Revealed ahead of E3, Twin Mirror is a 'story-driven investigation game' from Life is Strange studio Dontnod. Its latest developer diary explores its film noir roots, and the dark and emotional choices you'll inevitably force protagonist Samuel Higgs to make. The above, titled 'A Place for a Thriller', is the first of three developer diaries which aim to explore Twin Mirror's roots and inspirations. This one examines the game's "rustic" Basswood setting and investigative reporter Higgs' ties to the place he calls home. Within, narrative producer Helene Henry says: "There are certain elements of the game that echo film noir. It's about a hero who is adrift, helpless, and at the mercy of a complex situation not entirely of his own making, and who will struggle to the best of his abilities, and that's where the player steps in." Lead writer Matthew Ritter adds: "To me a noir story is a story about people, it's about characters interacting with each other in a very intimate and emotional way, and how that can get very dark sometimes. People always think that their lives are always fated to go in one direction, and it's about the fact that choices they make are what make bad things happen. Twin Mirror is very much about that." Fancy that? Look out for part two of Twin Mirrors dev diary series in the coming weeks. It's full release is expected some point next year.

Rainbow Six Siege players who use slurs are now getting instantly banned. Ubisoft's zero tolerance approach to toxicity was first installed in July, and Siege's brand director Alexandre Remy tells us the system is "evolving" as the dev aims to maintain and grow a respectful community. "The ban system is going strong, actually, and we feel very strongly about the system," Remy tells me at last month's Paris Major. "That system is going to be evolving too. Today, the system means that any player that uses homophobic or racial slurs in our chat will automatically receive a temporary ban. After three temporary bans you get permanently banned. "That is a very, very strong stance from Ubisoft and from the game about how we want to deal with toxicity in the game. That feature will evolve as we develop in the future, we plan to add filtering systems to stop those words even showing up at all in the chat, so it's going to be a little more flexible." Remy says that regardless of future plans, though, the Siege team is "very passionate" about stamping out hateful communications. He admits that online PvP games are by nature adversarial, and therefore tend to invite toxicity. Nevertheless, he says "we have no regrets whatsoever when it comes to banning toxic players" and that being strong means clamping down to prevent bad behaviour from spreading. I admire Remy and Ubisoft's no bullshit stance, but I ask Remy how he views the suggestion from certain players that this zero tolerance approach impinges on freedom of speech. "There's a saying that goes something along the lines of 'your freedom ends where mine begins'," says Remy. "To us, it's not a question of freedom or equality, it's a question of respect. Behaving in a respectful way, I believe, is not a requirement that's beyond humanity. Respect is all we are asking for. I believe that with those measures that we're putting in place, we are exactly on the right path of making a community, as much as possible, that's respectful of one another."

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds' latest limited-time event mode is Silent and Violent. No, it's not about flatulence. Yes, it is about sniper rifles. "Scurry through the hills of Sahnok with a fully loaded out VSS and eliminate as many enemies as possible in this squad-based war mode event," says developer PUBG Corp of the limited-time mode that's live now through September 9 at 7pm PST / September 10 at 3am BST. The rules of this 'un are pretty straightforward: all players spawn into the war mode with a fully-modified VSS, a level one helmet and vest, five bandages, one energy drink, one stun grenade and one smoke grenade. From there, it's shoot to kill. In squads of four, matches welcome a maximum 40 players. The weather is overcast, red zones are disabled—as are care packages, friendly fire and vehicle respawns. Kills make points, and the first team to 150 points wins. Dead players respawn in planes above every 30 seconds and "if no team reaches 150 points after 15 minutes, the team with the most point wins," says this Steam Community post. In other PUBG news, the battle royale 'em up has rolled out its long-awaited training mode.

What are the chances of Red Dead Redemption 2 coming to PC? Given the enduring success of GTA 5 and its Online counterpart on desktops, we reckon it will—and that's without taking June's Linkedin résumé mishap into consideration. Rockstar has now followed up last month's in-depth gameplay showcase with a catalogue of character art. From game protagonist Arthur Morgan, to the previous outing's central baddie Dutch van der Linde and a host of new faces, the developer spent yesterday drip-feeding 23 profiles via Twitter. Red Dead Redemption 2 is due on consoles October 26. Let us know when you reckon it'll come to PC in the comments down south.

Morgan's tips for playing Rainbow Six Siege’s newest operators are a sure fire way to master the squad shooter's freshest faces. Designing new combatants seems like a daunting task—but game director Leroy Athabassoff explains reworking them post-launch is equally important and can be trickier still, particularly once players have settled into certain playstyles. To this end, Frost, Castle and Thatcher are in the process of being reworked. "We are currently working on a Frost rework," Athabassoff tells me. "We have some issues with Castle. With team coordination he's okay, but at normal player level he's really average. People call him the sixth attacker because he can harm his whole team. How many times do you come back from roaming and there's a Castle barricade, and you're like: Oh shit! You feel trapped by your own defender. "With the rework, we're trying to maintain what he does well, but, ultimately, he shouldn't harm his own team. With that in mind, we have some design ideas that we're working on. The last one that we're introducing with Grim Sky is Thatcher. We're introducing the disable electronics state. [Thatcher will] no longer be able to destroy cameras with EMP, but instead will be able to disable them. What does that mean for players? It means there's now a layer of complexity that you need to learn." To this end, I ask Athabassoff what it's like when players take on new operators and use them in ways the development team hadn't expected. He tells me I'm wrong to assume he and his team have pre-set ideas as to how players will play, and they're simply creating tools for the player to use as they see fit. "When you say we have an idea, that's not actually true," says Athabassoff. "I think that's something that makes working on Siege completely differently from working on another game. If you think of single-player games, you are always thinking about these things, yes: I want the player to feel this, I'd like them to feel that; when they do this, I want them to experience that. But when you work on a multiplayer game like Siege, it's really different because the player's experience is carved by the nine other players. "Instead, what we are doing is crafting tools that help the player to build their own player experience. This is where we need to be super focused. This is why every time we make an operator, we keep in mind that it's a tool. A knife is cool because it can do a number of creative things - you're not obliged to kill someone with a knife. We could add certain tools that make one player's experience better, but if it makes the other nine players' experiences worse, then, no, it's removed at the prototype phase." Rainbow Six Siege's latest campaign, Operation Grim Sky, went live earlier this week.

Chris Pine reunites with 'Hell or High Water' director David Mackenzie for a historical epic about Robert the Bruce. Fourteenth century Scotland is a long way from the recession-struck West Texas where Chris Pine and director David Mackenzie last met for Hell or High Water; and that film's spare narrative has little in common with the boggy historical saga that is Outlaw King, where Pine plays the man who would lead Scotland's first war of independence from the English. One of very few things the films have in common is that both are about young men who decide to become criminals to keep greedy powers off their familial lands. (Another is that it's the loose-cannon character, not the hero, who keeps us watching.) Though likely to be meaningful to Scots, for whom Robert the Bruce is a national hero, audiences Stateside may often find the warrior's journey (and it's just the beginning — the war lasted another 20 years after this film ends) something of a grind, nodding off occasionally as they watch the two and a half-hour film from their sofas. Attention is easier to focus for this kind of period piece in a movie theater, but, this being a Netflix film, TIFF attendees may be the only ones who'll ever see it that way. We meet Pine's Robert with his tail between his legs, as he and many other Scottish lords, who'd been part of William Wallace's rebellion, are forced to pledge fealty to King Edward I. It's clearly a bitter deal to accept, and the surrender is short-lived, but Robert does get one thing out of it: Edward decrees that Robert, a widower with a young daughter, will marry his goddaughter Elizabeth de Burgh (Florence Pugh). Robert's gain is viewers' as well, since the slow-building admiration between the newlywed strangers provides welcome relief from the perfunctory political scene-setting of the film's first act. The one bit of dramatic promise here is the establishment of friction between Robert and the Prince of Wales (Billy Howle). The two had been friendly years ago, as the script has it, but now the Prince isn't friends with much of anybody. He's a loud man who hides his insecurity with rage, and Howle rips into the part. (Viewers who wish, midway through, that we had one solid scene to explain the Prince's anger will be rewarded when he finally gets to kneel at Edward I's deathbed.) It's difficult enough for the film's five credited screenwriters to sum up years of conflict and place Robert at the head of a very small army of Scots willing to go back to war; summarizing it here is a waste of time. Suffice to say that he commits a controversial murder, some priests arrange for him to be crowned king of the Scots, and when many rival lords refuse to join his cause, he gets an important ally in the person of James Douglas (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Douglas' late father was a sworn enemy of the English king, and the grudge he carries is (for reasons we don't quite understand) much more potent than his comrades' patriotism. At the film's climactic battle, when Robert exhorts his soldiers, "today we are beasts!," Douglas is the only one who truly seems to get it. Pine is fully committed to Robert's mission, but the film has a hard time making him a compelling character, even with a wife and daughter on hand to make him relatable. And it takes forever for his military campaign to get rolling. Robert takes massive losses early on, and at one point it seems he'll just keep walking into ambushes. The movie has lively moments, like one sequence pairing Robert's nighttime coronation with a baffling, violent ritual in which the Prince of Wales embraces his bloodlust. But the military storyline lags, and even at its best — the Battle of Loudoun Hill, where Robert uses knowledge of the muddy terrain to even the odds — nobody's going to mistake this for Braveheart, the celebrated portrait of Robert's predecessor William Wallace. Production company: Sigma Films Distributor: Netflix Cast: Chris Pine, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Billy Howle, Florence Pugh, Tony Curran, Stephen Dillane, Sam Spruell Director: David Mackenzie Screenwriters: Mark Bomback, Bathsheba Doran, David Harrower, James MacInnes, David Mackenzie Producers: Gillian Berrie, Richard Brown, Steve Golin Executive producer: Stan Wlodkowski Director of photography: Barry Ackroyd Production designer: Donald Graham Burt Costume designer: Jane Petrie Editor: Jake Roberts Casting directors: Kahleen Crawford, Francine Maisler Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Gala Presentations) 146 minutes

Isabelle Huppert, Chloe Grace Moretz and Maika Monroe give their all in Neil Jordan's trashy yet provocative adult fantasy. Almost every movie by Irish writer-director Neil Jordan has the air of a fable about it, though it's never a bedtime story you'd want to tell your children. The emotional aches and ardent eroticism in his kind of Grimm fairy tale are decidedly mature, though you usually have to dig through some puerility to get to them. This is certainly the case with Greta, which Jordan co-wrote with Ray Wright, and which is his first feature directorial credit since 2012's lady vampire fantasia Byzantium. The women take center stage here, too, and they're a first-class bunch. Chloe Grace Moretz plays Frances McCullen, a young restaurant hostess who lives with her best friend Erica Penn (Maika Monroe) in New York City. Their spacious, exposed-brick apartment is of the sort that only movie characters luck into, though Frances can't enjoy her home, or much of anything, really, since she's still grieving her dead mother. Is it her sense of bereavement that, in part, leads her to pick up a lost pocketbook and return it in person to its rightful owner? That would be Greta Hideg (Isabelle Huppert), an older Frenchwoman (so she says) who loves piano music — specifically Franz Liszt — and has an endearing need for companionship. Frances initially thinks her new acquaintance's loneliness stems from an absent daughter abroad. But as their friendship deepens, some more disturbing motives reveal themselves. That lost pocketbook, for one? Think the candy house that the witch in Hansel and Gretel uses to lure her prey, though Greta prefers to feast figuratively on hearts and minds as opposed to literally on human flesh. But Frances is no little girl lost, or at the least isn't going to be fed on without a fight. Narratively, Jordan is working in a pulpy vein that at best suggests prime Brian De Palma and at worst Chloe-era Atom Egoyan. The early parts of Greta are especially clunky, as Huppert stalks both Moretz and Monroe (the latter of whom thrillingly proves to be more than the ditzy blond she at first seems) with ridiculous ease and little consequence. The general ineffectiveness of the police and of authority figures like Frances' estranged dad (Colm Feore) lead one to fear that Jordan is venturing into the dreckish territory of his Jodie Foster revenge thriller The Brave One(2007). But the filmmaker's expressively cockeyed impulses soon take over (he's ably assisted by the terrific cinematographer Seamus McGarvey), and the resulting craziness is quite delightful to behold in the moment and to reflect on after. A hidden room in Greta's home becomes a psychological battleground, with both Moretz and Huppert gaining the upper hand at different points (sometimes in dreams!). And there are plenty of gleefully grisly touches, one involving a cookie-cutter and a wrong-placed finger, another a syringe, along with Jordan regular Stephen Rea and an impromptu dance that Huppert performs as if she were the star pupil at the Paris Opera Ballet. Coupled with the carnage is a potent undercurrent of grief that's evocatively summed up in an image of a children's toy chest with something savage locked inside. There are monsters among us, but not all of them are human. Production companies: Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, Lawrence Bender Productions, Metropolitan Films Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Chloë Grace Moretz, Maika Monroe, Colm Feore, Stephen Rea Director: Neil Jordan Screenplay: Ray Wright, Neil Jordan Executive producers: Neil Jordan, Bruce Toll, Hwang Soon-il, Kim Do-Soo, Lei Luo, Mei Han Producers: Sidney Kimmel, John Penotti, James Flynn, Lawrence Bender, Karen Richards Cinematography: Seamus McGarvey Original score: Javier Navarrete Editing: Nick Emerson Production designer: Anna Rackard Publicist: The Angellotti Co. Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) U.S. sales: Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor International sales: Sierra / Affinity 98 minutes

If the opportunity presents itself for her to return, Anna Paquin says she would be willing to play Rogue in the X-Men film franchise once again. The X-Men film series is still going strong with the upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix and New Mutants films set to be released in February and August of 2019, respectively. While Paquin was a part of the original ensemble cast in 2000's X-Men as well as the two sequels that followed it, she has not had a major part in the films since. This is in part due to the fact that after 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, the series took a turn for a bit of a reboot in 2011's X-Men: First Class, which also served as the beginning of a series of prequels for the franchise. With the films centered on stories that would take place before Paquin's character was even born, the actress had no reason to be involved with the films until 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past. However, even in that film, which connected the original trilogy to the prequel timeline, Paquin's storyline as Rogue was limited in the theatrical cut to simply a cameo appearance. Scenes from a "Rogue Cut" of the film have since been released, showing that she originally had a more extensive storyline in the film. Speaking with Variety, Paquin recently expressed her willingness to return to the role should the right opportunity arise. When asked if she would ever do another X-Men film, Paquin replied, "If there was a way that it made sense for my character to be in the world, of course." She went on to explain how such a return would be complicated, saying: "I feel like [X-Men is] my film family, because I’ve been making those movies since I was 16. But there’s been so many spinoffs and reboots and TV shows, so I’m not sure where Rogue or the other original characters fit into the current plotlines, so it’s probably not going to happen." Paquin certainly has a point. The X-Men films have diverged into many different plot lines over the years, at times focusing on the overarching ensemble films as well as more individualized stories such as Logan or Deadpool. While this has allowed for the X-Men film universe to greatly expand beyond what many likely anticipated in 2000, it has also made it less likely for actors and actresses from the original films to star in more films beyond this point. Yet, nothing is set in stone for X-Men, and Paquin's willingness to return is an exciting factor for fans who were eager to see the "Rogue Cut" of Days of Future Past. Plus, with the release of Deadpool 2, the franchise has essentially admitted that its own timeline does not make sense. With that in mind, the door could be open for any number of possibilities to bring Rogue - and plenty of other characters - back for another story. However, that would be complicated considering the impending Disney-Fox merger, especially since it's unclear how Marvel Studios will incorporate X-Men characters with the MCU. At least for now, it is good to hear that Paquin views the franchise fondly and would be game for bringing Rogue back if the right story comes along. Release Dates: X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) release date: Feb 14, 2019 New Mutants (2019) release date: Aug 02, 2019

Pierre Schoeller's film about the French Revolution has a huge cast that includes Gaspard Ulliel, Adele Haenel, Olivier Gourmet, Louis Garrel, Niels Schneider and Denis Lavant. Politically woke plebs in honey-colored light topple their divine ruler while blowing glass, doing laundry and having babies in One Nation, One King (Un peuple et son roi), a wannabe epic about the French Revolution that’s so bad it almost makes you wish France were still a kingdom. Inexplicably selected for an out-of-competition slot at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, this film from French director Pierre Schoeller (the well-received political drama The Minister) cuts back and forth between the country’s king and its commoners but finds practically no heart and even less tragedy in either storyline. A Parisian casting agent’s entire rolodex worth of famous faces, including Gaspard Ulliel, Louis Garrel and Denis Lavant, might ensure a decent opening in France, where it comes out Sept. 26. Though presold to several territories, internationally its chances are about as decent as stepping away from the guillotine with your neck intact. On July 14, 1789, the crenellations of the Bastille towers were demolished, which allows the summer sun to hit the faces of the members of the poor working class in the street below, literally illuminating their faces. They include a glassblower nicknamed Uncle (Olivier Gourmet); his buxom wife (Noemie Lvovsky); and the washing women Francoise (Adele Haenel) and her sister, Margot (Izia Higelin). Though of lowly station, they gather each evening to declaim their thoughts on the latest political events around a table only lit by candlelight. Francoise, whose favorite catchphrase will become “there are no two ways to be free,” is especially vocal about the fact that the fight for égalitéshould also include women’s rights, so it’s no surprise to see her face again at the Women’s March in October of that year, when, during a mad rainstorm, a loud fishmonger from the Halles market (Celine Salette), leads a group of protesters to Versailles to demand bread, wheat and rights. Around the same time, King Louis XVI (Laurent Lafitte, sporting a royal gut), signs the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen with a single tear rolling down his chubby cheek for maximum melodramatic effect. It was one of the court’s many concessions designed to hopefully keep the monarchy intact and the Republican fervor at bay, though the eventual outcome is of course well known. Even in the early going, many of film’s failings are already in full view. Political ideas are reduced to slogans and there is no sense of the extent to which either the workers or their sovereign really understand politics in general or France’s specific situation at that point. Each single character has only a few, short scenes, so they are all reduced to clichés with next to no character development. Also not helping is Schoeller’s tendency for broad overstatement rather than nuance, from the sun coming down to street level for the first time and the French monsoon that makes all the marching women look like drowned rats to the close-up of Louis tearfully signing the declaration, bringing to mind nothing less than the famous — and famously tacky — painting The Crying Boy from Giovanni Bragolin. Things become even more ridiculous when the National Assembly is created and people such as Robespierre (Garrel in wire-rimmed glasses), Marat (Lavant, wearing a costume with an eye-catching panther print) and Saint-Just (Niels Schneider) take turns speechifying as the self-appointed representatives of the nation try to figure out what France wants to be and what it should do next. Again, there’s little sense of background or context here, reducing the speakers to men in foppish wigs spouting big ideas in tiny speeches (since most of their discours are, of course, truncated to help cover as much ground as possible). Schoeller then reduces the mostly illiterate working classes, including Uncle and Francoise, to rabid political groupies who seemingly attend each and every meeting of the Assembly as if they were the period’s equivalent of a Shawn Mendes concert. And like the Canadian twunk’s most fervent fans, the spectators scream and shout throughout the spectacle they've come to witness, even though it is unlikely they have full grasp of what is even being discussed. Though first billed, it takes a while for Ulliel’s Basile to make an appearance. His long-haired, long-ago washed chicken thief-turned-lover of Francoise feels looks like a variation on the role he played in Jacquou le Croquant. Basile has perhaps the most dynamic development of all the characters, going from being a convicted criminal to someone who is freed by a priest, follows the king and finally ends up with the revolutionaries. Like with the other characters, however, there’s little sense of any emotional dimension or psychological texture, so a post-coital bedroom scene with a near-naked Francoise enveloped golden light, for example, looks more like an intentionally over-the-top cover of a cheap romance novel rather than the glowing aftermath of the union of two familiar-feeling people in love. The main problem is that it’s never clear what the raison d’etre is for this film; its new angle or singular point-of-view. It cuts between different storylines for no apparent reason, culminating in the unlikely back-and-forth between a glassblowing apprenticeship and an endless roll-call vote in the assembly to decide on the fate — death, banishment or imprisonment? — of their royal ruler. Potentially interesting episodes, such as the women’s march, the planting of “freedom trees” or the massacre on the Champs de Mars, are treated hastily and superficially, with the film apparently trying to cover as many of the events that occurred over the course of five years as possible in just two hours. The supposedly tragic death of one of the characters only serves to underline just how little we as an audience care for the people on screen, despite the energy and hard work of performers such as Haenel, who perhaps comes closest to moving the audience in a confrontation with La Fayette. However, most of the time, Schoeller seems more interested in details like making sure the many songs that are sung are historically accurate — unlike in, say, Les Misérables — rather than in making audiences care about what happens to any of the characters or the country they live in. Shot on many of the actual locations where the story happened, the writer-director manages to be authentic in terms of his visuals and Anais Romand’s costumes are certainly a wonder to behold. But without any palpable sense of emotion or more than a passing understanding of how politics influenced people’s thinking and behavior, what is the point? When the king finally walks up to the scaffold, a guard tells him to be “careful or you’ll slip”. In a Monthy Python sketch, this line would have been hilarious. Here, in a film that’s dead serious and in which the characters never come alive, it feels like the director himself slipped and fell way before he got to the beheading. Production companies: Archipel 35, Studiocanal, France 3 Cinema, Les Films du Fleuve Cast: Gaspard Ulliel, Adele Haenel, Olivier Gourmet, Louis Garrel, Izia Higelin, Noemie Lvovsky, Celine Sallette, Denis Lavant, Johan Libereau, Andrzej Chyra, Julia Artamonov, Laurant Lafitte, Stephande De Groodt, Niels Schneider, Louis-Do de Lencquesaing Writer-Director: Pierre Schoeller Producer: Denis Freyd Director of photography: Julien Hirsch Production designer: Thierry Francois Costume designer: Anais Romand Editor: Laurence Briaud Music: Philippe Schoeller Casting: Aurelie Guichard Sales: Studiocanal Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition) In French No rating, 121 minutes

Pieces of April' director Peter Hedges offers another uncomfortable holiday in an addiction drama starring Julia Roberts and his son Lucas Hedges. Fifteen years after his directing debut Pieces of April reminded TIFF attendees (and Sundancers before them) that family-reunion pictures can move us without leaving us guilty-feeling, Peter Hedges shows they can scare us as well with Ben Is Back, an addiction drama starring Julia Roberts and his son, Lucas Hedges. Another in a string of impressive turns by the young actor and one of the best things Roberts has ever done, the film is aware of the weight of its subject but loathe to behave like an "important" film — focusing instead on the specificity of one sick young man and the family that loves and fears him in almost equal measure. We meet Roberts' Holly Burns as she sits in church, watching three of her four kids rehearse for a Christmas pageant. It's the only day of the year they have to go to church, she reminds the two youngest (children of her second, current marriage, to Courtney B. Vance's Neal Beeby), so they'd better make the most of their time with God. As they're returning home to finish Christmas Eve prep, there's an unexpected guest on the doorstep: Ben (Hedges), who has been in a sober-living facility and was not supposed to leave. While a stunned-silent Holly rushes to embrace him, his sister Ivy (Kathryn Newton) angrily calls to tell her stepfather a storm has blown into town. The following scenes suggest an intimate knowledge of families who've been burned by a black sheep and deal with it differently. Mom, beaming, talks like things are normal, but quietly hides her pills and jewelry; Ivy scowlingly issues unnecessary reminders of how badly Ben's previous visits home have gone. When Neal gets home, he has the involvement-at-a-remove of a late addition to the family: "I'm concerned," he announces. There are too many triggers in this house for an addict who has only been clean for 77 days. But Ben, trying to talk anxieties away, reassures everyone that his sponsor okayed the trip. After some debate, Holly puts Neal's concerns into action: Ben will be allowed to stay a single day before going back to rehab, he'll never leave her sight, and he won't even be allowed to kick off his boots before he passes a drug test she administers. (Roberts' "you are mine, all mine" is one part maternal adoration, one part drill sergeant.) After some pee-test comic relief, the reunion lightens up. But with Ben home, every bit of holiday housework is fraught — from digging childhood tree ornaments out of the attic (it's where he used to hide drugs) to a trip to the mall for last-minute presents, where he bumps into old acquaintances. (And where a strange encounter allows Holly, out of Ben's hearing, to spit venom at the source of his addiction.) Ben makes a phone call we don't hear, he gets the stinkeye from a seedy character, and soon he's so rattled he needs to go to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Even in this presumably safe place, Holly tags along, sitting behind him as he is winningly honest about his recovery. But of course, we don't know how honest he's being. The screenplay and Hedges' performance give Ben the narcissism of a recovering addict (everything is my fault) but no self-pity, and we can't tell if his therapy-talk is 100 percent sincere or if it hides rationalizations for risky behavior. It's pretty clear Ben isn't sure either. And when a break-in at the house sends Ben and Holly off on an all-night mission to rescue the family's kidnapped dog, that swamp of intention, impulse and deception (inward- and outward-directed) takes the film over. Even as their search begins, the film subtly shows just what a minefield a hometown can be for someone who became an addict there. Familiar houses that mean nothing to Holly hold volumes of trauma for Ben; Roberts' eyes are those of someone who thought she'd seen life's bottom and realizes now how much further things go. As her son takes her to increasingly shady places, trying to learn which of his old associates has the dog, her protective anger rises. Surely this goose-chase has an ulterior motive. When he takes the car and leaves her stranded, she knows she was right. In an affecting encounter with a woman (Rachel Bay Jones) who lost a daughter to the darkest chapter in Ben's life, Holly borrows a car to continue her search, trying to find Ben before he's gone for good. The film offers the kind of desperate detective work real parents, not Liam Neeson characters, are doing every day in this country, and Roberts is, in her way, as fierce an embodiment of maternal single-mindedness as Hedges' last big-screen mother, played by Frances McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. To the elder Hedges' credit, though a couple of earlier sequences have signaled their twists ahead of time, it's hard to know where this dark night is going to go. Production company: Color Force Distributor: Roadside Attractions Cast: Julia Roberts, Lucas Hedges, Courtney B. Vance, Kathryn Newton, Rachel Bay Jones, David Zaldivar, Alexandra Park, Mia Fowler, Jakari Fraser Director-Screenwriter: Peter Hedges Producers: Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Teddy Schwarzman, Peter Hedges Executive producers: Daniel Steinman, Ben Stillman, Jane Evans, Mickey Liddell Director of photography: Stuart Dryburgh Production designer: Ford Wheeler Costume designer: Melissa Toth Editor: Ian Blume Composer: Dickon Hinchliffe Casting director: Bernard Tesley Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations) 103 minutes

Spanish director Carlos Vermut follows up his multiple-award-winning ‘Magical Girl’ with a twisting, Almodovar-esque tale about the complex relationship between a pop star and her biggest fan. It’s odd, director Carlos Vermut must have thought, how many movies there are about stars, but how few there are about the fans who make them. Quien Te Cantara is his compelling attempt to rectify the situation. There may be a great deal of style and exquisite formal composition about this elegant and rewarding story, but it's the terrifically moving central performance from Eva Llorach, playing a woman who's given the exciting but dangerous opportunity to escape into the life of her favourite singer, that elevates Cantara into the category of something special. Thoroughly contemporary in its explorations of fame, fandom, womanhood and shifting identities, this project, bigger in budget and scope than Vermut’s previous films, could, with the right handling, be the one to take his name out to a wider international audience. Lila (Najwa Nimri), a pop star whose light is fading fast and who hasn’t sung in public for ten years, faints in the sea off the south of Spain and learns in hospital that she’s lost her memory. Shown a photo of herself by her longtime assistant Blanca (Carme Elias), she tells Blanca that she thinks the photo is of Lila Cassen, naming herself in the third person. It’s this intriguing misperception that this film about self-fashioning and identity will elegantly go on to explore. Lila’s planned return to the stage — her public comeback is due in a couple of months — is thus in jeopardy. Enter Violeta, an altogether more interesting character, who inhabits a far grungier world than Lila’s rarified, remote and spacious cliff-top apartment where most of the action will unfold. Violeta, depressed and about to do something awful to herself, works in a karaoke bar, has a great voice — and is a huge fan of Lila’s. We first encounter her giving the brush-off to weaselly salesman Nicolas (Julian Villagran), in the film’s only male speaking role, in a scene that lasts a mere five minutes. (This is a highly stylized but appropriately depopulated film, one in which less is more.) Violeta lives with her daughter-from-hell Marta (Natalia Molina), disturbed to the point of psychopathy, who’s given to threatening suicide at the slightest provocation: Molina does terrific work, making every scene in which she appears a white-knuckle experience for not only Violeta but for the viewer as well. Having seen the passion and commitment with which Violeta transforms herself into Lila in the karaoke bar, Blanca asks her to help Lila rediscover herself — to train her, as it were, to become the old Lila again. A fascinating, shifting, complex and confused relationship will open up between the two women, fan and star, with Violeta suddenly having to relocate into an entirely different and psychologically dangerous world that also offers escape from the horrors of Marta. Who is Violeta, really? It’s a daringly ambitious conceit, made credible by the great skill of the script and the actors’ attention to the nuances of their roles. “Aren’t you afraid of being someone you’re not?” Violeta asks Lila, in what may be the film’s key question. Visually, Cantara is careful and lovely, shadowy and dark in its tones, and filled with meticulously-composed shots: Vermut trained as an illustrator and knows how to make symbols out of pictures, how to create images that repay careful watching. The sea plays a major role, always in the background, as enticing and dangerous as stardom itself. When reflections of the waves are briefly seen rippling on Violeta’s shirt and skin, and waves later echoed in the carefully arranged satin sheets of Lila’s bed, it all adds up to something. Indeed, everything about Cantara feels tremblingly assembled, and it never quite shakes off the air of something that, however lovingly, has been put together piece by piece. At times it feels like high-quality pastiche — though in a film about a person pretending to be someone else, this may not be a criticism. Everything slots tidily — sometimes perhaps too tidily — into the script’s structure, whether it’s the salesman’s symbolic talking dolls, or a beautiful shot of a marine picking out a delicate guitar tune (Vermut enjoys playing characters against stereotype), or the little origami boats that Blanca makes, or the fact that the Andalucian coastal town where the film is set is called Rota, which could (just about) translate from Spanish as “broken woman” (cast and crew presumably had to make the 500-mile journey down from Madrid in order to make the joke work). An exquisite structure, the focus on broken women, the melodrama, the almost tactile intensity of color and light, the liberal use of performance and song, and a score by Spain’s highest-profile composer, Alberto Iglesias, best-known for his work with a certain other Spanish director: It’s pretty clear Vermut has boldly marched into territory that during the 1990s Pedro Almodovar made his own. Comparisons will be made, but they’ll be futile, because just as Violeta the fan remakes herself in the mould of Lila, so does Vermut’s film remake itself in the manner of one of his heroes. This could be the cleverest thing about this very clever film. (Though it could, of course, all be a cynical attempt to cash in on the sense that there may be room for more than one Almodovar in the international market.) It was back in the 90s that the very particular, otherworldly looks and manner of Najwa Nimri were first used by the likes of Alejandro Amenabar and Julio Medem. (Like Lila, Nimri has been quiet of late, and Cantara represents her return to cinema.) Nimri’s Lila is almost inevitably a remote, ghostly presence, a cipher: her human story is contained in a single lengthy monologue that strikingly shows how she’s recovered her memory, but that comes too late on to give her much human depth. Violeta is by contrast very human indeed, Llorach virtually single-handedly carrying the film’s emotional intensity and the weight of its complex psychological underpinnings through her exchanges with Lila. Llorach, who has appeared in both of Vermut’s previous films, is wonderful as a lonely, ground-down, repressed and traumatized woman with few illusions left, but who still retains the glimmer of hope that her old fangirl dreams are founded on something real. It’s a peach of a role, and Llorach, in an edgy, hyper-intense performance, is up to the job. The title translates as “Who Will Sing to You,” a song by Mocedades, Spain’s 70s version of the Mamas and Papas. Inevitably music is a big part of the film, whether it’s stirring but cheesy 60s and 70s fare or the somewhat bland electropop (sample lyric: "I felt the wind on my face, I saw the wolves go by") delivered by Lila herself, voiced by a combination of Nimri, Llorach and singer Eva Amaral. If Quien de Cantara is a few minutes too long, then it's because it overindulges the music; as a final twist, it’s fully appropriate that it’s the sound of the sea, and not a song, that plays over the credits. Production companies: Apache Films,Las Películas del Apache, Aralan Films, Les Films du Worso Cast: Najwa Nimri, Eva Llorach, Carmen Elías, Natalia de Molina Director, screenwriter: Carlos Vermut Producers: Enrique López Lavigne Executive producers: Marta Velasco, Alejandro Arenas Director of photography: Edu Grau Art Director: Laia Ateca Costume designer: Ana Lopez Cobos Editor: Marta Velasco Composer: Alberto Iglesias Casting directors: Sara Bilbatua, Maria Rodrigo Sales: Film Factory Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Contemporary World Cinema) 124 minutes

Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson portray the woman who passed on to the Soviet Union the key to Britain’s atom bomb in Trevor Nunn’s drama, inspired by the true story of KGB spy Melita Norwood. A good old-fashioned British spy thriller in the scientific mold of Enigma, with a bewitching female heroine (or anti-heroine, if you will) played by the excellent actresses Judi Dench and (as her younger self) Sophie Cookson, Red Joan revisits the incredible real-life spy case of Melita Norwood. It is directed with a strong sense for character by Trevor Nunn, the former director of the Royal Shakespeare Company whose rare excursions into film include woman-centered works like Hedda, Lady Jane and Twelfth Night: Or What You Will. After its Toronto premiere, this well-rounded piece has the cards in hand to find a happy niche with audiences. Certainly, this isn’t the kind of adrenaline-pumping spy film laden with exploding buildings and the protagonist leaping out of skyscrapers. But it isn’t a sedate film either, and stakes couldn’t be higher: the balance of power between the West and the Communist Bloc at the end of WWII. Based on Jennie Rooney’s bestselling novel, Lindsay Shapiro’s screenplay cleverly plays with the ostensible staidness of ordinary pensioner Joan Stanley (Dench), a woman in her 80s living a quiet suburban life, who is abruptly arrested as a Soviet spy in the opening scene, set in 2000. It’s also a story of ideals and self-sacrifice that seem impossibly distant in the current day and age. Though she claims to have been frightened out of her wits the entire time she was stealing classified documents from her laboratory, which was engaged in developing Britain’s atom bomb during the war, on screen the young physicist Joan Stanley (Cookson) demonstrates nothing but courage, intelligence and furious conviction. As an elderly woman, she still has these qualities which make her every inch a heroine, despite the sinking sensation that comes from seeing the bomb being handed to Stalin on a silver platter. The story back-and-forths between the icy interrogation of the elderly Joan, who initially denies everything, and her memories of what really happened. Since much of the past is intertwined with her love affairs, it’s uncertain how much of the flashbacks she’s actually telling the police, leaving the audience with the satisfaction of knowing more than the investigators. Joan is a mousy physics student at Cambridge in 1938 and still a virgin when glamorous fellow student Sonia (Czech actress Tereza Srbova) crawls through her window late one night to avoid the house mother. It’s a fateful meeting. Sonia and her dashing cousin Leo (Tom Hughes) are German Jews and committed Communists. They draw Joan into their student meetings, which she attends primarily to meet Leo. He’s an idealist and political firebrand who leads rallies against Hitler and yearns for “a chance to rebuild civilization in a totally new way,” and it’s easy to see why the girl falls into his arms one night, with Sonia’s crafty encouragement. Though never named, the Cambridge Spy Ring, which included the infamous Kim Philby, hovers in the background. The scene shifts to a secret government laboratory run by the charming Prof. Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore, The Child in Time), who also rosily views the Soviet Union as allies but lacks Joan’s naivete and idealism. For him, scientists are not politicians; for her, they can't ignore the practical effects of their work. She becomes his invaluable assistant and, eventually, his lover, complicated by the fact he’s married and his wife refuses to give him a divorce. The romantic bits of Red Joan are a far cry from James Bond-type serial sex with glamorous partners in evening dress. Shown from a young woman’s p.o.v., Joan’s romances with Leo and Max are the believable affairs of a girl looking for love and marriage, not adventure. As the older Joan remembers it, the British government agreed to set up a nuclear fission facility in Canada to keep up with American experiments on building a war-ending bomb. It is on their dangerous Atlantic crossing aboard a destroyer that Joan and Max realize their love for each other, though he’s too much the gentleman to pursue a doomed affair. It wasn't love or adventure that finally made Joan give in to Leo and Sonia’s pleading and begin passing state secrets to her handlers. As she tells the interrogators and her barrister son Nick (Ben Miles), who has incredulously joined her, it was the news that the Americans had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Unlike the real spy on whom she is based, who passed secret documents to the Soviets out of pure Communist conviction, Joan reasons that the only way the world can be at peace is to create nuclear deterrence between the superpowers, putting the bomb in both their hands so neither can strike the other without disastrous consequences. This theory was first proposed in the late 1950s and it’s a stretch to believe it can be her motivation. On the other hand, Dench and Cookson portray Joan as being so smart in an unshowy English way that one can, for the space of the film, suspend disbelief and see how things turn out for her, Max, Leo and Sonia. Casting is right on cue and Dench’s dignified retired spy reverberates with her flashier role as M in Skyfall. Her stiff-necked son may think it all preposterous, but when the old lady fetches him a coffee in a Che Guevara mug, she gets a liberating laugh. And Cookson, who passes perfectly for Dench at 20 with the additional appeal of ripe youth and an infectious Lauren Bacall smile, makes a natural segue from her secret agent roles in the Kingsman films. Zac Nicholson’s cinematography is warm and involving like production designer Cristina Casali’s quaint woody laboratories, as behooves the sub-genre of British spy yarns. George Fenton’s romantic score and Charlotte Walter's charming costumes well describe the mood of the time. Production company: Trademark Films Cast: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Tom Hughes Director: Trevor Nunn Screenwriter: Lindsay Shapiro, based on Jennie Rooney’s novel Producer: David Parfitt Executive producers: Ivan Mactaggart, Tim Haslam, Hugo Grumbar, Zygi Kamasa, James Atherton, Jan Pace, Kelly E. Ashton, Karl Sydow Director of photography: Zac Nicholson Production designer: Cristina Casali Costume designer: Charlotte Walter Editor: Kristina Hetherington Music: George Fenton World sales: Embankment Films Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation) 110 minutes

Leigh (Elizabeth Olsen) is a walking bruise. Three months after her husband died suddenly, she’s only getting darker and more wicked the longer her grief stretches on. Every time it seems like it might finally be fading, someone’s cloying sympathy or misplaced word inevitably jolts her back into feeling the full brunt of her pain all over again. So, no, Leigh isn’t exactly the most fun character to follow around, as “Sorry For Your Loss” asks us to do. As she acknowledges with a snarl in her grief support group, she’s angry, sour, and quick to snap at people trying to help, most especially her newly sober sister Jules (Kelly Marie Tran) and would-be yoga mogul mother (Janet McTeer). But with the help of some sharp writing, charismatic supporting characters, and Olsen’s slyly sympathetic performance, Kit Steinkellner’s drama finds a way to portray the reality of grief without letting it overwhelm the show entirely. As Leigh struggles to move on from her husband’s death, “Sorry For Your Loss” cuts between her present day misery and her past joy in order to convey exactly what she — and everyone else who knew him — lost. The difference between the two time periods is stark, with the present washed out in cool blues while the more vibrant past warms up the screen. According to Jules, Matt (Mamoudou Athie) was “the glue that held [them] all together.” He helped the far more rigid Leigh to relax a little, inspired Jules to cut back on her self-destructive partying, and tried to help his wayward brother Danny (Jovan Adepo) get his life together. Leigh mostly remembers him as the shy and sensitive counterpart to her own type A efficiency. But the more she reflects on their life together, the more she realizes that she didn’t know or understand him as much as she thought — though in fairness, she thought she’d have many more years with him to try. Olsen anchors the show by nailing a particularly tricky performance, given that she isn’t exactly an immediately sympathetic character despite what she’s going through. (In one particularly rough moment, Leigh rejects a chipper young widow’s attempts to reach out by sneering that she, a “Courtney Love,” could never be friends with a “Jackie O.”) But Olsen makes Leigh’s pain palpable enough that it’s always obvious when she’s lashing out — and more importantly, why. Helping Olsen round out the story are a pair of particularly strong performances that ground Leigh’s past and present. As Matt, Athie faces the tall task of shading in a character almost entirely seen through Leigh, Jules, and Danny’s perspectives (not to mention making it clear why he was so beloved). But he’s more than up to the challenge, even imbuing Matt with a sly mischievous streak that keeps him from becoming too saintly in retrospect. And as Jules, Tran taps into her character’s intrinsic empathy as she did so well in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” making her the bubbly and determined foil to Leigh’s dour pragmatism. At least in the first few episodes, we don’t get to see the Jules that apparently made everyone’s lives hell; hopefully that will change, if only to give Tran more and different material to chew on. Just like Leigh, “Sorry For Your Loss” isn’t exactly in a hurry to resolve anything right away. The first four episodes don’t move with much urgency in an effort to keep things realistic, which can be frustrating, but that’s by design. The entire point of the show is that grief can fade, but it never truly goes away. That makes it a tough concept to hinge a series on, and yet the show draws viewers in for its patience, tenderness, and refusal to gloss over the least flattering (and most fascinating) parts of grief. Drama, 30 mins. (10 episodes, four watched for review.) Premieres Thursday Sept. 13 on Facebook Watch. Cast: Eilzabeth Olsen, Kelly Marie Tran, Janet McTeer, Mamoudou Athie, Jovan Adepo. Crew: Executive producers: Elizabeth Olsen, Kit Steinkellner, James Ponsoldt, Robin Schwartz, Marc Turtletaub, Peter Saraf, Cynthia Pett, Brad Petrigala, Jon Liebman, Lizzy Weiss. TV Review: 'Sorry for Your Loss' on Facebook Watch

Consumers can go to Google, Yelp and Facebook for crowdsourced insight about the experiences they'll have at a hospital, but they shouldn't expect foolproof guidance on the quality of care they will receive, according to new Indiana University research. Researchers Victoria Perez and Seth Freedman of IU's School of Public and Environmental Affairs compared social media ratings offered by patients with the extensive data available through the federal government's "Hospital Compare" website. Their key findings: *On patient experience -- food, friendliness, amenities -- the Google, Yelp and Facebook ratings most often aligned with hospitals that are highly ranked by Hospital Compare for patient experience based on surveys. *On quality of care and safety as measured on Hospital Compare, the Google, Yelp and Facebook ratings were not as accurate. In fact, 20 percent of the hospitals rated "best" within a local market on social media were rated "worst" in that market by Hospital Compare on patient health outcomes. "Our results indicate that crowdsourced ratings reflect measures of quality most easily observed, which is not all that matters in health care," Perez said. "While crowdsourced sites may provide similar information to the government's patient experience surveys, they are not a substitute for measures of clinical quality or patient safety." The researchers acknowledge that finding that information can be a challenge. Their research highlights shortcomings with the Hospital Compare scores and a need to communicate clinical quality more clearly to patients. Of the 57 Hospital Compare metrics, patients must wade through 46 to determine clinical quality and safety. Many may not apply to the specific condition for which they are seeking care. "For patients broadly interested in the dimensions of clinical quality and safety, our research shows the need for better tools to help patients search for hospitals that meet their clinical needs," Freedman said. While the Hospital Compare ratings have been available since 2005, only recently has it been possible to make a comparison with crowdsourcing sites. Because of the rapid growth of social media, 90 percent of hospitals now show up on Hospital Compare and on the crowdsourced sites. "Our study establishes how the 'best' and 'worst' rankings in a hospital market depend on where a patient goes for information," Perez said. "While 5-star ratings are easy to understand, our research shows patients should think twice before using it as a single source of information for a life-changing decision about hospital care." An in-depth article about the research, "Do Crowds

This is a resplendent Quetzal, an icon of the Central American cloud forest, and one of the study's focal species. The cloud forests of Honduras can seem like an otherworldly place, where the trees are thick with life that takes in water straight from the air around it, and the soundscape is littered with the calls of animals singing back and forth. Otherworldly, yes, but scientists have found that the cloud forests are not immune to very down-to-earth problems of climate change and deforestation. A 10-year study of bird populations in Cusuco National Park, Honduras, shows that the peak of bird diversity in this mountainous park is moving higher in elevation. Additional land protection, unfortunately, may not be enough to reverse the trend, driven in part by globally rising temperatures. The study is published in Biotropica. "A lot of these species are specialized to these mountain ranges," says study lead author Monte Neate-Clegg, a doctoral student at the University of Utah, "and they don't have a lot of options as to where to go should things go wrong." Heads in the clouds A cloud forest is an ecosystem that derives much of its moisture from water vapor in the surrounding air. Due to elevation and climate conditions, these forests are fed directly by clouds. Nothing ever dries, Neate-Clegg says. "Cloud forests are pretty special," he says. "The tropics hold most of the world's biodiversity to begin with, and then the mountain slopes hold the greatest biodiversity within the tropics." For example, he adds, Cusuco National Park is the home to at least six amphibian species that are known nowhere else on Earth. The park also supports species large and small-from jaguars to hummingbirds. Such specialized environments are at high risk for drastic alteration due to climate change,however. Scientists, including U professor and study co-author Cagan Sekercioglu, predicted that rising temperatures and changes in precipitation would cause species, particularly birds, to shift to higher elevations, shrinking their habitat and boosting the risk of extinction. That, the authors found, is exactly what's happening. Trouble in paradise Neate-Clegg and his colleagues, including researchers from the UK and Belgium, examined a ten-year dataset of bird species counts in Cusuco National Park. The counts were conducted starting in 2006 by Operation Wallacea, a conservation organization. Few long-term studies like this have been undertaken in the tropics, Neate-Clegg says, with a significant data gap in Central America. "I wanted to plug this geographic gap," he says. They found most species moving upslope, at an average of 23 feet (7 m) per year. Beyond species-specific changes in elevation, though, the researchers focused on bird diversity along the mountain slopes. "By looking across all species we could show that the diversity was increasing at higher elevations and decreasing at lower elevations," Neate-Clegg says. Losing ground The authors turned their attention toward discriminating the likely causative factors for such a shift. One factor is the continuing development and deforestation within the park. "Every year we go back and resurvey, and transects that were forested the previous year are suddenly cut down," Neate-Clegg says. "They are encroaching year on year." The terrain's status as a national park, he says, doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent for those seeking to expand agricultural land. But habitat loss is not the only factor. Comparing forested study plots, the authors concluded that changes to the local climate were responsible for the upward shift as well. Increased land protection would help give the birds more stable habitats, Neate-Clegg says, especially protections that encompass as much elevation as possible. But, as the paper grimly states, "Increased protection is unlikely to mitigate the effects of climate change."

A new study shows a difference between how risk is cognitively processed by self-reported law-abiding citizens and self-reported lawbreakers, allowing researchers to better view and understand the criminal mind. Along with her team, Valerie Reyna, Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor of Human Development and director of the Cornell University Magnetic Resonance Imaging Facility, examined neurological correlations between risk preferences and criminality in adults. In a study recently published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, participants who anonymously self-reported criminal or non-criminal tendencies were offered two choices: $20 guaranteed, or to flip a coin for double or nothing. The study found that individuals who are higher in criminal tendencies choose the gamble, even though they know there is a risk of getting nothing. Those who self-reported having higher criminal tendencies focused on the fact that $40 is more than $20. Similarly, when given the option to lose $20 or flip a coin and either lose $40 or lose nothing, the study showed a majority of people choose to gamble because losing nothing is better than losing something. Those with higher self-reported criminal tendencies do the opposite, taking a sure loss over the gamble. "This is different because it is cognitive," Reyna said. "It tells us that the way people think is different, and that is a very new and kind of revolutionary approach -- helping to add to other factors that help explain the criminal brain." As the tasks were completed, researchers looked at brain activation through fMRI and found that criminal behavior was associated with greater activation in temporal and parietal cortices, which are brain areas involved in cognitive analysis and reasoning. Ordinary risk-takers who self-reported not breaking the law showed emotional reactivity in the amygdala and reward motivation in the striatal areas. Reyna points out that not all criminal reasoning is equal, and therefore, public policies around the legal system can be impacted by these findings through a greater understanding of human brain behavior to have a more just system, while helping better protect the public. "I think this can really give us insight into how to help young people, for example, and how to distinguish the vast majority who will not grow up to be criminals, how to think about their risk-taking -- even when it does break the law -- in fundamentally different ways," Reyna said.

THESE are the first pictures of a teen victim who was stabbed to death at a birthday party last night — as his heartbroken family today paid tribute. Eddie O'Rouke, 18, was knifed during an "altercation" outside the Royal British Legion club in Runcorn, Cheshire. It is believed he was a guest at a friend's 18th birthday party when the fight broke out. Today his heartbroken aunt Theresa, 46, told The Sun Online: "The whole family are devastated. He has five brothers and sisters including a two-year-old. "Eddie only lost his father a few years ago. It's so heartbreaking — the family are in pieces. "His mum just wanted to see him one last time after it happened but she couldn't." She added: "Eddie was a smashing lad. We'll miss him so much." Murder cops have today arrested two boys aged 15 and 16 from the Runcorn area on suspicion of murder. Officers were called to reports of a fight outside the club in Halton village where they found the man wounded. Witness Mark Riggs, 25, said: "I was having a drink in the smaller bar watching some lads playing snooker. "The party was in the main room. I believe there was a fight but it was broken up. "I then heard some screaming and then I saw some a lad on the floor and people shouting his name. People were crying — it's terrible." More than 40 of his friends gathered at the scene with many hugging each other and weeping. One older woman was seen wiping away tears as she left flowers. One friend said: "He was so polite and was really popular. People are devastated." Eddie, who dreamed of becoming an electrician, was rushed to hospital but later died from his injuries. A police spokesman: "Two teenage boys from Runcorn aged 15 and 16 have been arrested on suspicion of murder. "We are currently trying to trace a third suspect". Devastated friends and relatives have been taking to social media to share emotional tributes to the youngster. Karen Richardson wrote on Facebook: "So so sad, R.I.P Eddie, only two years and two days after your dad's anniversary. "Devastating what your family are going through, thinking of them all." Paulajane Keeley said: "Heartbreaking for so many families around Liverpool and around the country. What's going on with the kids of today." Chelsie O'Rourke changed her profile picture on Facebook to an image of Eddie. She wrote: "My Eddie, we will get justice for you. I love you always from your Chel." Earlier Det Insp Adam Waller said: "We are in the very early stages of piecing together the events of tonight. "Enquiries are ongoing and I urge anyone who witnessed the incident or has any information that may help our investigation to get in touch. "I am keen to hear from anyone who was driving along Main Street or Castle Road at around 8.30pm and thinks they may have dashcam footage of the incident or anything else that may aid our investigation." Anyone with information is asked to call Cheshire Police on 101, quoting IML 177899, or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111. Stabbings are on the rise as figures show a surge in knife crime across the UK. As violent attacks spread from cities to the Home Counties. Recent figures from London's Metropolitan police showed that knife crime has surged by 16 per cent in the capital — as Britain's crime epidemic continues. The latest statistics confirm Britain's crime crisis is continuing - and overall the Crime Survey for England and Wales says it is up by four per cent. At least 51 people have been fatally stabbed in London since the beginning of the year. In February more than 250 knives and swords were seized across London in just one week and 283 people, many of them teenagers, were arrested for carrying them.

Averaging the results from two independent participants improved screening accuracy, whether participants were looking at baggage scans or mammograms, according to findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The research findings, reported by researchers at Brunel University, suggest that having multiple screeners could improve the detection of rare items in real-world contexts, such as airport security, radiology and military reconnaissance. "There is a known problem with detecting rare targets," said study author Jennifer E Corbett, an honorary lecturer for Brunel's College of Health and Life Sciences. "When you go to the airport, they always seem to find the bottle of water in your bag -- it's a very common item, so people have a mental template. They'll just find it. But with rare targets like weapons and guns, people see these far less frequently, so are more likely to miss them." Corbett, who coauthored the paper with Brunel researcher Jaap Munneke, says the problem lies with the human visual system, which is only capable of processing a few objects in detail at any given moment. The brain averages out redundant and specific information, filling in the spaces based on prior knowledge. As a result, infrequent objects -- those that the observers aren't expecting to see -- are often missed. However, two people independently looking at the same scan perceive it differently, significantly increasing the possibility of infrequent items being spotted. "We found that when we pair the estimates of two people who don't know they're working together -- they have no interaction whatsoever -- there is a huge improvement in detection, just by capitalizing on the diversity of people's judgments," said Corbett. To test their ideas, Corbett and Munneke conducted two experiments -- one which challenged participants to undertake airport screening and the other mammogram screening. In the airport screening experiment, 16 participants, who had no experience with security screening, saw an image containing nine objects for half a second. They then indicated whether they'd like to call the image back, based on whether they detected a target object. "The experiment tested weapons detection as well as simple detection tasks," said Corbett. "We found that not only did pairing observers estimates improve detection in both types of tasks, but that pairing individuals' estimates from the simple task in a way that maximized the decorrelated patterns actually improved the performance in the separate weapons task." The researchers discovered that when they paired the detections of two people who worked individually and independently, they not only saw an increase in the detection of rare objects, but also a reduction in the likelihood of harmless items being wrongly flagged as suspicious. For the second experiment, 18 participants learned how to identify a tumor on a mammogram. They then saw 400 unique scans, 5% of which had a tumor present, and then another 400, of which 50% had a tumor present. In both cases, a significant increase in detection rate was observed when two individuals' results were averaged. "The task is not so different between airport scanner and a radiologist -- the idea is you're looking for something you have knowledge of but see infrequently," said Corbett. "It doesn't matter though whether it's a tumor or a weapon or something else, averaging two different perceptions of the same scene increases detection." The researchers say their detection method is a marked improvement over those currently used in airport and radiological screening, as it significantly reduces the time someone needs to look at a scan. "The method we propose is probably the best candidate for maximizing the resources of a limited pool of highly trained experts needing to detect rare targets in a lot of images," said Corbett. "Obviously the limit here is that it requires a second set of eyes, but we're now looking for ways to use a deep-learning algorithm to cover the aspects of the images which are causing these decorrelations. We can then pair a single person with the algorithm."

This map shows average changes in the thickness of the Antarctic ice sheet over the past decade. Other data confirm that the most thickening is happening near Kamb Ice Stream. Kamb and neighboring ice streams drain into the Ross Sea. A region of West Antarctica is behaving differently from most of the continent's ice: A large patch of ice there is thickening, unlike other parts of West Antarctica that are losing ice. Whether this thickening trend will continue affects the overall amount that melting or collapsing glaciers could raise the level of the world's oceans. A study led by the University of Washington has discovered a new clue to this region's behavior: A volcano under the ice sheet has left an almost 6,000-year record of the glacier's motion. The track hidden in the middle of the ice sheet suggests that the current thickening is just a short-term feature that may not affect the glacier over the long term. It also suggests that similar clues to the past may be hiding deep inside the ice sheet itself. "What's exciting about this study is that we show how the structure of the ice sheet acts as a powerful record of what has happened in the past," said Nicholas Holschuh, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space sciences. He is first author of the paper published Sept. 4 in The Cryosphere. The data come from the ice above Mount Resnik, a 1.6-kilometer (mile-high) inactive volcano that currently sits under 300 meters (0.19 miles) of ice. The volcano lies just upstream of the thickening Kamb Ice Stream, part of a dynamic coastal region of ice that drains into Antarctica's Ross Sea. Studies show Kamb Ice Stream has flowed quickly in the past but stalled more than a century ago, leaving the region's ice to drain via the four other major ice streams -- a switch that glaciologists think happens every few hundred years. Meanwhile the ice inland of Kamb Ice Stream is beginning to bulge, and it is unclear what will happen next. "The shutdown of Kamb Ice Stream started long before the satellite era," Holschuh said. "We need some longer-term indicators for its behavior to understand how important this shutdown is for the future of the region's ice." The paper analyzes two radar surveys of the area's ice. One was collected in 2002 by co-authors Robert Jacobel and Brian Welch, using the ice-penetrating radar system at St. Olaf College in Minnesota, and the other in 2004 by co-author Howard Conway, a UW research professor of Earth and space sciences. Conway noticed the mysterious missing layers and asked his colleagues to investigate. "It wasn't until we had spent probably six months with this data set that we started to piece together the fact that this thing that we could see within the ice sheet was forming in response to the subglacial volcano," Holschuh said. The study shows that the mysterious feature originates at the ice covering Mount Resnik. The authors believe that the volcano's height pushes the relatively thin ice sheet up so much that it changes the local wind fields, and affects depositing of snow. So as the ice sheet passes over the volcano a section missed out on a few annual layers of snow. "These missing layers are common in East Antarctica, where there is less precipitation and strong winds can strip away the surface snow," Holschuh said. "But this is really one of the first times we've seen these missing layers in West Antarctica. It's also the first time an unconformity has been used to reconstruct ice sheet motion of the past." Over time, the glacial record shows that this feature followed a straight path toward the sea. During the 5,700-year record, the five major coastal ice streams are thought to have sped up and slowed down several times, as water on the base lubricates the glacier's flow and then periodically gets diverted, stalling one of the ice streams. "Despite the fact that there are all these dramatic changes at the coast, the ice flowing in the interior was not really affected," Holschuh said. What the feature does show is that a change occurred a few thousand years ago. Previous UW research shows rapid retreat at the edge of the ice sheet until about 3,400 years ago, part of the recovery from the most recent ice age. The volcano track also shows a thinning of the ice at about this time. "It means that the interior of the ice sheet is responding to the large-scale climate forcing from the last glacial maximum to today," Holschuh said. "So the long-timescale climatic forcing is very consistent between the interior and the coast, but the shorter-timescale processes are really apparent in the coastal record but aren't visible in the interior." Holschuh cautions that this is only a single data point and needs confirmation from other observations. He is part of an international team of Antarctic scientists looking at combining the hundreds of radar scans of Antarctic and Greenland glaciers that were originally done to measure ice thickness. Those data may also contain unique details of the glacier's internal structure that can be used to recreate the history of the ice sheet's motion. "These persistent tracers of historic ice flow are probably all over the place," Holschuh said. "The more we can tease apart the stories of past motion told by the structure of the ice sheet, the more realistic we can be in our predictions of how it will respond to future climate change."

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Aschaffenburg University of Applied Sciences have managed to make a breakthrough when it comes to dealing with the extremely ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon Freon 11. Their findings could make a major contribution to protecting the endangered ozone layer. Freon 11 is a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC). These substances were previously used, among other things, as coolants in refrigerators and as foaming agents for polyurethane foams. In the 1970s scientists realized that CFCs were damaging the protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere and were also responsible for the appearance of the ozone hole. In addition, Freon 11 is 4,750 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, additionally contributing to global warming. Although the Montreal Protocol banned the production and trade of this CFC in the late 1980s, it is still released today when refrigerators are recycled and is even traded on the black market. The ozone-depleting substance has also recently been the subject of repeated scientific and media attention. A study published in the journal Nature reported an alarming recurrence and a sharp increase in the global release of Freon 11, which the authors were able to attribute to extensive illegal production and use of this substance in Chinese polyurethane foam factories. Being able to effectively adsorb and detect Freon 11 at an early stage, it would seem, is thus more important than ever. "If we can learn to safely handle this environmentally harmful substance, it would be not only of great scientific interest but also, and above all, a matter of worldwide benefit," emphasized Professor Siegfried Waldvogel of JGU, corresponding author of the study. Sustainable and environmentally-friendly method of binding Freon 11 In their paper in the journal Global Challenges, the scientists from Mainz and Aschaffenburg describe a method of effectively binding both airborne and liquid phase Freon 11 using modified cyclic sugar molecules, i.e., a substance called methyl-substituted ?-cyclodextrin. This would prevent the release of the environmentally harmful foaming agent into the atmosphere, where it additionally impairs the stratosphere's ability to protect against UV radiation. The process of Freon 11 binding is reversible and the adsorbent medium can be fully regenerated under controlled conditions. The recovered material can also be reused. This makes the process a sustainable and environmentally-friendly method of binding this extremely ozone-depleting substance, a method that can be readily employed when old refrigerators are scrapped, for example. In addition, the research teams at Mainz and Aschaffenburg have been able to transfer this concept to an optical sensor device, making it possible to detect low concentrations of Freon 11 quickly and reliably.

China is participating for the first time in Australia’s largest maritime exercise as more than 3,000 personnel from 27 countries engage in joint training off the strategic northern port of Darwin. Exercise Kakadu is hosting 23 ships and submarines from across the Indo-Pacific region, enabling them to establish familiarity which helps to prevent conflict on the high seas and to coordinate disaster relief efforts. Commander Anita Sellick of the Australian frigate HMAS Newcastle said two Royal Australian Navy sailors were accepted onto China’s naval frigate Huangshan during the drill. “Two of our Australian navy sailors are across actually, right now in the Chinese ship. So they’ve both been able to integrate within each other’s navy and learn a little bit of what life is like for them today in Exercise Kakadu,” Sellick said on Saturday. Commander of the Australian Fleet, Rear Admiral Jonathan Mead, told reporters in Darwin in a televised interview on Friday that there were mutual benefits in building understanding and trust during the exercise. The joint military practice, which will continue until Sept. 15, is supported by the Royal Australian Air Force and involves 21 aircraft. Darwin, on the doorstep of Asia, is Australia’s most strategically important city and has been home to a contingent of U.S. Marines since 2011 making it the logical place for the exercise. Integrating the People’s Liberation Army Navy into the biennial training with American, Australian, New Zealand and Canadian forces for the first time has given China an opportunity to improve its working relationship with those countries, which has been tense at times. In April, three Australian warships had a challenging encounter with China as they passed through the South China Sea. Then in May, the United States disinvited China from joint naval exercises off Hawaii in response to what it called China’s militarization of disputed areas of the South China Sea, an allegation Beijing rejects. The participating countries in Exercise Kakadu are: China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Cook Islands, Fiji, France, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, East Timor, Tonga, United Arab Emirates, U.S., Australia, and Vietnam.

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