Wenlei Ma

3 weeks ago | thenightly.com.au | Wenlei Ma

When Mario was born in pixel form, he wasn’t the hero of his own story. He wasn’t even Mario. In 1981, Mario made his debut as a carpenter called Jumpman, a supporting character in the Donkey Kong arcade game Nintendo created to save the company from the financial blackhole brought on by the failure of Radar Scope, an Asteroids-like competitor that failed to fire.

3 weeks ago | thenightly.com.au | Wenlei Ma

I am Dana Scully at the start of The X-Files. That is to say, a sceptic. I’m an atheist, (Scully was actually Catholic), and believe every mystery has a rational explanation rooted in science, even if we don’t quite understand something yet. I once met a palm reader who looked at my hand and told me that the three significant relationships in my life were my partner, my mother and my friends. Wrong on two out of three. She spun the same line on everyone else at the party.

3 weeks ago | thenightly.com.au | Wenlei Ma

We want onscreen friends to be real-life friends. Whether it’s Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, Michael Sheen and David Tennant, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler or Michelle Williams and Busy Philipps, we love the idea that their chemistry transcends movie magic. It helps to buy into the elaborate fantasy worlds we emotionally invest in. Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters. Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.

3 weeks ago | thenightly.com.au | Wenlei Ma

Considering Ted Kaczynski’s later exploits, there’s a great irony that in 1959 as a 17-year-old, he would be given the code name “Lawful”. It’s quite the contrast to the moniker he would earn some decades later – the Unabomber. His notoriety stemmed not just from the 16 bombs he mailed to academics, airline executives, scientists and people he identified as furthering technological advancement and therefore, the decline of mankind. Sign up to The Nightly's newsletters.

3 weeks ago | thenightly.com.au | Wenlei Ma

If you didn’t get enough earnest sentimentality from last year’s blockbuster promotional tour for Wicked, it’s about to come back around. With the release of the first trailer for the second Wicked movie, we have now officially entered another hype era. There is sure to be more holding, both space and hands. Wicked: For Good is due out in November, the conclusion to Jon M.