detective

Image: Know Your MemeThe Pentagon recently released its fiscal year 2025 budgetary estimates. Hidden in the document is a new classified program run by the DoD’s defense development agency, DARPA, that is destined to give the internet’s conspiracy theory community a collective heart attack. The name? “CARCOSA.”How Important Was it for Jason Reitman to be a Part of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire?TV buffs will recall that this is the name of an ancient temple featured in HBO’s prestige cop drama True Detective, the likes of…

Andrey Kurkov’s latest novel to be translated into English, The Silver Bone, has begins in dramatic fashion. Its hero, Samson Kolechko, is walking in the streets of revolutionary Kyiv. It is the spring of 1919. Suddenly, two Russian Cossacks appear. They chop off his ear with a sabre before riding off. “Hot blood poured down his cheek and seeped under his collar,” Kurkov writes. Samson’s unfortunate father is cut down and killed.The severed right ear – recovered and placed in a tin – plays a central role in Kurkov’s…

Detective Dotson, a mystery-adventure game for PC by Ahmedabad-based independent game studio Masala Games, was announced on Monday. A demo of the game has been added to Steam and is now available to play. Its full version will be released later this year. The 2D platformer game, which is set in modern India, is influenced by Bollywood and Indian TV shows like CID, as per the publishers. Masala Games has previously released Word Mess, a word game, for iOS and iPadOS.The eponymous protagonist of the game is an aspiring…

An unwritten rule of kids’ movies is that they should include a worthy message to ram down little throats – like broccoli dipped into cod liver oil. (Any message will do: kindness, friendship and the importance of believing in yourself are popular choices.) What’s different about this fun, warm-hearted family adventure set in Eswatini (formerly known as Swaziland) is that its messages touch on genuine, real-world issues. It’s adapted from a children’s novel by German author Kirsten Boie but is mostly English language with…

This story contains spoilers from the the season finale of “True Detective: Night Country.” The darkness has lifted, “True Detective: Night Country” has come to an end, and some of us may never look at an orange in the same way again.Written and directed by Issa López, the latest incarnation of the anthology mystery series relocated the action to the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, and follows two women — Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster), the local police chief, and Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis), a state trooper, as they…

To think of the Yorkshire Ripper as a type of terrorist makes sense, given that the fear he engendered during his crimewave was far in excess of his actual reach. Here was a faceless phantom of almost supernatural power, striking at will and at random. In a time before the endless serving up of serial killers as nightly entertainment, women and girls across the north walked in groups after dark or stayed indoors; developed a horror of ginnels, alleys and snickets; looked at the men around them, wondering, could it be him,…

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of True Detective: Night Country, which is now streaming on Max. The third chapter of Night Country begins and ends with women screaming. The late Annie K is there for both scenes — the first a flashback, the second a shaky cell phone video. But in the flashback, Annie and her friends are helping women through labor at a birthing center, and the screams are part of the natural, often happy, circle of life. And in the selfie video, Annie’s screams appear to be…

In November 2021, Samantha Ruth Prabhu announced she would work with Downton Abbey's director Philip John for an Indo-British project. The English film is an on-screen adaptation of Timeri N Murari’s best-selling 2004 novel The Arrangements of Love. The coming-of-age rom-com, however, will now see Shruti Haasan headline the project, along with Viveik Kalra. (Also Read: Shruti Haasan talks about her Salaar co-star Prabhas: ‘He is powerful and magnetic’) Samantha was initially roped in for the on-screen adaptation…

While movies based on video games have often had rough box office results, Detective Pikachu was, at the time, a somewhat rare unqualified win. With success like it had, becoming one of the most successful video game movies at the global box office, one might have expected a Pikachu sequel to have happened by now. There are many upcoming video game movies and series, but nothing from this franchise. Not only have we never seen Detective Pikachu 2 yet, but despite reports the movie was happening, one of its main stars…

This post contains spoilers for this week’s episode of True Detective: Night Country, now available on HBO and Max. When the first True Detective season concluded 11 years ago, a lot of the finale discourse revolved around the lack of any supernatural elements after the previous episodes had been laced with references to Robert W. Chambers’ horror stories about the King in Yellow. That the killer was an ordinary, if evil, human being disappointed some viewers who had spent weeks theorizing, while True Detective…