Popes

Panic just held a games showcase revealing over a dozen upcoming exclusives. The company also announced a March 12 release date for the long-anticipated Mars After Midnight, which is likely the console’s first marquee title.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRjRt4NSfKMMars After Midnight is a game created by renowned developer Lucas Pope, the guy behind Papers, Please and Return of the Obra Dinn. Both of these titles were and Mars After Midnight looks to take a few cues from Papers, Please, as you play as a door guard of…

At the record label Chrysalis in New York, we had a Wednesday marketing meeting every week. I was a young executive and the president came in and said, “I just came back from England and we signed a super talent.” I think she was 19 – it was Sinéad. This was before she shaved her head. When we heard The Lion and the Cobra it was one of the greatest meetings I’ve ever attended – it was staggering, this record. It came out and we promoted it in a very unorthodox way. The key was getting it to go up the American college…

Blue-chip investment opportunities rarely include a lavish helping of fun, but one area where the two invariably coincide is the long-term ownership of vintage Ferraris, and this week served as a reminder of the potent force of forever rising Ferrari auction prices.Eight years ago in August 2015, RM Sotheby’s auctioned the Pinnacle Car Collection during Monterey Car Week, with the US$75.4 million sum making it the most valuable car collection in history, and with more than half the cars sold setting world record prices…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeRussell Crowe’s latest film The Pope’s Exorcist has been condemned by The International Association of Exorcists (IAE).In the trailer released last month, the Sony Pictures movie claims to be “inspired by actual files of father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican”.“There is actually a real job called the Chief Exorcist in the Vatican,” Crowe explains in the film’s production…

Hustled out over Easter, Julius Avery’s papal potboiler derives brisk if well-trodden hokum from the writings of Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s demonslayer-in-chief between 1986 and 2016. The film’s Amorth is a wry old pro, finding the levity in a devilishly tricky day job; not unhelpfully, he’s played by Russell Crowe, alternating gruff Italian and Italianate English, and possibly eyeing the prospect of a late-career franchise-slash-retirement plan. Crowe is by far the film’s strongest suit, pre-empting (some of)…

Most professions are flattered by the attentions of Hollywood. Yet a body representing the real-life practitioners depicted in new Russell Crowe horror The Pope’s Exorcist have condemned the film as “unreliable … splatter cinema”.The film’s plot – which posters declare was “inspired by the actual files of Father Gabriele Amorth, Chief Exorcist of the Vatican” – sees Crowe play Amorth, tasked with investigating a young boy’s possession. In the process, he uncovers a “centuries-old conspiracy” that the Vatican has…

Film: The Pope’s ExorcistCast: Russell Crowe, Daniel Zovatto, Alex Essoe, Franco Nero, Laurel Marsden, Cornell John, Ralph Ineson, River HawkinsDirector: Julius AveryRating: 2.5/ 5 This historical horror thriller is inspired by the case files of Father Gabriele of Amorth who performed and documented over 100,000 exorcisms in his lifetime. The colourful and controversial priest who started his exorcisms by thumbing his nose at the devil was appointed exorcist by no less than the Pope. He was also the founder of the…

Image via Sony Pictures Entertainment Despite the star power in its leading man Russell Crowe, The Pope’s Exorcist isn’t quite an instantly classic horror flick in the vein of something like The Conjuring, but it still makes for a solid – if slightly forgettable – time at the theater, which contains plenty of frights that may catch even the most grizzled of horror film veterans off-guard.  Crowe plays Father Gabriele Amorth, the titular real-world priest who served as the chief exorcist of the Vatican until he…

Research laboratory…

Is this a Lord of the Rings movie?Screenshot: Sony PicturesIn life, we can count on a few things. Death. Taxes. And Hollywood making innumerable, nearly indistinguishable exorcism movies. Every year it seems we get two or three of them and even when they’re good it’s hard to get excited because they always look the same. So it would make sense to see a title like “The Pope’s Exorcist” and roll your eyes. Yup, another movie about a priest battling a child possessed by a demon. However, after watching the trailer, this…