Think a little free library, but for Friday night movie marathons. More information Adding us as a Preferred Source in Google by using this link indicates that you would like to see more of our content in Google News results. Free Blockbuster was started by a former employee and VHS collector. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. By signing up, you confirm you are 16+, will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

The actor, who died at age 78 on Monday, embodied a passionate approach to research and positive masculinity in his role as paleontologist Alan Grant in the 1993 blockbuster . Sam Neill, the New Zealand actor who died at age 78 in Sydney, Australia, on Monday, had a long and varied résumé. He played everyone from an international spy () and a detective chief inspector () to a legendary wizard (). He even played the literal spawn of the devil (). But throughout his career, Neill was also known for scientist roles in films like and, with none more celebrated than Dr. Alan Grant, the rugged paleontologist and undisputed hero of .

The Oscar nominations will be announced later, with Leonardo DiCaprio's politically-charged thriller One Battle After Another expected to lead the field. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Sentimental Value, Bugonia and The Secret Agent are also expected to perform strongly when the shortlists are announced from 13:30 GMT. It's a weaker year for UK talent - Wunmi Mosaku from vampire horror Sinners is one of the few British stars with a chance of securing an acting nomination. But Irish actors Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal are expected to be recognised for their roles in the screen adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet. US comedian Conan O'Brien will return to host this year's Academy Awards ceremony, which takes place on 15 March.

Chris Pratt on new film Mercy: I asked to be locked into an executioner's chair Being locked barefoot in an executioner's chair sounds uncomfortable, but that is what Chris Pratt requested for his latest film, Mercy. More familiar as a wisecracking action hero in blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, this role is quite a departure for him. He plays homicide detective Chris Raven, who's fighting for his life after being accused of murdering his wife. Raven is an alcoholic who wakes in the chair after a drinking binge, with just 90 minutes to convince an AI judge he's innocent, or he'll be executed immediately. The film is set in real time, so we see Raven defend his case - while enduring a crashing hangover.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 leads the pack at this year's Game Awards with 12 nominations. The critically acclaimed role-playing game (RPG) is up for Game of the Year, as well as three entries in the best performance category. Other contenders for the top game prize this year are Death Stranding 2, Nintendo platformer Donkey Kong Bananza, indie games Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2, and medieval adventure Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. They will all compete at the event - the world's most-watched ceremony celebrating video games - on 11 December in Los Angeles, California. Organisers say there were 154 million livestreams in 2024, when platformer Astro Bot was named Game of the Year. What are the Game Awards?

The movie industry is associated with an elevated level of risk, which necessitates the use of automated tools to predict box-office revenue and facilitate human decision-making. In this study, we build a sophisticated multimodal neural network that predicts box offices by grounding crowdsourced descriptive keywords of each movie in the visual information of the movie posters, thereby enhancing the learned keyword representations, resulting in a substantial reduction of 14.5% in box-office prediction error. The advanced revenue prediction model enables the analysis of the commercial viability of "copycat movies," or movies with substantial similarity to successful movies released recently. We do so by computing the influence of copycat features in box-office prediction. We find a positive relationship between copycat status and movie revenue. However, this effect diminishes when the number of similar movies and the similarity of their content increase. Overall, our work develops sophisticated deep learning tools for studying the movie industry and provides valuable business insight.

In the 2023 blockbuster, Robots, Shailene Woodley and Jack Whitehall star as singletons who send robot'doubles' of themselves out on dates. While this might sound far-fetched, it could soon become a reality. Speaking at the Bloomberg Tech Summit, Herd, 34, claimed that daters could soon use an'AI dating concierge' to go out on hundreds of dates for them. 'If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierge,' she said. In the 2023 blockbuster, Robots, Shailene Woodley and Jack Whitehall star as singletons who send robot'doubles' of themselves out on dates.

A new top-grossing film that has received global recognition for its cinematic prowess is now being revered by the most successful director of the century. Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg recently proclaimed Dune: Part Two as a'visual epic' in a new interview, calling it'one of the most brilliant science-fiction films I've ever seen.' Spielberg said his favorite scene in the Blockbuster was watching Timothée Chalamet - who plays Paul Atreides - ride a sandworm. Spielberg has also lavished praise on Denis Villeneuve who directed both Dune films, saying Villeneuve's name will be added to the list of sci-fi filmmakers who have built incredible and unique worlds. 'You have made one of the most brilliant science fiction films I have ever seen,' adding that it'is truly a visual epic and it's also filled with deeply, deeply drawn characters,' Spielberg told Villeneuve in the Director's Cut podcast: Dune: Part Two cleared 82.5 million in its opening weekend, surpassing Oppenheimer which brought in 82.4 million. Since its release, the film has grossed nearly 240 million at the domestic box office and 570 million globally.

Steven Spielberg's wholesome sci-fi classic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, became a cultural touchstone following its release in 1982. The film's hastily-developed (as in, "you have five weeks to get this to market") Atari 2600 tie-in game became a cultural touchstone for entirely different reasons. In his new book, The Stuff Games Are Made Of, experimental game maker and assistant professor in design and computation arts at Concordia University in Montreal, Pippin Barr deconstructs the game design process using an octet of his own previous projects to shed light on specific aspects of how games could better be put together. In the excerpt below, Dr. Barr muses in what makes good cinema versus games and why the storytelling goals of those two mediums may not necessarily align. Excerpted from The Stuff Games Are Made Of by Pippin Barr.

Of all its characters, Nintendo is best represented by Kirby, a cutesy pink blob named after an intellectual property litigator. In 1983, John Kirby convinced a judge that Donkey Kong was not a trademark infringement of Universal Pictures' King Kong. The win helped pave the way for the company's wild success in the video game industry. Now, it is Nintendo that doles out the legal claims to protect its IP. The latest fan fixed in the hot glare of Nintendo's Sauronic eye also happens to be one of the most well-known.