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Future of Boots plunged into uncertainty as US owner begins takeover talks
As the year draws to a close, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to provide a sort of state of the union on the year’s movie monsters —a quick analysis of what’s still regarded to be scary . However, upon reflection, what was envisioned as 21st century bestiary began to look less like a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual and more like the aisles of my local Walmart. As the old world dies and the new world struggles to be born, it seems the monsters of 2024 may represent the same fears, but have taken on a more mundane hue. As I’m not sure what to do with this information, submitted for your approval is io9’s 2024 monster revue. The Familiar In a year that saw the re-election of a former president to office, an ongoing war in the Middle East, escalating nuclear brinksmanship, and the return of bird flu, 2024 carried with it a grimy sense of repetition. The feeling we’re going to double down on exactly what we tried earlier, only more so, with a full trilogy of material in a mind so it’s bound to pay off like never before, right? It’s no coincidence, then, that the year that was saw new variations of A Quiet Place , Alien, The Omen, Rosemary’s Baby, Beetlejuice, Ghostbusters, Godzilla, Hellboy, Salem’s Lot, The Crow, The Strangers —even Witchboard , the likes of which we haven’t heard from since a direct-to-video sequel in 1995. Currently, it seems like there’s no end in sight for the return of recognizable IP of yesteryear, with new Saw, Conjuring, Insidious, Fear Street, I Know What You Did Last Summer , and Final Destination movies scheduled for release next year. Not to mention 28 Years Later , another nostalgia piece boasting a trailer on track to become the most-watched horror trailer of all time. As we enter 2025, this “devil you know” attitude will extend to Universal once again doubling down on its stable of classic monsters, trading the company’s previous attempt at a shared cinematic universe for bespoke takes on Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, and The Mummy from no less than the likes of Guillermo del Toro, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Leigh Whannell, and Lee Cronin, respectively. Today even sees the release of a new Nosferatu , replete with a marketing campaign hopeful to make its cozy gothic trappings into a new Christmas tradition. It’s interesting then that movie audiences have largely rejected vampires—with an emphasis on this vampire, in particular—the last few years with films like Abigail, Renfield, and The Last Voyage of the Demeter failing to make much of an impact on either the culture or box office. The hallmarks of Dracula and/or Nosferatu —feeding on the blood of others, self-isolating, yet maintaining tremendous wealth and influence over others—these are good things wholly endorsed by the culture. The kids call it being “sigma.” What feels particularly new about this ongoing trend of sticking with what we know, though, is the sudden reverence we’ve developed toward the humble slasher genre—formally regarded to be horror’s bottom-of the-barrel. Though yesterday’s cultural detritus becoming tomorrow’s critical darlings is nothing new (recent Best Picture winners have included stories about a fish-man falling in love with a human woman; a universe where people evolved pork products in place of phalanges; and a socially minded take on the ABC Movie of the Week, Bad Ronald ), nothing that’s achieved this level of cultural significance has been so laser-focused on gore effects. The two-and-half-hour Terrifier movies have more in common with the films of Herschell Gordon Lewis than Dario Argento. In a Violent Nature, which reimagined a film like Friday the 13th or Madman from the perspective of its undead killer, added an experimental flourish to the genre’s classically simple narrative, emphasizing the thin wall differentiating films like these from the French New Wave really are the occasional splats of blood. Though the envelope-pushing Terrifier franchise may seem like a litmus test for human empathy, it should be noted people legitimately like Art the Clown and his unrated Harpo Marx-meets-Freddy Krueger routine. Anything too subversive wouldn’t be able to find this audience. It’s for this reason I’m legitimately intrigued by a movie that did not come out this year: Macon Blair’s remake of The Toxic Avenger . Something about a politically motivated judge, jury, and executioner of big business assets was deemed too radioactive to release. I wonder why... Media Convergent with the continued popularity of the slasher film has been the taboo-shredding approach of having them star children’s characters who have recently slipped into the public domain. In the last year, new slashers have been announced starring Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan, Bambi, Popeye, Steamboat Willie, Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, the Little Mermaid, and the Mad Hatter. Something about transposing characters meant to draw as much revenue as possible into the realm of bloodthirsty killers feels “correct” in a way that’s both timely and inevitable—not to mention punk rock. Once a IP falls into the hands of the people, is not the only moral thing to do to turn into a monster? Especially if all roads have lead to 2024, the consensus must be Mickey and company sold us a bill of goods the first time around. One need only lightly dust YouTube these days for an endless array of video essays on dark Pokémon theories or an unusually frightening PlayStation 2 game starring Piglet. In these circles, a lost Cartoon Network bumper or unproduced episode of SpongeBob Squarepants is spoken of in the same hushed reverence as unexploded nuclear ordinance. When everything is available online, something that isn’t—no matter how innocuous—suddenly becomes suspicious and arcane. If we used to tell children scary stories so they wouldn’t venture into the woods alone, lost media hunters must at least be deterring each other from sharing their credit card info with seedy collectors on the dark net. Recent films like I Saw the TV Glow understand the sort of fanatical devotion investing too much of yourself in children’s media can bring—the kind people used to describe as “Lovecraftian,” but is now referred to by terms like “Disney Adult.” To a generation where Cthulhu has been available as a plush doll their entire life, the Great Old Ones may just as well have been Garfield and friends, all along. Smile 2 is another film from the last year to understand this, following on the heels of films like The Ring and It Follows , where curses are spread as transmissible memes that move like viruses—and even our celebrities aren’t immune. As of 2024, “cosmic” horror is strictly earthbound and though the beliefs of its media savvy cultists may seem silly to you, you don’t need to believe in the destructive powers of their particular fandom as long as they do. Technology The last year has also seen a number of movies monster-ifying AI and bleeding-edge technology—movies like Subservience and Afraid , in which machines meant to improve our quality of life are personally invited into the home, vampire-like, only to reveal some unsavory appetites of their own. However, as terrified as we are of robots taking our jobs, we’ve paradoxically also collectively lost faith in the concept of technological progress. We’ve had movies about homicidal robot nannies, toys, smart homes, and personal assistants, but we’ve yet to reach that “singularity” in which this burgeoning technology does anything scarier than being better at the thing you’ve outrageously defined yourself to be. As our government continues to admit our airspace is and has always been occupied by physics-defying aircraft beyond human comprehension, I’m reminded of Jordan Peele’s 2022 feature Nope , which suggested UFOs are secretly some sort of insatiably hungry, atmospheric beast our zoologists have yet to recognize or catalog. Somehow, it’s easier to believe. Which brings us to... Life Itself/Old People Much like AI replacing us in the workforce, one of the more curious trends of the last year have been a string of monster movies focusing on—in one form or another—doppelgängers. Whether a heretofore unknown biological entity as in Cuckoo , a demonic presence as in Never Let Go and Daddy’s Head , or a voluntarily engineered proxy of oneself as in The Substance , the anxiety at the heart of these stories resides not in becoming a monster, personally, but in being superseded by one—and potentially missing out on the cool things a monster gets to do. Nightbitch , a recent film in which Amy Adams transforms into a dog as an expression of her repressed rage, is posed as a net positive. The idea of losing control has tremendous appeal lately. Just like Demi Moore’s fear of irrelevancy in The Substance , the real fear is being left behind. Speaking of, if 2024 could be defined by a single persistent boogeyman, the title would unanimously have to be given to old people. Films like Heretic, Apartment 7A, and Alien: Romulus , have featured the elderly (if not the outrightly late, as in the specter of poor Ian Holm in Romulus ) tormenting the young for a plethora of reasons, varying from financial gain to merely proving they’re still relevant from the comfort of their own booby-trapped homes. People often fail to see a distinction between mummies and zombies, but the difference between them is noteworthy. Mummies are distinct from zombies in that a zombie is something clinically dead, but somehow still behaves as if it’s alive. A mummy is something that by all means should be dead, yet somehow biologically is still alive—just as how the Kharis’s heart continues to beat by virtue of the tana leaves in Universal’s The Mummy’s Hand , The Mummy’s Tomb , The Mummy’s Ghost, and The Mummy’s Curse . With the release of Nosferatu today, in Count Orlok we have a familiar, elderly, copyright-infringing ghoul from the dawn of film who simply refuses to go away. The right man for the time, indeed.The Kimberley Curling Club (KCC) hosted the 2025 Safetek Profire BC U18 Curling Championships from Dec. 19 to 23. "We were thrilled with how everything went," said KCC general manager Blair Jarvis. "We knew that most teams were travelling a long way to get here and unfortunately they had to deal with some adventures with the snow we had last Wednesday. "We wanted to make sure that we gave them an experience that they would remember, so we spent a lot of time on the ice, we wanted to give them a great social experience off the ice as well and we heard from a number of curlers that it was the most U18 event that they’ve attended and so we’re really proud of that fact." The event had 12 teams competing on the Boys' side and seven Girls teams. On the Boys side of the competition, Team Jaeger out of Kelowna beat out Team Hrynew in the finals and for the Girls, Team Arndt from Vernon beat out Team Rempel to win the gold. With these wins, Team Jaeger has earned a spot at the Canadian Under-18 Curling Championships, which will be held at the Nutana Curling Club in Saskatoon, Sask. from Feb. 16-22, 2025. Teams Arndt and Rempel will both be headed to the Nationals. Team Jaeger was made up of coaches Tyler Jaeger and Travis Wielgosz, Lead Brendan Hruschak, Second Noel Wielgosz, Third Spencer Rempel and Skip Owen Jaeger. "We really worked hard this year, this year we really wanted to win," said Skip Owen Jaeger. "We put in a lot of work and it just feels really, really good to win and for all that hard work to pay off. We’re really, really excited, it’s our first National event, first U18 provincial win so we’re really excited." Team Arndt is Coach David Arndt, Lead Alicia Evans, Second Ivy Jensen, Third Bethany Evans and Skip Ava Arndt. "We’re just super excited," said Skip Ava Arndt. "It took us a couple years to get here, but the hard work payed off and we can’t believe it, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. It’s been a lot of hard work from us and the coaches and the parents. It’s been amazing." Jarvis coached Kimberley's Team Reynolds, who went on to win bronze. "We had set a target of making the playoffs and really happy with how the boys came together," Jarvis said. "They had a couple of games with a tough start and battled back and so the resilience they showed and how they stayed positive, there were a lot of great things we can take away from that. And the bronze medal, we were just thrilled to do that. "We saw Team Jaeger on the boys side and Team Arndt on the girls side as well — if we want to get to that level next year, we have some things to work on and it’s great to see the high level of curling in this province and so I think we’ve come away very motivated as well about what we need to do to get better if we want to be a little higher on the podium next year." Jarvis extended his gratitude to the over 50 volunteers who helped out before, during and after the event, including members of the Cranbrook Curling Club. "We’ll take some of the learnings from this event and apply them to the High School Provincials at the end of February, but we’re really happy with how everything went," he said. "And this is an event for the kids, we want to make sure that they’re going to have an experience that they’ll remember, the teams that had success will obviously remember the things that happened on the ice, but for most kids it will be the experiences they had off the ice. "We had karaoke here on the one night and a bunch of teams were intermingling together and having a great time and those are the experiences that I’m going to take away from this event." Patti Caldwell was head official for the event and Jarvis said she and Ian Milligan worked tirelessly throughout the week. "Patti’s attitude is this is all for the kids and making sure that they have fun and sure it’s a competition, but it’s meant to be fun and we’re going to enjoy this," Jarvis said. "This is a sport that we can enjoy for life and so you want to make sure you’re building positive memories in every aspect." Lindsay Shannon, administrative and event manager at Curl BC, was also on hand for the event, and presented all the awards. "We would just like to thank the Kimberley Curling Club and the City of Kimberley who put on an amazing event here and welcomed all of our athletes who have performed so well," Shannon said. "We're really looking forward to cheering our winners on at the Nationals." The Kimberley Curling Club's next big event is the High School Provincials from Feb. 26 to March 1.
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Pep Guardiola admits he is questioning himself after Manchester City’s latest defeat left them in danger of missing out on the Champions League knockout stages. City slumped to their seventh defeat in 10 games in all competitions as they were beaten 2-0 at Juventus in their latest European outing on Wednesday. Second-half goals from Dusan Vlahovic and Weston McKennie at the Allianz Stadium left Guardiola’s side languishing in 22nd place in the standings. Juventus beat Man City 💪 #UCL pic.twitter.com/H4KL15iCke — UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) December 11, 2024 With just two games of the league phase remaining, a place in the top eight and automatic last-16 qualification looks beyond them and they face a battle just to stay in the top 24 and claim a play-off spot. City manager Guardiola said: “Of course I question myself but I’m stable in good moments and bad moments. “I try to find a way to do it. I’m incredibly honest. If we play good (I say) we played good and today I thought we played good. “Our game will save us. We can do it. We conceded few chances compared to the Nottingham Forest game that we won. We’re making the right tempo. “We missed the last pass, did not arrive in the six-yard box (at the right time) or have the composure at the right moment. “But I love my team. This is life, it happens. Sometimes you have a bad period but I’m going to insist until we’re there.” City now face a crunch trip to Paris St Germain, who are also at risk of failing to qualify, next month. Guardiola accepts the top 24 is now the only aim. He said: “It’s the target. We need one point or three points. We go to Paris to try to do it and the last game at home.” Veteran midfielder Ilkay Gundogan said after the game he felt City were suffering from a loss of confidence but Guardiola dismissed his player’s comments. “I am not agreeing with Ilkay,” he said. “Of course it is tough but, except one or two games in this period, we’ve played good.” City now face a further test of their resolve as they host rivals Manchester United in a derby on Sunday. "We played well" Pep Guardiola trusts in his squad despite 2-0 loss to Juventus... 📺 @tntsports & @discoveryplusUK pic.twitter.com/VrmTzcTrEF — Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) December 11, 2024 Gundogan told TNT Sports: “It (confidence) is a big part of it. That’s a mental issue as well. “You can see that sometimes we miss the ball or lose a duel and you see that we drop immediately and lose the rhythm. They (the opponents) don’t even need to do much but it has such a big effect on us right now. “Even more you have to do the simple things as good as possible and create and fluidity, then it’s work hard again. This is how you get confidence back – do the small and simple things, (but) in crucial moments at the moment we are always doing the wrong things.” Juventus coach Thiago Motta was pleased with the hosts’ performance, which boosted their hopes of making the top eight. “It was a deserved victory,” he said. “We had to defend as a team and be ready to attack with quality. “We have shown we can compete at this level and now we have to do it consistently.”
Five things to know about Panama Canal, in Trump's sights
Video Home & Electronic Centre - Jumbo Electronics, a leading name in innovative technology and product solutions, has opened its state-of-the-art Centralised Warehouse Complex, Service Centre, Experience Centre and Staff Accommodation Facility at Manateq Logistic Park in Birkat Al Awamer. The inauguration ceremony marked a significant milestone in the company's commitment to operational excellence and innovation. Representatives from LG Electronics and Video Home & Electronics Centre attended the opening ceremony. These included LGEGF president Sanyoung Kim, director and head of Qatar branch Sungju Kang, CFO Moon Jiyong, service director Jae Hong Son and service manager Anand. Video Home vice chairman and managing director Sajed Jassim Mohammed Sulaiman and director and CEO CV Rappai attended. The facility spans over an area of 25,000 sq m with a built-up area of 24,774 sq m. The Centralised Warehouse covers 12,500 sq m. It has nine dock levellers and one ramp with rolling shutter systems and advanced material handling systems. The Service Centre and Spare Parts Facility are integral components of the project featuring a 4,000-square-meter space dedicated to after-sales operations. This includes a well-organised spare parts store and stacking area of 850 sq m designed to ensure the smooth management of essential components. Ancillary buildings complement the facility while providing executive staff accommodations with premium amenities and functional living spaces for workers. There are drivers' waiting room, prayer rooms and a guard room. “Customer satisfaction with the LG brand is our ultimate goal. As our trusted partner, Video Home has always maintained the highest level of service and is a top performer in the region. We are confident that we will provide even more outstanding customer satisfaction as we expand our new service centre here. Through strong service differentiation, LG and Video Home will continue to maintain its No.1 position in the Qatar market,” Kim said. A standout feature of the facility is the Experience Centre, which showcases cutting-edge products and innovations from leading brands. “This state-of-the-art facility underscores their commitment to excellence and innovation in the logistical and service sectors. He expressed enthusiasm for the enhanced capabilities this project brings to meet the needs of customers,” Sulaiman said. “The facilities are integral to their vision of driving sustainable development and economic growth in Qatar. He emphasised that this milestone aligns with their strategy to set new benchmarks in service and logistics infrastructure,” said Rappai. Related Story Ras Al Nasaa Park inaugurated on Doha Corniche Jumbo Electronics ties up with Platinum KaraokeNFL commissioner says Jay-Z rape allegation won't impact Super Bowl halftime show relationshipNone
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