Latest news with #PointBreak
Newsweek
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
The Witcher 3 Dev Reveals the Game Originally Had a Bank Heist
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors The Witcher 3 is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and with it comes a host of interviews across a number of outlets with the game's development team at CD Projekt Red. Earlier in the week we learned some juicy details about how the game's most memorable sidequest was almost very different, and it turns out that wasn't the only one. According to CD Projekt Red quest designer Danisz Markiewicz, one fan favorite quest from the Hearts of Stone DLC, Open Sesame, originally started off as a bank heist, before the team decided it wanted to go even bigger. The result was the quest that we got in the final game, which had Geralt pulling together a team of roguish misfits to run a heist on an auction house. "We wanted to have something more interactive," Markiewicz told DBLTAP in an interview. "The whole section of Geralt taking part in an auction, getting to meet people from high society, actually buying stuff – that felt very compelling. A bank heist could have certain opportunities, but this was on a completely different level." A screenshot from the Open Sesame quest in The Witcher 3, showing Geralt and others planning a heist. A screenshot from the Open Sesame quest in The Witcher 3, showing Geralt and others planning a heist. CD Projekt CD Projekt put great care into making sure its characters were a good fit for the bombastic nature of the quest, which takes inspiration from films such as Point Break and Ocean's Eleven. But, because CD Projekt never makes anything easy for itself, designers decided to have multiple options for each role in the heist, which required a lot of careful planning and clever execution to make the whole thing work. "We didn't want to redo the entire scene," Markiewicz said. "So we developed some new tech to implement a scene so that those characters are technically there, but if they're not present, another character takes their place. You see that in several scenes – for example, when they're talking over the whole plan. If someone were to play this scene just as it is, you would get two characters talking over each other. Almost like Schrödinger's cat." The quest also originally had plans for a magical security system, with a magic portal whisking Geralt away and into a cave with a Golem. Instead, Markiewicz said, the team decided to keep the quest a little more grounded, eschewing magic altogether and having Geralt dropped through a trapdoor into a pit of spiders. All of this comes with the context that CD Projekt Red is currently hard at work developing The Witcher 4, which will be the first in a trilogy of games focused on Geralt's apprentice Ciri. The game is currently in development using Unreal Engine, a departure from the studio's usual in-house engine, but one that should allow developers to spend less time tinkering with its engine and more time crafting memorable quests.
The Advertiser
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
An unhinged Nicolas Cage takes to the beach in this surreal trip
The Surfer (MA, 103 minutes) 4 stars You wanna make a wacked-out psychotropic trip of a movie, who you gonna call? Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan shot his film The Surfer in the sand dunes of Perth's beach suburbs and has none other than the kookiest of today's working actors, Nicolas Cage, in the 0lead. I'm totally here for it, as Cage's special kind of unhinged works perfectly for a film that feels like Point Break meets Wake in Fright. Cage plays a man, we don't learn his name, returned to his hometown in Australia from a lifetime living in America, just wanting to share the joys of surfing the local breaks with his teenage son (Finn Little). He has plans to buy his old family home that has come back on the market too, but one by one his plans are dashed before his eyes. A bunch of surfie thugs led by the grizzled Scally (Julian McMahon) tell the father and son that the beach is for locals only and intimidate them back to the car park, where the man's ex-wife calls to demand the son come home. Coming back to the beach later that day in his Lexus, with his work suit a little dishevelled, the man spends the afternoon on the phone to the estate agent selling his old family home (Rahel Romahn) and a finance company, trying to huckster cash to buy the house. His desperation is palpable, his dream of the beach home restoring a lost job and a broken marriage a disappearing illusion, and as the summer sun beats down, it seems there is more to lose. The surfer thugs continue to intimidate every visitor to the beach, especially an old man (Nicholas Cassim) who claims they have killed his son and dog. As days go by, the man is drawn to the very edge of his sanity, taunted by the surfers and feeling like everybody he meets is against him. It's an interesting concept that screenwriter Thomas Martin proposes for a low-budget film, the setting across five days not straying too far from a beach car park. But the film doesn't feel cheap and Martin's screenplay is a fascinating thought-piece into a modern masculinised culture fed by the Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates, of domination and performative brutalisation. And it also feels, as the sweat pours through Cage's orange Cheeto dust makeup, like a beautiful homage to Australian horror like the brutal Wake in Fright. There's a lot of Turkish dentistry going on in this film, I should say allegedly, with Cage and McMahon sporting fiercely white choppers that interestingly give some kind of backstory to these two international figures that find themselves squaring off on a Western Australian beach. Julian McMahon could almost be playing Patrick Swayze's Bodhi character from Point Break, a charismatic and physical surfer king leading loyal disciples. He holds focus even against Cage who is just bonkers, but good bonkers. Nobody Cages like Cage Cages. This posse of apparent bad guys who intimidate visitors with their "Don't live here, don't surf here" mantra have their own stories, and its the kind of nonsense I keep getting ads and infomercials for on my feeds. Lorcan Finnegan directs with a frenzy at times, plenty of movement to his camera, plenty of lens flare reinforcing the acid trip impression, probably just trying to keep up with Cage and hoping it all works. It does; it's the kind of film, if I had a cinema of my own, I would be programming for late late shows. It's perfect for the smoke-affected university students who stay up for these kids of things. The Surfer (MA, 103 minutes) 4 stars You wanna make a wacked-out psychotropic trip of a movie, who you gonna call? Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan shot his film The Surfer in the sand dunes of Perth's beach suburbs and has none other than the kookiest of today's working actors, Nicolas Cage, in the 0lead. I'm totally here for it, as Cage's special kind of unhinged works perfectly for a film that feels like Point Break meets Wake in Fright. Cage plays a man, we don't learn his name, returned to his hometown in Australia from a lifetime living in America, just wanting to share the joys of surfing the local breaks with his teenage son (Finn Little). He has plans to buy his old family home that has come back on the market too, but one by one his plans are dashed before his eyes. A bunch of surfie thugs led by the grizzled Scally (Julian McMahon) tell the father and son that the beach is for locals only and intimidate them back to the car park, where the man's ex-wife calls to demand the son come home. Coming back to the beach later that day in his Lexus, with his work suit a little dishevelled, the man spends the afternoon on the phone to the estate agent selling his old family home (Rahel Romahn) and a finance company, trying to huckster cash to buy the house. His desperation is palpable, his dream of the beach home restoring a lost job and a broken marriage a disappearing illusion, and as the summer sun beats down, it seems there is more to lose. The surfer thugs continue to intimidate every visitor to the beach, especially an old man (Nicholas Cassim) who claims they have killed his son and dog. As days go by, the man is drawn to the very edge of his sanity, taunted by the surfers and feeling like everybody he meets is against him. It's an interesting concept that screenwriter Thomas Martin proposes for a low-budget film, the setting across five days not straying too far from a beach car park. But the film doesn't feel cheap and Martin's screenplay is a fascinating thought-piece into a modern masculinised culture fed by the Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates, of domination and performative brutalisation. And it also feels, as the sweat pours through Cage's orange Cheeto dust makeup, like a beautiful homage to Australian horror like the brutal Wake in Fright. There's a lot of Turkish dentistry going on in this film, I should say allegedly, with Cage and McMahon sporting fiercely white choppers that interestingly give some kind of backstory to these two international figures that find themselves squaring off on a Western Australian beach. Julian McMahon could almost be playing Patrick Swayze's Bodhi character from Point Break, a charismatic and physical surfer king leading loyal disciples. He holds focus even against Cage who is just bonkers, but good bonkers. Nobody Cages like Cage Cages. This posse of apparent bad guys who intimidate visitors with their "Don't live here, don't surf here" mantra have their own stories, and its the kind of nonsense I keep getting ads and infomercials for on my feeds. Lorcan Finnegan directs with a frenzy at times, plenty of movement to his camera, plenty of lens flare reinforcing the acid trip impression, probably just trying to keep up with Cage and hoping it all works. It does; it's the kind of film, if I had a cinema of my own, I would be programming for late late shows. It's perfect for the smoke-affected university students who stay up for these kids of things. The Surfer (MA, 103 minutes) 4 stars You wanna make a wacked-out psychotropic trip of a movie, who you gonna call? Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan shot his film The Surfer in the sand dunes of Perth's beach suburbs and has none other than the kookiest of today's working actors, Nicolas Cage, in the 0lead. I'm totally here for it, as Cage's special kind of unhinged works perfectly for a film that feels like Point Break meets Wake in Fright. Cage plays a man, we don't learn his name, returned to his hometown in Australia from a lifetime living in America, just wanting to share the joys of surfing the local breaks with his teenage son (Finn Little). He has plans to buy his old family home that has come back on the market too, but one by one his plans are dashed before his eyes. A bunch of surfie thugs led by the grizzled Scally (Julian McMahon) tell the father and son that the beach is for locals only and intimidate them back to the car park, where the man's ex-wife calls to demand the son come home. Coming back to the beach later that day in his Lexus, with his work suit a little dishevelled, the man spends the afternoon on the phone to the estate agent selling his old family home (Rahel Romahn) and a finance company, trying to huckster cash to buy the house. His desperation is palpable, his dream of the beach home restoring a lost job and a broken marriage a disappearing illusion, and as the summer sun beats down, it seems there is more to lose. The surfer thugs continue to intimidate every visitor to the beach, especially an old man (Nicholas Cassim) who claims they have killed his son and dog. As days go by, the man is drawn to the very edge of his sanity, taunted by the surfers and feeling like everybody he meets is against him. It's an interesting concept that screenwriter Thomas Martin proposes for a low-budget film, the setting across five days not straying too far from a beach car park. But the film doesn't feel cheap and Martin's screenplay is a fascinating thought-piece into a modern masculinised culture fed by the Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates, of domination and performative brutalisation. And it also feels, as the sweat pours through Cage's orange Cheeto dust makeup, like a beautiful homage to Australian horror like the brutal Wake in Fright. There's a lot of Turkish dentistry going on in this film, I should say allegedly, with Cage and McMahon sporting fiercely white choppers that interestingly give some kind of backstory to these two international figures that find themselves squaring off on a Western Australian beach. Julian McMahon could almost be playing Patrick Swayze's Bodhi character from Point Break, a charismatic and physical surfer king leading loyal disciples. He holds focus even against Cage who is just bonkers, but good bonkers. Nobody Cages like Cage Cages. This posse of apparent bad guys who intimidate visitors with their "Don't live here, don't surf here" mantra have their own stories, and its the kind of nonsense I keep getting ads and infomercials for on my feeds. Lorcan Finnegan directs with a frenzy at times, plenty of movement to his camera, plenty of lens flare reinforcing the acid trip impression, probably just trying to keep up with Cage and hoping it all works. It does; it's the kind of film, if I had a cinema of my own, I would be programming for late late shows. It's perfect for the smoke-affected university students who stay up for these kids of things. The Surfer (MA, 103 minutes) 4 stars You wanna make a wacked-out psychotropic trip of a movie, who you gonna call? Irish filmmaker Lorcan Finnegan shot his film The Surfer in the sand dunes of Perth's beach suburbs and has none other than the kookiest of today's working actors, Nicolas Cage, in the 0lead. I'm totally here for it, as Cage's special kind of unhinged works perfectly for a film that feels like Point Break meets Wake in Fright. Cage plays a man, we don't learn his name, returned to his hometown in Australia from a lifetime living in America, just wanting to share the joys of surfing the local breaks with his teenage son (Finn Little). He has plans to buy his old family home that has come back on the market too, but one by one his plans are dashed before his eyes. A bunch of surfie thugs led by the grizzled Scally (Julian McMahon) tell the father and son that the beach is for locals only and intimidate them back to the car park, where the man's ex-wife calls to demand the son come home. Coming back to the beach later that day in his Lexus, with his work suit a little dishevelled, the man spends the afternoon on the phone to the estate agent selling his old family home (Rahel Romahn) and a finance company, trying to huckster cash to buy the house. His desperation is palpable, his dream of the beach home restoring a lost job and a broken marriage a disappearing illusion, and as the summer sun beats down, it seems there is more to lose. The surfer thugs continue to intimidate every visitor to the beach, especially an old man (Nicholas Cassim) who claims they have killed his son and dog. As days go by, the man is drawn to the very edge of his sanity, taunted by the surfers and feeling like everybody he meets is against him. It's an interesting concept that screenwriter Thomas Martin proposes for a low-budget film, the setting across five days not straying too far from a beach car park. But the film doesn't feel cheap and Martin's screenplay is a fascinating thought-piece into a modern masculinised culture fed by the Joe Rogans and Andrew Tates, of domination and performative brutalisation. And it also feels, as the sweat pours through Cage's orange Cheeto dust makeup, like a beautiful homage to Australian horror like the brutal Wake in Fright. There's a lot of Turkish dentistry going on in this film, I should say allegedly, with Cage and McMahon sporting fiercely white choppers that interestingly give some kind of backstory to these two international figures that find themselves squaring off on a Western Australian beach. Julian McMahon could almost be playing Patrick Swayze's Bodhi character from Point Break, a charismatic and physical surfer king leading loyal disciples. He holds focus even against Cage who is just bonkers, but good bonkers. Nobody Cages like Cage Cages. This posse of apparent bad guys who intimidate visitors with their "Don't live here, don't surf here" mantra have their own stories, and its the kind of nonsense I keep getting ads and infomercials for on my feeds. Lorcan Finnegan directs with a frenzy at times, plenty of movement to his camera, plenty of lens flare reinforcing the acid trip impression, probably just trying to keep up with Cage and hoping it all works. It does; it's the kind of film, if I had a cinema of my own, I would be programming for late late shows. It's perfect for the smoke-affected university students who stay up for these kids of things.
Time Out
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The 50 greatest gangster movies of all time
'They only live to get radical.' Does Kathryn Bigelow's high-octane, highly radical action-thriller technically count as a 'gangster movie'? On the one hand, Patrick Swayze's crew of bank-robbing surfer brahs are pretty much the polar opposite of mafiosi, and they operate in a completely different region of LA from the street gangs of Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society. But then again, they are highly organised, and live by a certain code of conduct – as Swayze's criminal zen master explains to Keanu Reeves' undercover FBI agent: 'If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price'. Anyway, we're counting it, because frankly, we'll take any opportunity to celebrate Point Break, one of the most rewatchable crime thrillers of the '90s, or any decade.
The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Woman in uniform: Jamie Lee Curtis plays a troubled, morally murky cop in Blue Steel
When Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break was released in 1991, it marked the arrival of a radical new voice in action cinema. Here was an adrenalised film about cops and robbers, centred on the intensely emotional bond between two men on either side of the law, that so happened to be directed by a woman. 'It's not just about breaking gender roles,' the film-maker said in a 2009 interview. 'It's to explore and push the medium.' Throughout her career, Bigelow has routinely operated in genres primarily occupied by men – perhaps most famously with her Iraq war film The Hurt Locker, which made her the first woman to win a directing Oscar. But just a few years before the macho melodrama of Point Break, Bigelow had already taken a scalpel to the action film in her wonderfully sleazy Blue Steel, a deceptively subversive, female-fronted thriller that investigates the thorny conflation of power and gender in the male-dominated cop genre. Jamie Lee Curtis stars as Megan Turner, a rookie NYPD officer fresh out of the academy who miraculously thwarts an armed robbery on her first night out on patrol. When the suspect's weapon mysteriously vanishes from the crime scene, however, she's shunned by her colleagues and suspended by the force for allegedly killing an unarmed man. To make matters worse, one of the hostages she rescues that evening, Wall Street money man Eugene (a perfectly slimy Ron Silver), becomes dangerously obsessed with his saviour and starts to commit his own murders, with Megan soon trapped in a cat-and-mouse game against a psychotic killer. Against the grimy surfaces of New York City, the film tracks the frustrating ways that Megan's efforts to apprehend Eugene are hindered by the very same systems she's taken an oath to uphold and protect. Her male superiors and fellow officers dismiss her claims of both personal abuse and professional innocence at every turn. It's not until she takes advantage of the liberties afforded her by her badge – much like Dirty Harry did back in 1971 – that Megan wrests justice into her own hands. The film's gaze is thrillingly romantic: its opening credits, for example, are overlaid on top of slow-motion footage of a service revolver being cleaned and reloaded, ingeniously shot with all the hazy festishisation of a softcore porno that transforms the barrel of a gun into a phallic object. The same principle applies to the many scenes of Megan donning her deep-blue police attire; Bigelow's camera leers at every buckle fastened, every button done, as if its subject were a masked vigilante triumphantly suiting up for a night of extrajudicial vengeance. All these images form Blue Steel's central concern: the disruption of a woman dressed in a uniform that so frequently signifies masculine authority. When we first meet Megan's parents, it's clear that her brutish father, Frank (Phillip Bosco), detests the profession his daughter has chosen. But what initially seems like a baby boomer-era misalignment of gender expectations soon reveals itself to be the result of something much more sinister, as an abusive misogynist now realises there's one fewer person in his life he can victimise. The point is only further accentuated by the savvy casting of Curtis: cinema's most recognisable final girl once again forced to rely on no one but herself in order to survive. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning What could have easily been a simplistic 'girls can be cops too' tale is instead complicated by Bigelow's clever manipulation of genre cliches. In its blaring climax, her protagonist engages in a reckless and chaotic gunfight across crowded streets and subway platforms, bending the troubling politics of state-sanctioned power to her own personal interests regardless of how morally justified they may be. 'Why would you want to become a cop?' one of Megan's male partners bluntly asks her early in the film. 'You're a good looking woman – beautiful, in fact.' She turns to him and drily responds. 'I wanted to shoot people.' Blue Steel is streaming on Stan in Australia, Starz in the US, and available to rent in the UK. For more recommendations of what to stream in Australia, click here
CNN
04-04-2025
- General
- CNN
What I learned from a summertime job at a greasy spoon
Josh the line cook leaned on the doorframe, burgers steaming on the hot plate behind him. He was arguing that 'Point Break' is the best sports movie of all time. I disagreed. 'Point Break' is no 'Friday Night Lights.' 'Hot take, Ruskell!' He handed me a basket of fried pickles. 'You're so wrong!' It was the summer before junior year. I was a waitress at Granby Grill, a little diner in a neighborhood of old millhouses in Columbia, South Carolina. The greasy spoon sat on the far end of the first floor of a massive brick building that had once been a cotton mill. I was 17 but working behind the bar because Granby's liquor license had not been renewed, rumored to be a casualty of a local legislator's crusade to class up Columbia. Consequently, regulars brought their own drinks in plastic bags and coolers, and I'd refrigerate their bottles and hand out chilled pint glasses. My duties at Granby were straightforward: Take orders, deliver food, clean tables. Open some days, close others. I got really good at managing multiple tasks, and having a lot of responsibilities made me more responsible. These values and skills — strong work ethic, organization and responsibility — are what numerous studies hold up as the important reasons teenagers should work part time or during the summer. They're what teachers mention at school assemblies when they encourage us to get jobs or internships. And yes, I developed those skills. But I don't think that's the main benefit high school students get from working. It wasn't for me. As a waitress, I was in conversation with both coworkers and complete strangers more than I'd ever been before or since I had that job. I had more arguments, too. Standing behind that bar, people talked to me like the adult I wasn't. They talked to me as a confidant, a trusted friend. The stories they told felt like hints of the bigger life I was desperate to lead, taking my place in the immense world outside my school's hallways. So much happened in the interstitial time and spaces between our official roles of waitress, cook, customer. This is where I think the value of a high school job lies: learning how to form community with people I never would have otherwise known. People older than me whose lives were vastly different. People whom I otherwise never would have talked to or learned from. High school students like me spend about seven hours a day in classes, then often stay afterward for school-sponsored sports or activities. High school feels all-encompassing when you're in it. It can be hard to remember that there's a much bigger world in which no one cares what lunch table you're sitting at in the cafeteria or what you got on your chemistry test. When we get home, we eat dinner, do several hours of homework, scroll on our phones and go to bed. There seems to be no time for a job. Less than a quarter of American high schoolers held jobs in 2023, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be wrapped up in school. But what I found is that a job can feel like a relief from the academic and social pressures of high school, a place where you relate to others because they're people, not because they're popular or in your social strata. Teen employment is making a slow comeback from a low in 2010, but the rate is still lower than it was before the start of the 21st century. I don't think it's because teens can't get jobs. In my hometown, there are 'Help Wanted' posters plastered everywhere. Every single one of my friends who wanted a job — granted not their dream job, but it's a start — has found employment. On a larger scale, workers are still needed. According to Stephanie Melhorn of the US Chamber of Commerce, the United States has 'a lot of jobs but not enough workers to fill them.' So why aren't high school students working the way they once did? I think high school has become more intense and time-consuming than it used to be because of the college admissions environment. Kids are taking harder classes to have more impressive resumes. We also feel the need to participate in impressive extracurricular activities to get into college, a perception encouraged by the social media apps we spend so many hours on. Handing out fried pickles and slinging ice cream don't seem good enough for the college resume anymore. I also think that boredom comes into play — or, really, the lack of it. With phones and the internet, teens never have to be bored again. One can happily doomscroll for hours. Why get a sometimes-boring job to assuage boredom that isn't there? Whatever the reasons for the decline in teenage jobs, the result is that some students graduate high school without ever having held a paying job. As a result, they may not develop the particular skills and unique endurance that can only come from a low-paying service job. For example, at Granby Grill, people regularly sent back their meals when a certain line cook added his secret 'JoJo Sauce' for extra flavor. But there were also people who sent their meals back because they 'just weren't as tasty as they were last time.' In truth, their burgers just didn't have the special JoJo Sauce they'd unknowingly eaten on their previous visit. The problem was no one except JoJo knew how to make JoJo Sauce or even what was in it. There's no math or history class that can teach you how to smooth that over. The daily tasks that came with being a waitress taught me customer service skills, multitasking and better time management. But the people I met at Granby Grill taught me that you can become friends with those decades older than you and strangers who have none of the same interests or hobbies as you. They taught me that you can wildly and stridently disagree with someone and still respect them, still learn from them, still love them. I don't work at Granby Grill anymore. The little greasy spoon closed a month after school restarted that year. I still think about all the people I met there though and what I learned from them. And I can't wait to get another job this summer.
