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Entertainment

Lovecraft Country Season 2 Teased By Creator Misha Green After HBO Cancelation – Deadline

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A very very different America was going to be unveiled in Season 2 of Lovecraft Country, creator Misha Green revealed today after HBO officially pulled the plug on the acclaimed horror drama.

A couple of hours after Deadline exclusively reported on the surprising demise of the the Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors and Michael Kenneth Williams starring series, showrunner Green took to social media to paint a picture of what might have been. It was certainly something to see, especially leading into the July 4th weekend:

Depicting four nations on what is the territory of the continental United States, the image Green teased on Twitter comes from a more than 75-page Bible that was created for a second season of Lovecraft Country, I hear. However, even with all that foundation work, no scripts had been written yet for what was anticipated to be a 10-episode season that was a seemingly slamdunk for renewal.

Having eclipsed the 2016 novel by Mark Ruff that served as Season 1’s source material, Underground co-creator Green was clearly looking to weave some more genre magic with alternate history. Which in many ways, remains within the mythology of Green, Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams ZEP’d first season. Having debuted on August 16, 2020 on the premium cabler, Lovecraft Country simultaneously ripped back the curtain on a secret history of American white supremacy, reappropriated some of the themes of writer and avowed racist H.P. Lovecraft, and shattered genres barriers over its 10-episode run

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‘Lovecraft Country’ Not Returning For Season 2 On HBO

Back in October of last year in a post-mortem on the Season 1 Full Circle” finale, Green spoke to Deadline of what Season 2 could be. “Nothing is official yet, but I envision a second season that carries on the spirit of Matt Ruff’s novel by continuing to reclaim the genre storytelling space that people of color have typically been left out of,” the EP said.

The axing of Lovecraft Country by the still WarnerMedia-owned outlet comes as the CAA-repped Green is set to direct and pen as new Tomb Raider movie with Alicia Vikander set to reprise her role as Lara Croft. The filmmaker also has a full dance card with a new Cleopatra Jones and the Kate Wood written action vehicle picture Fuel, which Green is executive producing with Smollett, among other projects.



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Entertainment

Children’s author Beverly Cleary, creator of ‘Ramona Quimby,’ dies at age 104

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Cleary published her first book, “Henry Huggins,” in 1950, and more than 40 other books in years following, according to HarperCollins. Cleary’s books have sold more than 85 million copies and were translated into 29 different languages.

Her protagonists were pests, goody-goodies, bullies and daydreamers, sometimes all at once. She mined memories of her youth and the struggles of kids she knew to capture children’s views of the adult world, where fathers sometimes lost their jobs and mothers sometimes parented alone.

“We are saddened by the passing of Beverly Cleary, one of the most beloved children’s authors of all time,” said HarperCollins Children’s Books President Suzanne Murphy in the company’s news release about Cleary’s death.

“Looking back, she’d often say, ‘I’ve had a lucky life,’ and generations of children count themselves lucky too — lucky to have the very real characters Beverly Cleary created, including Henry Huggins, Ramona and Beezus Quimby, and Ralph S. Mouse, as true friends who helped shape their growing-up years,” Murphy said.

Cleary was born Beverly Bunn in McMinnville, Oregon, on April 12, 1916, and spent her early years on a farm in the nearby town of Yamhill. When the Bunn family moved to Portland, Oregon, a school librarian encouraged young Beverly to write children’s books. The advice stuck with her through her studies at what’s now Chaffey College in California, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Washington in Seattle, where she studied librarianship.

At Berkeley, she met her husband, Clarence Cleary, and the two were married in 1940.

‘You can curl up with a book’

After college, she worked as a children’s librarian until she began to write. According to HarperCollins, Cleary’s dream of writing for children was rekindled when “a little boy faced me rather ferociously across the circulation desk and said: ‘Where are the books about kids like us?'”

Her books featuring Henry Huggins, his dog, Ribsy, and the children on Klickitat Street that included Beezus and her younger sister, Ramona found a large audience with young readers.

She was awarded the National Book Award for children’s fiction in 1981 for “Ramona and Her Mother,” and in 1975, she won the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for “a substantial and lasting contribution to literature for children.”

“Dear Mr. Henshaw” won the 1984 John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. The book is about a lonely boy who strikes up a correspondence with a children’s book author.

In 2000, she was named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress, and in 2003, she received the National Medal of Art from the National Endowment of the Arts.

“We at HarperCollins also feel extremely lucky to have worked with Beverly Cleary and to have enjoyed her sparkling wit,” Murphy said. “Her timeless books are an affirmation of her everlasting connection to the pleasures, challenges, and triumphs that are part of every childhood,”

Her last book,” Ramona’s World,” was published in 1999, decades after the perpetual bratty little sister first debuted in “Henry Huggins.”

Her husband died in 2004. She is survived by their two children, Malcolm and Marianne, three grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.

Into her 90s, Cleary said she expected children would still read her books for decades to come.

“You can curl up with a book, and I don’t think anything takes the place of reading,” she told National Public Radio in 2006.

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Entertainment

‘Simpsons’ Creator Matt Groening Says He’s Proud of Apu’s Character

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The creator of “The Simpsons” appears to be suggesting that the blowback over having a white actor voice Apu for all these years really isn’t all that big a deal … in his eyes.

Animator Matt Groening did an interview with USA Today in honor of the upcoming 700th episode, and he was asked about the controversy — namely, not having an Indian actor voice the Indian character … not to mention claims Apu was portrayed as a walking stereotype.

Groening had some interesting answers … for starters, he says he embraces bringing on new voice actors in the name of diversity — the more the merrier, he explains. However, you can tell Matt’s not nearly as up in arms as some have been about Apu’s handling.

He was asked if he would change the nature of Apu’s character and/or stories in light of the criticism that’s he’s 2-dimensional, and MG says this … “I think the Apu stories are fantastic, and he’s one of the most nuanced characters on a silly two-dimensional cartoon show. So, yeah, I’m proud of Apu.”

He also adds this knowing he might get blowback, “I’m trying not to open up another chasm of criticism, but it doesn’t matter what I say. I’ll get it anyway.” Matt goes on to say that the idea of having white actors voice non-white characters — which is what ‘Simpsons’ opted to do in the end — was not his idea, but that he’s “fine with it.”

Matt also says that the original intention was not to have some actors voice some characters — they were just trying to use everyone’s talent to the max, but he says he gets it. As to whether ‘Simpsons’ brass shoulda embraced this change years ago, he says … “Yeah. And I hear they want to take the guns away from Yosemite Sam. He’s a little hot-headed.”



12/01/17

TMZ.com

Quite telling … especially since the longtime voice actor for Apu, Hank Azaria, seemed way more empathetic to the diversity concerns than Matt is here. Different strokes, we suppose 🤷🏽‍♂️

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Technology

Stardew Valley Creator Thanks Fans for Sticking With the Game on 5 Year Anniversary

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Zhiqing Wan

Just yesterday, Stardew Valley celebrated its five year anniversary, which sounds pretty insane if you think about it. It’s already been five years since the game’s release, yet it still feels consistently fresh and exciting with how much work has been put into it post-launch.

Eric Barone, AKA ConcernedApe and the creator of the game, took to Twitter on the game’s five year anniversary to thank fans and players for sticking with the game for so long. And with how the game has been constantly improving over the years, it’s entirely possible that Barone will continue to work on patches and updates to add more content to it.

Just a few months ago, we got update 1.5, which was the biggest content drop Stardew Valley’s seen in quite a while. It added new dungeons, new animals, tools, along with new early and late-game goals for players to work towards, and the patch got released for consoles just a couple weeks ago.

There’s still plenty of content to dive into in Stardew Valley even if you’ve been playing since launch, which is a testament to just how solid this farming sim is. Stardew Valley is now available on PC, consoles, and mobile devices.



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Technology

Epic’s new MetaHuman Creator delivers super-realistic digital actors • Eurogamer.net

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See the new technology in action.

Epic Games today lifts the lid on MetaHuman Creator – a new tool designed to bring the highest fidelity facial rendering to the wider development community. It’s part of Epic’s ongoing mission to democratise high-end graphics technology, giving a wider range development studios the chance to deliver characters up there with the industry’s best and to get the most out of today’s hardware. According to Epic, we’re looking at the kind of facial quality and animation seen in high-end titles like The Last of Us Part 2 – and you can see for yourself just how close Epic’s technology gets via the embedded video on this page.

MetaHuman Creator takes the form of a browser-based app, plumbed into Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming. Vladimir Mastilovic, VP of Digital Humans Technology at Epic told us that the initial process as being as simple as a game, with no programming knowledge required as developers create and sculpt their digital actors – you get a sense of that in the video below. As changes and enhancements are made, MetaHuman Creator intelligently uses data from its cloud-based library to extrapolate a realistic digital person. At the end of the process, the final creation can be imported into Unreal Engine via Quixel Bridge, with full animation rigging and Maya source data provided. At that point, a massive degree of rendering customisation is available via the features of Unreal Engine itself – and the data is, of course, compatible with both UE4 and the upcoming UE5.

A look at Epic’s MetaHuman technology in action.

Based on the quality of the sample (and there’s another one here, this looks like an impressive showing for Epic, though in reaching the fidelity seen in the character rendering found in the first-party triple-A juggernauts, there is more to the process than just the graphics – quality of performance and motion capture are going to be key. However, we are clearly seeing some cutting edge technology here and these initial demos are striking. Skin shading, texture quality and geometric density are very impressive, while eyes look expressive. Additionally, hair is always a particularly tricky part of rendering convincing characters – but MHC can tap into the very latest strand rendering technology to produce a convincing look, a ‘next-gen’ feature we’ve only really seen on proprietary engines so far. While likely too demanding to run on anything other than next-gen consoles and high-end systems, MHC can fall back to more standard texture ‘cards’ for hair rendering. In fact, the system itself scales its creations to eight LOD levels, ensuring scalability from powerful systems down to mobile platforms.

It’s still early days for the MetaHuman Creator system with a limited number of preset characters in the cloud from which to work with, but work continues apace. Epic Games is looking to increase overall diversity, but also basic ‘types’ of character too – in a press briefing, it was acknowledged that adults are currently the focus and there’s a lot more work to do so for example, adding children at various stages of development is part of the plan. But Epic is clearly proud of its achievement and eager to share an impressive technology, to the point where the firm will be releasing two completed sample characters for developers to experiment with, before moving onto an early access programme at some point in the next few months.

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World

Nunuk Nuraini: Indomie instant noodles flavor creator dead at 59

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Nurlita Novi Arlaida, the head of Indofood’s Public Relations confirmed Nuraini’s death In a statement to local newspaper, Kompas.

The cause of death was not revealed.

Following news of her death, many fans took to social media to pay tribute to the recipe developer who worked at the company for nearly 30 years where she produced the hugely popular ‘mi goreng’ and other flavors for the brand.

I
ndomie, an Indonesian company under the Indofood umbrella, is the biggest noodle brand in the country.

However, the instant noodles influence has grown beyond the borders of Indonesia.

In Nigeria, Indomie is the noodle of choice for many in the country despite the prevalence of numerous brands on the market.

The instant noodle was first exported to Nigeria in 1988 and by 1995 had opened its first production factory. With three factories presently in the West African nation, the company says it produces eight million packets of noodles daily to meet the high demand.

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Health

Darrell Salk, son of polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk, gets Covid-19 vaccine

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The younger Salk said he rarely capitalizes on his name — but he felt this time it would make a positive difference, because now he was getting the Covid-19 vaccine.

“I publicly stepped forward so I could be vaccinated publicly and have a chance to say something because I hoped that it would make a difference,” Salk told CNN. “I hoped that if I stepped forward from back in the shadows where I usually stay, it might help some people make up their minds. If so, I will be very grateful.”

Salk received the vaccine at UW Medical Center Montlake campus in Seattle, UW Medicine spokeswoman Susan Gregg confirmed to CNN.
More than 24.6 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been administered in the US, according to data published Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The state of Washington has administered 534,445 doses of the vaccine, as reported by the CDC.

Salk, who has felt fine since getting the vaccine, said he was “delighted” to get his first dose. Part of that is because he has several underlying conditions and is a high-risk patient, he said.

The other part is that he sees it as a feat of modern science. Salk has spent years as a vaccinologist studying the creation of vaccines, as well as how to manufacture and transport them.

“There’s several aspects of it that were very impressive,” Salk said. “The creation of a vaccine that’s effective and safe in less than a year is astounding. It’s an amazing thing. To develop the polio virus vaccine took seven years.”

For him, the decision to get a vaccine was obvious, both for his health and those around him.

“The chances that you will be infected with Covid-19 is so much higher than the risk associated with the vaccine,” he said. “That looks like an easy choice to me. I don’t want to risk my life, or the life of someone I love.”

However, there are people who claim the vaccine is unsafe and others who are vaccine hesitant.

Salk has a message for them.

“The takeaway is that these vaccines are safe, they’re effective and they will help us bring this pandemic under control,” he said. “You should embrace the opportunity to be vaccinated and to be part of the solution.”

Polio and Covid-19 both gripped the US

The polio epidemic gripped headlines in the US as mostly children became stricken with the crippling disease. It captured the nation’s attention and the emotion of it all is something people who lived through it in the first half of the 20th century remember vividly.

The Covid-19 pandemic has some of that same emotion, Salk said, but the trajectory of both diseases is markedly different.

“Polio arose gradually. It was a chronic disease or an endemic disease, and then became epidemic as the susceptible population grew,” Salk said. “The Covid-19 virus, on the other hand, appeared, everybody was susceptible and had no experience with it before. It spread basically like wildfire … around the world very rapidly.”

Beyond the zero-to-60 mph speed of the spread of Covid-19, the fatality rate of the virus is much higher than polio, Salk said.
Polio was known for crippling and paralyzing people, killing nearly 2,000 people yearly from 1951 to 1954, according to the CDC. As of Wednesday, Covid-19 has killed at least 428,654 people in the US since last January.

Seeing Covid-19 vaccines distributed has made Salk think of his father and how “pleased and excited he would have been to see this,” he said.

“It impressed on me the importance of the work that my father did, both stopping the epidemic with the vaccine itself, and demonstrating that you could use noninfectious agents to immunize,” Salk said. His father used a killed polio virus to create the vaccine.

Living through the Covid-19 pandemic has had a duality to it for Salk, who is both intrigued and frightened of it.

“I had this kind of push me, pull you reaction,” he said. “I was scared by it, but then I was fascinated to be able to be part of it, to see it and to live through it.”

US response to the pandemic ’embarrasses’ him

Simple acts like washing your hands, wearing a mask and avoiding crowds could have controlled the spread of Covid-19. How the US responded to the pandemic frankly embarrasses Salk, he said.

“It’s really a shame that in this country, supposedly the epitome of advanced countries, the response was, I’m sorry, bungled so badly,” he said.

“We’re now swimming upstream,” he said. “It embarrasses me that the United States is number one in problems with the Covid-19 virus, more cases than anyplace else, it’s spreading faster than anyplace else. It’s embarrassing to me that this country did not respond properly because it was not driven by the science.”

The way to get the virus under control lies in enough people getting the vaccine and Salk hopes that Americans opt to get it.

“Vaccines are safe and effective, and they should be widely used,” he said. “We will get out of this, but it will take individuals doing the proper behavior in order to get rid of it.”

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