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Tony Fadell tells us the story of the iPod-based iPhone prototype

by Nilay Patel

‘Sometimes stupid things only seem stupid at first’

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2016 burst the VR hype bubble — Epic’s Tim Sweeney thinks that’s not a problem

by Adi Robertson

Epic Games is still working on its first full-length virtual reality game: an arcade shooter called Robo Recall for the Oculus Rift. But the studio best known for Unreal Tournament and Gears of War has already made a huge impact on VR through its...

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Arrival director Denis Villeneuve on the politics of the year’s best sci-fi film

by Bryan Bishop

The moody first teaser for Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Blade Runner 2049 arrived earlier this week, and the footage couldn’t be more different from his currently-in-theaters film, the thoughtful, patient Arrival. Starring Amy Adams as a...

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La La Land’s choreographer shares the film’s sneakiest dance-movie references

by Tasha Robinson

La La Land director Damien Chazelle declares his intentions in the film’s opening moments, as a crowd of Angelenos caught in a traffic jam leap into an energetic dance number, using their vehicles and each other as props. It’s an old-school movie...

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La La Land writer-director Damien Chazelle on subverting the things he loves most

by Tasha Robinson

Ever since Damien Chazelle’s La La Land premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August, it’s been hailed as the presumptive front-runner for half of this year’s Academy Awards, especially in the music, visual, acting, and directing categories....

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Paul Bloom on why VR empathy projects won’t save the world

by Angela Chen

Can we save the world through empathy? For the past year, that idea has been a source of public debate as people try to figure out who deserves empathy, who doesn’t, and how to cultivate more of it to solve our problems. Technology has been a key...

The new Gilmore Girls’ treatment of people of color is even more stunning in screenshots

by Kaitlyn Tiffany

Writer Rahawa Haile’s new Tumblr Gilmore Blacks spotlights every black person who appears in Netflix’s massively hyped Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. One of them is a secretary who gets fired moments after she first appears on-screen, others...

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How Susan Miller runs Game of Thrones’ best fan site from her kitchen

by Kaitlyn Tiffany

For Game of Thrones fans, there is basically no off-season. When the show isn’t airing, or the theorizing subreddits aren’t churning, there are still casting rumors to chase, filming details to parse, and massive plot leaks to debunk or debate....

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How Moonlight’s creators made a universally acclaimed window into gay black identity

by Tasha Robinson

Since the moment Barry Jenkins’ feature film Moonlight debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in November, it’s been a critical darling, with rave reviews following it from film festivals in Toronto, New York, and Rome to its current wide release...

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Microsoft Surface Studio: the engineering beneath floating pixels

by Tom Warren

Microsoft’s Surface PCs are known for their hinges. From the first, launched alongside Windows 8, to the new Surface Studio, each device has a hinge system that has evolved over time. That’s no accident, as the designers behind the scenes have...

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Bourne Identity director Doug Liman on the making of his new VR series, Invisible

by Adi Robertson

Virtual reality filmmaking is in its infancy, but for Bourne Identity and Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman, there are already too many rules. The press release for Invisible, a five-episode action series that officially premieres today, lists...

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Microsoft's Windows chief: Surface Dial is just the beginning

by Tom Warren

Microsoft's Windows chief sees a future where the regular input devices —€” touch, mouse and keyboard, or stylus —€” are complimented by objects that interact with a PC's screen. Talking to The Verge after Microsoft's Surface event yesterday,...

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Black Mirror director Dan Trachtenberg explains why horror stories are 'good for your soul'

by Tasha Robinson

"Wes Craven said that horror movies are a boot camp for the soul, and that horror movies don't create fear, they release fear."

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The Borrowed Time animators on how evolving Pixar tech made them 'scramble to not fall apart'

by Tasha Robinson

"It wasn't like, 'Oh, let's get this new technology to do this thing we couldn't do in the previous version,' it was more like, 'Oh my God, we can't render anymore, the characters are not building.'"

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Ford design chief Moray Callum is preparing for a driverless society

by Tamara Warren

Ford design chief Moray Callum imagines a future in which the car could be smarter than the driver.

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Novelist Connie Willis explains why telepathy is a terrible superpower

by Tasha Robinson

Also: Her new novel Crosstalk, why AI isn't scary, and why tech creates as many problems as it solves

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Seven VR predictions from Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe

by Adi Robertson

Oculus announced a surprising amount of VR news at last week’s Connect conference. Its research division teased a new all-in-one headset, parent company Facebook demonstrated some new social features, and most pertinently for many VR enthusiasts,...

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The creative team behind Harley Quinn on letting an icon grow

by Kwame Opam

Harley Quinn might be unstoppable. Even though she started off as a throwaway henchwoman in Batman: The Animated Series, she’s since exploded in popularity to become one of the most recognizable characters in all of comics. She’s certainly not on...

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Facebook’s Michael Booth answers our questions about VR social networks

by Adi Robertson

At Oculus Connect conference yesterday, we got a glimpse of what Facebook was after when it got into virtual reality: a VR environment where you can feel like you’re hanging out in the same physical space as your friends, complete with realistic...

How to start a racing series with Teslas — an interview with the CEO of Electric GT World Series

by Sean O'Kane

The Electric GT World Series is an all-Tesla racing series that was announced back in March. But the announcement was accompanied by very little detail: the series was being started by a new company called Electric GT Holdings, it was supposedly...

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Andrea Arnold on the cross-country party that produced American Honey

by Tasha Robinson

The director combed beach parties and Walmart parking lots for young people to star in her film, then took them on a road trip across America.

How 'Nigerian Spielberg’ Izu Ojukwu is taking advantage of free speech and a changing industry

by Tasha Robinson

His new film 76 is trying to bring history back to a Nigerian filmmaking culture that's growing at an amazing speed.

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Designer Ralph Gilles wants people to care how self-driving cars look

by Tamara Warren

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles design chief Ralph Gilles lives in the future, though he’s reticent to share what it looks like. Gilles and I met on a steamy Michigan August day at his spacious office in the Chrysler World Headquarters and Technology...

Talking to How To Dress Well about pop music and not staying sad forever

by Lizzie Plaugic

Tom Krell’s first full-length album as How To Dress Well was called Love Remains. That 2010 album — a collection of lo-fi home recordings — features the track "Suicide Dream 2," in which Krell sings (though you can barely hear him through the...

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The writer and director of Blair Witch explain what killed the original found footage series

by Bryan Bishop

"It was a chance to do something really fun and creative and different, because no one really has any preconceived expectations of what a Blair Witch film in 2016 would be."

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The director of Studio Ghibli's The Red Turtle went deep into the origins of the film at TIFF

by Tasha Robinson

One of the great experiences of the Toronto International Film Festival so far was The Red Turtle, billed as the latest from Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli, producers of films like Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Princess...

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How an award-winning documentarian unearthed a damning new case against John McAfee

by Michael Zelenko

At the Q&A following the premiere of Gringo: The Dangerous Life of John McAfee, a question came from the front of the audience: now that the film was out, was the director Nanette Burstein concerned for her safety?

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A Monster Calls director J.A. Bayona says all his films are about growing up

by Tasha Robinson

"I think ambiguity is what keeps the movie alive. It's something organic, something that keeps working on your mind once you leave the movie theater."

How the directors of Netflix's Amanda Knox uncovered the humanity behind the headline

by Michael Zelenko

"What was originally interesting about the story to us is how does something that begins as a tragedy — a young woman loses her life in a terrible situation — become something that’s driving a news cycle every day?"

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Sony says the 4K PS4 Pro is 'where we think the market wants to go'

by Andrew Webster

Yesterday at the PlayStation Theater in New York City, Sony announced two new iterations of the PlayStation 4, both of which are due to launch this year. That makes three hardware launches for the company’s gaming division over the next three...

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The director and star of Morris from America talk racial sensitivity and teen pillow-sex

by Tasha Robinson

How Chad Hartigan and comedian Craig Robinson turned their coming-of-age story into the anti-Moonrise Kingdom.

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Reddit’s most prolific Game of Thrones theorist shares his favorite predictions

by Kaitlyn Tiffany

George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, the source material for HBO's Game of Thrones, sits at 1.8 million words right now by most estimates. The wealth of writing around and about it on Reddit, mainstream content outlets, tiny blogs, and...

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