cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22755283

> > English folk horror Lost In The Garden is among the four winners of the 2024 Nero Book Awards, as its author Adam S Leslie takes home the fiction prize. > > > >The screenwriter, musician and songwriter, who grew up in Lincolnshire and lives in Oxford, won £5,000 and is in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, book of the year 2024, which boasts an additional £30,000 prize, along with winners across three other categories. > > > > ... > > > > Judges praised Leslie’s story of three women travelling to a sinister place as making “vulnerable, rooted characters come of age in a hazy, hypnotic book that reflects contemporary Britain through a distorted lens”. > > > >Leslie is also a psychedelic pop singer-songwriter who produces music under the name Berlin Horse.

> Frantic cross-Atlantic discussions have taken place over the past week between right-wing Tory and Reform politicians and Donald Trump’s team to try to ensure that Sir Keir Starmer did not complete a deal with the Chagos Islands before the US president-elect’s inauguration on Monday. > >With Mr Trump seeking to block or even veto the deal to hand over the British Indian Ocean colony to Mauritius, the hope had been that Sir Keir would be prevented from landing an agreement before the new president is sworn into office. > > The revelation came as Tory leader Kemi Badenoch branded the agreement “a dumb deal” at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, asking: “Why does the prime minister think the British people should pay for something they already own?” > >Sir Keir said: “We inherited the situation where the long-term operation of a vital military base was under threat because of legal challenges.” > > He pointed out that negotiations began under the last Tory government, adding that his deal had provided for “effective continued operation of the base”. > > ... > > Foreign secretary David Lammy had agreed a deal with Mauritius, but following a change of government there, the new Mauritian prime minister Navin Ramgoolam rejected it as “not good enough” and demanded more concessions from the UK. > >The British organisers of the efforts to prevent a handover to Mauritius broke cover on Wednesday with the publication of an open letter signed by 23 leading figures on the right, including Nigel Farage (along with a number of other Reform MPs), former Tory PM Liz Truss, former Tory home secretary Suella Braverman, and former Reform leader Ben Habib. > > It is understood that the letter was also backed by Ms Badenoch, though she did not sign it. > > Conservative Post editor Claire Bullivant, one of the letter’s organisers and signatories, told The Independent that the campaign had wider significance beyond the row over the Chagos Islands. > >She said: “This has laid the groundwork for potential cooperation between Reform and the Conservative Party.” > >Another source involved in organising the letter and talks across the Atlantic said that Brexiteer Martin Howe KC, another signatory, had been giving more advice to the Trump administration on the issue in the last few weeks alongside wider talks on preventing the deal. > > ... > > On the topic of Mr Trump, the signatories warned: “President Trump has reportedly expressed strong opposition to this agreement, citing concerns about its implications for US security and the potential benefit it would grant to China, which has expanded its influence in the region. It is unthinkable to alienate our closest ally by finalising this deal without their support.”

> Director M Night Shyamalan went on trial on Tuesday (14 January) over allegations that he plagiarised from an independent film for his Apple TV + series Servant. > >The $81m (£66m) lawsuit brought by Italian director Francesca Gregorini accuses Shyamalan of taking key elements from her 2013 film The Truth about Emanuel. > > His psychological horror series, Servant, follows the story of a couple who hire an eighteen-year-old girl to help them look after a child. It transpires that the child is dead, and has been replaced by a reborn doll, which the traumatised mother still believes is alive. > > ... > > Gregorini alleges that the film shares substantial similarities to hers. She originally sued in January 2000, shortly after the series was released. The case was thrown out by a federal judge in the first instance, but was revived in 2022 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals who found a genuine dispute over whether the works were in fact “substantially similar”. > > ... > > The jury in the case will be required to watch both The Truth about Emanuel and the first three episodes of Servant, back-to-back before the attorneys of both respective parties make their case.

> Prof Stephen Wallace from the University of Edinburgh is among those turning the fatbergs into perfumes. "It's a crazy idea," he admits to me, "but it works." > >Fatbergs are accumulated lumps of fat from cooking oils, toilet and other food waste that people put down their drains. Prof Wallace gets his from a company that specialises in fishing them out of sewers and turning them into biofuels. They arrive at the lab in a tube. > >The first step is to sterilise the material in a steamer. Prof Wallace then adds the specially modified bacteria to the remnants of the fatberg. The bacteria have a short section of DNA inserted, to give the bacteria their particular properties. > >The fatberg gradually disappears, as the bacteria eat it, producing the chemical with the pine-like smell - this can be used as an ingredient in perfumes. > > Prof Wallace says that while the UK has taken a lead role in establishing the technology, it now needs to show it can go to the next step. "We are at this nervous point where the core technology that enables a huge range of sustainable industrial technologies is established and we are now progressing to the stage of scaling up to manufacturing. > >"But there is a challenge in the UK to create infrastructure... and progress to commercialisation at a rate that is comparable to investment in Europe and the US."

Business at the front, party at the back.

I have looked it over a few times and am still confused about everything stuffed in the back garden - an extension for tiny pottery houses, a converted bathyscaphe, a fountain that looks like it came from a funfair and a tree house. All that before you get to the loft conversion that has the feel of a small caravan (we used to go on holiday in a Sprite). 🤷‍♂️

Archive

> Tulip Siddiq has resigned as a Treasury minister after accepting the government was being harmed by the furore over her close ties to her aunt, the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh now accused of corruption. > >Siddiq, who was the City and anti-corruption minister, stepped aside after an investigation by Laurie Magnus, the adviser on ministerial standards, into her use of properties given to herself and family by allies of the regime of Sheikh Hasina. > > She was not deemed by Magnus to have broken any rules over her use of the homes and he found no evidence to suggest that any of Siddiq’s assets were derived from anything other than legitimate means. > >The inquiry also looked into her presence at the signing of a 2013 nuclear deal between her aunt and Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The adviser accepted her explanation that she had been there only socially and as a tourist. > >However, Magnus also said a lack of records and lapse of time has meant that he had “not been able to obtain comprehensive comfort in relation to all the UK property-related matters referred to in the media”. > >The watchdog added that Siddiq could have been more alive to the reputational risks arising from her family’s ties to Bangladesh and suggested the prime minister would want to consider her responsibilities.

>Fun though it is to see Jackie Chan good-naturedly busting out the classic moves – and very spry he is at 70 years old – this really is a by-the-numbers piece of work. It’s a Chinese action comedy in which Chan plays himself, the adored movie star, who is a little bored with the range of downtime activities on offer for an icon like him. > > Then he jumps at the chance to adopt a rare baby panda at the zoo, and shows up just as a kidnap attempt is under way: a battalion of tough guys have been sent in to abduct the CGI creature at the behest of some Middle Eastern businessmen whose obvious stereotypical villainy is finally redeemed by some sentimental tearjerking — and of course Chan has to kick their butts in that unique slapstick way, helped by winsome zoo assistant Su Xiaozhu (Shi Ce). It’s a kids’ film in essence, although oddly the action violence means that it has a 15 certificate in the UK.

Trailer

> Lazio fired the far-right sympathiser who handles their eagle mascot on Monday after he posted a series of videos and pictures of his erect penis online. > >Falconer Juan Bernabe, who has been present at Lazio home matches with Olympia the eagle since the 2010-11 season, posted the footage on social media after having surgery on Saturday to implant a penile prosthesis to improve his sexual performance. > > ... > > Bernabe defended the decision to publish the images by saying in an interview with radio station Radio24 that “nudity is normal, I grew up in an open-minded, naturist family”. > >The 56-year-old Spaniard has previously been in hot water over his openly hard-right politics, and was suspended by Lazio in 2021 for performing a fascist salute at the end of a match with Inter. He was filmed by fans at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico making the gesture and chanting “Duce, Duce” while holding Olympia and dressed in full Lazio kit. > >Bernabe then told Italian newspaper Il Messaggero that he was “proud” to be a supporter of far-right Spanish political party Vox “like many footballer friends of mine”. He confirmed that he had performed the chants in favour of Benito Mussolini, who founded the National Fascist Party and ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943 before being killed near Lake Como by Italian partisans in 1945. “I did it and I don’t regret it because I admire Mussolini, he did great things for Italy as Franco did for Spain,” he said in the same interview. “I admire both of them and I’m proud of it.”

> The lure of remote-controlled intimacy gadgets isn’t hard to understand. Whether you’re in a long-distance relationship or just like the convenience, these devices have taken the market by storm. > >According to a 2023 study commissioned by the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology (DSIT), these toys are some of the most vulnerable consumer IoT products. > >And while a vibrating smart egg or a remotely controlled chastity belt might sound futuristic, the risks involved are decidedly dystopian. > >Forbes’ Davey Winder flagged the issue four years ago when hackers locked users into a chastity device, demanding a ransom to unlock it. > >Fast forward to now, and the warnings are louder than ever. Researchers led by Dr. Mark Cote found multiple vulnerabilities in these devices, primarily those relying on Bluetooth connectivity. > >Alarmingly, many of these connections lack encryption, leaving the door wide open for malicious third parties. > > ... > > A TechCrunch exposé revealed that a security researcher breached a chastity device’s database containing over 10,000 users’ information. That was back in June, and the manufacturer still hasn’t addressed the issue. > >In another incident, users of the CellMate connected chastity belt reported hackers demanding $750 in bitcoin to unlock devices. Fortunately, one man who spoke to Vice hadn’t been wearing his when the attack happened. Small mercies, right? > > ... > > And let’s not forget: IoT toys are multiplying faster than anyone can track, with websites like Internet of Dongs monitoring the surge.

> Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized Instagram competitor. On Facebook, the company is labeling links to Pixelfed.social as “spam” and deleting them immediately. > > ... > > Bluesky user AJ Sadauskas originally posted that links to Pixelfed were being deleted by Meta; 404 Media then also tried to post a link to Pixelfed on Facebook. It was immediately deleted. > > Pixelfed is experiencing a surge in user signups in recent days, after Meta announced that it would loosen its rules to allow users to call LGBTQ+ people “mentally ill” amid a host of other changes that shift the company overtly to the right. Meta and Instagram have also leaned heavily into AI-generated content. Pixelfed announced earlier Monday that it is launching an iOS app later this week. > >Pixelfed said Sunday it is “seeing unprecedented levels of traffic to pixelfed.social.”

> Giant Pictures has acquired Lexi Alexander’s (Green Street Hooligan) martial arts action movie Absolute Dominion for international sales and U.S. release. > >The movie’s cast includes newcomer Désiré Mia, Patton Oswalt, and Alex Winter, who also produced. Pic is slated for a spring 2025 release and it will be on sale at the upcoming EFM in Berlin. > >Absolute Dominion takes place In the year 2063 AD, when the world faces catastrophe as zealots and extremists wage a global holy war in the name of spiritual superiority. In a desperate attempt to save humanity from itself, the world’s governing bodies vote to establish ‘The Battle of Absolute Dominion,’ a fierce martial-arts tournament that will determine a champion whose faith will govern humanity and restore peace for the future.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22671134

> > Editor’s note: This story contains content that readers may find disturbing, including graphic allegations of sexual assault. > > > > ... > > > > This past July, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault. S​ince then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse. The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them. (Gaiman’s perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.) I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs. I also reviewed contemporaneous diary entries, texts and emails with friends, messages between Gaiman and the women, and police correspondence. Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman. The youngest was 18. Two of them worked for him. Five were his fans. With one exception, an allegation of forcible kissing from 1986, when Gaiman was in his mid-20s, the stories take place when Gaiman was in his 40s or older, a period in which he lived among the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand. By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women. “Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature,” wrote Tara Prescott-Johnson in the essay collection Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman. Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy. > > > > ... > > > > If you know nothing about BDSM, Gaiman’s claim that he was engaging in it with these women may sound plausible, at least in some cases. The kind of domineering violence he inflicted on them is common among people who practice BDSM, and all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him. But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing. An acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism,” BDSM is a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it. This, as many practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture, have stressed over decades, is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse. And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect. Two of the women, who have never spoken to each other, compared him to an anglerfish, the deep-sea predator that uses a bulb of bioluminescence to lure prey into its jaws. “Instead of a light,” one says, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.” > > Archive - warning: it's tough going

> Editor’s note: This story contains content that readers may find disturbing, including graphic allegations of sexual assault. > > ... > > This past July, a British podcast produced by Tortoise Media broke the news that two women had accused Gaiman of sexual assault. S​ince then, more women have shared allegations of assault, coercion, and abuse. The podcast, Master, reported by Paul Caruana Galizia and Rachel Johnson, tells the stories of five of them. (Gaiman’s perspective on these relationships, including with Pavlovich, is that they were entirely consensual.) I spoke with four of those women along with four others whose stories share elements with theirs. I also reviewed contemporaneous diary entries, texts and emails with friends, messages between Gaiman and the women, and police correspondence. Most of the women were in their 20s when they met Gaiman. The youngest was 18. Two of them worked for him. Five were his fans. With one exception, an allegation of forcible kissing from 1986, when Gaiman was in his mid-20s, the stories take place when Gaiman was in his 40s or older, a period in which he lived among the U.S., the U.K., and New Zealand. By then, he had a reputation as an outspoken champion of women. “Gaiman insists on telling the stories of people who are traditionally marginalized, missing, or silenced in literature,” wrote Tara Prescott-Johnson in the essay collection Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman. Although his books abounded with stories of men torturing, raping, and murdering women, this was largely perceived as evidence of his empathy. > > ... > > If you know nothing about BDSM, Gaiman’s claim that he was engaging in it with these women may sound plausible, at least in some cases. The kind of domineering violence he inflicted on them is common among people who practice BDSM, and all of the women, at some point, played along, calling him their master, texting him afterward that they needed him, even writing that they loved and missed him. But there is a crucial difference between BDSM and what Gaiman was doing. An acronym for “bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism,” BDSM is a culture with a set of long-standing norms, the most important of which is that all parties must eagerly and clearly consent to the overall dynamic as well as to each act before they engage in it. This, as many practitioners, including sex educators like Dossie Easton and Janet W. Hardy who wrote some of the defining texts of the subculture, have stressed over decades, is the defining line that separates BDSM from abuse. And it was a line that Gaiman, according to the women, did not respect. Two of the women, who have never spoken to each other, compared him to an anglerfish, the deep-sea predator that uses a bulb of bioluminescence to lure prey into its jaws. “Instead of a light,” one says, “he would dangle a floppy-haired, soft-spoken British guy.”

Archive - warning: it's tough going

> 2024’s Christmas and New Year film calendar was interesting, to say the least. There wasn’t a genuine Christmas film in sight, so audiences had the option of singing their hearts out in the Land of Oz, watching a superfast blue hedgehog fight an evil egg man, beholding the CGI-rendered origin story of a famously deceased cartoon lion, or travelling to the lost island of Motufetu with an animated Dwayne Johnson. Fascinatingly, though, many cinemagoers chose to counter-programme their holiday season by embracing the darkness of Robert Eggers’ remake of the classic silent vampire tale Nosferatu. Most of them won’t have known, though, that Eggers’ Gothic fairytale wasn’t the only remake of that German Expressionist classic released in 2024. Instead, please spare a thought for the mostly-ignored Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, starring Doug Jones of The Shape of Water fame. > >On December 3rd, 2014, David Lee Fisher’s proposed shot-for-shot remake of FW Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter. Fisher’s intention was to make the same film again but with a new cast, a full script and symphonic musical score, and backgrounds created through a mixture of sets and CGI. At this point, Fisher’s version would have been the movie’s second remake after Werner Herzog’s 1979 opus Nosferatu the Vampyre. However, in July 2015 – only eight months later – Eggers’ own remake of the film was announced by Studio 8. This proved that Nosferatu remakes are like buses – you don’t see any for 35 years, then two come along at once. > >Unfortunately for both Fisher and Eggers, though, the next decade proved extremely difficult when it came to translating their respective visions to screen. Jones, Hollywood’s premier monster actor, was cast as Fisher’s grotesque Count Orlok and shot his part in 2015, several years before he played the haunting Amphibian Man in Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning romantic oddity. He returned for some pick-up shots two years later before the film fell into what he described as “a very, very long post-production process.” > > ... > > Ultimately, Fisher’s film would finally premiere in Michigan in November 2023 but wouldn’t become widely available to the public until September 2024, when it was quietly released as a video-on-demand rental. Eggers’ star-studded $50million version followed on Christmas Day in the US and New Year’s Day in international markets. Naturally, most people were only aware of the version that starred Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Bill Skarsgård as Orlok instead of the strange low-budget version that quickly got lost in the streaming wasteland.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/22656864

> > An animator has sued Disney for allegedly copying the idea for hit franchise Moana from his decades-old screenplay without his consent. > > > >Buck Woodall filed a suit in a California federal court on Friday claiming that Disney lifted many elements of a screenplay he had written for an animated film titled Bucky. > > > > ... > > > > Woodall initially sued Disney last year but a California court ruled in November that his filing had come too late and dismissed it. The release of Moana 2 allowed the animator to sue the production giant anew, on the same basis. > > > > The suit alleges a “fraudulent enterprise that encompassed the theft, misappropriation and extensive exploitation of Woodall’s copyrighted materials” on part of former Mandeville Films development director Jenny Marchick, now head of development at DreamWorks Animation. > > > >The suit states that Woodall gave Marchick a screenplay and trailer for Bucky in 2003 and was then asked for more materials over the next few years, including character designs, production plans, budgets, and storyboards. Woodall claims he delivered “extremely large quantities of intellectual property and trade secrets” for projects titled Bucky and Bucky the Wave Warrior and was told by Marchick she would get the film greenlit. > > > >“Disney’s Moana was produced in the wake of Woodall’s delivery to the defendants of virtually all constituent parts necessary for its development and production after more than 17 years of inspiration and work on his animated film project,” the suit states. > > > >It also points out alleged overlaps between Bucky and Moana 2. > > > >Both are set in an ancient Polynesian village and follow teenagers who set out on a dangerous voyage to save their land, and meet ancient spirits who manifest as animals on their journey. > > > > The suit specifically points out details like the rooster and pig companions, a meeting with the Kakamora warrior tribe, a whirlpool that leads to a portal as all being lifted from the screenplay of Bucky.

> An animator has sued Disney for allegedly copying the idea for hit franchise Moana from his decades-old screenplay without his consent. > >Buck Woodall filed a suit in a California federal court on Friday claiming that Disney lifted many elements of a screenplay he had written for an animated film titled Bucky. > > ... > > Woodall initially sued Disney last year but a California court ruled in November that his filing had come too late and dismissed it. The release of Moana 2 allowed the animator to sue the production giant anew, on the same basis. > > The suit alleges a “fraudulent enterprise that encompassed the theft, misappropriation and extensive exploitation of Woodall’s copyrighted materials” on part of former Mandeville Films development director Jenny Marchick, now head of development at DreamWorks Animation. > >The suit states that Woodall gave Marchick a screenplay and trailer for Bucky in 2003 and was then asked for more materials over the next few years, including character designs, production plans, budgets, and storyboards. Woodall claims he delivered “extremely large quantities of intellectual property and trade secrets” for projects titled Bucky and Bucky the Wave Warrior and was told by Marchick she would get the film greenlit. > >“Disney’s Moana was produced in the wake of Woodall’s delivery to the defendants of virtually all constituent parts necessary for its development and production after more than 17 years of inspiration and work on his animated film project,” the suit states. > >It also points out alleged overlaps between Bucky and Moana 2. > >Both are set in an ancient Polynesian village and follow teenagers who set out on a dangerous voyage to save their land, and meet ancient spirits who manifest as animals on their journey. > > The suit specifically points out details like the rooster and pig companions, a meeting with the Kakamora warrior tribe, a whirlpool that leads to a portal as all being lifted from the screenplay of Bucky.

> They say to let sleeping dogs lie, but one sleeping dog has lain down for a bit too long. Donnie Yen’s Sleeping Dogs adaptation is no more, the actor told Polygon this week. > >Fans of the 2012 Hong Kong-set action game have been waiting for years for an update on a live-action film adaptation. First announced in 2017, the Sleeping Dogs movie was to star Yen, who rose to international fame in the Ip Man franchise and made a Hollywood splash in Rogue One, as game protagonist Wei Shen. In 2018, Yen said the movie was “in motion,” and at one point, Indonesian gore maestro Timo Tjahjanto (The Night Comes for Us, The Shadow Strays) was in talks to direct. > > That would have been quite the appealing combination of talent for an adaptation of a beloved game, but as Yen shared on a Zoom call this week, the project is no longer in the works — at least as far as the Hong Kong legend is concerned. > >“I spent a lot of time and did a lot of work with these producers, and I even invested some of my own money into obtaining the drafts and some of the rights,” Yen said. “I waited for years. Years. And I really want to do it. I have all these visions in my head, and unfortunately… I don’t know, you know how Hollywood goes, right? I spent many, many years on it. It was an unfortunate thing. > >“Well, on to better things.”

And that's people who don't consume animal products, not the inhabitants of Vega.

> The official statement does not elaborate on the reasons of the dismissal, but local media linked it to the disappearance of the anti-tank mines in June 2024, which Kępczyński allegedly concealed from his superiors. > >According to the reports, soldiers failed to unload part of the train carrying over 1,000 tons of explosives in total, and the anti-tank mines continued to circulate around the country before they went missing. On paper, false information about the number of mines was provided, media reports. > >Officials apparently became aware of the problem when the weapons were found sitting in the IKEA warehouse, at which point someone called the military to ask “when they would collect their mines.”