After the events of the films “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame”, Wanda Maximoff loses her lover, the Synthesoid Vision. Heartbroken, she creates Westview, an artificial town where everything resembles her favorite American sitcoms. In it, Wanda and Vision can lead a happy family life.

At this time, the organization M.E.Ch. settled near the borders of Westview. led by Tyler Hayward. Gathering the best specialists, M.E.Ch. trying to find out what is happening in the city – and who is to blame for what is happening.

WandaVision is a completed miniseries with no second season planned. There are 9 episodes in total with different timing: the first ones last 20-25 minutes, but gradually the episodes are getting longer.

Agent Jimmy Woo– Former SHIELD agent Previously worked with Melinda May of Agents of SHIELD, but later left for the FBI. Jimmy Wu first appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp as a parole officer for Scott Lang.

Altron Is an android created with Loki’s Scepter. Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Bruce Banner (Hulk) deciphered the code from the Scepter that contained the Mind Stone. Scientists created artificial intelligence to protect the earth, but Ultron turned against humanity as a result. He appeared in the movie “Avengers: Age of Ultron”.

“Darkhold”, or “Book of Sins” – an ancient book that stores powerful spells. Darkhold was created from dark matter. In addition to WandaVision, Darkhold has appeared in Agents of SHIELD and The Runaways.

Lesson Lewis – astrophysicist, assistant and girlfriend of Jane Foster. She has appeared in the films Thor and Thor 2: The Kingdom of Darkness.

“M.E.Ch.” – an offshoot of the SHIELD organization protecting world security. It is assumed that M.E.Ch. more focused on alien threats.

Monica Rambo – former employee of M.E.Ch.a, daughter of pilot Maria Rambo. She followed in the footsteps of her mother, who was close friends with Carol Danvers (Captain Marvel). She appeared in Captain Marvel, when Monica was a child at the time.

Skrulls – an alien race that has the ability to remake its appearance for any person. For many years they fought a hostile Kree race and eventually lost their home planet. The plot of the Captain Marvel movie is closely related to the Skrulls.

Some time after the events of the movie “Avengers: Endgame”. All those who disappeared after Thanos’ click returned to existence in their world. Vision died before a click, so the efforts of the Avengers did not bring him back to life.

MCU Movie Heroes Appear in WandaVision – Monica Rambo (Teyona Parris), agent Jimmy Woo (Randall Pack), Lesson Lewis (Kat Dennings)

Also in the series there is a famous comic book character – a witch Agata Harkness(Katherine Hahn). In Westview, she disguised herself as Agnes, Wanda’s neighbor, and tried to figure out how Wanda had managed to create a powerful illusion. In the comics, Agatha was the mentor of the Scarlet Witch who saved her from Mephisto.

Twins are born to Wanda and Vision Tommy and Billy… Wiccan (aka Billy Kaplan) and Speed ​​(aka Tommy Shepard) are also comic book characters. Only there they were not just children of the Scarlet Witch and Vision, but fragments of the soul of the demon Mephisto; Billy and Tommy subsequently disappeared, but Wanda was able to find them in her reality.

Actor Evan Peters also appears in the series, allegedly in the role of Pietro Maximoff, Wanda’s brother. However, in the finale, it turns out that Pietro is fake. It turned out to be a local resident named Ralph Boehner, who was manipulated by Agatha Harkness.

Doctor Strange, Mephisto, Nightmare or other characters from comics and films do NOT appear in WandaVision.

Wanda Maximoff did create Westview, but not from scratch. The superheroine, with her magic, transformed the local city and imprisoned all its inhabitants inside the so-called “Hexagon”, or “Maximoff illusion”. The people in Westview are in a kind of trance, but they see Wanda’s nightmares and constantly feel her pain.

Strong magic caught the attention of the witch Agatha Harkness. She hid in Westview, pretending to be Wanda’s neighbor, watching and manipulating her. It was she who sent the fake Pietro to Wanda (with the face of Evan Peters).

In episode 8, Agatha forces Wanda to walk through her memories to understand how she managed to create such a powerful illusion. She explains that Wanda is the legendary Scarlet Witch and her strength is too great and dangerous for the world. It turns out that Agatha is absorbing other people’s magic and wants to steal Wanda’s abilities. In the end, Wanda fights with Agatha and defeats her, “unlocking” the magic of chaos in herself.

It also turns out that the director of M.E.C., Tyler Hayward, tried to recreate the Vision – so he could get the strongest technology on Earth. Hayward faked the videotapes and made it appear as if Wanda Maximoff had stolen Vision’s body and moved it to Westview. In episode 9, Hayward with operatives M.E.Ch. gets inside the illusion and tries to attack Wanda, but he is stopped and arrested.

Wanda and her family are protected by Darcy, Wu, and Monica Rambo, who has passed into an illusion on her own. Constantly crossing the borders of Westview, Monica gains superpowers similar to the strength of Captain Marvel.

Having defeated all rivals, Wanda realizes that Westview can no longer exist. She abandons her family in order to release all the hostages. Saying goodbye to them, Wanda “collapses” the illusion. Artificially created by her Vision, Tommy and Billy disappear, and Wanda herself escapes.

Scene one: Having dealt with M.E.Ch. and Wanda, Monica helps at the scene. A colleague asks her to go to a local cinema. The woman turns out to be a Skrull in disguise and tells Monica that an “old friend” wants to meet her in space. This is probably Agent Nick Fury.

Scene two: Wanda Maximoff is in exile, living in a hut somewhere in the mountains. She goes deeper into the house and removes the kettle from the stove. At this moment, the camera zooms to the side and shows the Scarlet Witch – an astral projection (or alter ego?) Of Wanda, who is studying the Darkhold.

The scene is likely to serve as a lead-in to Doctor Strange: Into the Multiverse of Madness.

For 8 weeks, Kanobu monitored the release of new episodes. Below you can find recaps of all episodes, mini-reviews, analysis of theories and opinions about WandaVision.

Did you miss any references, explanations from the cast, and fan art? Not scary – we have collected the main news on WandaVision, which were published on Kanoba.

The Boss Level script was written back in 2010, when the Groundhog Day action movie seemed like an original idea. The fact that the film looks great even in modern conditions, withstanding any comparison, is the best proof of Cairnahan’s talent. First of all – as a scriptwriter.

I’m scared to imagine what Boss Level would look like in talentless writers like Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick (Deadpool) or Derek Kolstad (John Wick). However, it is clear how: they can only savor the violence on the screen, in the second act they present us their own masturbatory fantasy in the form of the hero’s girlfriend, and in the third they suddenly start demanding empathy from us for a handsome actor and a beautiful actress just because they, they say, they love each other.

Like Deadpool or Wick, the film would have been quite successful with a fairly large category of viewers who are also not capable of empathy, empathy for the main character, for whom all this is nothing more than action figures making jokes and cutting each other into pieces.

Actually, this was the script for Boss Level from a couple of unknown authors until it fell into the hands of Joe Cairnahan – a great master, an experienced person and a real artist. In his hands, both the main character Roy and his beloved Gemma (Naomi Watts) have become living people with real problems, with a personal past and professional knowledge that is evident in every dialogue and action of the characters.

This is the highest class of script work – a concept that relies on a strong pair of heroes, heroes that are interesting even outside the context of a time loop, and an action that is needed not to spray the screen with blood, but so that the fantastic and emotional components finally form into one point – the event horizon, beyond which there are only the final credits.

This is already a question of Cairnahan’s talent as a director, which is not as outstanding as his talent for screenwriting. The fighting scenes were filmed creatively, cleanly and clearly, but the film does not have some kind of “show stopper”, grandiose fight or shootout, for which it would be worth revisiting. This is not even the “Edge of the Future”, not to mention the “Matrix” or at least “Hardcore” by Ilya Nayshuller. This is a representative of that rare category of action films, where the story and work with the heroes is more impressive than melee, explosions and firing on the screen. As a result, the film is a one-off – but a great pleasure to watch.

Despite all the jokes about 40-year-old men who are fond of retro video games, Boss Level very subtly transfers the gaming reality to the screen, including the most absurd moments of the design of virtual worlds. Here stealth, and mini-bosses, and peaks of difficulty got it.

The last third of the film is the hero’s attempts to complete the mission from Hitman or Metal Gear Solid by brute force, and the most ridiculous, but in its own way impressive moment is the girl with the sword, whom the commandos Grillo for some reason cannot kill from the Uzi pair. No, this moment can only be solved by pumping the character, or rather, even by “swinging” a certain skill.

Joe Cairnahan is a great gamer, he even worked on the film adaptation of Uncharted. Therefore, in addition to obvious borrowings from games, there are really deep observations. For example, in the same scene with a girl fencer, a complex BDSM relationship is shown that every person who is addicted to complex games with certain bosses is shown (mainly in From Software games). And the climax of the film in general is a hymn to speedruns, attempts to break game design in order to fulfill some special goals set for oneself.

At the same time, Cairnahan is not interested in the philosophical, existential questions that such a concept raises, willy-nilly. By the standards of movies about time loops, Boss Level is a very compressed and intimate work.

The hero takes about 200 numbered attempts for the entire “walkthrough” – there is no such horror that you feel in the best moments of Palm Springs or Edge of Tomorrow, when you realize that the character can repeat all these actions, not even a thousand and not hundreds of thousands, but millions or billions of times, that he literally could spend an eternity in the next Groundhog Day.

Against this background, the “Day of the Trigger” is as simple as two kopecks or the Russian “adaptation” of the original name: went into the loop, died many times, got out of the loop. First of all, the intellect, clarity of vision of the director-scriptwriter are impressive. It’s a smart movie that doesn’t require the viewer to turn off their brain while watching it. Brains were not inserted into human organisms to be turned off (under any circumstances), so the appearance of films in the spirit of Boss Level is a very pleasant event every time.

The Kingston DataTraveler Duo flash drive was released in late 2020 and is part of the Kingston DataTraveler line. The USB drive is sold in a blister with a plastic window, which is usual for this segment.

The Kingston DataTraveler Duo is slightly larger than conventional flash drives. It’s all about two USB Type-A and Type-C connectors, as well as a folding protective structure.

If desired, each of them individually, or two together, can be hidden in a sliding mechanism. Convenient if you put a USB flash drive in your pocket or bag with other things. So the connectors will not touch anything, they will not get tangled anywhere, they will not be scratched, and so on. True, there is still a chance that small debris will fall into them, because they are not closed from above.

The same design does not provide for a cap that is always lost, but there is no place for attaching a rope or for keys, a carabiner and other common places.

Ideally, take speed measurements in such a port, but my laptop only has USB 3.1, so put a little on top to the indicators below if you have the latest USB version.

Through CrystalDisk, the results came out as follows: read speed 108 MB / s, and write 28 MB / s.

Then I took a 1.62 GB folder and copied it first from the M.2 SSD to the USB flash drive, and then from it back to the disk.

In the first case, the minimum speed was 7 MB / s, and the maximum speed was 24 MB / s. In the second, the minimum is 34 MB / s, and the maximum is 102 MB / s.

In my case, I was unable to measure the read / write speed on my Samsung Galaxy M31s. The smartphone recognized the USB flash drive and worked with it without problems, but neither the A1 bench application nor other similar metering programs saw it.

I can only say approximate speed measurements from colleagues. Through the A1 bench, the DataTraveler Duo USB drive averaged 17.7 MB / s read and 8.2 MB / s write. Of course, this is not a memory card, but the result is quite adequate.

A flash drive is useful as an encrypted key to enter, as an installation flash drive, as a place to store programs in Portable versions, as a means of playing large multimedia on TVs and set-top boxes, as a place for backups, APK libraries, and so on. …

The Kingston DataTraveler Duo is not the smallest USB stick out there. But it looks modern, it is equipped with a movable mechanism for protecting the connectors, however, it is not equipped with places for attaching to various objects. If you already have a flash drive with a similar amount of memory, then it is hardly worth switching to this model. The speed here, of course, is higher, but this is unlikely to be enough to make a purchase decision.

And if you are thinking of upgrading a 4, 8 or 16 or 32 GB “old lady”, want to find a replacement for a lost flash drive or just buy a new one, then Kingston DataTraveler Duo is an adequate option for all cases.

Main characteristics:

Volume: 32 or 64 GB

Connection connectors: USB Type-А и Type-C

USB 3.2 Gen 1 support: there is

Guarantee: 5 years

The weight: 10 g

Dimensions: 64.05 x 21.2 x 10.4 mm

Compatibility: Windows 10, 8.1, 8, Mac OS (ver. 10.10.x +)

Linux (вер. 2.6.x +), Chrome OS, Android

Price at the time of writing this review: from 500 rubles

Much more interesting is what this deal may lead to in the future. And it is possible, of course, that everything was started only in order to make The Elder Scrolls VI exclusive to Microsoft, but this would be an obvious and, perhaps, the most uninteresting scenario. Let’s think about what else this could mean for all of us.

The agreement between Microsoft and ZeniMax Media is indeed almost a “deal of the century” for the gaming industry and everyone involved, but right now it is primarily a brilliant marketing move in the “war” of next-generation consoles. Neither Microsoft, Bethesda, nor other ZeniMax Media studios announced any new games or made any announcements about their future releases – and more importantly, the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X games lineup on launch day.

And if before it seemed to you that Microsoft had nothing to “cover” Sony, which already had a remake of Demon’s Souls (2020) at the launch, which can not be played anywhere except on the PlayStation 5, now there is hardly anything to your opinion. should affect. The actual balance of power in this “war”, despite the high-profile deal, remained the same. And those looking to buy a new Xbox will buy a new Xbox. And those who were going to go to the store for the PS5 will go after her.

Or not?

The very fact that Microsoft, thanks to this deal, sometime in the future can make the new The Elder Scrolls its exclusive, or, say, give Arkane money to develop Prey 2, means more to many than the opportunity to play a remake of Demon’s Souls on PlayStation 5 …

And that’s okay – I say, a brilliant marketing ploy.

Phil Spencer has already stated that some of the games being created and will be created by Zenimax studios will become PC and Xbox exclusives. However, he has not yet mentioned specific names. Nevertheless, the network has already started talking that the new games of Bethesda itself – the same TES 6 – can only be released on Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X and Windows.

And yes, such a possibility cannot be ruled out, since no one has argued otherwise, but do not forget that Microsoft itself has not used exclusives as a final argument in console “wars” for a long time.

Instead, it is developing a service – that is, an ecosystem in which there are PCs on Windows and Xbox (and more recently, smartphones), and its own Game Pass subscription with a huge library of games. The company still has formal exclusives – the same Halo, Forza and Gears of War exist only within the ecosystem described above on PC and Xbox and have never appeared on Sony consoles. But in the end, their conditional exclusivity is not as important as the fact that all new games from these series appear in Game Pass on release day.

And if you actively use the service, play a lot of games and perceive Game Pass as “Netflix for games”, the availability of new projects on release day without additional costs and problems plays an important role. It is clear that the subscription still costs money, but the Game Pass for a year costs several times less than the announced PS5 exclusives at the moment all together. And on a subconscious level, when you already have a subscription, the opportunity to play a game by “gamepass” is associated with the word “free”. Of course, not free, but the game appeared in Game Pass, you don’t pay for it separately, you just download and play.

And given the fact that all new games from Bethesda and other Zenimax studios will appear in Game Pass, for many, I’m sure a much more attractive option would be to play The Elder Scrolls 6 on Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S through this service. , and not buy it on PS5 for 5-6 thousand rubles. And there will be no difference, whether this is an exclusive game or not.

On the other hand, Microsoft can do just about anything. She has already said that the PS5 will retain the temporary exclusivity of Deathloop (she is not so generous, and the previously concluded agreements seem to be binding). And also – that the availability of all future games on different platforms will be discussed after the fact. It can be either temporary exclusivity, or complete, or exclusivity for some of the content.

In addition, Phil Spencer, with the same sly smile, first gives the go-ahead to Halo: Infinite for Xbox Series X, after which he announces Minecraft Dungeons, which will also be released on PS4, and then “releases” both parts of Ori on Switch. So it’s really too early to think about it – anything can happen.

This deal, among other things, opens up a lot of opportunities for developers and, possibly, involves additional budgets – including the creation of games that Bethesda would not have spent before.

This is The Evil Within 3: the second part is one of the best survival horror stories of our time, which did not bring the expected sales. And, for example, Prey 2 is the main immersive sim game to date, which also fell short of sales expectations. It is also a sequel to Dishonored, or an offshoot in the same universe, but with different heroes.

This is Fallout: New Vegas 2: the game may well return to Obsidian – both the studio itself and the rights to the series are now in the hands of Microsoft.

These are the new Quake and Doom from John Carmack: the creator of both series has already expressed the hope that in the future he will be able to work on id Software games again.

This is Fallout Online (not Fallout 76, but a normal game): the same The Elder Scrolls Online proved to be excellent, pleasing both those who wanted to play it in the MMO, and those who were waiting for a single adventure.

There are many more games that one might not even be aware of.

Few people think about it, but right now Microsoft is working:

• Tim Schaefer – Founder of Double Fine, Full Throttle and Grim Fandango writer, Psychonauts and Brütal Legend creator, Jack Black’s best friend;
• Brian Fargo – founder of inXile, creator of Torment: Tides of Numenera and Wasteland 2 and Wasteland 3;
• Tim Kane – Writer Obsidian, creator of Fallout, founder of the now closed Troika Games and head of development for The Outer Worlds;
• Leonard Boyarski – Tim Kane’s colleague, Fallout and Diablo 3 designer, co-creator of The Outer Worlds;
• Todd Howard – Producer of Bethesda Game Studios, head of development for The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, the hero of numerous memes about “Skyrim”;
• Harvey Smith – Arkane Game Designer, Deus Ex Designer and Dishonored Creative Lead
• Shinji Mikami – Founder of Tango Gameworks, creator of the Resident Evil series, The Evil Within, currently working on GhostWire: Tokyo;
• Hugo martin – Creative Director of id Software and the last two Doom installments;
• And many more developers who donated games like We Happy Few, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, Forza Motorsport, Gears 5 and so on.

All of these people could well make some of the most important next generation games. And these games will be owned by Microsoft.

A good part of the sci-fi genre rests on the interaction of earthlings with aliens of all sorts, stripes and moods. Sometimes humanity learns to dominate them, as in “District 9”, sometimes the alien invasion is completely irreversible, as in “Annihilation” by Alex Garland.

Debris somehow occupies a niche between Annihilation and, oddly enough, The X-Files. This is both a good interpretation of “evil and strange aliens from outer space” and an interesting procedural with tense moments. Although the very plot of the series is most easily explained by “Roadside Picnic” by the Strugatskys (who are well known abroad).

The idea is quite simple: somewhere above the Earth (completely similar to ours, ordinary Earth) a spaceship crashed. The debris was scattered across the planet, and rather quickly revealed unusual properties. Months later, all earthly intelligence services hastily collect the remains of the ship in different corners of the Earth so that they “do not fall into the wrong hands.”

The plot revolves around a team of two such debris-hunting operatives – Finola Jones (Rianne Steele) of MI6 and Brian Benvenety (Jonathan Tucker) of the CIA. International collaboration turns out to be more enjoyable than they both expect: in the very first episode, Finola and Brian talk heart to heart and get along well, so there is more time for their intriguing adventures.

Things for them are really interesting, moderately frightening, strange, but without excesses. The fact is that each wreck of the ship has its own peculiarity: for example, in one of the first scenes, the hotel maid accidentally touches this artifact and immediately falls fourteen floors down. So the fragments of the ship pose a danger to others – and are very valuable on the black market, which is actively hunting for them.

The creators of “Flinders” do not overdo it with graphics, do not exploit the most common clichés from similar films and series. NBC can hardly boast of a blockbuster budget, so all the effects here are spent sparingly and wisely. Even the aliens themselves are not in the frame, at least in the first two episodes.

The main characters of “Flinders” are divided, as is often the case, into the so-called “skeptic and believer”, but very conditionally. The characters, even if they turned out to be a little one-dimensional, but healthy skepticism and at the same time the ability to surprise, feel and empathize with both is enough. So Finola and Brian won’t have a second Mulder and Scully, but that’s for the best.

They are separated by other factors: experience and occupation. Finola’s father was one of the first scientists to see the wreckage. After his death, the woman decided to continue his work, considering everything that happens from a scientific angle. Because of this, Finola does not always have time to stop in time – in the first episode, she falls under the influence of the splinter (however, in the second, Brian also gets it).

But her American partner has been working for the CIA for a long time and has a military career behind him. This makes Brian more composed and tough, but not callous. He constantly has colleagues on the wire, who are simultaneously conducting a secret investigation – so secret that no one should know about him, not even Finola.

This is another easy confusion and intrigue, which will last for a maximum of a season. And yet, because of her, watching the interaction of the characters is more interesting. And Jonathan Tucker brilliantly withstands all the moments when his partner opens up to his character – and he, in response, no, no, yes, slows down, as if he wants to reveal an unpleasant secret to her. But then Brian blinks, sighs and shakes off the moment as if nothing had happened.

A huge plus of “Flinders” is precisely in the rate on the actors’ play and the relative simplicity of the plot. One episode per episode, one main intrigue and a whole story – this is what the procedures are good for. Moreover, the episodes are built really well, catching at the level of a strong thriller; what is only one scene with the parallel suffering of three clones.

The potential of such shows usually dries up not earlier than 2-3 seasons, so now is the time to enjoy “Debris”. It is also the perfect benefit for Tucker. The actor already finds a chance to show himself brilliantly, for example, in “Kingdom”, “American Gods” or “Westworld”.

But the role of Brian – the role of the forefront – is practically written for him. And even if the whipping up intrigue in “Wreckage” ends up being resolved by a weak ending, the series should be given a chance, at least for Tucker’s sake.