Last year, around this time, I wrote a feature arguing that Starfield , with its perfectly OK, but a bit synthetic and cold universe, was 2023’s actual game of the year . Not because it was the best game of 2023, but because the feeling of playing it, the short bursts of fun within a meander through the galaxy that often lacked much meaning or wonder, best mirrored the experience of living and working in and around the games industry last year. A would-be masterpiece with all of the awe-inspiring size and scale, but very little of the soul, for a medium that was constantly chucking more people onto the layoff fire while we all clung on to the bangers we did get for comfort. I wouldn’t say 2024, while arguably even more depressing on the state of the industry front, had a big game like Starfield that accidentally served as so fitting a mood metaphor for it. Instead, I’m going to do what I did a bit in that feature last year - I’m gonna momentarily chuck the gloom into the sun, and concentrate on the good. As it always does, the indie space kicked out underrated gems and gems that got plenty of credit this year on the reg. Everyone’s list of these will be different, but here’s mine. Chill racing management sim Golden Lap was as vibe-immaculate as Funselektor releases have proven to always be when I reviewed it , and it’s only gotten better since as its devs have worked hard to rectify its teething issues and start to add improvements over the past few months. Thalassa: Edge of The Abyss was an emotion-heavy stumble through the wreckage of a ship and the lives of its crew that I think flew under a lot of people’s radars, but is definitely worth a go if you’re a fan of Baldur’s Gate 3 ’s narrator, and like doing a bit of sobering detective work. Still Wakes The Deep opted to lean more into the Lovecraftian and stock horror than it did the terrifying reality of what can happen when things go bad out in the big blue abyss for its scares, but it’s still good, with its great Scottish accents and chase with a giant head. Hades 2 was another thing I had a lot of fun with, even if I haven’t had much time to go back and check out Supergiant’s changes since routinely getting my arse kicked by Chronos and those damn sirens when it rolled into early access in a form that was just as good as the first game, if arguably not one capable of conclusively eclipsing such a hard act to follow. Renaissance painting romp Death of the Reprobate might be the one of these that was my favourite discovery in hindsight, especially since I’m now in the process of going back and playing its Pythonesque point-and-click predecessors, which are just as unique and hilarious. That’s five just off the top of my head, and it doesn’t include great Steam next fest demos for stuff like Keep Driving . Though, as I said, every year has its cool indie things, so with that in mind, here’s the real best thing it’s important to shout out when it comes to helping make 2024 in video games as great as it was at times. Mods. Sure, every year has plenty of good and noteworthy mods, and it’s a space that’s been starting to be recognised more by many major and minor publishers for the key role it can play in helping people get even more out of their games - especially those big single-player RPGs I like - for a few years now, 2024 was a big step forward. Fallout: London , despite its buggy launch, was an unofficial full-blown Fallout game you could sink hundreds of hours into loving in a year that basically cried out for a fresh entry in the series due to the TV show whetting everyone’s appetites. Larian’s addition of official mod support to Baldur’s Gate 3 - for both PC and consoles - helped 2023’s actual game of the year manage to outdo some of the metrics from the release year in which it basically blew all of us away. CD Projekt’s release of REDkit modding tools for The Witcher 3 triggered a revival for that game, with competitions getting a lot of interesting entries from folks keen to try relatively advanced stuff like quest and new area design. There are also plenty of 2024 releases that’ve been big on the modding front. From Stalker 2 , to Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree , and even occasionally the likes of Helldivers 2 . Heading into 2025, it feels like modding’s as big a part of what people love about gaming than ever before, and as someone who loves getting to write about them on the regular at work, that’s this year’s biggest bright side for me.Daniel Jones Next Team Odds: Contenders jockeying for QB?Judge rejects request to sideline SJSU volleyball playerTrump To End Daylight Saving Time? Calls It ‘Hassle for the Nation’#ssbet77bwin 。

In this article Loan Affiliate Programs Related USSD transactions reach N2.19tr in H2 2024 amid debt issues December 8, 2024 Nigeria's VAT revenue reaches N1.78tr in Q3 2024, up 14.16% December 8, 2024 Tinubu’s Tax Reform: How it will affect you December 8, 2024 CBN debunks information on sales of FX to BDC operators 3 days ago Mobile money, bank agents vows support for $1tr economy 3 days ago Reps to probe CBN over naira scarcity 3 days ago 0 Comments cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Flag Comment Why are you flagging this comment? I disagree with this user Targeted harassment - posted harassing comments or discussions targeting me, or encouraged others to do so Spam - posted spam comments or discussions Inappropriate profile - profile contains inappropriate images or text Threatening content - posted directly threatening content Private information - posted someone else's personally identifiable information Before flagging, please keep in mind that Disqus does not moderate communities. Your username will be shown to the moderator, so you should only flag this comment for one of the reasons listed above. Flag Comment Cancel Thanks for your feedback! We will review and take appropriate action. Close Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on WhatsApp Share on Telegram News Nigeria Metro Politics Africa Europe Asia Americas Opinion Editorial Columnists Contributors Cartoons Lifestyle Music Film Beauty What's New Features Sport Football Boxing Athletics Tennis Other Sports Woman Marie Claire GuardianTV Exclusive Politics Business Appointments Business News Business RoundUp Industry Aviation Capital Market Communications Energy DrillBytes Maritime Money Technology Gadgets Telecoms Social Media Technology Guardian Life Beauty Culture Events Features Food Film Love and Relationships Music Odd News On The Cover Spotlight Style Travel and Places Wellness What's New Guardian Arts Arts Art House Artfolk Revue Literature Theatre Visual Arts Features Gender BusinessAgro Education Executive Motoring Executive Briefs Focus Friday Worship Health Law Media Science Youth Speak Reviews Guardian Angels Advocacy Commentary Corporate Social Responsibility Philanthropy Social Impact Property Environment Mortgage Finance Real Estate Urban Development Saturday Magazine Youth Magazine Just Human Life & Style Love & Life Transition Travel & Tourism Celebrity Brand Intelligence Gardening Weekend Beats Sunday Magazine Ibru Ecumenical Centre Campus CityFile News Feature Living Healthy Diet Living Wellbeing Newspeople #EndSARS Guardian TV Follow Us Home About Us Reviews Terms Advertise With Us © 2024 GUARDIAN Newspapers . ALL RIGHTS RESERVEDWinter weather is upon us, with the potential for icy, slushy and snowy roads. Michigan State Police is again encouraging safe-driving habits with these reminders: • Drive slowly on snow and ice. It can take up to 10 times longer to stop a vehicle on snowy and/or icy roads. Reduce crash risk by slowing down and allowing more ime to react and brake, and more room between your vehicle and the one ahead. • Winterize your vehicle and stock it with emergency supplies. • Routinely check your vehicle’s tire pressure and examine treads for wear. • Drive safely near snowplows. If you can’t see the snowplow’s mirrors, the driver can’t see you. Michigan law requires drivers to stay at least 200 feet away from snowplows and makes it illegal to stop within 20 feet of a snowplow at an intersection. • Know how to handle winter-driving emergencies. If you are stalled or stopped on the roadway, stay in your vehicle with your seatbelt on and call 911 or a roadside service. Turn on your hazard lights to make your vehicle visible. During the winter of 2022-2023, there were 30,786 crashes, MSP reported, including 59 fatal crashes.

One night last month, near the end of the Chicago International Film Festival, a particularly long line of moviegoers snaked down Southport Avenue by the Music Box Theatre. The hot ticket? This fall’s hottest ticket, in fact, all over the international festival circuit? Well, it’s a 215-minute drama about a fictional Hungarian Jewish architect who emigrates to America in 1947 after surviving the Holocaust. The film’s title, “The Brutalist,” references several things, firstly a post-World War II design imperative made of stern concrete, steel, and a collision of poetry and functionality. Director and co-writer Brady Corbet, who wrote “The Brutalist” with his filmmaker wife, Mona Fastvold, explores brutalism in other forms as well, including love, envy, capitalist economics and how the promise of America eludes someone like the visionary architect László Tóth, played by Adrien Brody. Corbet, now 36 and a good bet for Oscar nominations this coming January, says his unfashionable sprawl of a picture, being distributed by A24, is also about the “strange relationship between artist and patron, and art and commerce.” It co-stars Felicity Jones as the visionary architect’s wife, Erzsébet, trapped in Eastern Europe after the war with their niece for an agonizingly long time. Guy Pearce portrays the imperious Philadelphia blueblood who hires Tóth, a near-invisible figure in his adopted country, to design a monumental public building known as the Institute in rural Pennsylvania. The project becomes an obsession, then a breaking point and then something else. Corbet’s project, which took the better part of a decade to come together after falling apart more than once, felt like that, too. Spanning five decades and filmed in Hungary and Italy, “The Brutalist” looks like a well-spent $50 million project. In actuality, it was made for a mere $10 million, with Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley shooting on film, largely in the VistaVision process. The filmmaker said at the Chicago festival screening: “Who woulda thunk that for screening after screening over the last couple of months, people stood in line around the block to get into a three-and-a-half-hour movie about a mid-century designer?” He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with Fastvold and their daughter. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Q: Putting together an independent movie, keeping it on track, getting it made: not easy, as you told the Music Box audience last night. Money is inevitably going to be part of the story of “The Brutalist,” since you had only so much to make a far-flung historical epic. A: Yeah, that’s right. In relation to my earlier features, “The Childhood of a Leader” had a $3 million budget. The budget for “Vox Lux” was right around $10 million, same as “The Brutalist,” although the actual production budget for “Vox Lux” was about $4.5 million. Which is to say: All the money on top of that was going to all the wrong places. For a lot of reasons, when my wife and I finished the screenplay for “The Brutalist,” we ruled out scouting locations in Philadelphia or anywhere in the northeastern United States. We needed to (film) somewhere with a lot less red tape. My wife’s previous film, “The World to Come,” she made in Romania; we shot “Childhood of a Leader” in Hungary. For “The Brutalist” we initially landed on Poland, but this was early on in COVID and Poland shut its borders the week our crew was arriving for pre-production. When we finally got things up and running again with a different iteration of the cast (the original ensemble was to star Joel Edgerton, Marion Cotillard and Mark Rylance), after nine months, the movie fell apart again because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. We couldn’t get any of the banks to cash-flow the tax credit (for location shooting in Poland). It’s completely stable now, but at that time the banks were nervous about whether the war would be contained to Ukraine or not. And then we finally got it up and running in Budapest, Hungary. Q: That’s a long time. A: Every filmmaker I know suffers from some form of post-traumatic stress (laughs). It sounds funny but it’s true. At every level. On the level of independent cinema, you’re just so damn poor. You’re not making any money, and yet from nose to tail, at minimum, a movie always takes a couple of years. With bigger projects, you might have a little more personal security but a lot less creative security with so many more cooks in the kitchen. Either route you choose, it can be an arduous and painful one. Whether you’re making a movie for a million dollars, or $10 million, or $100 million, it’s still “millions of dollars.” And if you’re concerned about the lives and livelihoods of the people working with you, it’s especially stressful. People are constantly calling you: “Is it happening? Are we starting? Should I take this other job or not?” And you have 250 people who need that answer from you. Every iteration of the project, I always thought we were really about to start in a week, two weeks. It’s just very challenging interpersonally. It’s an imposition for everyone in your life. And then there’s the imposition of screening a movie that’s three-and-a-half-hours long for film festivals, where it’s difficult to find that kind of real estate on the schedule. So essentially, making a movie means constantly apologizing. Q: At what point in your acting career did you take a strong interest in what was going on behind the camera? A: I was making short films when I was 11, 12 years old. The first thing I ever made more properly, I guess, was a short film I made when I was 18, “Protect You + Me,” shot by (cinematographer) Darius Khondji. It was supposed to be part of a triptych of films, and I went to Paris for the two films that followed it. And then all the financing fell through. But that first one screened at the London film festival, and won a prize at Sundance, and I was making music videos and other stuff by then. Q: You’ve written a lot of screenplays with your wife. How many? A: Probably 25. We work a lot for other people, too. I think we’ve done six together for our own projects. Sometimes I’ll start something at night and my wife will finish in the morning. Sometimes we work very closely together, talking and typing together. It’s always different. Right now I’m writing a lot on the road, and my wife is editing her film, which is a musical we wrote, “Ann Lee,” about the founder of the Shakers. I’m working on my next movie now, which spans a lot of time, like “The Brutalist,” with a lot of locations. And I need to make sure we can do it for not a lot of money, because it’s just not possible to have a lot of money and total autonomy. For me making a movie is like cooking. If everyone starts coming in and throwing a dash of this or that in the pot, it won’t work out. A continuity of vision is what I look for when I read a novel. Same with watching a film. A lot of stuff out there today, appropriately referred to as “content,” has more in common with a pair of Nikes than it does with narrative cinema. Q: Yeah, I can’t imagine a lot of Hollywood executives who’d sign off on “The Brutalist.” A: Well, even with our terrific producing team, I mean, everyone was up for a three-hour movie but we were sort of pushing it with three-and-a-half (laughs). I figured, worst-case scenario, it opens on a streamer. Not what I had in mind, but people watch stuff that’s eight, 12 hours long all the time. They get a cold, they watch four seasons of “Succession.” (A24 is releasing the film in theaters, gradually.) It was important for all of us to try to capture an entire century’s worth of thinking about design with “The Brutalist.” For me, making something means expressing a feeling I have about our history. I’ve described my films as poetic films about politics, that go to places politics alone cannot reach. It’s one thing to say something like “history repeats itself.” It’s another thing to make people see that, and feel it. I really want viewers to engage with the past, and the trauma of that history can be uncomfortable, or dusty, or dry. But if you can make it something vital, and tangible, the way great professors can do for their students, that’s my definition of success. “The Brutalist” opens in New York and Los Angeles on Dec. 20. The Chicago release is Jan. 10, 2025. Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.Goodbye to time changes? Donald Trump says he will push to end daylight saving time

Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Famer Jim McNally and late Buffalo Bills running backs coach Elijah Pitts are recipients of the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Awards of Excellence, it was announced Tuesday. Offensive line coach Jim McNally, shown in the locker room at his alma mater, the University at Buffalo, in 2005. It’s a career accomplishment created by the football shrine in 2022 to recognize significant contributors to the game in “behind-the-scenes” roles. In addition to assistant coaches, Awards of Excellence are given annually to selected public relations personnel, athletic trainers, equipment managers and film/video directors. McNally and Pitts are joined as coaching honorees by Dick Hoak, longtime running backs coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Lewis wears many different hats in the Bills’ secondary. McNally, 81, played and coached at the University at Buffalo and then spent 43 seasons in the NFL, becoming a legend among offensive line coaches. McNally entered the NFL with the Cincinnati Bengals in 1980. He stayed there until 1994, reaching two Super Bowls and mentoring future Hall of Famer Anthony Munoz for all 13 of his seasons. Known by friends and colleagues as "Mouse," McNally had stints with the Carolina Panthers (1995-98), the New York Giants (1999-2003) and the Bills (2004-07). Then he served as a consultant with New Orleans for two years, the New York Jets for two years and then the Bengals for a dozen years before his “second retirement” in 2023. “I think it is satisfying partly because most of the people who’ve gotten recognized on the offensive line have been on Super Bowl winners,” McNally said from his home in Orchard Park. “I was on four Super Bowl teams, three with the Bengals and one with the Giants, and the teams didn’t win. So I think it has something to say about my contribution to the football world, whether it’s high school coaches, college coaches.” Besides his famed work for NFL teams, McNally has given coaching clinics across the country for decades, spreading his knowledge and serving as somewhat of a goodwill ambassador for offensive line play at all levels. He still spreads his knowledge with posts on O-line techniques on the social media platform X, where he has 23,000 followers. There will be a dinner in late June in Canton, Ohio, to honor the Awards of Excellence recipients. Pitts, who died at age 60 in 1998, was a five-time NFL champion as a running back for the Green Bay Packers. He served 24 years as an NFL assistant coach, starting under head coach Chuck Knox with the Rams in 1974. Pitts moved with Knox to the Bills from 1978 to 1980, then coached Hall of Famer Earl Campbell with the Oilers for two years. Pitts worked under Marv Levy as Bills running backs coach from 1985 to 1997. He was assistant head coach from 1992 to 1997. Pitts played a big role in mentoring Hall of Fame running back Thurman Thomas. Get in the game with our Prep Sports Newsletter Sent weekly directly to your inbox! Bills/NFL writer {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.