Would you like to live in the home of J.R.R. Tolkien? Now you can. The Oxford, England home of The Lord of the Rings author is now on the market.
Priced at £4,575,000 ($5.93 million USD), the residence is where Tolkien lived from 1930-1947. The 4,000 square-foot home, which was built in 1924, has six bedrooms, high ceilings throughout, and windows that provide ample natural night. There are also multiple reception rooms, a drawing room, and a walk-in pantry. Outside there is a large yard. It’s really lovely.
Realtor Breckon & Breckon is selling the home–you can see more pictures and get additional details at the official listing here.
Tolkien published The Hobbit in 1937, after which he began work on The Lord of the Rings. Presumably he did at least some writing in this home, which no doubt increases the value of the estate.
The Discovery Channel has announced a new TV show that pits humans against bears in what’s being billed as a unprecedented competition program.
The network has given the green light to a show called Man vs. Bear, which is a competition show where “humans will be entering the bear’s territory and take them on in a competition like never attempted.”
Three grizzly bears–whose names are Bart, Honey Bump, and Tank–will compete against three humans in challenges involving speed, strength, and stamina. Each episode will feature five different competitions that are apparently based on what bears do in the wild. Some of the competitions include a tug-of-war between bear and man and another strength test involving pushing big logs. In the final round, the human competitors will square off against the biggest bear, Bart, who stands more than 8 feet tall and weighs 1,400 pounds.
All of the bears live in a sanctuary in Utah, which is where the competition will take place. One of the competitors is an MMA fighter named Ira, who spoke frankly about the challenge: “Competing against bears is both scary and exciting,” Ira said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Man vs. Bear will feature a commentary team comprised of CBS Sports Radio broadcaster Brandon Tierney and animal expert Casey Anderson.
“Grizzlies are extremely clever and lightning fast animals. Do these humans stand a chance? And will the humans be able to prove that they’re the ultimate predators…or simply prey?” reads a very ominous-sounding description by Discovery Channel.
Man vs. Bear premieres December 4 on Discovery Channel.
Update 1: Charlie Cox and Tom Hiddleston may have just won Halloween. The two actors blew minds when they showed up backstage at a Broadway performance of Betrayal dressed as each other’s Marvel character.
For the first time in a few years, it seems like Call of Duty has stopped peeking at other shooters’ homework for inspiration. It’s not to say it hasn’t been successful with taking on trending modes and mechanics, like when Treyarch’s Black Ops 4 ditched the campaign and introduced an amazing battle royale mode. This year, though, Infinity Ward pulls from its own history for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. And as a result, it’s delivered excellent gunplay to pair with an intense and effective campaign and a fantastic weapon customization system in multiplayer. Something it didn’t learn, though, is that even a great arsenal can’t make up for poor map design, especially when there’s such a limited selection available at launch. Missteps in multiplayer and Spec Ops are like suppression fire that keep Modern Warfare from taking the high ground of its classic namesake, but everything else suggests that the series is now heading in a promising direction.
This is a non-spoiler review for David Michôd’s The King, which starts streaming Friday, November 1 on Netflix. It’s currently playing in limited theatrical release.
The King is a sometimes riveting, sometimes rickety retelling of Shakespeare’s Henry V, starring Oscar-nominee Timothée Chalamet as a young reluctant king who’s quickly steered into a war with France by a retinue of advisors with questionable loyalties.
Directed by David Michôd (Animal Kingdom, The Rover), and written by Michôd and Chalamet’s co-star Joel Edgerton (Black Mass), The King attempts to take what’s commonly known about the famous play — that King Henry (given the common name “Hal” here) was pushed into a war by a self-serving council — and tether it to larger, modernly relevant themes about power and inherited violence.
Australia’s top consumer law regulator has announced that some people who bought Fallout 76 will be able to request a refund after ZeniMax acknowledged missteps related to the game.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (ACCC) said in a news release that ZeniMax, which owns Bethesda, “acknowledged they were likely to have misled consumers about their consumer guarantee rights in relation to the online action game Fallout 76.”
ZeniMax’s European and Australian divisions “accepted that their actions were likely to have contravened the Australian Consumer Law.” Some people complained to the ACCC that ZeniMax staff denied them refunds after they experienced bugs and other network issues with the controversial always-online Fallout game. This runs against Australian Consumer Law.
“ZeniMax has acknowledged that they are likely to have misled certain Australian consumers about their rights to a refund when they experienced faults with their Fallout 76 game,” ACCC Commissioner Sarah Court said in a statement.
ZeniMax will offer refunds to Fallout 76 purchasers in Australia who requested refunds between November 24, 2018 and June 1, 2019. Players will lose access to Fallout 76 once they accept the refund.
“When a consumer has purchased a product that has a fault which amounts to a major failure, the Australian Consumer Law provides them with the right to ask for their choice of either a repair, replacement, or refund,” Court said.
In addition to paying out refunds, the ACCC said ZeniMax is updating its customer service documents to better reflect Australian consumer protections.
Fallout 76 was released in November 2018 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, and the reviews were generally unkind to the role-playing game. Unlike previous entries in the series, Fallout 76 adopted an always-online, multiplayer-focused approach, which did not resonate with everyone.
Amazon is having a huge movie and games sale ahead of Black Friday. The promotion states”Buy 3 item(s) Get 1 item(s) Free“, but what they mean is if you buy 3 items, one of the 3 items is free. This is an outstanding deal because it includes newly released games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and newly released movies like Spider-Man: Far From Home. You can mix and match any eligible item, so you could potentially have a board game, movie, and video game all in the same bundle. Some of these prices are so good, and the releases so recent, that they’ll unlikely to be matched even on Black Friday.
The news that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have exited their planned Star Wars trilogy at Lucasfilm was surprising… and yet not all that surprising. Not only had the pair recently inked a very lucrative contract with Netflix, which would seem to conflict with making three Star Wars movies in terms of the duo’s schedule, but also the execs behind our beloved galaxy far, far away have established at this point quite a history of hiring and then firing or otherwise losing directors for their films.
