Software billionaire Paul Allen is already using his riches to further brain science, spaceflight, rock ‘n’ roll history (and oh, the Seattle Seahawks, too) but he’s not done yet: Artificial intelligence and cell biology are the next big ideas on the agenda for the guy who calls himself “Idea Man.”…
OK, doesn’t this “idea” sound like a movie we made? 😉
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/next-big-ideas-idea-man-paul-allen-i-cell-biology-8C11284483
It’s been 36 years since the first “Star Wars” film was released, and it’s tough to surprise fans with anything new. But a now-viral video of never-before-seen bloopers from “Episode IV: A New Hope” has amassed nearly 1.5 million views since being uploaded on Sunday.
It’s been a record-breaking year for Hollywood, but not every studio was able to benefit equally from the estimated $8.164 billion and counting made at the box office in 2013. Sony Pictures Entertainment (NYSE:SNE) is still banking on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 to offer the studio its first big hit after a dreadful summer, and Viacom’s (NASDAQ:VIA) Paramount Pictures is another company that shows the record year wasn’t so great for everyone involved…
Paramount will lay off 110 employees across several departments including finance, human resources, information technology, international home media distribution, legal and marketing, according to an internal memo obtained by TheWrap…
China’s richest man plans to spend $8.2 billion (50 billion yuan) to build the country’s version of Hollywood in the northeastern city of Qingdao.
In a glitzy, star-studded red carpet event Sunday, Wang Jianlin said his company, Dalian Wanda Group, will build a state-of-the-art film studio complex in a bid to dominate China’s rapidly growing movie market.
The Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis’s 20 studios will include a permanent underwater studio and a 108,000-square foot stage that Wang said would be the world’s biggest. The facility will also include an Imax research and development center, cinemas and China’s biggest film and celebrity wax museums. The first phase is planned to open in June 2016 and it will be fully operational by June 2017…
The Walt Disney Company is ending its long-standing first-look deal with mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the studio announced on Thursday.
The deal expires next year. The decision follows years of the successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” and other projects, but comes right on the heels of an expensive flop this summer produced by Bruckheimer, “Lone Ranger.”…
https://movies.yahoo.com/news/disney-end-first-look-deal-jerry-bruckheimer-023228017.html
The numbers are simply staggering. These are the movies to date which have earned more than $1 billion worldwide at the box office…
https://movies.yahoo.com/photos/billion-dollar-movie-club-1377192789-slideshow/
“I’m glad it’s almost over,” the longtime reviewer and “Movie Guide” author tells CNN in a phone interview. “The movies get bigger and dumber every year, and we’re subjected to more remakes and sequels. None of which means that they can’t be good — and occasionally they are — but this has not been a very fortuitous season.”
He wasn’t alone in this belief. Audiences felt the same way: Many of this summer’s big-budget franchise flicks — the so-called “tentpoles” — fell like redwood trees toppling in a forest, earning generally poor reviews and equally mediocre box office despite their blockbuster costs and wall-to-wall marketing efforts.
You know the list: “After Earth,” “Pacific Rim,” “White House Down,” “Elysium,” “R.I.P.D.” and, particularly, “The Lone Ranger,” which grossed $88 million domestically (through August 25) on its $200 million-plus budget and could cost Disney a $190 million writedown…
https://www.cnn.com/2013/08/30/showbiz/movies/summer-movies-mixed-season/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9
The habit of insisting that the virtual life is somehow not part of real life has diminished with time. Few people regard, say, online magazines as fake magazines anymore. And more than one politician has been felled by a scandal involving sex that was purely digital. So even though it wasn’t physical, it must have been real. Right?…
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/arts/video-games/madden-nfl-25-portrays-real-football.html?_r=1&
You can yell, “Beam me up, Scotty!” all you want, the only thing that will happen is you’ll elicit a bunch of bemused stares from passersby wondering if you’ve bonked your head recently. The sad fact is human teleportation devices don’t yet exist in 2013, and even if they did, the tremendous lag would make it extraordinarily impractical. Such is the reality of science that it doesn’t always mesh with our fantastic visions of fictional futures filled with flying cars and other implausible technologies. In other words, reality sucks compared to what we’ve grown up watching on television.
That doesn’t mean Hollywood got it all wrong, however. Take a look around you and you’ll notice quite a few inventions that not only don’t suck, but some of which were predicted by movie makers decades ago…
https://www.maximumpc.com/movies_predicted_technology_right_2013
