Category: Worldwide

Over the last year artificial intelligence has become a growing concern. It has the capacity for greatness, including in the field of medicine. It can also be destructive. It can destroy job and make it easier to steal people’s identities. Hollywood is already feeling the effects, as when Tom Hanks learned an AI version of him was starring in a dental ad. The latest to be affected is Scarlett Johansson.

Per Variety, the erstwhile Marvel actress was nonplussed to learn an AI app had used her likeness for an ad. It’s called Lisa AI: 90s Yearbook & Avatar, and it’s an AI image-generator that demonstrated its prowess by making an ad starring an AI version of a movie star who famously sued a gigantic corporation because they stiffed her. Predictably that didn’t turn out so hot.

“We do not take these things lightly,” Johansson’s attorney, Kevin Yorn, told Variety. “Per our usual course of action in these circumstances, we will deal with it with all legal remedies that we will have.”

The ad, which was first spotted on October 28, appears to have been deep-sixed. How did it use Johansson?

The ad, reviewed by Variety, begins with an old clip of Johansson behind the scenes of Marvel’s “Black Widow.” Johansson says, “What’s up guys? It’s Scarlett and I want you to come with me…” before a graphic covers her mouth and the screen transitions into AI-generated photos that resemble the actor. A fake voice imitating Johansson then continues speaking, promoting the AI app. “It’s not limited to avatars only. You can also create images with texts and even your AI videos. I think you shouldn’t miss it,” says a voice that sounds like Johansson.

Fine print under the ad read “Images produced by Lisa AI. It has nothing to do with this person” — an apparently attempt to cut any legal action by Johansson off at the pass. Apparently that didn’t work.

It’s not surprising that Hollywood would fall victim of the shadier aspects of AI. But there was one big player who had the tech’s number before anyone: Tom Cruise, who made the main baddie in Mission: Impossible 7 a rogue form of AI. One person who saw that film was President Joe Biden, and it scared him enough that it inspired him to sign an executive order to rein in AI. If humanity has avoided one of those robot takeovers depicted in fiction for decades, it may be partly thanks to the guy who keeps risking his life to entertain us.

(Via Variety)

The world is still mourning Matthew Perry after the Friends star died in a drowning accident at his home over the weekend. The 54-year-old actor was found unresponsive in his jacuzzi when authorities arrived at his Los Angeles are home though no drugs or signs of foul play were found at the scene.

Perry had been open about his addiction struggles in the past, even converting his Malibu home into a sober living space called the Perry House that offered support for men with addiction issues. As friends and family grieve his passing and fans look for answers to the tragedy, TMZ is now reporting that initial tests show Perry did not have fentanyl or meth in his system following his death.

According to law enforcement officers speaking to the outlet, less-in-depth tests run following Perry’s death prove neither fentanyl nor meth contributed to his untimely passing in any way. But, the outlet was quick to note that more in-depth tests that look for evidence of other intoxicants — alcohol, prescription drugs, etc — will take longer to conduct, with results expected in the next four to six months. Though Perry did find pills in Perry’s home following his death, they were prescribed to him by doctors and “stored in proper bottles.” At this time, there’s nothing to indicate those medicines contributed to his death.

(Via TMZ)

The proposed “multi-stadium listening event” for Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign’s purported joint album has been postponed. According to Billboard, both the listening event and the album itself have been pushed back from their original date, November 3. Billboard notes that this isn’t the first time they’ve been rescheduled, with the original release aimed at October 27. A report from earlier that month said they were planning on holding it at RCF Arena (formerly known as Campovolo) in Reggio Emilia; however, the date came and went without confirmation, and on October 23, Ty shared an Instagram post teasing the new date in November.

Before that, it was reported that the duo was looking for a distributor for their joint album, fielding five offers from different labels. Per Billboard, though, their grandiose plans are contingent on a lot of factors outside their control. They’d need weeks — not just one or two — to secure a location and insurance, plus enough time to promote the show — at least, much more time than they allotted with the October 23 announcement. Plus, arenas in Europe are currently engaged in football season — no, not the one with helmets and pads — so teams would likely be unwilling to rent out their arenas and risk damage to the fields, even if they were playing away games on the requested dates.

Truthfully, all this is less than surprising and at this point, I’m not sure who Kanye thinks he’s fooling. He doesn’t have an agent — and probably isn’t going to find another one after being dropped by CAA over his prior antisemitic statements — and he probably isn’t anywhere near liquid enough to assume the risk of putting all this on himself — again, because his bank accounts were closed in the wake of the above-mentioned bigotry, while the IRS simultaneously put a hold on him for unpaid taxes. Most importantly, his past erratic behaviors appear to have finally caught up with him, making him more of a liability in the eyes of business partners than a potential cash cow. You can only cry “wolf” so many times before the villagers turn on you, and Kanye’s been shouting wolves, lions, tigers, and bears for the past year. The jig might finally, well, and truly be up.

(Gross spoilers for Amazon’s Gen V will be found below.)

Gen V‘s preparing for what promises to be a head-splitting season finale, and there’s plenty of speculation of what type of cliffhanger we will witness. You gotta know there will be one of those, and hopefully, more about The Woods will come to light. As the audience prepares, however, people tend to have questions, and one Reddit user had a solid one about Lizze Broadway‘s fun-sized character, Emma, a.k.a. “Little Cricket.”

As we previously discussed in our season review, Emma’s power — the ability to shrink and grow in size by purging and binging — is one of many in this series that strongly relates to the more traumatic aspects of coming of age. Emma deals with this in the most graceful way possible, at least, as far as her clothing goes, but there’s certainly a healthy dose of self-loathing that goes along with this power vs. the pressures of college life.

Still, there’s a big question when it comes to Emma being big, and one Reddit user articulated what a lot of people are probably thinking. When Emma needs to shrink, does she have to do so mechanically, so to speak? And if that’s the case, does vomiting always suffice, or, you know, does it work with the other end, too? I will now let user “shhbaby_isok” take hold of this important discussion, especially with the second question:

Does Emmas powers work through the mechanical act of eating or purging, or by caloric intake/deficit? Say Emma refrained from eating, would she burn through her fat stores, or would she simply shrink?

Or is the act of purging necessary to make her shrink? What if she’s been giant size for a while and her stomach content has been metabolized. Is she stuck like that? or does poopin also count as purging?

There’s more at the source, of course, regarding whether or not calorie count of any particular food matters, and, if this “poop” ability was a real thing, whether Emma would, you know, fall into the toilet if she…. ? Never mind.

In the series, Emma does know that she has to maintain a certain calorie count or shrink beyond her control, so it makes more sense if these calories are in-and-out on a temporary basis rather than fully metabolized. If the latter was the case, she might keep growing and never be able to shrink again, soooo yeah. I’m gonna have to guess that vomiting is the only bodily function that matters when it comes to Emma’s powers.

It must be Supe science.

Amazon’s Gen V streams new episodes on Fridays.

(Via Reddit)

“Higher, faster, further,” might be Carol Danvers’ motto, but it definitely doesn’t apply to the box office projections of the MCU’s next team-up, The Marvels.

The Nia DaCosta’s directorial effort scheduled to land in theaters on November 10th is currently tracking at $75M – $80M for its three-day opening weekend. That’s around 50% less than Captain Marvel’s debut, which earned $153M in its opening weekend. According to Deadline, buzz around the sequel to Brie Larson’s superhero vehicle — also starring Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris — has suffered due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, which has severely limited the studio from pushing the film in the press and at conventions like San Diego Comic-Con.

Without stars making the rounds to promote the film, any interest in the MCU entry must be built through smart marketing tactics, but even there Marvel seems to have failed. The PR campaign for The Marvels started much later than the standard 12 weeks other superhero team-ups have gotten. That could be due to a lack of confidence in the film’s ability to draw crowds back to theaters during a period of superhero fatigue amongst movie fans.

Deadline reports that The Marvels is “well below the top-performing MCU titles among men under 35,” and that among both male and female audiences, it falls behind recent movies like Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in terms of interest. With some fans unsure of where the film fits in the ever-expanding multiverse being built by the studio, it sounds like even the tease of an X-Men crossover might not be enough to save it at the box office this month.

(Via Deadline)

Over the summer, Harrison Ford whipped his way back into theaters as the iconic archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It’s now been several months since the fifth Indy film’s release, and fans of the fedora-wearing adventurer want to know when they can watch his newest adventure on Disney+. The answer? Very soon.

According to Variety, Dial of Destiny will start streaming on Disney+ on December 1 because nothing brings in the holidays like Harrison Ford punching Nazis. We’re always saying that.

While Indy’s previous adventure, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, didn’t live up to the stone-cold classic movies from the ’80s, Dial of Destiny seems to have done a better job of returning an older, more grizzled Dr. Jones to the big screen. Uproxx‘s Mike Ryan praised Dial of Destiny as an “audacious blast” that didn’t repeat the mistakes of the fourth film.

“The crazier it got, the more I liked it,” Ryan wrote in his review. “I’ve re-watched the other four movies very recently. I think there’s a misconception from people who haven’t seen them in awhile that they are based on some sort of gritty reality. I re-watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with someone who hadn’t seen it before and she found the ending over the top. Basically, here’s this movie set in reality, then all of a sudden ghosts are flying out of the Ark killing people while Indy does a whole bunch of nothing. Personally, I’m just so used to Raiders I’ve never really thought of it that way before. I love the movie, but she’s not wrong. All the movies are like that. And the thing about Dial of Destiny is it doubles down, or even triples down, on that idea.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny starts streaming December 1 on Disney+. It’s also currently available for purchase on VOD.

(Via Variety)

Over the summer, Harrison Ford whipped his way back into theaters as the iconic archaeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It’s now been several months since the fifth Indy film’s release, and fans of the fedora-wearing adventurer want to know when they can watch his newest adventure on Disney+. The answer? Very soon.

According to Variety, Dial of Destiny will start streaming on Disney+ on December 1 because nothing brings in the holidays like Harrison Ford punching Nazis. We’re always saying that.

While Indy’s previous adventure, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, didn’t live up to the stone-cold classic movies from the ’80s, Dial of Destiny seems to have done a better job of returning an older, more grizzled Dr. Jones to the big screen. Uproxx‘s Mike Ryan praised Dial of Destiny as an “audacious blast” that didn’t repeat the mistakes of the fourth film.

“The crazier it got, the more I liked it,” Ryan wrote in his review. “I’ve re-watched the other four movies very recently. I think there’s a misconception from people who haven’t seen them in awhile that they are based on some sort of gritty reality. I re-watched Raiders of the Lost Ark with someone who hadn’t seen it before and she found the ending over the top. Basically, here’s this movie set in reality, then all of a sudden ghosts are flying out of the Ark killing people while Indy does a whole bunch of nothing. Personally, I’m just so used to Raiders I’ve never really thought of it that way before. I love the movie, but she’s not wrong. All the movies are like that. And the thing about Dial of Destiny is it doubles down, or even triples down, on that idea.”

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny starts streaming December 1 on Disney+. It’s also currently available for purchase on VOD.

(Via Variety)

No hard feelings to the other late-night hosts, but Jennifer Lawrence only has eyes for Seth Meyers.

In a 2015 episode of Late Night, the Oscar-winning actress told Meyers that when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2013, she had “a really big crush” on him. “I had created the romance in my head, because I’m delusional. I had this whole plan. I was going to ask you out,” she said. But while getting her costume fit, “I talked to a wardrobe lady about it, and I was like, ‘I think I m gonna ask him out, I’m gonna give him my number,’ and she was like, ‘Honey he’s engaged.’ I was like, cool, good talk.”

Meyers was asked about Lawrence’s infatuation with him on The Howard Stern Show this week. “I was very flattered,” he said, according to People. “And my wife was so happy. She was just, ‘I’m so happy Jennifer Lawrence told you that story! I’m so glad that you have that in your back pocket every single day.’”

The former “Weekend Update” anchor said that during his 13-year tenure on Saturday Night Live — engagement aside — he never had “the bandwidth to flirt with anyone,” despite the fact that “so many of the most charming, beautiful, intelligent women came through” the series each week. “I also feel like I was always, like, filthy and sweaty and stressed and so it really… I mostly just think it reflects poorly on Jennifer Lawrence’s taste,” he joked.

If Jennifer Lawrence had a crush on me, even if it was only for, like, 10 minutes, it would be the only thing I ever talk about. The people working the Taco Bell drive-thru line would get sick of me real quick.

(Via People)

No hard feelings to the other late-night hosts, but Jennifer Lawrence only has eyes for Seth Meyers.

In a 2015 episode of Late Night, the Oscar-winning actress told Meyers that when she hosted Saturday Night Live in 2013, she had “a really big crush” on him. “I had created the romance in my head, because I’m delusional. I had this whole plan. I was going to ask you out,” she said. But while getting her costume fit, “I talked to a wardrobe lady about it, and I was like, ‘I think I m gonna ask him out, I’m gonna give him my number,’ and she was like, ‘Honey he’s engaged.’ I was like, cool, good talk.”

Meyers was asked about Lawrence’s infatuation with him on The Howard Stern Show this week. “I was very flattered,” he said, according to People. “And my wife was so happy. She was just, ‘I’m so happy Jennifer Lawrence told you that story! I’m so glad that you have that in your back pocket every single day.’”

The former “Weekend Update” anchor said that during his 13-year tenure on Saturday Night Live — engagement aside — he never had “the bandwidth to flirt with anyone,” despite the fact that “so many of the most charming, beautiful, intelligent women came through” the series each week. “I also feel like I was always, like, filthy and sweaty and stressed and so it really… I mostly just think it reflects poorly on Jennifer Lawrence’s taste,” he joked.

If Jennifer Lawrence had a crush on me, even if it was only for, like, 10 minutes, it would be the only thing I ever talk about. The people working the Taco Bell drive-thru line would get sick of me real quick.

(Via People)

With the holiday season approaching, The View ladies got into the festive spirit by gleefully dunking on the state of Tucker Carlson‘s career.

Ever since Carlson was surprisingly ousted from Fox News earlier this year, and for reasons that have never been made explicitly clear, the former conservative provocateur has struggled to find a new platform to peddle his conspiracy theories and deep love for testicle tanning.

As the panel discussed how Carlson’s firing proved that “everyone is expendable,” Republican co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin offered a brief rundown of his penchant for being axed by major networks.

Via Mediaite:

[Carlson] has the distinct privilege of being the only host whose ever been canned by MSNBC, CNN and Fox News. All three. But what fascinates me in this story how fame and power can corrupt… I’ve seen it hatch to too many people. I’ve known him for a decade, and he used to want to be the future George Will. He want to elevate the discourse. He wanted the Republican Party to be the party of ideas. Now he’s on Twitter hosting a deranged conspiracy theorist who claims he’s Obama’s gay lover that he did crack with. How the mighty have fallen.

Griffin noted that, like Bill O’Reilly, Carlson got a little too full of himself. “There’s always this question of ‘They don’t need Fox News, they’ll be just as powerful.’ No, no, no. You need the institution.”

That’s when Joy Behar swooped in for the kill.

“They end up in somebody’s basement with a podcast,” Behar quipped, which immediately cracked up her co-hosts.

(Via Mediaite)