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The Toronto International Film Festival is almost like a preview of the movie slate for the next few months — and this year I’m watching as much as possible to give you all the scoop on what’s ahead. To do that, I’ll be writing a dispatch covering every movie I’ve seen that day, which will run daily throughout most of the festival. That includes bigger movies you probably already know about, like Netflix’s Wake Up Dead Man and Frankenstein, along with hopefully some great new films you maybe weren’t aware of, like the creepy adaptation of the horror game The…

Everyone basically agrees: if you want people to transition from polluting gas guzzlers to electric cars, you have to make them more affordable. The luxury EVs, with their big battery packs and fine leather interiors, are all well and good, but if you really want to move the needle on EV adoption, we need more entry-level options. And so far, we’re lacking. Volkswagen hears this, and is responding with a new lineup of small and mid-sized electric vehicles aimed squarely at the low end of the market. We’ve already seen the ID.2all — recently renamed ID. Polo and ID. Polo…

When director Rian Johnson introduced the new Knives Out film on the third day of TIFF 2025, he exclaimed: "we're going back to church." By that he meant that Wake Up Dead Man, the latest Benoit Blanc mystery, would harken back to the origins of the whodunit, and in particular the gothic vibes of Edgar Allan Poe. And now that I've seen it, I have to say that Johnson pulled it off: the new movie has a darker and more spiritual feel than its predecessors, and yet it's still distinctly Knives Out, which is to say twisting and hilarious. I…

A few years ago, artist Modern Biology became a viral sensation when he posted videos of himself controlling a modular synth with mushrooms on TikTok. Pocket Scion gives anyone similar capabilities, but without having to spend thousands of dollars on a Eurorack rig – and in a much more portable package.  A core part of Modern Biology’s setup is a module called Scion from Glasgow-based Instruo. Scion turns biofeedback, whether that’s from houseplants or your own skin, into CV (control voltage) for controlling other synth modules in a larger setup. Touching two sensors to your hand or a mushroom completes…

No Other Choice. At my second day at TIFF 2025, the longest line I saw wasn't for a movie: it was for the Criterion Closet. The space is housed in a van so that it could make it up to Toronto, and honestly, it felt a little wrong to see the outside of it after watching everyone from Michael Cera to Hideo Kojima spend time in its cramped interior digging through Blu-Rays. The line was long enough that I didn't even bother trying to get inside, which is probably a good thing since I'd just be overwhelmed anyways. Besides, standing…

The RVSolar System living its best vanlife. | Image: Bluetti It only took three years, but Bluetti is following EcoFlow’s lead with a fully integrated power system of its own to make vanlifers, off-grid cabins, and boats energy independent. The RVSolar System’s main advantage over bespoke systems is a relatively quick and easy installation, requiring just “30 minutes,” according to Bluetti’s announcement at IFA 2025.  While it’s undoubtedly faster than installing a fully bespoke solution from Victron Energy, for example, the last time I installed EcoFlow’s comparable system, it took closer to five hours — and that was after several hours…

When I was 16 years old, I wrote my first fanfiction. It was a crossover fic where the cast from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy gave the anime dog demon Inuyasha a makeover. It was stupid and poorly written, and yet, to this very day, I remember it fondly. This is exactly what it's like playing Super Robot Wars Y - an exceedingly silly, nonsensical plot featuring characters that have no business speaking to each other all, stitched together by tactical robot action. It rules. Super Robot Wars Y was released on Nintendo Switch 2 and Steam on August…

A screenshot from Panic’s Herdling game. | Image: Panic / Okomotive Herdling is a slow game about herding fuzzy animals through a vibrant natural world. That may not sound particularly exciting, but I found it to be a perfect game to unwind with after a stressful day. In Herdling, you play as a kid who makes friends with and shepherds large fluffy creatures called Calicorns, which kind of look like a mix of a sheep and a woolly mammoth. The Calicorns are adorable, with cute snorts and head shakes that make them feel like real animals. You'll even get opportunities…

Eddy Cue deserves a raise. As the executive overseeing Apple's services division, he's highly incentivized to protect the tens of billions of dollars a year that Google pays to be the default search engine in Safari. "I've lost a lot of sleep thinking about it," he said from the witness stand during Google's antitrust trial earlier this year. Luckily for Cue, his court testimony appears to have had a significant impact on Judge Amit Mehta, who ruled this week that Google's default payments to Apple and others can continue. You can see Cue's arguments at trial mirrored in Mehta's ruling:…

YouTube is getting “hundreds” of full classic Sesame Street episodes beginning in January 2026. Once the episodes are available, “YouTube will have the largest digital library of Sesame Street content,” Sesame Workshop says. YouTube is already has a wealth of popular content focused toward kids, including big channels like Cocomelon (which is getting a theatrical film in 2027) and Ms. Rachel (who also has a deal with Netflix). The addition of the classic Sesame Street episodes could give parents another educational option if their kids want to watch something on the platform. Speaking of Netflix, new episodes of Sesame Street…