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Geek Vibes Nation
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
'Until Dawn' 4K UHD Blu-Ray Review - A Gory, Cyclical Nightmare
One year after her sister Melanie mysteriously disappeared, Clover and her friends head into the remote valley where she vanished in search of answers. Exploring an abandoned visitor center, they find themselves stalked by a masked killer and horrifically murdered one by one…only to wake up and find themselves back at the beginning of the same evening. Trapped in the valley, they're forced to relive the night again and again – only each time the killer threat is different, each more terrifying than the last. Hope dwindling, the group soon realizes they have a limited number of deaths left, and the only way to escape is to survive until dawn. For in-depth thoughts on Until Dawn, please see my colleague Cody Allen's review from its original theatrical release here. Video Quality The 4K UHD Blu-Ray of Until Dawn offers a minor but valuable uptick in quality over the already impressive accompanying Blu-Ray. The HDR/Dolby Vision expands the range of the color spectrum to impressive heights when it comes to accuracy and depth. This 4K presentation excels when it comes to the balance of the contrast. Dolby Vision allows for a much healthier command of these differences within the frame with greater depth and finer delineation. Black levels stay deep and inky with exceptional detail even in the intense shadows. The highlights in the film are likewise firmly defined with whites pure and balanced and no instances of blooming at play. This is a key benefit when it comes to this format. In terms of color reproduction, you could not ask for more. Elements of the lighting throughout the visitor center radiate off the screen with impressive resonance. Some of the clothing and elements of the production design are accompanied by noteworthy splashes of color to keep things from becoming overly gloomy. Skin tones appear a touch more natural with healthy doses of crisp detail apparent on faces such as makeup. Fine detail is in great shape with the texture of costumes and within the background impeccably defined. The visual effects are decent for what they are trying to accomplish. Sony has delivered another knockout transfer on this latest 4K release. Audio Quality This 4K UHD Blu-Ray utilizes a Dolby Atmos track that gives the narrative the sonic complexity it deserves. Dialogue is crisp and clear without ever getting clipped by the music or sound effects. The score does a nice job of setting the mood as it effectively saturates the room. Despite not being an action-packed outing, nearly all of the surround speakers make themselves known throughout from the expository moments to horrific confrontations. The implementation of the height channels is commendably unsettling at times as the environment becomes very immersive and lived-in. The effects in the low end from the subwoofer give moments the perfect amount of texture. Atmospheric sound effects are deftly rendered within the mix so that directionality is never in question. Until Dawn has been provided a track that effortlessly achieves its sonic ambitions. Optional English, English SDH, French, Spanish, and a plethora of additional subtitles are provided. Special Features Audio Commentary: Director David F. Sandberg & Producer Lotta Losten provide an informative commentary track in which they discuss the production of the film, how they achieved certain shots, fun Easter Eggs in the film, challenges that needed to be overcome, working with the performers, and more. Adapting A Nightmare: A nearly three-minute featurette in which the cast and creative team discuss the concept, the fun of the video game world, expanding the narrative for a feature film, and more. Practical Terrors: A nearly three-minute look at the drive to keep things as practical as possible to maintain a sense of realism. Death-Defying Cast: A three-minute exploration of the characters and the performers who bring them to life, the qualities they bring to the screen, the bonding on set, and more. Deleted Scenes: A 37-minute collection of unused material is provided here, including an alternate opening, alternate ending, extended sequences, and more. Previews Final Thoughts Until Dawn is a video game adaptation that, by most accounts, seems to be dead set on alienating most of its original fan base. As someone who has never played the game nor even heard whispers of what it is about, it does not feel like a great betrayal to me that this feature apparently strays so far from the source material. What I experienced was a surprisingly gory and visceral horror movie with a creative premise executed with a good amount of skill and a mostly likable ensemble. The conceit does become a bit tedious in spots, but it keeps things fresh with creative obstacles and gloriously over-the-top deaths. In terms of studio-backed horror films, this is a pretty fun surprise. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has released a 4K UHD Blu-Ray featuring a stellar A/V presentation and a decent assortment of special features. If you are not married to the gaming lore, give this a shot. Recommended Until Dawn is currently available to purchase on 4K UHD + Blu-Ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital. Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the 4K UHD Blu-Ray. Disclaimer: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.
The Guardian
07-07-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: Bird cherries, caterpillar silk and a beautiful dead hedge
A ghost tree shines silver against the greenery of the hillside wood. Sheathed in silk from its trunk to the tips of its branches, this bird cherry has been completely defoliated by caterpillars. These are the overwintered larvae of bird cherry ermine moths, Yponomeuta evonymella, which, having spun their protective webbing, can devour the leaves, safe from blue tits and parasitic wasps, before pupating. Some weeks later, thousands of slender moths will emerge, their white wings speckled with tiny black dots. Bird cherries abound in this valley. Fast-growing, often multi-trunked trees, one once stood by our boundary wall that had grown so tall it rocked in the winds, the movement of its roots bringing down the stonework. When it demolished the wall for the fifth time, we reluctantly had it felled in late winter before birds started nesting. As well as logs, this left a huge pile of brash. In another part of the garden, those same winter gales, pummelling down the valley from the west, had brought down a hazel hurdle. My husband decided to turn the bird cherry branches into a dead hedge, a wind-filtering wildlife habitat, practical barrier and cost-free fence. Having driven in a double row of round wooden stakes, he laid horizontal lengths of bird cherry, interweaving them for solidity. Twisting and looping the most flexible branches, he pinned some vertically and, as the mass grew, interspersed it with heavier wood for weight. At 2ft wide, it absorbed a surprising amount of material that can be topped up with further prunings as it decomposes. What he has made is beautiful to look at. The bark varies in colour from soft grey, speckled with lichens, to shiny, rich warm brown. A squirrel runs fluidly along the top, a wren forages in its density for tiny insects. The dead hedge is a shelter for mice and voles, beetles and bees, amphibians, fungi and mosses. It has made use of something that might otherwise have gone to waste. Meanwhile, on the hillside, the silver-wrapped ghost tree will recover, new leaves will grow before autumn and birds will distribute its seeds along the valley. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
ABC News
21-06-2025
- General
- ABC News
Stan Grant on leaving the media and returning to his ancestors' Wiradjuri land
The leaves have turned from green to yellow and red and some have fallen already. Soon the branches will be bare, that is when the smoke from the early morning fires will settle over the village that sits beside a stream, all nestled in the valley. My valley. Here is the land of my ancestors — Wiradjuri land, Wiradjuri Ngurumbang. Protected, we are. Held. Yes, nature holds us all here and time turns on the seasons not the hands of a clock. There is an ancient rhythm in this place. Everyone says the same thing, whenever they come here, they say "I feel like time has stopped". It hasn't, time still works its way into us. Entropy will hasten us to our end. Physicists may debate whether time is real but life is finite. Or rather our lives are finite. Each of us allotted a number of years, for some tragically so few. For others maybe too long; long enough to grow lonely, left with too many memories. Every morning I wake in the cold before dawn to walk the hill past the shedding trees, from my house to the graveyard to sit with all the stories of all the people buried here. All my people because that's what we are. So many stories. One headstone marks the lives of three children, their deaths each separated by a few years and each gone before their first birthday. They've been dead now for more than a century. I wonder, what pain their parents must have endured. What took their lives? There are headstones under which wives and husbands rest together for all-time. There are some plots so old that no marker remains. And others forgotten. No one visits any more. Here at the graveyard I watch the sun rise every morning. I close my eyes and I feel it warm my body. In the quiet — and there is nothing as quiet as a graveyard — I say a prayer. This is so far from the world of noise in which I have spent too many years. It is two years now since I walked away from daily journalism. In truth, I stayed too long. Journalism stopped answering my questions a long time ago. I don't know if it ever did answer them. It is not that I am ungrateful, or regretful. My career was audacious and unimaginable. A boy like me was not meant to have this life. My journey took me from Aboriginal missions, to small towns in outback New South Wales, long dark nights in a cramped cold car looking out a foggy window as my family wandered from town to town looking for somewhere we might settle. We never really did. I kept moving. Journalism led me to more than 70 countries as I watched the world turn reporting on coups, wars, calamity, disasters of nature and humans. News doesn't like triumph. It feasts on suffering. It took its toll on my mind and my soul. There are friends I shared this journey with who are no longer here. The road took them. There are others I may no longer see but we are bonded forever. In the end, I don't know that I served journalism as well as it served me and that's probably true of all of us, whatever we do. We are never the equal of our calling. Maybe I never respected the craft. There is something shallow, ultimately un-serious about it all. Journalists think events determine our world, yet events tell us nothing. If we follow events we miss what the French call questions d'existence. We miss the meaning of it all. My yearning has led me to physics, philosophy, theology, accumulating a library of books, completing a PhD, writing books of my own and all of it maybe amounts to less than a falling leaf. Saint Thomas Aquinas after experiencing the presence of God late in life, said that all he had written was straw. We do not derive the truth from knowledge or news, we feel it. We participate in God — what Aquinas called ipsum esse, the act of existence — in our repose, in the quiet, in nature and in our mortality, the finality of our existence. No one reads yesterday's headlines. But we return to the poets. A line of poetry is greater than a mountain of newsprint. In the period since I have disappeared from our television screens, I have spent more time back here in this valley, in the land of my ancestors. I still read a newspaper occasionally, quickly and distractedly and sometimes I tune into the television but I don't pay it a lot of mind. I want to be closer to ipsum esse. I want to wonder at the turning seasons and be attentive to the souls of those with whom I share a breath, the water, the stars and this land. When I sit in the graveyard I laugh quietly at the silliness of making claims on nature. This land of my people is a land I share with all people. The souls buried here lived, laughed, cried and loved. Their battles now fought, won or lost. Their trails all at an end. This is their place. Our place. One day I will rest here with them. T.S Eliot wrote: "the point of intersection of the timeless with time, is the occupation of the saint." For all the distractions of life, the noise of news, for most of us, "there is only the unattended moment, the moment in and out of time." We are only undefeated because we have gone on trying. We find our rest, our truth, in the ultimate journey of our passing. We, content at the last if our temporal reversion nourish (not too far from the yew-tree) The life of significant soil. Stan Grant is a former ABC journalist and global affairs analyst. Compass visited him at his property on Wiradjuri country in the Snowy Mountains. Watch Compass tonight at 6.30pm on ABC TV or ABC iview.
The Guardian
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Country diary: Our fields are green, but this farm desperately needs more rain
May is the greenest month and this year has been no exception, given how high the water table was after such a wet start to last winter. There's a lush depth to the valley, with the hawthorn – which blossomed early and abundantly – creating a chequered green and white idyll. But it flatters to deceive. Like recent thunder, there's rumbling concern on farms here where sunlight bounces off concrete yards and there's only one conversation – 'when are we going to get some rain?' Data is exchanged like gossip: 'Only 28mm since February'; 'Just 17mm the other night and it mostly ran off'; 'We'll be out of grass this time next week'; 'Our barley's coming into head, it could be harvested this month, in May!' The first cuts of silage have been taken already because the grass simply stopped growing, resulting in poor-quality, low yields. And the fields, now mown or already grazed down, have the balding look of Centre Court in the second week of Wimbledon. Farming is often collateral. What's happening now has a knock-on effect – provision of winter forage, viable stocking densities and, potentially, the price of beef. The cattle are unconcerned. The crossbreed calves are dozing in a separate group this morning as I seek out my favourite. The last to be born, he's a jet-black, long‑legged Angus, but with a stout pair of North Devon knees. It's not uncommon for a cow beginning labour to fixate on another calf and decide it must be hers, which is what his mother did. Notwithstanding my eventual success in getting her calved and mothering, in the preceding chaos she hurdled a fence and lacerated her teats. For weeks he suckled the one undamaged teat, but had to be supplemented by me. I made sure to feed him beside her, giving enough to keep him going but still keeping him hungry, so he would continue to look to her. Eventually, as her teats healed and he became more tenacious, I was able to wind down our jobshare. With Pavlovian response, whenever he sees me he still gives a jerk of his head, but he no longer gets up. Unlike the ground on which he lies, he at least no longer thirsts. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
The Guardian
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Wrong Gods review – absorbing drama tackles dark chapter in India's history
H aving made his name with the hugely successful Counting and Cracking – an epic three-hour work spanning multiple generations and featuring a massive set, 16 performers and many more characters – the Sydney playwright S Shakthidharan has downsized in his latest play. The Wrong Gods covers just seven years over 100 minutes, with four actors on an almost bare stage. But do not be deceived: this is an ambitious work with big ideas on its mind. It tilts at nothing less than the history of capitalism and impacts of modernity. Our setting is riverside in a valley in India, surrounded by a bountiful forest – a kind of prelapsarian paradise. Here we meet Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera, the star of Counting and Cracking and its sequel, The Jungle and the Sea), a farmer and the head of her village's council, and her precocious teen daughter, Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar, another Counting and Cracking alum), an aspiring scientist. Nirmala, whose ancestral roots in the valley stretch generations, believes in the old, pre-Hinduism gods – and in particular the goddess: the river. Isha does too, though her voracious mind is already questioning these belief systems and questing for greater truths. Isha longs to escape back to school in the city. Nirmala, newly abandoned by her husband, needs her daughter home to help work their patch of land. The two quarrel over their competing values and visions of the world, as mothers and daughters often do. A greater struggle is afoot: Nirmala is anxiously awaiting the arrival of 'big fat American' developers who have greedy eyes on the village, and prays to the goddess to send them packing. Isha prays to the goddess to let her go with them, back to her teacher and educational champion, Miss Devi (Manali Datar). And then, as if teleported from another dimension, Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash) arrives: a middle-class smooth-talker with an offer too good to refuse – and a magic packet of seeds that promises high yields with low labour. Nirmala can prosper; Isha can go to school. Worshipping different gods: Nirmala (Nadie Kammallaweera), Isha (Radhika Mudaliyar) and Lakshmi (Vaishnavi Suryaprakash). Photograph: Brett Boardman Photography/Belvoir If this smacks of fairytale or myth, it's by design and clearly telegraphed by the play's elemental set (its stone surfaces and moss-tipped concentric circles evoking an ancient amphitheatre) and by the dialogue: Isha, it is explained, is the goddess of destruction; Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth. But there may be other clues here too: in Sanskrit, Isha means strength, guardian or protector; Nirmala means virtuous. The Wrong Gods is doing double duty, working as a fable of capitalism and modernity, and as a primer on a specific chapter of Indian history: the government-sponsored Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s, and its devastating impacts. Nirmala's village is a microcosm of a devilish pact in which an estimated 50 million farmers and Indigenous people were displaced by a network of dams that promised water for the cities, at the expense of natural environments and civilisations thousands of years in the making. At the same time, the Indian government and foreign companies induced farmers to abandon old crops and methods for new high-yield varieties of wheat and corn, and synthetic fertilisers. This also came at a cost, sending millions of farmers into crushing debt cycles that spawned suicide epidemics, and upended delicate ecosystems with far-reaching consequences. The Wrong Gods was inspired by one of the centres of this modern tragedy: the Narmada Valley, site of the Sardar Sarovar dam network – dubbed 'India's greatest planned environmental disaster'. It was also the birthplace of one of India's most successful civil resistance movements: Narmada Bachao Andolan. Isha, Nirmala and Lakshmi look on as Devi (Manali Datar) takes the floor. Photograph: Brett Boardman Photography/Belvoir Shakthidharan spent time in the valley more than a decade ago, and The Wrong Gods offers an imagined origin story for Narmada Bachao Andolan, which was substantially led by women. Perhaps in tribute to this, not only the cast and characters but almost the entire creative team of this production, which Shakthidharan co-directs with Belvoir resident Hannah Goodwin, are women. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion The Australian Ballet performs Manon – in pictures Like many contemporary plays of ideas, The Wrong Gods suffers occasionally from speechifying and on-the-nose lines, with scenes interrupted as characters spout exposition. The extent to which audiences tolerate this may depend on how much they know of the real-world issues. The play is generally successful, however, in bringing a massive, intractable problem down to the human scale, showing the emotions and interpersonal dynamics – and primal survival instincts – behind this epic tragedy. The performances are great and special credit goes to Kammallaweera and Mudaliyar, who swiftly and surely bring the mother and daughter to endearing life and make us believe the relationship on to which the play's big ideas are scaffolded. Goodwin and Shakthidharan keep the drama dynamic and engaging, and pare back aesthetics and action so as to not overwhelm the text. The result is an absorbing drama – though fans of Counting and Cracking may wish Shakthidharan lent a little less on neat parable and a little more into the human mess.
