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Welcome to Career Watch, a vocational checkup of top actors and directors, and those who hope to get there. In this edition we take on Nicholas Hoult, who’s doing what he’s always done: owning character roles in film, theater and television.
Bottom Line: Hoult has an enigmatic persona that fits just about any role. The camera is drawn to his deep blue eyes, and you can count on Hoult to deliver a character’s emotional spine. (He’s not one to go overboard.) That’s why this grown-up child actor never falls out of favor. He can handle anything: Marvel superheroics (“X-Men: Days of Future Past,” “First Class,” “Dark Phoenix” and “Apocalypse”), Nic Cage flicks (“The Weatherman” and “Renfield”), movies starring Toni Colette (“About a Boy” and “Juror #2”), action thrillers (“The Order,” “True History of the Kelly Gang,” “Mad Max: Fury Road”), and comedic bodice-rippers (“The Favourite,” “The Great”).
Career Arcs: Hoult first trod the boards when he was three, following in the footsteps of his older siblings. He starred opposite Toni Collette and Hugh Grant at age 11 in “About a Boy” (2002) and landed a role in his first American movie at age 14 opposite Cage in “The Weatherman.” He made his mark at 16 as a tough teen in the TV series “Skins,” followed by Tom Ford’s “A Single Man,” as a vital young man who reminds a grieving Colin Firth that there are reasons to live. That led to Hoult’s shaved-head performance as Knox in George Miller’s arduous Namibia desert shoot, “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
“I found ‘Fury Road’ thrilling because it was so practical and visceral,” Hoult said in a Zoom interview. “I remember sitting in my character Knox’s car and seeing the stunt team give the signal to start the engines, and you hear this cacophony of noise around you, and then you’d go across the desert. You couldn’t hear well what was going on because of the noise of the engines. But then you’d see the camera flash by on the video car. There was an electricity to it. Yes, at times it was a long shoot. I enjoy challenges. I thrive on people banding together to accomplish something that’s difficult.”
Assets: Beyond his self-evident acting skills and tall leading man looks, Hoult’s an experienced veteran with athletic grace. He can go American or English, ride a horse or sling a gun, but he doesn’t burn his audience with formula familiarity. And he never phones it in, no matter how bad the movie. In both well-reviewed “The Order” (Justin Kurzel) and “Juror #2” (Clint Eastwood), he projects potential menace: Hoult keeps you guessing as to what motivates these seemingly decent family men.
He had worked with Justin Kurzel on “The Kelly Gang” so he trusted him on “The Order,” based on true stories of 80s neo-Nazis in the Northwest. He didn’t mind playing a villain opposite FBI agent Jude Law, but sees him as a character worth understanding. “The story feels relevant today,” Hoult said. “To play the character as evil and obvious wouldn’t be appealing. And Bob Mathews is someone who presented all these things to disenfranchised and lonely people. He could target people, put people off enough whereby they wouldn’t understand what they were getting into, perhaps.”
“The Favourite” and “The Great” revealed Hoult’s penchant for sexy comedy. “First of all, Tony McNamara is whip-smart,” said Hoult. “Every day I opened the script, it’s an absolute joy to read and to get to deliver those lines. It was wonderful to have that experience with that character, because then I could take that forward into doing ‘The Great.'”
Some stars don’t like to look weak on screen. Hoult isn’t worried about that. In Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” the actor plays the feckless husband of a woman (Lily-Rose Depp) being pursued by a vampire. When he goes to encounter the demon (Bill Skarsgard), he’s terrified. He’s the damsel in distress. “What’s tragic about Nicholas Holt’s character,” Eggers told me, “is that he’s trying, and he thinks he’s going to be the hero, of course. But he can’t be.”
In the movie, Hoult walks along a dirt road in the dark toward the ominous moonlit castle of Count Orlok, getting more terrified by the minute. Suddenly he is swung through the air onto a horse and carriage. The actor started out walking, then stepped onto a board that had been attached to a dolly, which was on a track, kept going forward, and then lifted him up. “That’s a great example of so many things that have to work just right,” said Hoult. “The movie feels easy and flows wonderfully and is beautiful to watch. But there’s so many small elements like that that were actually incredibly difficult to get inch-perfect.”
Awards Attention: So far Hoult has been nominated for Golden Globes, Critics Choice Awards, and Emmys for his tasty scene-chewing role as Emperor Peter III in “The Favourite” writer Tony McNamara’s “The Great,” his well-reviewed three-season Hulu series opposite Elle Fanning as Catherine the Great.
Latest Openings: Hoult had a busy year. After shooting “Nosferatu” in Prague, “it was an intense period,” he said, “because I had a weekend off when I was traveling back from Prague and then flew to Calgary to begin ‘The Order.’ And then I had a weekend off, which wasn’t really a weekend off, because of the ‘Superman’ screen test. And then I flew on the Monday to Savannah to start ‘Juror #2.’ It was amazing to work with those three directors in one year. At the end, I sat down for a minute, and reflected, which I don’t often do. If you could have told me 10, 15 years ago, that I get to work with those three directors in one year? That’s the dream. That’s everything I could have wished for. I’ve grown a lot.”
The character in “Juror #2” is a cipher. “He is hiding everything,” said Hoult, “and he has to somewhat be a mirror for the audience, be someone that they can project themselves onto. For this to work, everyone has to be like, ‘Hang on, what would I do?’ The big moral question of this film keeps you engaged. This predicament is getting worse and worse and there’s no easy way out, obviously.”
Playing opposite Toni Colette was a welcome reunion after “About a Boy.” “Here’s this actress that I respected,” he said, “this person that made me feel so looked after and saved as a kid, and now I’m an adult, we’re both different people, but getting to have this experience together. It was beautiful.”
Next Step: Hoult buzz-shaved his head for the second time, for “Superman” villain Lex Luthor: his son did the honors. Hoult relishes “all of those things physically that make you feel more like the character,” he said. He had a month to prep before the film shot in Atlanta last February. “So many wonderful actors have portrayed that character in so many different films and iterations,” said Hoult. “We’re working from the same source material, but I do feel fortunate with James Gunn directing and writing the script, because he has such an understanding of the world and such a unique voice. He has a great take on it. But it’s daunting taking on a role like that. We’ll see what people think.”
Current Gossip: Hoult shuttles back and forth between L.A. and London. After a four-year romance with his “X-Men” costar Jennifer Lawrence, Hoult is raising two children with partner Bryana Holly.
Career Advice: Hoult is talented and bankable in indie films and TV series, but so far not many studio leading roles have come his way. Hoult is right to keep changing things up. He could use a box office hit, and “Nosferatu” may fit the bill. While he ably carried well-reviewed “Juror #2, Warner Bros. ill-advisedly took the film straight to streaming, amid media protests.
The studio did cast him as villain Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s reboot of “Superman”: the ultimate juicy supporting role. “Maybe I haven’t been pigeonholed because I consciously try and play away from not doing one thing,” he said. “I enjoy acting. I want to continue doing it for a long, long time, hopefully.”
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We can’t think of a more versatile, large-capacity NAS box than the 10Gbe ZimaCube Pro. And it supports Thunderbolt ethernet for even faster performance. But it’s a tad pricey and we ran into some bugs with the NVMe in RAID.
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If you’re looking for a dainty wallflower of a storage box, skip this review. If you’re looking for a large-capacity network-attached storage (NAS) box to provide ton of storage space as well as run web apps, read on.
The ZimaCube is a cube-shaped (duh!), 6-bay server/storage enclosure that can function both over 10Gbe and Thunderbolt 4 port via an ethernet bridge. The handsome box measures approximately 8.75-inches deep, by 8.75 inches tall, by 9.5-inches wide–no, it’s not a perfect cube. Cubular? Cubist? All six SATA drive bays are 3.5-inch, housing six non-locking, easily-removal trays.
Note that the 3.5-inch trays don’t use quick-change, pop-out rails, you must use the provided screws to install drives. Smaller, finer-threaded screws are also provided for SATA SSDs.
There is what appears to be a seventh bay to the right. Technically it is and is referred to in the ZimaCube documentations as the seventh bay. However, it uses a different connector that mates with the provided single 4-slot PCIe M.2/NVMe adapter card. Said adapter is held in place by a captive thumb screw for easy removal.
The bays are covered by a magnetically attached face plate. Directly above it are two Type-A 3.0 USB ports (5Gbps), a 5Gbps Type-C port, 3.5 mm stereo headphone jack, and a quick copy button that immediately copies data from attached thumb drives and the like.
The back of the box is home to a single 10Gbps ethernet port, twin 2.5Gbps ethernet ports, two Type-A 2.0 USB ports, two Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports (without the identifying logo), as well as both DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 ports for attaching displays. To the left of the Thunderbolt 4 ports are the power jack and a pinhole reset button.
As you might guess, a server running a 10-core I5, with up to six HDDs and four NVMe SSDs like the ZimaCube ships with beefy power support: 19-volts and 11.58 amps to be specific. That should handle any drives you throw in the ZimaCube easily.
IceWhale didn’t provide any instructions on how to visit the interior of the unit. The lack of granular documentation was my least favorite thing about the ZimaCube Pro. Consequently, I simply started removing bolts. Fortunately, my first four choices (IceWhale “thoughtfully” uses hexagonal types) at the top of the unit allowed me up to pop the top to see the two half-height PCIe slots. You can add just about anything Linux has a driver for.
I was also able to view the populated M.2 slot. There’s another underneath, but it’s quite difficult to insert an SSD into. So difficult to both see and access that I asked the company if that was indeed what it was before proceeding.
The ZimaCube Pro is $1,099 with the 16GB of DRAM that we tested, and $1,249 with 64GB of memory. That’s a pretty reasonable upgrade price (unlike a certain famous company that charges far more than upgraded components are worth). If you’re going to run virtual machines or Docker apps, go for the 64GB.
On the other hand, if you’re simply going for lots of storage via NAS, you might be able to get away with the $699 non-Pro version of the ZimaCube with a slower Intel N100 CPU, only 8GB of memory, and no Thunderbolt ethernet. It’s also 2.5Gbe only, so expect performance to top out at around 250MBps.
IceWhale provides a utility that makes finding and accessing the ZimaCube a piece of cake, though it involves some guess work. Again, the lack of granular documentation meant no reference to a default username and password. I recommend installing the utility and have it open the web interface, then follow the prompts to create a new username and password with which to log on.
After you’re fully logged on via the web interface, you can define any RAID arrays or single volumes you want using the storage utility. It worked well in my hands-on but sometimes required a reboot before array deletions would register. Most users won’t make as many changes as I did during testing.
Beyond that, accessing the ZimaCube locally is just like mounting any other network resource, whether via 10Gbe or Thunderbolt ethernet bridge. Create shared folders via the web interface using the Files app, locate the ZimaCube in network locations, log on, and open said shared folders.
NAS boxes, at least those with display ports, can be used as the computer they actually are, if you attach a keyboard and monitor. However, as mentioned, they are typically configured and employed remotely via an HTML interface and accessed using a web browser. It’s much like using Teamviewer, RustDesk, etc. to control another computer remotely. The image of the Zima interface below is from my browser.
Modern NAS is capable of much more than their original purpose of simply serving up files. IceWhale implements a rather large array of browser-based apps that cover a wide spectrum of utility. They’re all available from an app store, though I missed a search function to browse them by function.
Media servers include Plex, Emby, Swingmusic, and Jellyfin. There’s the Handbrake video encoder and Calibre-Web for reading ebooks. Bittorrent/download clients include Transmission, qBittorrent, and Gospeed. Backup is represented by Duplicati, and Resilio Sync.
I’ve only mentioned the better-known applications; there are others. I was most enticed by the ZVM app which allows you to run virtual machines and comes with a demo of Windows 10 you can run.
Docker is nicely integrated into the system with an option in the app store to add containerized applications, though there’s not a lot of hand-holding in the process. As with much of the ZimaCube, a fairly high geek IQ or a zeal for learning Linux and Linux apps is helpful. Linux? Yup. Nearly every NAS box out there these days is running a version of Linux, which as you may or may not know, is nearly as app-rich these days as the pay competition and in some areas such as Docker, superior.
Given its 10Gbe and Thunderbolt 4 support, and the ability to combine drives in RAID the ZimaCube Pro is fast, though not as fast as you might think when you first hear “Thunderbolt.” That’s because, as mentioned, the ZimaCube Pro connects via a Thunderbolt connection using an ethernet bridge and network transport protocols (SMB in this case). The fastest we saw over Thunderbolt ethernet was about 2GBps reading.
For media, I tested the ZimaCube Pro with two fast (290MBps sequential transfers) 24TB hard drives in a striped RAID 0, four SATA SSDs striped in RAID 0, as well as four 2TB NVMe SSDs striped in RAID 0 using the adapter card. Both over the 10Gbe port, as well as the Thunderbolt port on a Mac Studio M1 Max. The results, while all relatively fast, were occasionally puzzling, and I ran into an “issue.”
The puzzler was the two HDDs logging well over 800MBps over both Thunderbolt and 10Gbe, significantly faster than the roughly 600MBps they’re natively capable of. Obviously there’s some caching going. Overall, it made it somewhat difficult to directly compare the ZimaCube’s results with other DAS or NAS boxes.
This “issue” was that at various times, under stress of the AmorphousDiskMark (64GiB) testing, the NVMe RAID 0 array would go belly up with one of the drives disappearing from the array.
ZimaCube Pro pointed to one NVMe SSD as damaged, but rebooting cleared the error and the array would again be available for use. I even changed the drive that disappeared and the error repeated itself. In normal copy operations, I didn’t see any errors. Only under the benchmark stress.
Tested individually, there was also no problem with any of the four SSDs. The issue is still under investigation by IceWhale at the time of this writing. Note also, that there’s no real reason to run all four NVMe SSDs in RAID 0 as there’s no way to utilize the speed over ethernet.
Below you’ll see the best results I got from each array on each bus. As AmorphousDiskMark overly stressed the ZimaCube’s NVMe, I switched to Atto for this article.
Atto shows faster speeds than Disk Speed Test and AmorphousDiskMark, but for the most part, I ran it using the far smaller 256MiB (Mebibyte) data set on a couple of tests. Note that when I tried the 32GiB (Gibibyte) data set (the second image below) on the NVMe RAID 0 array, it did not cause the same error as AmorphousDiskMark, However, both read and write speeds started bouncing all over the map. Again, caching.
All the Atto tests are over Thunderbolt 4 ethernet. First up are the SATA RAID 0 results which turned out much as expected.
Again, you can below that upping the data set to 32GiB delivered extremely mixed results.
With the NVMe RAID 0 array, results were wildly inconsistent even using the much smaller 256MiB data set. There’s no way writes should be this much faster (from 512Kib to 24MiB)than reads without caching involved.
The HDD RAID 0 array results were very consistent, but far faster than they have any right to be. As stated, even combined the total throughput shouldn’t exceed 600MBps. Again, though not confirmed by IceWhale this is likely caching.
Next is Disk Speed Test for the NVMe RAID 0 array over 10Gbe (left) and Thunderbolt 4 ethernet (right). Pretty darn close and these results make sense.
Next up are SATA SSDs which perform on par with the NVMe according to BlackMagicDesign’s Disk Speed Text. This is four of them in RAID 0. Note that ethernet is a major limiting factor in long transfers.
Below are the RAID 0 HDD results which again, make zero sense unless the ZimaCube Pro is using some sort of caching. Normally, a twin HDD array such as this is capable of 580MBps maximum.
I sound like a broken record, but it’s likely some sort of caching or software wizardry skewed the results. That said, it’s difficult to complain about anything that’s faster than you expect. So I won’t.
The basic story is this: You’ll get between 600MBps and 1000MBps using its 10Gbe port, depending on media, and anywhere from 800MBps to 1.9GBps (read) using the Thunderbolt 4 port as an ethernet bridge will be the norm.
If you’re looking for fast, capacious NAS with the possibility of a faster direct Thunderbolt connection, then the ZimaCube is an attractive solution. Especially for virtual computing and media streaming. Overall, despite the issues (again, there’s really no need for NVMe RAID 0 over ethernet), I enjoyed both looking at the ZimaCube’s handsome countenance and using it. Note that IceWhale also makes one of our favorite modular build-it-yourself NAS solutions which you can find reviewed on sister publication TechHive.