Tom Cruise

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Paramount drops action-packed Mission: Impossible—Final Reckoning trailer

Tom Cruise is back for what may (or may not) be his final turn as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible—Final Reckoning.

After giving CinemaCon attendees a sneak peek last week, Paramount Pictures has publicly released the trailer for Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, the eighth installment of the blockbuster spy franchise starring Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, and a sequel to the events that played out in 2023’s Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning.

This may, or may not, end up being Cruise’s last film in the franchise; everyone’s being pretty cagey about that question. But the trailer certainly gives us everything we’ve come to expect from the Mission: Impossible films: high stakes, global political intrigue, and of course, lots and lots of spectacular stunt work, including Cruise hanging precariously mid-air from a 1930s Boeing Stearman biplane.

(Spoilers for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning below.)

For those whose memory of Dead Reckoning‘s plot is dim, Hunt and his team became embroiled in a global chase to find the two keys capable of controlling a rogue sentient AI dubbed The Entity. Both were needed to unlock a chamber aboard a Russian stealth submarine that contained The Entity’s source code, so the possessor of those keys could control or (preferably) destroy the AI. Hunt managed to acquire the two keys and fled by paraglider, reuniting with his BFF and fellow field agent Benji (Simon Pegg), intending to complete the mission and shut down The Entity.

Given that Final Reckoning is a continuation of that film, naturally Cruise and Pegg aren’t the only returning cast members. Also reprising their roles are Ving Rhames as IMF computer technician Luther Stickell; Hayley Atwell as thief-turned-IMF agent Grace; Vanessa Kirby as black market arms dealer Alanna Mitsopolis (aka the White Widow); Esai Morales as Gabriel, an assassin who serves as The Entity’s liaison; Pom Klementieff as Gabriel’s fellow assassin who joined forces with Hunt after Gabriel betrayed her; Angela Bassett as former CIA director and now US President Erika Sloane; Henry Czerny as former IMF director Eugene Kittridge, who now heads the CIA; and Rolf Saxon as CIA analyst William Donloe.

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Roku owners face the grimmest indignity yet: Stuck-on motion smoothing

Buttery and weird —

Software updates strike again, leaving interpolated frames in unwanted places.

Couple yelling at each other, as if in a soap opera, on a Roku TV, with a grotesque smoothing effect applied to both people.

Enlarge / Motion smoothing was making images uncanny and weird long before AI got here.

Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Roku

Roku TV owners have been introduced to a number of annoyances recently through the software update pipeline. There was an arbitration-demanding terms of service that locked your TV until you agreed (or mailed a letter). There is the upcoming introduction of ads to the home screen. But the latest irritation hits some Roku owners right in the eyes.

Reports on Roku’s community forums and on Reddit find owners of TCL HDTVs, on which Roku is a built-in OS, experiencing “motion smoothing” without having turned it on after updating to Roku OS 13. Some people are reporting that their TV never offered “Action Smoothing” before, but it is now displaying the results with no way to turn it off. Neither the TV’s general settings, nor the specific settings available while content is playing, offer a way to turn it off, according to some users.

“Action smoothing” is Roku’s name for video interpolation, or motion smoothing. The heart of motion smoothing is Motion Estimation Motion Compensation (MEMC). Fast-moving video, such as live sports or intense action scenes, can have a “juddery” feeling when shown on TVs at a lower frame rate. Motion smoothing uses MEMC hardware and algorithms to artificially boost the frame rate of a video signal by creating its best guess of what a frame between two existing frames would look like and then inserting it to boost the frame rate.

When it works, a signal looks more fluid and, as the name implies, smooth. When it is left on and a more traditional signal at 24 or 30 frames per second is processed, it works somewhat too well. Shows and films look awkwardly realistic, essentially lacking the motion blur and softer movement to which we’re accustomed. Everything looks like a soap opera or like you’re watching a behind-the-scenes smartphone video of your show. It’s so persistent an issue, and often buried in a TV’s settings, that Tom Cruise did a whole PSA about it back in 2018.

Ars has contacted Roku for comment and will update this post with a response. When affected Roku TVs regain their ability to keep motion smoothing at bay, the setting is typically located in the “Expert Settings” area of the TV or by enabling “Movie” mode from the quick settings.

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