One of the secrets of good writing is to listen to your inner muse and write what gives you intense pleasure. The most successful screenwriters in Hollywood happen to have passions and taste that dovetail with pleasing audiences. They can ride the studio collaborative process to a happy conclusion.…

Game of the Year Hmmm……I’m trying to figure out a good way to put this. Basically here’s what happened: after the launch of Stanley Parable, I became a bit depressed. Largely this is because in those months, SO much attention was directed at the game and at me personally. And while I could not even…

Post-production film artist Adam Palmer sold off all his film equipment to play with a video game program. "I was so confident this was the direction I wanted to go," said Palmer, who left live-action filmmaking to instead work with gaming company Valve's 3D animation program Source Filmmaker . "I…

In 2008, a then-28-year-old Edmund McMillen , was prepping for his high school reunion in his hometown of Santa Cruz, Calif. It didn’t matter that he didn’t seem “the type” to actually attend a 10-year high school reunion. What did matter, though, was the enduring memory of a particular classmate…

Daniel Craig, it would appear, does not want to be James Bond anymore . And that’s fine. He has done a very good job at it and deserves to be tired of the role. More than being fine, though, it’s fun, because it allows for the “Who should be the next James Bond?” conversation to happen naturally,…

THE federal minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour since 2009. While Congress has refused to take action, Democratic politicians have been engaged in something of a bidding war to propose raising the minimum wage ever higher: first to $10.10, then to $12, and now some are pushing for $15 an…

I had one goal in mind when starting this little rant: to take down a recent American classic. I wanted to shred something so beloved that I may even come off as a rotten dick. Off the top of my head, I first thought of Forrest Gump . Seemed easy enough. I thought for a few minutes about all the…

Why you should care Because when you live on a chunk of sinking land, a broken marriage is NBD. By Shannon Sims The Daily Dose MAR 21 2016 The Maldives — that scattering of 1,200 tiny islands, a long way south of India, that you’ve seen on a screen saver or two — might seem like paradise. Bungalows…

I love to watch an actor within a shot . . . I feel I’m the first person watching it. Roger Deakins There are images in the films of Roger Deakins—including in his newest collaboration with director Denis Villeneuve , Sicario , and going back to his pioneering early work on classics like 1984 (1984)…

Annie Duke was often the only woman at the poker table, which influenced the way people saw her - and the way she saw herself . Feeling like an outsider can come at a cost, but also be an advantage. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: Annie Duke was often the only woman at the poker table. This influenced the way…

Fargo , FX’s Emmy-winning anthology series, returns for a second season at 10 p.m. ET on Monday, October 12. And it’s good. It’s so, so good. The only thing stopping me from saying it’s great is (a) a Midwestern humility that befits the subject matter, and (b) that I’ve only seen four episodes.…

Chance the Rapper is about to kick off a sweeping North American tour with dozens of stops including Montreal, New York and Los Angeles. The 22-year-old hip-hop artist is a rising star. Born Chancelor Bennett, he has opened for Eminem, shared stages with Kendrick Lamar, hung out with Taylor Swift…

The mass shooting in Roseburg, Ore. has reignited debate over gun control and gun rights in the United States. Below are a series of questions drawn from what people have been searching for on Google since the shooting – and an attempt to answer them. What is gun control? “Gun control” is a broad…

Nicki Minaj Credit Erik Madigan Heck for The New York Times. Styling: Rushka Bergman. Hair: Oscar James. Makeup: Sheika Daley. Manicure: Millie Machado. Set Design: Andrea Huelse. P op music is dominated almost exclusively by the female star — Beyoncé, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus,…

Samsung Pay was presented during a promotional event in New York in August. Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — Months before its technology became the centerpiece of Samsung’s new mobile payment system, LoopPay, a small Massachusetts subsidiary of the South Korean…

There are no fixed boundaries in Patti Smith’s universe: her dreams seep through her waking hours, the dead speak to her, she journeys on a whim. Photograph by Stefan M. Prager/Redferns via Getty Patti Smith loves coffee. It courses through her new memoir, “M Train,” like a dark, steaming river,…

For years—decades, centuries even—we’ve always wanted to be first. Being first affirms our primacy in the pecking order of taste. It’s a way to stunt on our friends and competitors. It’s practically a superpower, one that separates us from them. The poetry and swagger of discovery is only for a…

When Donald J. Trump responded in July to criticism from one of his Republican rivals, Senator Lindsey Graham, by publicly releasing the South Carolina lawmaker’s cellphone number , the public and the press could not get enough of the jaw-dropping stunt. But on Monday, when Mr. Trump sent a case of…

If you want to know how James Bond – sorry, I mean Daniel Craig – starts the day, I can tell you. Two double espressos with honey. Plus poached eggs on toast. With another double espresso to follow. So basically: caffeine, more caffeine and some more caffeine, with honey to soften the blow. Craig…

In the fourth episode of the British comedy series Spaced , 20-something man-child Tim Bisley is gloomily playing videogames when his eccentric neighbor, Brian, walks into the apartment. “What are you playing?” Brian asks. “ Tomb Raider 3 ,” Tim replies. The television (on which we also see the…

Who owns the games that we play? The answer may seem obvious, but it isn't. The question of whether video games are sold or licensed to purchasers has simmered atop the surface of the games industry for years. In the beginning the issue felt semantic: Buyers had not yet been playing games for long…

Consumers are smarter today than they used to be, but that hasn’t stopped video game publishers from releasing what have become known as “ bullshots ,” doctored images that are meant to show what a video game looks like, but end up being so modified and fancified they’re often nothing of the sort.…

Savion Glover and Jada Pinkett-Smith in Bamboozled.Photograph: New Line International Releasing/EPA I first saw Bamboozled as a 15-year-old, in April 2001, at the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton, south-west London, and it threw me for a loop. Written and directed by Spike Lee, the film is an intense satire…

The upcoming federal election is shaping up to be a real sweepstakes for a certain kind of voter: free weed is on offer , courtesy of a marijuana dispensary in BC, and now there's the promise of nude pics, thanks to a group of young Canadians calling themselves "Sluts Against Harper." On Tuesday,…

Illustration by Miguel Gallardo As the president of the Extremely Loud Doorbell Company, I am frustrated and puzzled by the many charges that have been levelled against us. Perhaps the most common charge is that our doorbells cause people to go deaf. This is patently untrue, for reasons I can’t…

TIRANA, Albania — After investing thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours meticulously planning for his moment, Ismail Morina realized he had made a rookie mistake. It was 9:25 p.m. last Oct. 14, and Morina, a 33-year-old Albanian crane operator, was standing in one of the towers of the Church of…

In a rare interview, the '80s comedy blockbuster star (really!) explains to THR that he's not retired, what he's been doing for two decades (voice work, raising children) and what it would take to get him back in front of a camera: "I'll continue to be picky. Picky has worked for me." This story…

It’s a Monday night, and there’s a line down Hollywood Boulevard, a hundred or so millennials, most of whom are white, many of whom are wearing sports jerseys, all eagerly waiting to see Lil Dicky headline at the Fonda Theatre. Which for many passersby, and now many readers, probably raised the…

Source: Official promo Meow The Jewels is probably the most a musical artist has pandered to the internet’s obsession with cats and the endless entertainment they bring since… ever. Starting merely as a joke, El-P and Killer Mike said they would recreate the entirety of their absolutely fantastic…

The main thing you should know about autonomous vehicles is that they are utterly inevitable. Mat Honan / BuzzFeed News The thing about covering tech, especially for a long time, is that you have these moments where you get to really reach out and touch the future. They're rare. But you get to the…

Elena Scotti/FUSION Imagine for a moment that, one day in the future, a major pharmaceutical company released a new miracle drug that radically and instantaneously enhanced human performance. Everyone who took it immediately became significantly faster, stronger, and more efficient. As a result,…

Will Hart/USA Network Vincent D’Onofrio and Patti Smith on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.” Maybe the most surprising detail about Sunday’s episode of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” – based, don’tcha know, on the real-life circus that is Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” – was the number of…

Photo: Bloomua via Shutterstock Presented in San Jose’s U.S. District Court, the key issue in Perkins v. LinkedIn is spam. Namely, during the user sign-up process, LinkedIn claims that it “will not store your password or email anyone without your permission.” Despite this, LinkedIn sends automated…

For our October 'Nowstalgia' issue , on stands 10/20 , we asked three rap icons to pay tribute to lost leaders of the game. Stay tuned this week for pieces by Eminem on Tupac and Swizz Beatz on the Notorious B.I.G. Eazy-E. Photo by Chi Modu I remember when I was five or six years old, waking up one…

This article is part of a series called Shut Up, Videogames , in which critic Ed Smith invites games old and new to pipe down, or otherwise. In this edition, he looks at Vagabond Dog’s cut throat RPG Always Sometimes Monsters. “Set out on a cross-country journey to win back the love of your life and…

Editor’s Note: This article is one of the top 10 habits to adopt to be better at your job in 2016. See the full list here. Eureka moments are rare. The backstory behind great ideas is often more complex and winding than having an apple fall on your head. But the best part is that creative ideas…

“Most of the time, no one sees these performances,” Miranda July says matter-of-factly when describing her theater appearances, the most recent of which, “New Society,” comes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music Oct. 7 through 10. July, of course, is exaggerating just a bit. Her four-night run at BAM…

On the night of Dec. 5, 1989, Vladimir V. Putin, then a lieutenant colonel in the K.G.B., watched with alarm as thousands of East Germans in Dresden swarmed the riverside compound of the dreaded secret police, the Stasi. The Berlin Wall had been breached the month before, and the Communist…