Latest news with #action-adventure
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Chief of War to Hurricane Katrina: the seven best shows to stream this week
An epic history lesson, courtesy of the mountainous Jason Momoa. When we first meet Ka'iana (Momoa) he is something of a loner, capturing a shark with his bare hands and some rope. But he is coaxed back into armed service by the prophecy of an invasion that will lead to the unification of Hawaii. The drama is based on true events and great care has evidently been taken to present an authentic version of this undertold story. It is steeped in Polynesian cultural practices but it is also full of universal, action-adventure staples – namely, political machinations that periodically dissolve into prolonged outbreaks of expertly choreographed, frequently blood-curdling violence. Phil HarrisonApple TV+, from Friday 1 August Twenty years have now passed since the horrifying events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, but this gripping series brings the trauma back to life in visceral style. What began as an appalling natural disaster soon became a national crisis then an outrage of governmental negligence and structural racism which came to embody – and irrevocably taint – the final years of George W Bush's presidency. To watch the footage now is to be reminded of how close even the most seemingly advanced societies are to breakdown and chaos. Essential. PH Disney+, from Sunday 27 July This documentary, delayed from June, explores the death of British woman Christine Robinson who was raped and murdered at a safari lodge in South Africa in 2014. After the local police drew a blank, Robinson's niece Lehanne took it upon herself to hunt her aunt's killer remotely. She located the suspect online and began a long-distance relationship with Andrea Imbayarwo, who had, by this time, fled the country. Her actions led to his arrest and conviction. Harrowing but also a remarkable story of crime and punishment in the social media age. PH Prime Video, from Sunday 27 July This Netflix series is turning out to be an engaging source of quirky, marginal human interest stories. Its latest documentary explores the 2019 Storm Area 51 Facebook event, which was started by Matty Roberts as a joke but soon became dangerously real. The nominal idea was to see if anyone fancied uncovering the truth about alien lifeforms held in the US airforce facility Area 51. However, by the time the event had attracted the (virtual) attention of more than three million people, Roberts realised he'd created a monster he could no longer control. PH Netflix, from Tuesday Sign up to What's On Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday after newsletter promotion A trippy and inventive animation for the summer holidays. StuGo introduces six gifted students tricked into attending a fake summer camp by eccentric scientist Dr Lullah, whose propensity for swishing her gown around like she's on a catwalk should have been a dead giveaway. Once the youngsters arrive on her island, they find an environment that is rife with danger but also full of perilous fun. It's a world of mind-reading manatees, huge fighting fungi, human cacti and a crocodile wearing jeans, and soon the kids are having a blast. PH Disney+, from Wednesday 30 July The southern belle stylings of Leanne Morgan meet the sitcom smarts of Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men) to create this comedy. Morgan plays Leanne, who discovers that Bill (Ryan Stiles), her husband of 33 years, has cheated on her. The devastating blow launches a flurry of gags about menopause, midlife crises and recovering your dating mojo, as Leanne – with her sister Carol (Kristen Johnston) – looks to move on. It has hysterical studio audience reactions and hits its formulaic comic beats with confidence. PH Netflix, from Thursday 31 July The idea of spies who alternate domestic bliss with espionage activities peaked with The Americans. But this French-Canadian thriller retools the premise, starring Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Patrick Labbé as Rachel and Émile, two agents with a loving relationship, a couple of kids and – after a shooting at a consulate exposes a CIA operation – dangerously contrasting professional missions. To make matters worse, Émile needs to root out a double agent in the organisation. Could this lead him dangerously close to home? PH Channel 4, from Friday 1 August
Japan Times
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Is Japanese skin really ‘too smooth' for Hideo Kojima's games?
They say beauty is only skin deep, but does that also apply to the world of video games? Released on June 26, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach is the latest action-adventure game from Japanese auteur Hideo Kojima and his studio, Kojima Productions. The follow-up to 2019's Death Stranding, the game sets players in a postapocalyptic Australia, where they must deliver supplies to and establish communications between remote colonies of survivors — all while unwrapping the mysteries of the cataclysm that brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Kojima's games are more an acquired taste than mass-market hits, but even accounting for this niche appeal, the game currently sits at a 90 rating on Metacritic and is measuring up to be one of the best games the 61-year-old developer has ever made. Aside from critical acclaim, Death Stranding 2 also includes a relative rarity for a Kojima game: a Japanese cast member. Japanese Australian actress Shioli Kutsuna's casting as curiously afflicted survivor Rainy prompted IGN Japan to question why this isn't a more common occurrence in Kojima's games. 'It's hard to make Asian people look accurate in (computer-generated imagery),' Kojima said. 'Especially young women or those with flawless skin, they end up looking too smooth. It's not just Japanese people, but many Asians have beautiful, fine skin that makes them look artificial in CG.' Kojima added that language skills also influence casting decisions: Though Kojima Productions is based in Tokyo, it releases English-language games with performances recorded in Los Angeles. Still, the untranslatable quality of Asian complexions was taken by the internet to be perhaps the only blemish on Death Stranding 2's release, with multiple threads on Reddit criticizing both the technical and cultural merits of Kojima's claims. Many of these criticisms take for granted an understanding of how digital faces are created, though. Some developers, like Kojima Productions, work with real-life actors, whose likenesses are digitally scanned and then blended with facial animations. Other studios create character models by digitally melding different facial features together, with or without inspiration from an actual person. The Assassin's Creed franchise, for example, has for years featured historical figures, but with no Leonardo da Vinci available to come into the studio for a face scan, the only alternative is to re-create a digital visage that evokes his personage instead of replicating it entirely. That East Asian skin remains beyond the technical capabilities of modern game development is, on its face, a laughable proposition. The number of Japanese or ethnically Asian characters from major hits in the last few months and years alone — Lune in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 ; Naoe in Assassin's Creed Shadows ; Jin in Ghost of Tsushima ; and the 20 years of yakuza gangsters and Tokyo lowlifes in the Like a Dragon series — should tell you that even if the faces in these games failed to capture the spark of real-world likenesses, it did nothing to hamper their success. The question, therefore, isn't whether East Asian skin looks good in games. Rather, it's whether it looks good to Kojima. Kojima has long prized casting not just real-life actors but A-list celebrities in his games. In the Death Stranding series, Norman Reedus plays the main character, while Lea Seydoux, Elle Fanning, Margaret Qualley, Mads Mikkelsen and others also appear not merely as voice talent for other characters with different appearances but as you might expect them to for any role on the silver screen. Norman Reedus leads a largely A-list cast of Hollywood celebrities in Death Stranding 2: On the Beach — a reflection how Hideo Kojima wants his games to look, play and feel. | KOJIMA PRODUCTIONS Sometimes, Kojima's Hollywood-first approach leads to consternation among fans. For decades, voice actor David Hayter played the iconic character of Solid Snake (and some of its derivatives, but no time to get into Kojima's labyrinthian plots now) of the Metal Gear Solid franchise. As the series grew in popularity, Kojima would try to recast Snake's voice actor more than once, including an unsuccessful attempt to rope in Kurt Russell — whose character in the 1981 film 'Escape from New York' was its original inspiration. In 2015, Kojima would finally get his way, shunting Hayter aside in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain in favor of Keifer Sutherland. Kojima is an admitted and unabashed movie buff, and he often casts his games like a film director. Look no further than Death Stranding's world-record, 71-minute-long cutscene (in addition to the game's 10-plus additional hours of nonplayable runtime) as proof of what informs his artistic approach. He envisions a character and finds a famous face that he feels fits. When it comes to Kojima's visuals, art imitates life. And it's more often Hollywood's version of life — with all its inherent biases — that his games try to imitate.
