Month: March 2019

In 1971, Hollywood lore has it that the legendary Bruce Lee pitched an idea for a TV series about a martial artist in the Old West. Skittish studio heads passed on the project (and on Lee as its star), opting to make Kung Fu with David Carradine instead. Now Lee's vision is getting a second life, as Cinemax prepares to debut its new period drama, Warrior, based on the martial arts master's own writings.

When he was first approached about adapting the material for a TV series, Justin Lin (who directed Fast and the Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond) was intrigued, since he had long admired Lee's work and his breaking down of racial barriers for Asians in Hollywood. But it was the source material that clinched the deal for Lin: Lee's own writings, provided by his daughter, Shannon, who gave her blessing to the project. The writings were "rich with Lee's unique philosophies on life, and through a point of view rarely depicted on screen," Lin told The Hollywood Reporter.

• 

  Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji arrives in San Francisco from China. [credit: YouTube/Cinemax ]

Warrior follows a by-now familiar outline. A young Chinese martial arts prodigy, Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), arrives in 19th-century San Francisco. Why he left China is a mystery, but he soon finds himself embroiled with the Tong Wars, a period of particularly violent disputes between rival Chinese gangs, called tongs, in the Chinatowns of several American cities. (There were as many as 30 tongs in San Francisco at the height of the Tong Wars; it took the great earthquake of 1906 to end the violence, since the tongs never recovered from the damage to their businesses.) Ah Sahm also must contend with rising anti-immigrant sentiment against the Chinese and perhaps a forbidden interracial romance.

In 1971, Hollywood lore has it that the legendary Bruce Lee pitched an idea for a TV series about a martial artist in the Old West. Skittish studio heads passed on the project (and on Lee as its star), opting to make Kung Fu with David Carradine instead. Now Lee's vision is getting a second life, as Cinemax prepares to debut its new period drama, Warrior, based on the martial arts master's own writings.

When he was first approached about adapting the material for a TV series, Justin Lin (who directed Fast and the Furious 6 and Star Trek Beyond) was intrigued, since he had long admired Lee's work and his breaking down of racial barriers for Asians in Hollywood. But it was the source material that clinched the deal for Lin: Lee's own writings, provided by his daughter, Shannon, who gave her blessing to the project. The writings were "rich with Lee's unique philosophies on life, and through a point of view rarely depicted on screen," Lin told The Hollywood Reporter.

• 

  Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji arrives in San Francisco from China. [credit: YouTube/Cinemax ]

Warrior follows a by-now familiar outline. A young Chinese martial arts prodigy, Ah Sahm (Andrew Koji), arrives in 19th-century San Francisco. Why he left China is a mystery, but he soon finds himself embroiled with the Tong Wars, a period of particularly violent disputes between rival Chinese gangs, called tongs, in the Chinatowns of several American cities. (There were as many as 30 tongs in San Francisco at the height of the Tong Wars; it took the great earthquake of 1906 to end the violence, since the tongs never recovered from the damage to their businesses.) Ah Sahm also must contend with rising anti-immigrant sentiment against the Chinese and perhaps a forbidden interracial romance.

Enlarge / Anthem may look gorgeous. But what's that worth when it makes your console hard-lock to the point of fully powering down? (credit: EA / BioWare)

After a weekend full of reports about Anthem woes on PS4, people who purchased the game on that console got a sliver of "good" news on Monday: you can probably get a no-questions-asked refund for your purchase if you ask Sony for it.

The story begins with a scary "full" system crash mid-game, which doesn't just hard-lock the game or dump users into an error message and system menu. Instead, the crash completely powers down PS4 consoles, as if the power cord had been yanked out. That means a tap of the controller's "PS" button won't power the console back on. Once users press the system's power button, the PS4 reboots in a black, 480p-resolution screen to check for possible issues with corrupted memory. After that disk check, the console's menus remind users not to power down their systems in such an unsafe way.

But, again, that's the fault of the game Anthem as of its Thursday, February 28 patch on PS4. Multiple threads on the game's r/AnthemTheGame Reddit community have sprung up with users complaining of the same issue, and they've pointed to games journalists and critics like Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker reporting the same crash. (Ars Technica does not have a copy of the game on PS4 to test.)