‘Batman v. Superman’ in 4DX made watching a bad movie worse

If you’ve ever wanted your movie-going experience to feel like an abusive amusement park ride that went on way too long, 4DX is probably for you. But after seeing Batman vs. Superman in 4DX last weekend, it’s not something I’d ever want to suffer through again. Created by the South Korean company CJ Group, 4DX aims to add another dimension to theaters with moving seats, strobing lights and weather effects, such as water, wind and fog.

For the most part, though, I found it to be a messy experience that detracted from the film. And worst of all, it costs $28.10, around twice the price of a typical New York City movie ticket.

4DX has been around for a few years now, starting in South Korea and eventually making its way to the west coast. The Regal Union Square theater, just a few blocks from our office, is the first place in New York to offer the technology (it will also be available at the Regal E-Walk in Times Square next month). There are also a few competing standards: MediaMation’s MX4D offers all of the same features as 4DX, while D-Box focuses more on moving seats.

Given the extensive nature of 4DX’s environmental effects, theaters have to refit an entire screening room to support it. That includes adding new seats on hydraulic platforms, infrastructure for water and smell effects, and extra lighting and fog generation. All of the additional hardware inevitably leads to fewer available seats, but theaters probably hope to make up for that with the higher ticket prices.

Since the seats are lifted off the ground, you actually have to climb onto them. That was a bit of a struggle for the young kids in my audience. The seats are also surprisingly uncomfortable; they’re stiff with no ability to recline. That makes sense since they’re supposed to move around, but sitting in them makes you feel more like you’re riding a rollercoaster than relaxing for a film. The arm rests are fairly wide, and there’s also a button for turning off the water effects. (I imagine many will end up doing that.)

I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy 4DX almost as soon as Batman v. Superman started. As we relived the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents for the umpteenth time, cross-cut with a somber funeral scene, the seats rolled back and forth in tune with the dramatic camera angles. It was raining during the scene, so I should have guessed that meant I’d have water sprayed in my face as young Bruce Wayne mourns. I don’t think that’s the sort of immersion most viewers are looking for. Gunshots led to the seat punching me in the back, and I could feel the fluttering of bats on screen with air jets going off near my head. And that was just the first few minutes of the film.

Over the course of Batman v. Superman’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime, I came to hate how the 4DX seat would punch me during every action scene, as well as the seemingly random use of water effects. This is New York City, after all: We spend most of our time avoiding mystery liquids in public. The fog effects also seem particularly ill-advised. One bro couldn’t stop shouting, “The theater’s on fire!” every time it happened. (That’s illegal, dude.) I didn’t detect many smell effects, but that’s also something you can look forward to with 4DX. (The Sensorama Simulator did the same thing 50 years ago.)

While I’m sure some people might enjoy what 4DX is offering, especially for big, dumb action movies, it feels more fitting for short rides at Universal Studios than feature-length films. When I looked around at the audience as Batman and Superman were punching each other, I saw only looks of pain and annoyance from all of the 4DX effects. I understand that theaters need to try new things to combat falling ticket sales, but is this really how they expect to get people away from their couches and Netflix queues?

4DX is total garbage, not sure how being punched in the back and sprayed with water = 2x the price. Everyone involved should be ashamed

— Devindra Hardawar (@Devindra) March 27, 2016

The high price is another big issue. My heart sank when I saw families with two to four kids attend my screening. Do the math: It would cost around $120 for a family of four to attend a 4DX screening, and that’s not including drinks and popcorn. Pricing like that might lead families to go to the theater less often, which would be bad news for theaters, since they make most of their money from concessions.

It also didn’t help that the 4DX theater was one of the smallest screens at the Regal Union Square. You can get genuinely bigger screens and better sound systems from Dolby Vision theaters and IMAX (even so-called “lie-MAX” screens) for far less than 4DX prices. And if you really want to treat yourself, look for local theaters with dine-in options, like the popular Alamo Drafthouse chain.

Perhaps I’m too much of a purist. When I go to the cinema, I actually want to, you know, see the movie. But just about everything about the 4DX experience gets in the way of that. For a company that markets itself as a new method of immersing yourself in films, it’s really just innovating ways to distract you.

[Photo: Warner Bros. via AP]

Tribeca Shortlist brings its movie-streaming app to Apple TV

Up until today, Tribeca Shortlist has been available on iOS, Fire TV and Roku. And now the movie-streaming service, created by the company behind the Tribeca Film Festival and Lionsgate, is expanding to the new Apple TV. The application, which requires a $5 monthly subscription, will give you access to more than 150 movies on demand. While that number seems low in comparison to Netflix or Hulu Plus, Tribeca Shortlist is all about quality, not quantity, according to the company.

The curated content it offers is based on recommendations made by “personalities you know [actors, directors],” and ranges from classics like Good Will Hunting to City of God. If you don’t have an account yet, you can grab a free trial from the Tribeca Shortlist site, which should help you determine whether it’s worthy of your cash every month.

Source: Tribeca Shortlist

DraftKings and FanDuel pull the plug on college fantasy contests

While debates about the legality of fantasy sports services DraftKings and FanDuel rage on, both companies have announced that they’ll suspend all paid contests on collegiate sports as of this week. Sorry, armchair coaches: looks like your March Madness championship paydays aren’t coming after all. While the news might be a bummer for people already gearing up for the Division I college football in a few months, CNBC also reports that the two companies will also stop offering contests involving “high school and youth sports.”

According to ESPN, the announcements come on the heels of prolonged conversations with NCAA officials and state legislators. It’s easy to see where state governments come into play — the federal government hasn’t taken a firm stance on daily fantasy contests, leaving individual specific regulation up to states. Opinions, to put it mildly, are varied. New York has been ardently opposed to the fantasy sports operators, while Virginia recently became the first state to pass a daily fantasy sports law. All told, DraftKings said in a statement, “nearly 30 states” have “advanced thoughtful and appropriate regulations for fantasy play. Also up for interpretation is how non-professional athletes figure into these daily fantasy equations. EA Sports had to discontinue its NCAA Football games after a class-action suit over player likenesses popped up, and CBS Sports points out financial contests involving the same players are similarly questionable.

[Photo credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images]

Source: ESPN

‘Call of Duty: Black Ops III’ second DLC arrives April 19

Treyarch announced on Thursday that the second DLC pack for Call of Duty: Black Ops III, dubbed Eclipse, will be released on April 19th. The new content, which will initially be available only on the PlayStation 4, features four new maps as well as a new Zombies storyline set on a remote, WWII-era island somewhere in the Pacific.

If you haven’t purchased the game’s $50 season pass, which grants access to all four DLC packs scheduled for this year, you can still pick up this one for $15. There’s no word on when, exactly, Eclipse will hit the XBox One but you can be sure it won’t be arriving on last-gen consoles any time soon.

Microsoft’s Edge browser gets a handful of new extensions

Microsoft has announced some important new extensions for its Edge browser at the annual Build developer conference. Major services like Pinterest, Amazon, Evernote, LastPass, Reddit, Adblock and Adblock Plus can now plug into Microsoft’s newest browser. This comes a few weeks after an updated version of Edge rolled out that supported a paltry three extensions; those announced at Build bring the number up a little bit, but Edge still lags far behind Chrome, Firefox or even Safari in this department.

It’s worth noting that the support for Adblock and Adblock Plus extensions is how Microsoft plans to offer an ad-blocking experience. Originally, some slides from a developer presentation made it seem as if Edge would have built-in ad-blocking; instead, it’ll just support the feature from third-party developers. That’s just how Apple and Google handle ad-blocking with Safari and Chrome.

While it’s good that Microsoft is supporting more extensions, the company has a lot of work to do to close the gap with its browser competition. Most users probably don’t use more than a handful of extensions (and lots probably don’t use any at all), but those who swear by them likely won’t switch to Microsoft’s browser without replacements.

Via: VentureBeat

Source: Microsoft

Kanye West’s new album may hit Apple Music, Spotify tomorrow

Anyone who’s familiar with Kanye’s antics knows to always take his words with a grain of salt. Back in February, after releasing The Life of Pablo exclusively on Tidal (a music service he owns a stake in), West tweeted that the album would “never never never be on Apple [Music].” But, thankfully for some of his fans, it looks like that statement won’t hold true. According to reports from Mashable and Recode, citing sources familiar with the matter, TLOP will be released on Apple Music and Spotify this Friday, April 1st. Shocker.

My album will never never never be on Apple. And it will never be for sale… You can only get it on Tidal.

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 15, 2016

Over the past few days, songs from the The Life of Pablo started showing up outside of Tidal. First it was Famous, a track that shoutouts Taylor Swift and, most recently, I Love Kanye — as if we needed reassurance of Kanye’s love for himself. Leading up to tomorrow’s purported arrival of The Life of Pablo on Apple Music and Spotify, Kanye has updated the album for Tidal listeners, making changes to 12 of the 19 songs featured on it. It’s not the first time he’s done this, however: Wolves recently saw the reintroduction of vocals from artists Vic Mensa and Sia.

If you’re an Apple Music or Spotify subscriber, we don’t recommend holding your breath for TLOP. Because this is Kanye we’re talking about, and in the life of Kanye, anything can happen.

Source: Pichfork, Mashable, Recode

Watch Microsoft’s opening-day Build keynote in just 10 minutes

If you didn’t happen to be sitting near a computer during the opening ceremonies for Microsoft’s Build developer conference yesterday, never fear: We’ve condensed the two-hour, opening-day keynote into a roughly 10-minute video. Included in our highlight reel are CEO Satya Nadella’s opening remarks; the Windows 10 “Anniversary Update”; news on universal apps; a demo of new Windows inking features; Microsoft’s surprise Linus news; a peek at HoloLens’s packaging; and, most importantly, a glimpse at Microsoft’s incoming army of chatbots. If you’ve got just 10 minutes, we’ll give you all the meat, minus the fluff.

NASA will attempt to develop drugs in space

A team of researchers from the University of Southern California and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are sending fungi aboard a SpaceX flight to the ISS on April 8th. Not to expose them to Mars-like conditions like an earlier experiment did, but to see if they can be used to develop medicine in space. See, fungi produce molecules called secondary metabolites that can be used to develop medicine. One good and familiar example is penicillin. However, scientists (including USC professor Clay Wang who’s leading this project) found that in many cases, fungi can only generate secondary metabolites when they’re put in stressful conditions. And space can provide an environment harsh enough to activate the production of those molecules.

The researchers believe that the species they’re sending out, Aspergillus nidulans, could produce up to 40 different types of drugs in microgravity. It’s the perfect organism for the experiment, because it’s been used widely in pharmaceutical research and is already known to produce metabolites that can be used for osteoporosis drugs. Seeing as astronauts lose bone mass when they spend long stretches of time outside our planet, A. nidulans could be a valuable cargo for deep space missions. The team also believes the the organism can be used for cancer, anti-fungal and Alzheimer’s disease studies.

The fungi will be kept at 39.2 degrees Fahrenheit during the trip to the space station, where they’ll be thawed and stored at the ideal growth temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit for up to seven days. Wang’s team will get the specimens back for testing in May, hopefully after having produced the molecules that can be used for drug development. If the experiment works, then that means the researchers successfully found a way to make medicine in space. And as Professor Wang said:

“Drugs have an expiration date. NASA’s human mission to Mars is expected to last anywhere from one to three years. Not all drugs are going to be stable in that time period, so the ability to make drugs in space will enable us to go further away from Earth and will also benefit future space explorations.”

Via: Motherboard

Source: University of Southern California, Clay Wang Lab

NASA takes a Super-Earth’s temperature

NASA researchers recently trained the Spitzer Space Telescope at a nearby Super-Earth, 55 Cancri e, and, for the first time, have managed to map its temperature as the exoplanet orbits its host star. The map reveals that the planet suffers from extreme temperature swings, depending on its orbit. Since 55 Cancri e circles so closely to its star (completing orbits in just 18 hours), it behaves much like the Earth’s moon. That is, one side of the planet continually faces the star and is therefore far hotter than the opposite side — 4400 degrees F and 2060 degrees F, respectively.

“The latest findings tell us the planet has hot nights and significantly hotter days,” lead author of the study, Cambridge University’s Brice Olivier Demory, said in a statement. “This indicates the planet inefficiently transports heat around the planet. We propose this could be explained by an atmosphere that would exist only on the day side of the planet, or by lava flows at the planet surface.” Researchers had initially discovered that 55 Cancri e does possess an atmosphere, however this data would suggest that the planet’s atmosphere is thin at best. NASA plans to follow up this study with additional observations using the James Webb telescope.

Source: NASA

Sprint is now selling monthly Amazon Prime subscriptions

Sprint announced on Thursday that it will begin selling Amazon Prime subscriptions to its customers for $11 a month. That’s slightly more than what you’d pay if you purchased Prime on your own but this is the only way to get the service for less than a year — and $100 — at a time. Interested Sprint customers can sign up through the company’s website.

This move comes as the battle between carriers for customer hearts and wallets continues to heat up. Sprint has brought back two-year contracts and is offering double the data allowance for those willing to switch carriers. Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, are offering up to $650 for people to jump ship. T-Mobile, for its part, will let customers binge on porn.

Source: Sprint