The largest actors union in Hollywood officially called a strike early Friday morning against several prominent video game companies after the two sides failed to reach an agreement on an increase in compensation for performers who do voice-over and motion-capture work for popular games. SAG-AFTRA said Friday the work stoppage began at 12:01 a.m. Friday and covers games made by the companies that went into production after Feb. 17, 2015. Many of the most sophisticated games take years to develop and bring to market, and employ large casts of actors over that development process. Members of SAG-AFTRA are planning to picket one of the companies -- Electronic Arts -- at its location in Playa Vista on Monday.

While plenty of movies and TV shows have made it onto various Internet "Best of" lists, not many can claim to have made a list curated by a president. Now films like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Star Wars: Episode IV -- A New Hope" can add that honor to their list of commendations. Somehow between his day job as POTUS and campaigning for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama found time to guest-edit the November issue of Wired. Among his editing duties was listing off his essential genre films and television shows, and no real surprise here, a lot of sci-fi greatest hits made the list. But that's OK, Obama's still got plenty of nerd cred to go around.

The opening screen of Variable State's new video "feature" "Virginia" welcomes players to a small town named Kingdom. It's laid before us as if it were a board game, with little trails leading to a cave or a gas station, a schoolyard or an observatory, all of it presented with the simple cheery look of a brightly filled-in coloring book. Come in, stay awhile and bask in the beauty of small-town life, it seems to say. Press play, however, and things get twisted, and not with the typical things-are-not-what-they-seem subversion. Indeed, the first sign that something is out of the norm comes from the word "feature."