Taylor Swift won’t be shaking off the recent deepfakes of her committing sexual acts that flooded the internet last week — nor should she, as these are clear violations of her likeness, persona and basic human rights. As such, it’s said that Swift may be looking into legal action of the AI-generated images that hit social media.
As per a source close to Taylor Swift, “Whether or not legal action will be taken is being decided but there is one thing that is clear: these fake AI generated images are abusive, offensive, exploitative, and done without Taylor’s consent and/or knowledge.” There was also an uproar that the images even made it to social media in the first place, particularly Elon Musk’s X. And while the images have been removed from the platform (even a search for “Taylor Swift” yields “Posts aren’t loading right now.”), we all know that once something makes its way to the internet, it’s out there forever. The same source also made the point that, “The door needs to be shut on this. Legislation needs to be passed to prevent this and laws must be enacted.”
Certainly Taylor Swift taking legal action would set a major standard within the world of entertainment and artificial intelligence. But until then, there’s another celebrity that has been the target of misuse of AI. In the case of George Carlin, however, it has to do with the podcast Dudesy using the voice and mannerisms of the late comedian to present a new stand-up comedy special.
But the Carlin estate isn’t taking this one sitting down, filing a lawsuit late last week that could show that works of AI that are developed without consent are unethical and possibly illegal. Also, it’s bad for ya! “Defendants’ AI-generated ‘George Carlin Special’ is not a creative work. It is a piece of computer-generated clickbait which detracts from the value of Carlin’s comedic works and harms his reputation. It is a casual theft of a great American artist’s work…In short, Defendants sought to capitalize on the name, reputation, and likeness of George Carlin in creating, promoting, and distributing the Dudesy Special and using generated images of Carlin, Carlin’s voice, and images designed to evoke Carlin’s presence on a stage.”
As with the case of Taylor Swift’s deepfake pictures, the George Carlin special may be removed from the original source but it’s still readily available online — the damage has been done and the reputations have been hacked. But that doesn’t mean celebrities and artists should let companies continue to cash in on their name, especially when defacing it.
The use of artificial intelligence was a major talking point during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes last year. Those may have been resolved but the fight is far from over. And now that even the White House has even chimed in on the Taylor Swift front, it could be just about time for laws to be put in place at the federal level.
What do you expect to come of the use of deepfakes and AI? Can Taylor Swift and the George Carlin estate help pave the way for proper action? Give us your thoughts on the matter in the comments section below.
The weekend numbers are here and with it we are seeing the beginnings of how much the Writers and Actors strikes are going to affect the 2024 box office as there were zero wide new releases. Granted, January is generally a slow time and most studios sit this weekend out due to not wanting to compete with the NFL Championship games, but even last year saw Neon release their Brandon Cronenberg film Infinity Pool while Fathom events knew their faith based audience would show up for Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist.
But let’s not bury the lead: in its third week of release The Beekeeper has pulled off the upset and won the weekend with $7.4 million. That is quite the feat as R rated action films have had a really tough time at the box office in recent years. In our Thursday predictions, we thought the NFL playoffs may keep more action oriented fans away from theaters this weekend, but it appears audiences embraced this bloody tale of revenge. With a budget of just $40 million and a worldwide take in the $90 million range, this little tale of Jason Statham kicking ass has proven to be a solid hit at a time both he and director David Ayer really needed one. I do believe we will be hearing news of a sequel soon, just don’t overcomplicate it, we just want to see Jason Statham kicking the $h!t out of some bad people!
Slipping to second place is Mean Girls with an estimated $7.3 million. That number represents a drop off of 37% from last week while this musical adaptation turns into a solid little money maker for Paramount. The film, that cost just $36 million to produce before marketing, has already amassed around $80 million worldwide. That is a solid number for this remake/ Broadway adaptation. However, I don’t believe when all is said and done it will pass the box office take of the original film which finished its domestic run with just over $86 million and its worldwide run with $130.1 million (which would be $143.1 million domestic and $216.5 million worldwide when adjusted for inflation.)
With The Beekeeper and Mean Girls being moderately priced films that are pulling in solid profits, it just proves yet again how misguided some of these studios have been over the past few years when allowing their tent pole films budgets to get out of hand with underperforming titles such as Mission: Impossible- Dead Reckoning (Part 1, maybe?!), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Fast X having budgets in the $300 million range. I love globe trotting action films as much as anyone, but how can you expect a film that must hit a billion dollars in order to see any profit, be successful?!
Spots three through five go to your holiday holdovers with the monster hit that is Wonka again landing in third place with $5.9 million. Since its release, Wonka has not fallen out of the top three at the weekend box office, quite impressive when you consider most films live or die by their opening weekend numbers. Never ever under-estimate the power of making a good movie that people want to see. It is for that reason we are seeing the animated film Migration continue its solid run with another $5.1 million added to its domestic total of $101.2 million while the R rated romantic comedy Anyone But You is seeing the type of legs we haven’t seen for R rated comedies since films like American Pie and Wedding Crashers dominated the charts. This weekend sees the Sydney Sweeney/ Glen Powell hit comedy pulling in another $4.8 million, representing just an 11% decline from last week as that film has not dropped out of the top five since its release over a month ago. With just a $25 million budget and a worldwide gross in the $110 million range, Anyone But You is proving to be one of the more profitable films of 2023.
Despite no new wide releases this weekend, the final week of January is proving to be a solid launching ground for Indiana Language films as last year we saw Pathaan launch on just under 700 screens to nab a $6.8 million weekend at the domestic box office. This year we have the Hindi language film Fighter launching its domestic run with $3.7 million, which may not be as high as last years Pathaan, is still a solid opening weekend number for a film launched in just 662 theaters. As I have always said, when films like these are released (films with targeted audiences) the audience will show up, even if the film in question isn’t getting the best reviews (Fighter currently sits at just 29% on Rotten Tomatoes).
Spots seven and eight go to Poor Things with $3 million and American Fiction with $2.8 million. While Poor Things has seen a steady flow of cash since its release, American Fiction is the film that is seeing the biggest bump from its recent (and very much deserved) Awards nominations including 5 Oscar nominations as the Jeffrey Wright starring film actually gained a massive 65% this weekend, the Oscar bump is alive and well! Both films, in my opinion, deserve all the praise being heaped upon them as they are both very original and beautiful films. I am hopeful Emma Stone can pull off the victory for Best Actress at this years Oscars for her truly transformative performance. You can check out Chris Bumbray’s 9/10 review for Poor Things here and his 8/10 review for American Fiction here.
Rounding out the top ten are Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom with $2.8 million showing the type of resilience at the box office that other recent DC films did not have proving that Aqauman really was the ace in the hole for the now defunct DCEU while Godzilla Minus One returned to theaters this weekend with a new Black and White version labeled Godzilla Minus One Minus Color where it added another $2.6 million to its stellar $55 million domestic total.
Outside the top ten, but worth noting, is the re-release of Oppenheimer which also saw a bit of an Oscar bump as it was released back into IMAX screens where it garnered a little over $1 million in receipts.
Are you happy to see The Beekeeper finally take its rightful place atop the charts? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to check out our weekly poll where we ask: What is your favorite Movie from 1999?
Let’s get one thing out of the way first. The Road House remake looks badass. I was among those who were wary of director Doug Liman remaking the Patrick Swayze action classic, especially when I heard Jake Gyllenhaal would be leading the cast. Gyllenhaal is a great actor, but would he be good as Dalton the bouncer? And what about the hair??? Could he ever compare to the late Crazy Swayze? But, over the last few months, the buzz has been building that this Road House remake is terrific. It’s apparently one of the highest-testing movies in Amazon-MGM history, and the trailer rocked the internet earlier this week. Against all odds, it looks like Liman and Gyllenhaal have made a slam-bang action flick that updates and pays homage to the original film without being derivative.
So why isn’t it going to theatres?
Indeed, Road House is set for a worldwide streaming debut March 21st on Prime Video. Doug Liman is so dismayed at the lack of a theatrical release that, in a bombshell letter to Deadline, he stated that he would be boycotting the film’s SXSW premiere. In his letter, he wrote that Amazon told him the movie was a “smash hit” and revealed that it tested higher than his two most successful films as a director, Mr. and Mrs Smith and The Bourne Identity. So, one can understand why Liman would be miffed at the streamer not giving the film theatrical play.
It should be noted that Amazon-MGM has been very supportive of movie theatres in the past. Their film, Air, was a big box office success, while the theatrical run of Saltburn helped pave the way for the movie to become a viral sensation. Their awesome Jason Statham action flick The Beekeeper is doing well right now. To play devil’s advocate, not every movie they’ve given a theatrical release has performed well. Their last movie with Jake Gyllenhaal, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, was only a modest performer but was a far less commercial film than Road House. This movie has the makings of another cult classic, and there’s nothing more fun than watching a kick-ass action flick on the big screen with a crowd.
Then again, it’s worth noting that 1989’s Road House was not a box office success and only found success on home video and cable. Perhaps Prime Video is hoping the film will be another viral sensation, and it’s not the only movie they’re premiering on streaming, with the star-packed Ricky Stanicky bowing on the service just a few weeks earlier.
In the end, if Amazon financed Road House, they can release it however they see fit, but as an action fan, I wish this was getting a theatrical release. Mid-budget action movies are a dying breed, so it’s essential for fans, such as myself, to be able to go out and support the genre. I also think the next generation of action stars should be promoted, as they truly are a dying breed. Road House could be the movie that makes Gyllenhaal the next big action hero (it also looks like a nice launching pad for the younger Lukas Gage – who could become one of the first openly gay action stars). I want nothing more than to gather up a few friends and see this on a Friday night on the big screen. Granted, it’ll still be great on streaming, but I think the world deserves to see Road House in theatres, especially given how barren the theatrical release calendar is due to the various strikes that happened this summer.
Do you think Road House should be opening in theatres? Let us know in the comments.
PLOT: In late 1984, inspired by the success of Band-Aid in the UK, legendary producer Quincy Jones decides to make a charity single including all of the biggest pop stars in the country. Due to the complicated schedules of all involved, they only have one evening to complete what will become one of the best-selling singles of all time, “We Are the World.”
REVIEW: If you’ve seen the music video for “We Are the World,” you’ll know that pretty much every pop-rock icon of the first half of the eighties was there for its recording. In addition to co-writers Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie, there was Huey Lewis, Hall & Oates, Diana Ross, Kenny Loggins, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Kenny Rogers, Paul Simon, Steve Perry and so many more. Even Dan Aykroyd showed up singing in the chorus.
The song was a charity single designed to provide life-saving funds to those dying from famine in Africa, particularly in Ethiopia. The idea for charity singles and Live Aid came from Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats, with “Do They Know Its Christmas” earning tens of millions for famine relief in late ’84. Yet, in the United States, the song wasn’t (initially) a huge hit, although it’s become a Christmas staple since then. Thus, Quincy Jones, the most celebrated producer of the time, had the idea to do an American version. It just so happened that pretty much every big American star would be present at the American Music Awards on the evening of January 28th and would be in L. A and available for an all-night recording session.
As director Bao Nguyen’s documentary The Greatest Night in Pop reveals, Lionel Ritchie (also hosting the AMA) had to hustle for weeks and weeks to make the recording happen, with him and Michael Jackson only finishing the song days before the recording. Ritchie, who also produced the doc, is the main interviewee, as he fondly remembers his late manager Ken Kragen, who was instrumental in assembling the various acts that Quincy Jones would marshall on the day of the recording.
As Ritchie amusingly recalls, working with Jackson was intense, with Bubbles the Chimp roaming his estate and him almost getting bitten by MJ’s pet snake at one point. The challenges of the recording session are emphasized, with Stevie Wonder causing country star Waylon Jennings to flee the session when he decided there should be a bit sung in Swahili (they don’t speak Swahili in Ethiopia). It was up to Ritchie to massage egos, although he recalls virtually everyone was happy to participate.
Of the singers, Kenny Loggins, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, and Huey Lewis are around to remember what it was like doing the recording. Lewis was only supposed to be in the chorus, but he sang a verse when Prince was a no-show. Still, he was very intimidated by the many generation-defining singers around him and displays some rather touching humility. Ritchie remembers Bob Dylan being shy and overwhelmed, only to be personally coached and put at ease by Stevie Wonder, who was a fantastic mimic and could show Dylan precisely what he would sound like in the song. The footage is great, including an iconic shot of Kenny Rogers rolling up to the recording driving a DeLorean.
For the most part, the stories of the various singers are sweet, with Diana Ross remembered as particularly happy to be there, especially when she got to meet her favorite singer, Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates. Lionel Ritchie also remembers being blown away by Steve Perry’s voice. Yet, it’s not pure hagiography, with Cyndi Lauper remembered as almost dropping out at the eleventh hour due to her reservations over the song (which she admits to), plus Al Jarreau got drunk and couldn’t nail his part. In contrast, Sheila E remembers feeling used, conveying that she was just a placeholder for her then-boyfriend, Prince. When he didn’t show up and she realized no one really had a place for her, she bailed on the session.
Overall, though, it’s a sweet, inspiring account of a song that raised over $168 million (in 2024 dollars) for famine relief. As Springsteen admits in his section, it was a song that wasn’t designed as art but rather as a vehicle to reach as many people as possible, and in that, it succeeded. More than anything, it proves what a unique one-off it was, as it would be all but impossible to do now without the modern equivalent of a Ken Kragen or Quincy Jones to get everyone organized.
The Greatest Night in Pop hits Netflix on January 29th!
Recently, I wrote an article about movies that were surprisingly hard to find on streaming or Blu-ray, and one of the movies I mentioned was a little-remembered 1988 thriller called Shoot to Kill (aka Deadly Pursuit in the UK). The film was a decent box office hit in its day, but outside of a DVD release many years ago, it has sunk into obscurity.
This is a shame, as Shoot to Kill is a nifty little movie. After a few comments praised the film, I decided to revisit it for myself, as I honestly hadn’t seen it since the nineties and had no idea if it would hold up. To my surprise, not only did it hold up, but Shoot to Kill is a bit of a lost 80s action classic.
The film stars Sidney Poitier as a veteran FBI agent investigating a strange robbery where the owner of a diamond broker robbed his own store. It turns out the desperate man stole his own diamonds to pay off a man holding his beloved wife hostage. Poitier’s G-man underestimates the criminal, and in the end, he murders the man’s wife, his maid and even his dog. Shaken up by the fact that this jewel thief would kill so many innocent people, he becomes obsessed with finding him, only to discover that the man has hightailed it into the Pacific Northwest wilderness and has infiltrated a group of fishermen who are being led through the mountains by a female guide named Sarah Renell, played by a young Kirstie Alley, who was on Cheers at the time and would star in Look Who’s Talking the following year. Luckily, Sarah’s boyfriend, Jonathan Knox, is an expert tracker and mountain man, and the two team up to track down the fishing party before the killer, whose identity we don’t know at this point, can be revealed.
Now, this is an excellent premise for an action flick. It has all the elements. It has perfect motivation for the two heroes, with Poitier’s Warren Stantin feeling guilt over the people he couldn’t protect, while Berenger’s Knox wants to rescue his girlfriend. The two are also a classic mismatched pair, with Poitier a sophisticated, older urbanite with no wilderness experience. At the same time, Berenger plays a total loner who has never had to kill or been pitted against a monster despite his skills in the mountains. This makes the film work on many levels, being a straight-ahead thriller with tons of action while also having elements of a mismatched buddy comedy worked in.
It’s expertly directed by Roger Spotiswoode, who made a slew of exciting thrillers in the 80s, including Terror Train, Under Fire and Air America, before taking an ill-advised stab at comedy with Stop or My Mom Will Shoot. He bounced back when he directed Tomorrow Never Dies.
But what makes Shoot to Kill work is how exceptionally well-cast it is. Younger viewers may not appreciate how big of a star Sidney Poitier was when Shoot to Kill was made but suffice it to say he was a legend. Poitier was the first black movie star, winning an Oscar for Lillies in the Field and having starred in a slew of classics, including In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Shoot to Kill was his first time in front of a camera in 12 years, as he had prematurely retired from acting to try his luck as a director. He was the first black director to make a movie that grossed over $100 million when he made the Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor comedy classic Stir Crazy.
When he made Shoot to Kill, Poitier was sixty, and this was a pretty bold role for him to take, as by the nature of the film, it’s highly physical. He spends most of the movie in the mountains, hiking, climbing rocks, and doing a lot of pretty physically taxing stuff that, impressively, he wasn’t doubled for. More than anything, his gravitas gives the film an extra oomph, as he has the aura of a man who’s been through a lot, as by his age, his character would have been one of the first black FBI agents and, as he tells Berenger at one point, he’s faced off with the Mafia, the KKK and the KGB. Indeed, Poitier has – onscreen, that is. You also buy him as a man who’s haunted by his failure, and near the end of the film, his pursuit of the villain becomes almost suicidal, as he doesn’t want another innocent life to be taken. But Poitier is also hilarious, reacting with disbelief at the various things he encounters in the mountains, such as a moose and a grizzly bear that he manages to scare away. Berenger is just as good in a rare action role, playing a rugged mountain man with a soft side. Kirstie Alley could have been saddled with a generic woman-in-p peril role. Still, her character is tough and resourceful, and even once the bad guy has been revealed and she gets taken hostage, she constantly tries to get free and never allows herself to become a victim. In some ways, she’s the star of her action movie happening simultaneously.
No, as for the villain, this is where it gets tricky. The film goes through great pains to hide his identity so that you don’t know who the bad guy is when he infiltrates the fishing party. Three other fishermen are played by well-known character actors who have played villains before, including Dirty Harry’s Andrew Robinson, Richard Masur, Frederick Coffin and the Kurgan himself, Clancy Brown. Ok, so to someone in 2024, it may not be that much of a mystery who the killer is, as one of these guys has become a legendary big-screen villain, and I’m not talking about Richard Masur. Even still, this mystery aspect works well.
Overall, Shoot to Kill is a pretty stunning piece of old-school action filmmaking, with good performances, hair-raising stunts, and excellent location shooting in BC and San Francisco. My only complaint is that the musical score by John Scott is a tad cheesy, with too much saxophone – but alas, that’s the era. Part of me thinks it would be a classic if Michael Kamen, Alan Silvestri, or Jerry Goldsmith had scored this. This winter of 1988 was a good-sized hit at the box office, making more than twice its budget back, and it was a popular VHS rental. So why is it out on Blu-ray? It seems to have fallen into a gray zone of unavailable movies released by Disney’s adult label, Touchstone Pictures, in the 80s. Many of these movies are available on Disney Star internationally, and Shoot to Kill was streaming at one point, as there’s a good HD copy floating around out there – it’s just not available at the moment. That’s too bad because this movie is a little gem worth rediscovering, especially given that Poitier passed away not too long ago. If you can find it, you should give it a shot.
This year celebrates 25 years since the final year of the 1900’s. A year that brought about such classics as The Matrix, Fight Club, American Pie, and Office Space as well as my personal favorite movie of all time: Arlington Road. The year was so successful that 20 years later it would inspire a book titled Best Movie Year Ever. With a vast cannon of films ranging from highly anticipated block busting prequels (Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace) to that years’ eventual Best Picture winner American Beauty and a movie that changed the meaning of twist endings forever (The Sixth Sense) 1999 truly was a year for the ages.
I will be honest, after compiling last weeks list for Best Movies from 1994 and now this list, I have to say 1994 was far more deserving of its own book! But that isn’t to say that 1999 doesn’t have a number of movies that are still on constant rotation in my house.
As always, if you don’t see your favorite listed, please click the Other” button and tell us what it is in the comments.
Whether you have a fondness for the sequels or not, Halloween 4 and 5 rolled the dice on introducing a new female lead: Danielle Harris as Jamie Lloyd, daughter to the deceased Laurie Strode, killed offscreen sometime before Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. Now, with the latest trilogy long in the shredder, Harris is giving her thoughts on David Gordon Green’s movies, Rob Zombie’s interpretations and even reprising Jamie.
Danielle Harris actually lobbied for a cameo in Green’s Halloween trilogy, which wiped the slate back to the Laurie Strode era (thus bumping Jamie Lloyd from the family tree), but is more interested in how else Jamie could be portrayed. “I’ve said from the beginning, I would love to see where Jamie is now, as an adult. I wouldn’t come back to the movie as anything other than that, and I’m hoping that now they’ve got the rights to TV series and all these things in the universe, the whole Halloween world. I’m really hoping that that they find a timeline where we can go back and explore where where I am right now, because I would sure love to know.” On Green’s Halloween Ends, Danielle Harris wasn’t nearly as harsh as most, saying she enjoyed it but not as a Halloween movie.
Danielle Harris also played Annie in Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies, but we know how that turned out…On those, Harris noted that the franchise was in serious trouble and that studio involvement only hurt his efforts. “It’s hard, studios are hard, there’s a lot of players, a lot of rules. I learned that from the difference between Halloween 4 and 5 versus working on Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Four and 5 was 100% creative in producers and director [control], they were all team players, where you have, now, the studio involved, and you’ve got other forces at play that make decisions based on things outside of the art and the story. I’m hoping that maybe we get to go back to the way that it used to be, because it’d be lovely to get back into Halloween as Jamie and have it not be a studio feel. Have it be kind of how it was in the ’80s.”
While Halloween 4 and 5 rank as some of the worst in the franchise’s 45+-year run (we’ll spare you this time, Busta), it is pretty cool to see Danielle Harris so committed to the property, even turning up at conventions. And now that Miramax has secured rights, maybe she can step back into the character again.
Would you want to see Danielle Harris return as Jamie for more Halloween entries? Where do Halloween 4 and 5 rank for you? Let us know below!
Martin Scorsese loves the cinema more than just about anyone else in the business. He has championed film preservation, worked tirelessly to save Turner Classic Movies and promotes films of every genre (well, almost…). But that doesn’t mean he’s going to step foot in a cinema on opening night. And you can blame that on modern audience behavior and being too short to see the screen.
Martin Scorsese – who is pegged at standing around 5’3” – told Variety that he not only doesn’t sneak into his own movies to gauge audience reaction but tends to avoid packed cinemas. “I’m short and there’s always a big person in front of me. It’s the same with Broadway — I can’t go to theater. There’s someone in front of me, and I can’t see the stage or hear the show. I really enjoy Imax as I get older. You go in, you can sit up in the back and you’re sort of looking up.”
Scorsese also doesn’t trust that his fellow moviegoers will behave. “Regular screenings, I have found the audiences becoming a bit more raucous than they used to be. But maybe it’s always like in the ’50s when we used to yell back at the screen.” And just imagine how obnoxious these people would be with an intermission thrown in…Still, he added, “But it’s very important to me to support films while they’re on the big screen. I just wait a while.”
OK, it’s kind of adorable to picture Martin Scorsese asking for a booster seat so he can see above peoples’ heads, but he’s relaying what many of us normal movie fans have experienced. We might not have trouble seeing the screen but you just don’t know who in that theater is going to talk or post on TikTok or feed their pocketbook pooch treats for the duration (something that happened to me while seeing David Gordon Green’s Halloween). It’s all enough to push people to just wait for the fourth or fifth week – and at that point they may just wait for streaming.
Have you found yourself shying away from going to the movies due to audience behavior? Share your worst moviegoing experience you’ve had in the comments section below.
It’s already been eight whole years since Final Fantasy XV, and its ending still gets us all choked up just thinking about it. Read on for all things Palworldand the highly unusual tale of mobile gameLove Live! School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live.
It’s already been eight whole years since Final Fantasy XV, and its ending still gets us all choked up just thinking about it. Read on for all things Palworldand the highly unusual tale of mobile gameLove Live! School Idol Festival 2 Miracle Live.
