She has been cast in maternal roles since her teens. Now, playing a mother for the first time since becoming one, she has chosen the part of a woman pushed past the edge of sanity. In "Die My Love," Lawrence, as Grace, vibrates with boredom and fury. The novel "Die, My Love," by the Argentinean writer Ariana Harwicz, is narrated by a wife and new mother who is living in rural France and seems to be losing her mind. Motherhood has inserted an immersion blender into her psyche: lust, repulsion, pleasure, and doom swirl into a single mess. She calls herself a "sodomising rodent" with "bullet-wounds for eyes," and thinks, "When I masturbate I desecrate crypts, and when I rock my baby I say amen, and when I smile I unplug an iron lung." One night, standing in the cold, staring at her family through a sliding door, she thinks, "I'll stop trying to draw blood from a stone. I'll contain my madness, I'll use the bathroom. I'll put my baby to sleep, jerk off my man and postpone my rebellion in favor of a better life." Martin Scorsese saw a brief review of the novel in the some years ago and decided to pick up a copy. He found it to be a "powerful mosaic of the mind," he told me recently. Scorsese is a member of a book club of sorts, with a few other filmmakers, who read with an eye toward adaptation. For "Die, My Love," he imagined casting Jennifer Lawrence in the lead. He'd been amazed by her performance in Darren Aronofsky's bewildering 2017 fantasia, "Mother!" In that surreal film--it's like an allegory set inside an oil painting--Lawrence plays a woman living with her poet husband in an old farmhouse, which is gradually, then apocalyptically, invaded by strangers. "She really is feeling everything that's happening, in what appears to be a dream of some kind," Scorsese said. He and Lawrence had discussed adaptations before. They considered "The Awakening," Kate Chopin's 1899 novel of female liberation, which ends with the protagonist, Edna Pontellier, walking into the sea. "Die, My Love" was like "The Awakening" if it began with Edna already underwater.

The Final Exam, a recently released video game in which you play as a student caught amid a school shooting, lasts for around ten minutes, about the length of a real shooting event in a U.S. school. The game opens in an empty locker room. You hear distant gunfire, screams, harried footsteps, and the thudding of heavy furniture being overturned. The sense of disharmony is immediate: a familiar scene of youth and learning is grimly debased into one of peril. As the lockers surround you, their doors gaping, you feel caged: get me out of here. Moments later, as you enter the gymnasium, a two-minute countdown flashes on screen.

If you struggle to hear what's being said in the movies and shows you're watching, just know you're not alone. Whether your hearing is less than ideal, or the sound mixing could be better, or you're trying to watch and listen to something without disturbing the rest of the household, there are a lot of reasons why dialog might be hard to pick out. The good news is that there are quite a few ways to fix the problem so you don't have to put up with missing out on dialog, which is a crucial part of understanding and enjoying what's onscreen. These are the options you can try, depending on the devices and apps you're using for streaming. Your first port of call should be the apps you're using to watch whatever it is you're watching.

There are a ton of tricks that smart displays can do. But not all of them are created equal or are worth doing on this style of advice. The basics are easy--just about anyone knows how handy it is to ask any smart speaker or smart display to tell you the weather or play music. It's their best use case, especially since smart displays like the Echo Show can give you more weather details onscreen. But that's not all these handy devices do, and for the price you should get the most out of any smart display you buy.

Last Tuesday, shortly after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued relaxed guidelines for wearing masks in public during the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden gave a speech on the North Lawn of the White House. The setting was so verdant--bright sunlight, tall trees framing a lectern, shrubbery in full bloom--that it might have been a virtual Zoom background. Biden wore a black mask to the lectern, then took it off to speak. "If you're in a crowd, like in a stadium or at a concert, you still need to wear a mask, even if you're outside," he said. "But, beginning today, gathering with a group of friends in the park, going for a picnic, as long as you are vaccinated and outdoors, you can do it without a mask."

Afew days before my return to classroom teaching at Sichuan University, I was biking across a deserted stretch of campus when I encountered a robot. The blocky machine stood about chest-high, on four wheels, not quite as long as a golf cart. In front was a T-shaped device that appeared to be some kind of sensor. The robot rolled past me, its electric motor humming. I turned around and tailed the thing at a distance of fifteen feet.

Onscreen: Can driverless vehicles make ethical choices? News video: An Uber autonomous vehicle was driving about 40 mph when it struck a pedestrian. Onscreen: Consider the "Trolley Problem." Botnivik: And you have to decide whether you're gonna pull the switch and move it onto other tracks. And let 5 people die?

The technology around us has made its way into all kinds of movies. But there's one movie genre it hasn't been able to infiltrate -- the romantic comedy. The technology around us has made its way into all kinds of movies. But there's one movie genre it hasn't been able to infiltrate -- the romantic comedy. Because so many of us hate it.

Do students learn as much when they read digitally as they do in print? For both parents and teachers, knowing whether computer-based media are improving or compromising education is a question of concern. With the surge in popularity of e-books, online learning and open educational resources, investigators have been trying to determine whether students do as well when reading an assigned text on a digital screen as on paper. The answer to the question, however, needs far more than a yes-no response. In my research, I have compared the ways in which we read in print and onscreen.

On a recent Saturday morning, my wife, Susan, and I slipped into the city to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a place we hadn't gone together since before our sons were born. The crowds hadn't yet descended and for an hour or so we wandered around and absorbed the cavernous hush of art. We separated for a bit, together but apart; while Susan roamed among the Manets and Van Goghs I slipped into a small side gallery, not much larger than a subway car, that held a series of glass cases with small bronze sculptures by Degas. There were a few busts and several horses in stride and the figure of a woman stretching, a small bronze rising to her feet and curling her left arm upward as if waking from a long nap. At the end of the gallery, in one long case, were two dozen ballerinas in various states of motion or repose.