If you want to see yourself on screen with Hugh Jackman, this is your chance. The promo for Warner Bros. upcoming Reminiscence movie uses deepfake technology to turn a photo of your face — or anybody’s face, really — into a short video sequence with the star. According to Protocol, a media startup called D-ID created the promo for the film. D-ID reportedly started out wanting to develop technology that can protect consumers against facial recognition, but then it realized that its tech could also be used to optimize deepfakes.
For this particular project, the firm created a website for the experience, where you’ll be asked for your name and for a photo. You can upload the photo of anybody you want, and the experience will then conjure up an animation for the face in it. The animation isn’t perfect by any means, and the face could look distorted at times, but it’s still not bad, considering the technology created it from a single picture.
Reminiscence is a sci-fi thriller about Nick Bannister, a “private investigator of the mind.” The idea behind the promo is that you’re a client looking into your memories to solve a case. The movie will be shown in theatres on August 20th, but like most new releases these days, it will also be available for streaming on HBO Max.
The first full trailer for the new Nicolas Cage movie Prisoners of the Ghostland is here and it features a bold proclamation from the star himself. In the trailer, Cage is quoted as saying Ghostland is “The wildest movie I’ve ever made.” Which, coming from someone with a resume like Cage, is saying something. But considering it’s a film about a criminal forced to wear a bomb suit and go into a wasteland to rescue the granddaughter of a crime boss from a bunch of mysterious nomad ghost people—sure, it’s pretty wild.
Directed by Sion Sono (Love Exposure, Cold Fish, Tokyo Tribe), Prisoners of the Ghostland will be released in theaters and on VOD September 17. It co-stars Bill Moseley and Sofia Boutella, and here’s the trailer.
So the trailer pretty much says it all, but here’s what you just watched. The movie is set in a place called Samurai Town, where Cage is a bank robber imprisoned after a job goes horribly wrong. However, when the granddaughter (Boutella) of the town’s warlord (Moseley) goes missing, the warlord offers the robber a deal. Put on this explosive suit and head into the wastelands and retrieve her, or else. He does, of course, and what he finds is not at all what anyone is expecting.
Prisoners of the Ghostland debuted at this year’s virtual Sundance Film Festival before being picked up by RLJE Films. We watched it and, frankly, found the wildness to be a bit too much. The movie just kind of never comes together and feels hugely disjointed. At least that was my opinion. You can read the full review here. But, as you can see in the trailer, plenty of people who aren’t the stars of the movie enjoyed it quite a bit. Lots of critics from other sites heaped praise on the unique film and hey, I’d rather watch something that takes a huge risk like Prisoners of the Ghostland than another remake of a movie that wasn’t good in the first place, or a franchise reboot prequel that never gets off the ground. So even just in that aspect, it’s pretty darn wild.
Again, the film opens in theaters and on VOD September 17.
Coda is directed by Siân Heder, who made 2016’s Tallulah, starring Elliot Page, and was also a writer-director on the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. It’s the story of 17-year-old Ruby, the only hearing person in the Rossi family.
Newsmeter performed a Google Reverse Image Search of the viral picture, which directed us to a report published by The Indian Express on May 25, 2016. The report was titled ‘Urmila Matondkar, hubby Mohsin Akhtar Mir enjoy a romantic dinner date’.
According to the report, actress Urmila Matondkar married Kashmir-based businessman Mohsin Akhtar Mir on March 3 in a quiet ceremony. Urmila’s close friend and celebrity designer Manish Malhotra was the only person from Bollywood to attend the wedding.
According to a report by Jagran on March 06, 2016, Mohsin has appeared in the Bollywood film ‘Luck by Chance’. Mohsin was in the role of Farhan’s rival model in this film. Apart from this, he was seen in the lead role in the movie ‘It’s Man’s World’. Mohsin was seen in the role of a male sex worker in this film directed by Saurabh Sen Gupta.
We then performed a keyword search to find if the actress is the niece of Mohan Bhagwat. There is no evidence that can prove any relationship even quite far between Urmila and Mohan Bhagwat.
We then found that the claim has been doing rounds since 2016. `smhoaxslayer‘ had debunked the viral claim in 2016. It was again debunked by India Today and Aaj Tak in 2019.
It is therefore evident that the claim is misleading. There is no relationship between actress Urmila Matondkar and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat. The actress is not the niece of Mohan Bhagwat
Marvel has often been taken to task for poor pacing on its shows. The Netflix programs were always said to be padded out, with more installments than they really needed per season. The Disney+ era has given us shows with fewerepisodes, but that hasn’t deterred complaints about slow pacing. What If…?, premiering this week on the service, has a different problem: It’s frantic and rushed, like a podcast episode played at 1.5x speed.
The concept behind What If…? is simple. Take a pivotal moment from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, change one thing, see what happens. In the premiere episode, set during the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, Peggy Carter chooses to stay in the room where Steve is receiving the super soldier serum. Steve gets shot, forcing Peggy to jump into the machine and get bulked up in his place.
You’d need to be intimately familiar with the original movie to spot the difference, which is why the omniscient narrator is there to point it out. It’s probably the only time the episode stops to catch its breath.
The problem is that this is a half-hour show attempting to present an alternate version of a two-hour movie. It isn’t even enough to just say that Captain Carter has super powers; they feel the need to show how the events of the entire movie play out, down to the final battle with the Red Skull. There isn’t a lot of time for character development, because they assume you already know the characters well from seeing them on the silver screen. (Also, why is she Captain Carter and not Captain Britain?)
It runs from plot point to plot point, a highlight reel of the film with some small and a lot of big changes. You’ll probably want to rewatch the original movie either before or after, just because there are so many winks and nudges to it that the episode simply cannot stand alone. It’s like a dvd extra and fan fiction had a baby — which, to be fair, is what the original comic felt like.
The difference here is that this is a version of What If…? that gets to play in the MCU sandbox, with the voices and likenesses to boot (except for Hugo Weaving, who is once again replaced by Ross Marquand as the Red Skull). Animation is the only way to pull it off, given that the cast and setting changes with every episode so a live action production would be prohibitively expensive.
But, despite being owned by one of the most famous animation studios in the world, Marvel Studios went with third-party animators. It’s a cel shaded style, which is more often used in video games and here looks a lot like rotoscoping. It’s sort of stiff and awkward, with more attention paid to making characters look like their actors instead of being more fluid or expressive. It’s a shame, given that Disney’s 2012 short film Paperman utilized a hybrid 2D/3D style which looks similar to this, but with a lot more personality.
Future episodes will explore other divergences from the MCU, like T’Challa becoming Star Lord or Tony Stark getting saved by Killmonger. So it’s likely some episodes will be far more enjoyable than others based on their conceit alone, though Captain Carter is still a solid start. But a good concept can’t completely overcome animation and pacing issues.
Taking a break from working on new music, the band have half an eye on another sport, the Olympic gymnastics, as they chat to us over Zoom about their directorial debut. La Vita Olistica, the band’s new short film, was borne out of their third album of the same name, which was released in March.
The Green Knight, one of the best movies of the year, is currently only available to watch in theaters. However, there’s some good news if you can’t make it out to your local cinema. Distributor A24 plans to stream the film for one night only on August 18th, and you can purchase the $20 ticket to see The Green Knight starting todaythrough the company’s Screening Room website.
Once you buy a ticket, you’ll have three ways to stream the movie. You can watch it on a web browser, via A24’s Apple TV app or through the Roku app. Starting at 9PM, you’ll have four hours to finish the film. We will also note that A24 only plans to stream The Green Knight on the 18th in the US.
The topic of simultaneous theatrical and online releases has been a complicated subject in Hollywood recently, with Disney’s Black Window generating $60 million in streaming revenue for the company while at the same time leading to a legal spat with star Scarlett Johansson. With no foreseeable conclusion to the pandemic, we’re likely to see more companies like A24 try out different distribution strategies.
Taking a break from working on new music, the band have half an eye on another sport, the Olympic gymnastics, as they chat to us over Zoom about their directorial debut. La Vita Olistica, the band’s new short film, was borne out of their third album of the same name, which was released in March.
Last week, the New York Times reported that the owner of an eyewear store in the Bronx, New York, was struggling to persuade some of its staff to get a Covid vaccine, with one citing the plot of I Am Legend as a concern.
