It didn’t take long for news of actor Matthew Perry’s death to go public. TMZ broke the story so early that paparazzi had already camped out to photograph the Friends star’s grieving parents as they arrived on the scene. The vulturous routines of the celebrity death news complex are, at …
Read More »Taylor Swift and Beyoncé Are Resurrecting the American Movie Theater
Christopher Nolan is a Taylor Swift fan. This is an actual sentence typed in the year 2023. Why does this matter? you ask? Simple, Nolan is a longtime champion of the cinematic experience, and during a recent event at the City University of New York he noted that Hollywood studios …
Read More »'The Black Book' Is Nigeria’s First Runaway Netflix Hit
Editi Effiong’s excitement is infectious. It’s less than three weeks since his crime thriller, The Black Book, premiered on Netflix, and the movie has already been watched more than 70 million times. “I’ve been in a very happy place,” Effiong says. “You create a thing and watch it go out …
Read More »Putting a Real Face on Deepfake Porn
For Taylor Klein, it starts with a weird Facebook message from a friend. A Pornhub link. She doesn’t open it. Must be spam, she figures. “I think you’ve been hacked?” she replies. Nope. Her pal insists the link is real. She clicks, and her nightmare begins. Another Body, directed by …
Read More »Netflix’s Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Working—for Now
If it’s not the company motto yet, it should be: Never count Netflix out. On Wednesday, the streaming giant beat Wall Street projections by reporting a gain of nearly 9 million new subscribers worldwide and $8.5 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2023, a nearly 8 percent increase …
Read More »Here’s What Marvel’s 'Daredevil' Overhaul Means for Streaming
Trouble, it seems, is afoot in the Mouse House. Daredevil: Born Again, the reboot of Netflix’s canned Daredevil series, is reportedly getting an overhaul. Marvel didn’t just recast a side character or have someone punch up a script, no. Instead, it dismissed head writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman and …
Read More »'Dear David' Is the Final Gasp of a Dying Internet
One of the most remarkable achievements in cinema is when a film successfully transports its audience to another time and place. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain immerses viewers in the world of cowboys in 1960s Wyoming. Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War brings us to bleak, gorgeous 1950s Poland. Spike Lee’s The 25th …
Read More »'Aggro Dr1ft' Is Built on AI and Video Games—Shouldn’t the Movie Be More Fun?
Sometime in the late 1990s, filmmaker Harmony Korine undertook a project that, in many ways, still defines his artistic ambition. The abandoned documentary Fight Harm saw Korine trawling the streets of New York City, instigating brawls with random passersby. (Leonardo DiCaprio and magician David Blaine reportedly served as the film’s …
Read More »Why Everyone Is Talking About ‘Dicks’
There’s a scene in Nathan Lane’s new movie in which the beloved icon of stage and screen grabs a sack of Boar’s Head deli lunch meat, chews it up, and spits it into the face of two writhing, grotesque, skeleton-like puppets. They’re the Sewer Boys, and alongside Lane, Megans Mullally …
Read More »Voice Actors Are Bracing to Compete With Talking AI
Quincy Surasmith is a radio journalist and actor, but you may also hear his voice and never realize it. That’s because he’s been the voice of Thai-speaking cartoons, chattering background crowds, and characters without major speaking roles. It’s not all glamorous. “I’m making grunting noises, getting beat up by some …
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