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‘Deep Water’ Review: A Plane Crashes Into a Pile of Sharks in Renny Harlin’s Unexpectedly Sensitive Return to the Sea

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‘Deep Water’ Review: A Plane Crashes Into a Pile of Sharks in Renny Harlin’s Unexpectedly Sensitive Return to the Sea

Like all great films, Renny Harlin’s solidly enjoyable “Deep Water” is about an airplane that crashes right into a big pile of sharks. And let me tell you, those sharks are fucking hungry.

You’d think the sound of a 747 (or whatever) splitting open above their favorite dinner spot might scare these makos away, but these credible-enough CGI predators quite literally smell blood in the water, and the wreckage is still flaming when they start chomping on the survivors like god’s perfect jump-scares. Even the tiger sharks that ate so many of Quint’s compatriots from the USS Indianapolis in “Jaws” had the courtesy to wait 30 minutes; in this economy, I guess no one can pass up the chance for a free meal, especially when the food is a little richer than usual.

TAXI DRIVER, Robert DeNiro, 1976

Perhaps that explains why Harlin was lured back into the water after all these years. He’s largely been slumming it since last venturing into the ocean with 1999’s “Deep Blue Sea” (which continues to rival “Jaws” for cinema’s most indelible shark-related deaths, and tragically remains the only movie ever made to end with LL Cool J rapping about how his hat is like a shark’s fin). It certainly explains why Harlin’s “Deep Water” — which is not to be confused with “Deep Water” where Ben Affleck fixates on his snail collection while Ana de Armas cucks him to oblivion — feels so much closer to a real movie than any of the Redbox junk and “The Strangers” sequels that Harlin has been churning out this century. In a word: money. In three more confusing words: Gene Simmons’ money. 

Indeed, the Kiss frontman — aka Chaim Witz, aka “The Demon” — has invested in a well-funded production company along with Arclight Films chairman Gary Hamilton, and their first order of business was to resurrect the “Bait 3D” sequel that was originally set to shoot in 2014 before it was scrapped because of its “uncomfortable similarities” to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Good news: The only “uncomfortable similarities” that remain in “Deep Water” are the ones it shares with the B-pictures of yesteryear (e.g., patience, emotionality, people dying from horniness), which strike a nerve because they’re so rare to find in the age of straight-to-streaming disaster slop like “Thrash.” 

Most of the film’s other resemblances, of which there are many, prove less distressing. For example: The ensemble script, credited to Shayne Armstrong, Pete Bridges, S.P. Krause, and Damien Power, feels less indebted to “The Towering Inferno” than it does to the human simulacra of Garry Marshall’s overstuffed holiday trilogy, but I have to admit I found some charm in how ruthlessly “Deep Water” deploys its archetypes. 

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That starts with Aaron Eckhart’s Ben, who’s the closest thing this movie has to a protagonist. A hard-jawed first officer who grimaces even when he’s trying to reassure a frazzled child before takeoff, Ben signs up for a flight to China just because it will keep him away from his wife and kids; the guy is so obviously haunted by something that you half expect him to start radioing the flight control tower about his ghosts. That makes him a perfect foil for the fun-loving captain Rich (Ben Kingsley, loose but still imperious), an errant father and repeat divorcé whose itinerant lifestyle suits his preference for singing bad karaoke to a gaggle of flight attendants over staying in one place with a single woman. 

The other characters make these guys seem complicated by comparison. Three cheers for “Mad Max: Fury Road” actor Angus Sampson, who scores above-the-billing credit for his performance as Dan, the single worst person ever born onto this earth. A rumpled and sweaty human stinkrag, Dan’s entire job in life is to be so utterly loathsome that otherwise good people might shrug their shoulders when he’s devoured by a shark right in front of their faces, and business is a-booming. He moves through “Deep Water” with all the grace of a turd floating through a community swimming pool, harassing Northeastern Airlines employees for a cocktail even after the plane has plunged into the ocean. 

Naturally, it’s only because Dan lies about having a lithium bag in his suitcase that the plane goes down in the first place, a catastrophe that Harlin stretches into a strong, phobia-triggering setpiece that’s even scarier for its step-by-step clarity than for all of the bodily harm it visits upon the passengers. Yes, people still get ripped out of a hole in the fuselage like always, but not until after they’ve been obliterated by flying snack carts and diced apart by shards of broken glass. 

While the crash might lack the dark comic glee that Sam Raimi brought to a similar accident in the recent “Send Help,” Harlin is very selective about his approach to “fun” in this film — while “Deep Water” is always dumb as hell, it’s also heavy with the sort of unleaded sentiment that’s seldom found in pre-summer popcorn fare. Braindead but heartfelt, this is hardly the only disaster movie that wants you to delight in some deaths and get choked up over others, but even the “deserved” kills in this one are tinged with tragedy (spoiler alert: Dan has three kids!), while the tragic ones are sad enough to suggest that “Deep Water” takes itself more seriously than most audiences will. 

That approach can be hard to square with a movie whose characters all seem a few AI tokens short of passing the Turing test. Kelly Gale and Ryan Bown play a pair of comically hot newlyweds who — in a move equal parts insane and understandable — decide to join the mile-high club even though they’re flying with their two young children from previous marriages (both of whom become integral to the story in their own ways). Meanwhile, there’s Kate Fitzpatrick as a sassy and spiteful version of the old woman who wants to show you pictures of their grandkids the whole flight; Li Wenhan and Zhao Simei as star-crossed gamers on the same e-sports team; and Lakota Johnson as a comically aggro American meathead who still wants to pick fights with his fellow passengers on a piece of sinking fuselage surrounded by dorsal fins. There’s also a handful of beautiful flight attendants who all kind of bleed together and/or out.

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It’s impossible to care about any of these people in the traditional sense, or to even think of them as people in the traditional sense, but Harlin invests in them with a conviction that proves endearing, if not quite contagious. Plotted like modern schlock but paced almost like a classic ’70s disaster movie, “Deep Water” mines real investment from its thrills by focusing on the little things that movies this stupid usually forget: The respectful friction between Ben and Rich as they figure out how to ditch the plane, the geography between the various pieces of the cabin after it shatters, the way the sharks circle around their victims the way they used to in old cartoons. 

It all feels very purposeful, which makes it that much worse that the kills are telegraphed the same way anytime (I’d expect more from the man who gave us Samuel L. Jackson’s most iconic screen death), and that the movie kinda just bobs in the ocean as it builds to its not-so-grand finale. Admirable as it is that “Deep Water” tries to play things straight, Harlin’s film would have benefited enormously from a neurologically enhanced super Jaws in the third act. Ben Kingsley could have rapped for us at the very least. But if this isn’t quite the best shark movie since “Deep Blue Sea” (that honor still belongs to “The Shallows,” or maybe “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou” if you stretch the rules a little), it’s a lot higher up the food chain than it should be. 

Grade: C+

Magenta Light Studios will release “Deep Water” in theaters on Friday, May 1.

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‘House of Criticism’ Review: A Pensive and Touching Portrait of Married Art Critics Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith (It Is Only, at Moments, a True-Life Christopher Guest Movie)

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‘House of Criticism’ Review: A Pensive and Touching Portrait of Married Art Critics Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith (It Is Only, at Moments, a True-Life Christopher Guest Movie)

If you wanted to be funny about it, you could say that Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, who occupy the center of the documentary “House of Criticism,” are like characters out of a Christopher Guest movie. Both are venerable New York art critics — but the thing is, they’re married New York art critics, whose lives revolve entirely around art and art criticism and talking about art and art criticism. They eat, breathe, sleep and dream it. In the Guest mockumentary of my imagination, the two would be played by Bob Balaban and Parker Posey, and they would be blissfully cracked egghead eccentrics who think that art is the most important thing in the world because it’s the most important thing in the world to them.

At moments, “House of Criticism” does throw off unintentional comic sparks of art-world insularity. But I’m kidding, ultimately, since underneath that it’s a pensive and touching documentary, and it happens to be about two writers I greatly admire. Roberta Smith, the co-chief art critic of the New York Times, and Jerry Saltz, the art critic of New York magazine, are writers of sway, elegance, legend. They’re two of the last powerful legacy critics in America, and both are fantastic writers. For them, the love of art is a mission, at once sophisticated and childlike. Roberta calls art “the most advanced operating system that our species has devised to explore consciousness, the seen and the unseeable.” The way art connects (and saves) these two on a daily basis is its own rarefied story, and it speaks to a certain vanishing culture of passionate New York literary brainiacs that used to be thought of as almost the essence of the city.

Early on, Jerry stands before Picasso’s epochal Les Demoiselles d’Avignon at the Museum of Modern Art and does a head-spinning riff on it, describing how 500 years of art history collapsed in the late 19th century (through Manet, the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Cezanne), leaving the blank slate for Picasso to fill. He compares the way the painting remade the world to the cataclysm of 9/11 (“When we believed in one course of history, and obviously there was another course of history, and they shattered”). Now that’s criticism.

As “House of Criticism” shows us, Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith are luminaries and survivors who enjoy an idealized life together. Roberta is something of a contradiction, both the haughtier and more vulnerable of the two. She can be imperious in that Timesian way, but there’s a tremulous insecurity about her. Beneath a certain Midwestern patrician rigor, she’s full of self-doubt about her writing and is in constant need of encouragement, which Jerry is more than happy to provide. He’s blustery and big picture-oriented, while her insights are more delicate and intimate, blooming out of her holy communion with the work.

Jerry is a contradiction as well, a man who writes like a demon and looks like a dentist. But don’t let his fubsy aura fool you — he’s the social butterfly and loose cannon, plugged into social media (which he plays like a violin), and the audacious thoughts pour out of him. The most telling aspect of their relationship is that as writers they should be competitors, but instead they’re spiritual collaborators; they turn what could be a competition into a romance. They help each other on word choices, and even when they’re reviewing the same show, they’re really competing with themselves, with their own cultivated and highly different ideas of perfectionism.

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Their relationship is built, to a large degree, around Jerry’s belief that Roberta is the superior critic — but this, for Jerry, is a form of chivalry, the flower of their love story. “Your writing is so condensed, right on the object, focused,” he says. He’s intensely supportive, but Jerry, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2018, is arguably the greater writer (his poetic showmanship flies higher), and it’s my reading that deep down he knows it. It’s his perpetual self-deprecation and devotion that keeps the marriage balanced.

The two have no children and no apparent hobbies outside of their unrelenting obsession with art. They slip in and out of gallery openings, where they’re treated like royalty, and they attend 20 to 30 shows a week. By all rights, they should have a social calendar that rivals Andy Warhol’s in the ’70s. But here’s the joke: They adore their life together but are so devoted to their work, so monastic about it, that they never go out. Jerry calls them “happy losers” and describes their spacious apartment off Fifth Avenue in Greenwich Village as “the house that criticism built.”

In the morning, he pours deli coffee over ice into a 7-11 Big Gulp cup, and he’ll consume three of those a day. It’s fuel, as is the food he eats. When his friend Adam Platt, the New York magazine restaurant critic, asks Jerry what his favorite food is, Jerry replies: the grilled chicken at Gristede’s (a slightly downscale New York supermarket). “That’s the life of the mind!” says Platt. “You’re as happy with prison food.” He’s not kidding. I live in the same neighborhood and use Gristede’s as a convenience store, and I would never consider buying the grilled chicken there. But as Jerry explains, popping a bag of spinach into the microwave, he and Roberta are so consumed with work that they subsist on this drone food. The two barely go to restaurants (though we see them having breakfast at their favorite diner). Do they drink? If I was them, I’d need a cocktail by the end of the day, but the movie never says.  

“House of Criticism,” directed by Alison Chernick, has a sketchy but rather controlled vantage. There’s a lot you don’t learn (I would have liked to see more about the politics of the New York art world), and plenty you do — like the fact that Lena Dunham is their goddaughter. Late in the movie, she comes over to visit them and provokes a penetrating exchange on the subject of why they never had kids.

People don’t often think of critics in humanistic terms, but these two invest criticism with soul, and there’s something disarming about how they were both damaged people who came together by seeing, in each other, a mirror image. She was born in New York and raised in Kansas, moving back to Manhattan in her early twenties to be part of the art scene (her mentor was the artist and critic Donald Judd). She found her way to criticism as a role in life, yet there was something metaphysically lonely about her.

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It’s Jerry who comes from trauma. His mother, who committed suicide when he was 10, was erased out of his life (she was never spoken of again). He tells a haunting story about how she dropped him off for a solo visit to the Art Institute of Chicago just two weeks before her death, and it was there, on that visit, that the art lightbulb went off: He realized that every painting is a story. He wanted to be a painter, and tried (he had some talent), but thought that he lacked the proper schooling. What he really lacked was confidence. In photographs from the time, Jerry looks like he could be Richard Dreyfuss’s sad-sack brother. He wound up becoming a long-distance trucker, driving 10-wheelers full of paintings (he did this for 10 years), and he confesses that at moments he would go back into the truck and stomp on paintings and damage them. That is seriously sick behavior (his self-hatred was off the charts), and it’s amazing that he became the menschy person he did.

These two have thrived as critics by evolving. Jerry says of critics, “We have to adapt to the times, or we’re bullies and geezers.” He’s right. The film culminates in Roberta’s ultimate evolution — her decision to retire from the New York Times. The time feels right, but the question hovers: Without that job, what will her identity be? In a moving moment, she tells Jerry, “You’re my infrastructure.” “You’re mine,” he says. (That’s the critic version of “You complete me.”) And seeing each other through the prism of art is both of their infrastructure. These two are standard-bearers for the glory of a culture that once was. It’s a culture where criticism is about judging things, but more than that it’s about exploring things — experiencing things, bringing you closer to life.

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Movie Review: SUPERGIRL – Assignment X

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Movie Review: SUPERGIRL – Assignment X


By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer


Posted: June 26th, 2026 / 08:03 PM

SUPERGIRL movie poster | ©2026 Warner Bros./DC Studios

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Milly Adcock, David Corenswet, Eve Ridley, Matthias Schoenaerts, Diarmaid Murtagh, Jason Momoa, David Krumholtz, Emily Beecham
Writer: Ana Nogueira, based on characters created by Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster
Director: Craig Gillespie
Distributor: Warner Bros./DC Studios
Release Date: June 26, 2026

The new SUPERGIRL doesn’t have that “Eureka! This is how you do this now” spark that galvanized its immediate franchise predecessor, last year’s SUPERMAN. Director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira, basing the film on characters created by DC Comics’ Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster, probably wisely, aren’t going for that.

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Instead, the SUPERGIRL makers are intent on providing a lively adventure, getting to the point quickly and letting the action unspool with unquestionably strong motivation, abetted by plenty of punch-ups, kicking and frequent explosions.

Supergirl, aka Kara Zor-El (Milly Adcock), is from the now-dead planet Krypton, just like her cousin Clark/Kal-El/Superman (David Corenswet). However, where Clark has chosen to remain on Earth, where the yellow sun gives him superpowers that allow to help Earth’s residents, Kara likes to party on planets that have a red sun, where she has no unusual abilities.

This is because Kara seems to have taken to heart a dictum from a different comic book universe – with great power comes great responsibility – and decided the inverse is true: with no power comes no responsibility.

We get insight into exactly why Kara is so duty-averse over the course of SUPERGIRL, and it’s probably not a spoiler to say that she re-examines some attitudes as events unfold.

Kara plans to celebrate her twenty-third birthday on a backwater red sun planet. The bar where Kara chooses to drink is entered by preteen Ruthye Knoll (Eve Ridley), whose family has been murdered by brigands, led by the horrendous Krem (Matthias Schoenaerts). Ruthye is out for revenge. Kara thinks Ruthye is a bit young and pure-hearted to be on a murderous quest.

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Even on a planet with a red sun, though, Kara is still handy with fists and feet. Ruthye sees what Kara can do and concludes she is the ideal ally. Kara absolutely refuses to help. Then something occurs that credibly rouses Kara to do whatever it takes to achieve her aims, which sort of line up with Ruthye’s.

No explanation is needed for why Kara feels such urgency, which we easily share. Her concern for Ruthye is understandable and her connecting to larger purpose is shown rather than spoken.

Intriguingly, the aesthetics of SUPERGIRL are largely those of STAR WARS, with some MAD MAX and BLADE RUNNER thrown in. The filmmakers have a good time with all sorts of utterly nonhuman alien people and figuring out how to make interplanetary versions of familiar items like vending machines.

The pace is pleasingly brisk and the structure doesn’t require much exposition. When they hit a hard-to-answer question like why Kara is Supergirl while Clark is Superman, they acknowledge it and then get out from under without irritating anybody.

For anyone wondering about the veracity of the recording from Superman’s parents that appeared in SUPERMAN, a quick line of dialogue here confirms it (sorry, Jor-El supporters).

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There is the expected amount of CGI involved, including a great motion-capture performance by Kara’s dog Krypto (modeled upon executive producer/SUPERMAN director James Gunn’s dog), but a lot of the stunts and makeup appear gratifyingly practical.

Adcock is fine in all of Kara’s moods, from wasted to resistant to determined, with a delightful reaction to feeling her body’s response to the yellow sun. Ridley is an appealing young hero, and Corenswet offers wholesome support. Schoenaerts lets Krem revel in his own soft-spoken vileness, and Jason Momoa enthusiastically portrays an intergalactic bounty hunter. David Krumholtz is affecting as Kara’s scientist father.

SUPERGIRL isn’t going to redefine superhero movies, but it’s a perfectly enjoyable example of the form.

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Film review: ‘Tuner’ mixes classical music, crime, and Dustin Hoffman | The Jerusalem Post

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Film review: ‘Tuner’ mixes classical music, crime, and Dustin Hoffman | The Jerusalem Post

Tuner, now playing in theaters throughout Israel, is an offbeat, interesting drama and crime caper, with some funny moments.

It co-stars Dustin Hoffman in a story of a young piano tuner, Niki (Leo Woodall), a former music prodigy with perfect pitch who suffers from hyperacusis, a condition that makes him extraordinarily sensitive to loud noises.

In a series of events that are a bit improbable but that seem quite credible while you’re watching, Niki discovers his finely tuned hearing gives him a great talent for safecracking, which brings him to the attention of a crime gang.

It features a clever, often surprising screenplay, co-written by its director, Daniel Roher (who won an Oscar for the documentary, Navalny) and Robert Ramsey. There are also wonderful performances from the cast, which also includes distinguished actress Tovah Feldshuh of Nobody Wants This and Fauda star Lior Raz.

DUSTIN HOFFMAN (behind) and Leo Woodall in ‘Tuner.’ (credit: Forum Films)

The characters have a nice, funny raport

When Tuner opens, Niki is working in a piano-tuning business in New York with a former musician, Harry Horowitz (Hoffman).

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The beefy, laconic, young man treats the garrulous, wisecracking Harry with respect, listening patiently to all his jokes and stories about the good old days when he worked with jazz greats.

These two have a nice rapport, as Niki drives Harry all over the New York area in an old van and eats in diners with him.

Niki does the work while Harry sits on a sofa, critiquing him.

The two stick out like sore thumbs in the many mansions where they work on spectacular pianos that haven’t been played in decades, for clients who ask them if they can also repair toilets and modems.

Harry, who never made much of a living despite his talent, has fallen on hard times, and he and his wife, Marla (Feldshuh), are barely scraping by. Niki is also broke.

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Recognizing what a great musician Niki is, Harry tries to cajole him into playing again, but the younger man refuses, living an isolated life and trying not to draw attention to himself.

The three incidents that set the plot in motion

Harry has forgotten the combination to his safe and needs to open it. When Niki goes on YouTube to look at a video on how to do it, he discovers that his sensitive hearing makes him a genius at safecracking.

Harry becomes ill and, due to a mess with Medicare, suddenly falls into a huge debt; and Niki meets Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), an extremely ambitious pianist and composing student, who is astounded by his perfect pitch.

Soon, Niki’s talent for safecracking draws the attention of Uri (Lior Raz), an Israeli who runs a bogus security company, where he uses his knowledge of his client’s homes and passwords to steal what he contends are minor trinkets, but which add up to big money for his gang, much like Jon Hamm’s character in the Apple TV series, Your Friends and Neighbors.

Raz hams it up as a character who fits the stereotype of the obnoxious Israeli in the US, and lords it over his supposedly bright accomplice, Yoni (Gil Frank), and his much dimmer nephew, Benny (Nissan Sakira).

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Much of the comedy in the movie comes from Uri browbeating the two, and if you can understand the Hebrew, it’s even funnier than the subtitles.

Criticisms of Tuner

Niki’s romance with Ruthie, which develops quickly, feels a little convenient at times, though the screenplay paints a realistic picture of the competitive world of high-level music students. You know, for most of the movie, that eventually Niki will reveal to her that he was once a great pianist, and when it comes, it’s something of an anti-climax.

After Hoffman’s character gets sick, he disappears from the rest of the movie except for a couple of scenes, and that’s too bad. It’s great to see Hoffman having fun as Harry, and the scenes where he and Niki banter help humanize the younger man, making him more likable and less self-centered.

Woodall is one of the most in-demand young actors. He played a hunky love interest in both Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and the Netflix series Vladimir; he also appeared in the second season of The White Lotus.

He has a buff body and conventional leading-man good looks, and generally plays confident, happy-go-lucky guys, which means he is cast against type here.

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Niki is the kind of role that might seem better suited for actors like Josh O’Connor, Jeremy Allen White, or Timothée Chalamet. Woodall has to work hard to convince us he is withdrawn and feels out of place in all the mansions where he tunes pianos, but his charm wins out, and soon, you come to accept him in the role.

Mixed music and mixed genres

The soundtrack features a mix of classical music and jazz, and it’s clear it was made by a director who appreciates both.

Tuner settles neatly into a mini-genre of movies that feature plot lines that combine piano-playing characters and crime, that include James Toback’s Fingers with Harvey Keitel, and Jacques Audiard’s remake of it, The Beat that My Heart Skipped with Romain Duris; Francois Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player with Charles Aznavour; and Eugenio Mira’s Grand Piano with Elijah Wood. It also recalls the spirit of Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, which features Jack Nicholson in one of his best performances; here as a piano prodigy who has rejected his oppressive family and become an oil field worker.

Tuner shares some of the bleakness typical of 1970s films, like Fingers and Five Easy Pieces. At times, the movie moves jarringly between brooding, almost noir-like darkness and scenes with the chatty Harry or the bumbling gangsters.

It might have been a stronger film if Roher had gone in one direction instead of mixing genres, but it would likely have been less entertaining.

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