Very sorry and sad to say it’s true. I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all. pic.twitter.com/Kh2fq3tf9m
— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) January 11, 2016
Late last night, as the hubbub online over the evening’s Golden Globes telecast was fading out, the Internet was struck by tragic news: Legendary rock star David Bowie had died at age 69.
Bowie’s passing was announced in a statement on his official website that read: “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief.” The news was confirmed on Twitter by Bowie’s son, director Duncan Jones, who just finished the movie Warcraft.
Almost immediately after the news broke, social media became flooded with tributes to Bowie from everyone from Neil Gaiman to the Golden Globes’ host Ricky Gervais to “Weird Al” Yankovic. One of the most influential rock stars of his generation—or any generation—Bowie had just released his 28th album, Blackstar, earlier this month. Below are just a few of the reactions to Bowie’s passing.
Bowie existed so all of us misfits learned that an oddity was a precious thing. he changed the world forever.
— Guillermo del Toro (@RealGDT) January 11, 2016
Stunned and sad. The world is emptier now, and all they stars crashing down. My love and sympathies to @ManMadeMoon.
— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 11, 2016
David Bowie was one of my most important inspirations, so fearless, so creative, he gave us magic for a lifetime.
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) January 11, 2016
https://t.co/3S4suFZ38d
— Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) January 11, 2016
Please could every radio station around the globe just play David Bowie music today – I think the world owes him that.
— Eddie Izzard (@eddieizzard) January 11, 2016
I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me – I was not ready for this. RIP Bowie.
— Al Yankovic (@alyankovic) January 11, 2016
I just lost a hero. RIP David Bowie.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 11, 2016
The Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase 2 Collection, which comes out on Blu-ray tomorrow—housed in a beautiful casing shaped like the Morag Orb from Guardians of the Galaxy—features all six films from the second round of the MCU dating back to Iron Man 3. But among its bonus features is a preview for next year’s Phase 3 kickoff film Captain America: Civil War, which debuted over at Entertainment Weekly.
It’s mostly talking head interviews with the cast and crew setting up the plot line, but it does feature some new footage and also reveals tidbits of information on the state of the heroes coming off Avengers: Age of Ultron. There are a few shots and statements that show Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) will be more confident in her abilities, and some comments from Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige that indicate Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) will be integral to Civil War’s plot. It’s also the second straight video—after the first trailer—to feature Tony Stark gloomily standing over either Rhodey or War Machine’s empty, destroyed suit, which portends some personal strife that would ignite conflict between Captain American and Iron Man. More information will surely trickle out ahead of Civil War’s release date next May, but for now, this is a bountiful array of new images to pore over until then.
When it came to light we were going to get new Star Wars movies, there were a lot of things fans wanted. (Wookiees, plz!) But there was one thing a lot of them (read: us) were really hoping to see: badass female characters. Leia was great. Padmé Amidala was cool. But we need more, more, more.
With Rey (played by Daisy Ridley), it looks like fans will get that wish. In a new featurette for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Ridley says Rey is “an amazing character” and that—as we’ve long speculated— she’s a scavenger on Jakku.
However, what she says after that is the thing sure to elicit more than a few relieved sighs from those looking for well-rounded roles for women in the new Star Wars universe.
“I hope that women—and men—all across the world can see something they relate to in Rey, in a strong woman who does her own thing and has her own story,” Ridley says.
We’ll see if that proves true next week (!!!). Watch the full video, which includes John Boyega (Finn) touting that Rey “can really kick some butt,” above.
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The Final Fantasy VII remake from Square Enix announced at E3 earlier this year has a new trailer courtesy of today’s Playstation Experience keynote. It’s looking quite snazzy, if we do say so ourselves. The trailer offers our first look at the kinetic new interpretation of the game’s turn-based combat, as well as showing off the voice acting.
Oh, and if that’s not enough Final Fantasy VII for you? The long-teased port of the PC version is out on PS4. Like, right now.
So earlier today, the cast and crew behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens did a Q&A on Twitter to answer fans’ burning questions about the film, which is now a mere 14 days away according to the paper chain countdown thingy we have here at the WIRED office. The Internet being the Internet, some people came to troll. But surprisingly, some of those people were celebs like comedian Paul F. Tompkins and Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus. (Or maybe that’s not surprising at all—depends on how you feel about celebrities, really.) The responses are still coming in, but we’ve collected some of the best #TwitterAwakens questions below, including Hoppus’ deep desire to know what the cast’s favorite Blink-182 songs are.
[View the story “Celebs Trolling #TwitterAwakens” on Storify]
Dear Internet: Never change.
Love, WIRED
Dark Cloud, running on PlayStation 4. Sony
Sony has revealed the first batch of PlayStation 2 games that will be available to purchase and play tomorrow via the PlayStation 4 console, ahead of the PlayStation Experience fan expo.
The games listed below will launch tomorrow, December 5. Coming later will be Parappa the Rapper 2 and King of Fighters 2000, which will be playable on the PlayStation Experience show floor in San Francisco this weekend.
WIRED first reported of Sony’s plans to release PlayStation 2 classic games via emulation on PS4 last month.
Dark Cloud — $14.99
Grand Theft Auto III — $14.99
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City — $14.99
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas — $14.99
Rogue Galaxy — $14.99
The Mark of Kri — $14.99
Twisted Metal: Black — $9.99
War of the Monsters — $9.99
Dark Souls 3, the third entry in FromSoftware’s ultra-hard ultra-gothic action role-playing series, is to be released in the United States on April 12, publisher Bandai Namco has announced. Alongside the announcement, two new videos have been released: a trailer and some extended gameplay footage.
The trailer (above) doesn’t feature anything we haven’t seen before, but the gameplay footage (below) has some surprises. The long and short of it is that everything is trying to kill you, always and forever, and you should start mentally preparing yourself now.
Chi-Raq is director Spike Lee’s best-reviewed feature film since 2006’s Inside Man. But the movie, a modern-day adaptation of Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata that tells the story of Chicago women organizing a sex strike to stop gang violence in their neighborhoods, hasn’t been as well-received within the community it claims to represent. The name already stirred up controversy in Chicago while the film was in production, and now the city’s own Chance the Rapper has taken to Twitter to lambaste the movie—and Spike Lee’s decision to engage the city’s trouble as an interloper.
[View the story “Chance the Rapper on Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq” on Storify]
It’s a strong reaction, but one that makes a lot of sense. Lee is a provocateur; in his recent appearance on Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he claimed that a sex strike could curb sexual assault on college campuses. What he’s trying to do with Chi-Raq is churn up enough noise to force a conversation that leads to positive change–but that’s an affront to Chicago residents who live with the specific, regional complexities that have fueled the violence there. Perhaps anyone interested in the actual state of the city’s south side would be better off watching Kartemquin’s incredible documentary The Interrupters instead.
Jaja Poupou
Through his laborious breathing, Kylo Ren serves up a latte, injecting the espresso through his … nose? Meanwhile, Finn reacts with alarm as he can’t keep his luminescent pool noodle—er, lightsaber—aloft. Leia can’t control her frenzied cross-eyes, and Rey is definitely possessed. Even poor BB-8 is having a full-scale freakout. Did a stormtrooper’s head just fly off?
No, this isn’t the nightmare of an acid trip—or, actually, we’re not going to rule that out. Lucasfilm has been issuing one helluva promotional campaign in advance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Dec. 18 release, but the never-ending TV spots and ads have got nothing on French artist Jaja Poupou’s disturbing animation of the movie’s poster. We can only hope that the Star Wars PR team capitalizes on the bizarreness of Jaja—judging from their other videos, which feel kind of like watching Monty Python sketches in French while listening The Dark Side of the Moon, the Force behind this oddity is strong indeed.
Project M
For the past few years, a small team of Nintendo fans have been iterating on a mod called Project M, a revamped version of the Wii’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The mod, which was designed to improve Nintendo’s original game with an eye toward tournament play, has shut down, effective immediately.
According to the development team’s website, the six-year project is ending so that they can take their skills and “move on to bigger and better ventures,” presumably work on some sort of original game. Along with closing development, the team has closed out Project M‘s website completely, removing all information and download links, a move that serves as a reminder of the liminal lifespan of even the most beloved fan games.
San Francisco-based mashup creator Jordan Roseman, aka DJ Earworm, has been crafting year-in-summary mashup tracks since at least 2007. Similar to Canadian musician Daniel Kim’s Pop Danthology series, Roseman’s United State of Pop entries combine as many Billboard Hot 100 songs as possible into one track. This year’s version, “50 Shades of Pop,” has everything from Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and Demi Lovato’s “Cool For the Summer” to Major Lazer and DJ Snake’s “Lean On” and Adele’s “Hello.” Since it sticks to what charted in 2015, there are some songs from 2014 albums mixed in—like a whopping four tracks from Taylor Swift’s 1989, more than any other artist. It’s essentially a CliffsNotes version of popular music in 2015, the bare essentials of the year boiled down into one five-minute track–with a frenetic video that cuts around to feature the lead vocal track at any given moment. It’s not quite a heart-racing banger, but anchored chiefly by the bass line for The Weeknd’s “I Can’t Feel My Face,” it’s an addicting track worthy of DJ Earworm’s name.
Writer, actor, and all-around artistic genius Lin-Manual Miranda has been enjoying a blockbuster year. His Founding Fathers-centric historical rap musical Hamilton has been the talk of Broadway since the summer. The original cast recording album of the musical hit the top spot on the Billboard rap albums chart. And Miranda had a barnburner of an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, doing a Wheel of Freestyle rap battle with Black Thought from The Roots.
But last night, television viewers found out that Miranda’s year is about to get even better. J.J. Abrams, in full swing on the promotional tour for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, dropped by to talk with Fallon about the hotly anticipated film. It was expected that he’d connect with Fallon about the legacy of the franchise—but nobody thought they’d hear a story of how Abrams saw Hamilton, met Miranda, and then offered the composer the chance to write some music for his new Star Wars movie. It turns out that John Williams only wanted to do the score and not the diegetic music within the world of The Force Awakens. So Abrams brought in Miranda to co-write the music for what he calls “our version of the Cantina scene.”
Disney is going all-in on new Star Wars material, from spin-off standalone films to every kind of product licensing imaginable. What’s to say that they won’t tap a musical genius like Miranda to try his hand at crafting a stage musical set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?
Bad dancing. Worse fashion. A stupidly catchy song. Yes, friends, it’s time for a new Psy video. “Daddy,” which the South Korean pop star just dropped, has a pretty simple premise: CL of girl group 2NE1 would like to know “Hey, where’d you get that body from?” The answer is, naturally, “I got it from my daddy.” Commence crazy dance interludes, costume changes, and an insane hyped-up beat. (Skrillex, is that you?) The video may not have the same surprise-hit factor that Psy’s video for “Gangnam Style” had, but it’s just as bonkers, and it’s already gotten nearly 6 million views in less than 24 hours. So now the real question is: Where do you get that viral magic from, Psy?
Original article:
The Internet Mourns the Death of Rock Legend David Bowie