital marketplace.
“To be honest, it’s all about how we manage the project,” Oganesyan said. “Games publishing ten years ago was very different, but as the digital market has caught up to the retail market, things have changed. Nowadays, we can do many of the responsibilities that publishers have ourselves, and we don’t see any reason not to do it honestly because now we are in total control of our business, which will help our studio even more. Yeah, basically there is no reason not to do it.”
Oganesyan added that the COVID-19 pandemic did create some challenges in the development of Chapter One. With over a year in development at this time, the game is shaping up to be the biggest Sherlock Holmes game to date, however, the producer made it clear that Frogwares has adjusted to the shift in development well, and that the game was still on track for a 2021 release on consoles and PC.
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Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition, an updated version of one of the best RPGs for the Wii, releases on Nintendo Switch this Friday, May 29. Whether you’re planning on diving in for the first time or revisiting the modern classic in its updated form, you should take a look at the pre-order deal at Amazon. Right now, you can pre-order Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition for $49.94, which is a savings of $10.
This is the same price Walmart was selling the Definitive Edition for, but Walmart is currently sold out. Amazon already sold out of its Xenoblade pre-orders at this price earlier today, so there’s a good chance this offer won’t be available for long. If you already placed your pre-order at Amazon at the full $60 price, you’ll get the discount thanks to Amazon’s pre-order price guarantee.
In addition to enhanced visuals, updated controls, remixed music, and general quality-of life improvements across the board, the Switch version adds a new epilogue dubbed Future Connected that builds onto the story of the lengthy role-playing game.
Xenoblade Chronicles originally released on Wii in 2010, and a New 3DS exclusive port, Xenoblade Chronicles 3D, followed in 2015. With the release of the updated Switch version, three of the four Xenoblade experiences are now available on Switch: Xenoblade, Xenoblade 2, and Torna – The Golden Country (a large prequel expansion). Here’s to hoping the Wii U’s Xenoblade Chronicles X is ported to Switch in the future, too.
In 2019, the head of Bayonetta developer Platinum Games, Atsushi Inaba, said he was not all that impressed by the next generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft. He said they offered “more of the same,” and those comments led to some debate and discussion.
Inaba has now clarified his comments, telling Video Games Chronicle that his original words led to “a little bit of backlash” and the perception that he was a snob. Inaba now says he’s excited by the fact that the new consoles will allow developers to “do more” as it relates to graphics and technology. However, he stands by his estimation that the leap from the PS4/Xbox One era to the PS5/Xbox Series X era won’t be as dramatic as the shift that occurred years ago during previous console transitions.
“If you think back to the generation between Super Nintendo and PlayStation, and how we went from pixel art to 3D polygons… nobody could have ever imagined that a few years prior,” Inaba said. “When that stuff started coming out people were just blown away: they weren’t ready for it, they weren’t anticipating it… it was just so new.”
The latest console generations, by comparison, leave something to be desired, Inaba said.
“I feel that the announcements that we’ve had for recent consoles generations, while all good and interesting, and of course I’m happy for us as developers to have better technology to work on… it’s a ‘perceivable’ future,” he said. “There’s not the extreme surprise or the unexpected quality that I felt from the leap to previous consoles. Now I see the announcements and I think, ‘Oh, that’s cool’ and then the next minute I think, ‘Hmmm… what should I watch on Netflix tonight?'”
Inaba clarified that this is only his personal opinion, and that–from an industry level–the launch of the PS5 and Xbox Series X is “all very promising.” He also mentioned that Sony and Microsoft have yet to fully reveal their new consoles, so it’s possible the machines will end up wowing him.
“We haven’t seen everything from next-gen at this point, I think, and it’s still very likely that there could be a quality like that in these consoles that’s going to kind of be a game-changer, that’s going to change how games could be played,” he said. “And if that is the case, then maybe they’ll blow me away. So I don’t want to sound like, ‘Hey, I know everything about the new consoles and they’re boring.’ But with the information that I have now, I haven’t seen any extremely big surprises.”
Inaba also called out the Nintendo Switch as an example of a platform-holder trying something bold and new. “The Nintendo Switch was very groundbreaking in how it was able to just to take a home console and make it portable,” he said. “It’s something that you hadn’t seen a lot of people doing before: it took this wall, that perhaps a lot of people didn’t know even existed, and broke it down.”
The testing positions are open to European players, and while the company hasn’t specified what it’s looking for in a tester, the application form asks about location, availability, previous testing experiences, and which devices you have available.
Testers will have to sign an NDA if accepted for the two-week process, which involved a preliminary briefing, two weeks of reporting based on short periods of gameplay, and a debrief session. Participants will be paid £200 (around $250 US) at the end of the testing period. Applications are now open for the limited positions here.
GameSpot’s review of Dreams praised the tools the game provided for its endlessly creative community, saying “Dreams is a refined constructor for building a wide variety of games, and a community-centric showcase where others can play them. It’s a stunning achievement that encourages limitless creative expression, a place where people can come together, collaborate, and explore each other’s imaginations. It’s a tool for the fools who dream, and one of the most innovative releases in years.”
Media Molecule released a free demo for Dreams on the PS4 earlier in May, featuring limited access to the game’s creation tools and select user-created content.
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