From Fox News:
Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code, or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.
The stark warning — which includes discussion of a “Terminator”-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters — is part of a hefty report funded by and prepared for the U.S. Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research.
OMG, too much.. Thanks Defamer.
I think I’d go with #5.
John Updike, author of the classic “Rabbit” series and frequent contributor to the New Yorker has passed away. (Read the here.)
I remember zooming through all the “Rabbit” books in my first few months living in NYC in 1996 as I waited around for temp agencies to call me for work, getting four decades of American social history from the point of view of Updike’s troubled main character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom as he struggles with responsibility, infidelity, being a father, and somehow managing to never really grow up.
From the NYT:
”He was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man’s interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it ‘‘to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached.’’ Nothing was too great or too small for Updike to poeticize. He might rhapsodize over the film projector’s ‘‘chuckling whir’’ or look to the stars and observe that ‘‘the universe is perfectly transparent: we exist as flaws in ancient glass.’‘
There’s a great piece by Tad Friend in the latest New Yorker about Hollywood movie marketing and Lionsgate marketing guru Tim Palen, including Palen’s brilliant branding for films like “Monster’s Ball” and “W.” as well as the unfortunate Hollywood studio tendency (no big news here) to make movies only for the biggest mass appeal possible or to generate very predictable films aimed at broad segments of the population:
The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, “you’re so gay” banter, and sex—but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall.
Older women like feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies: they are the core audience for stories of doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men; they hate seeing a child in danger. Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.
Older men like darker films, classic genres such as Westerns and war movies, men protecting their homes, and men behaving like idiots. Older men are easy to please, particularly if a film stars Clint Eastwood and is about guys just like them, but they’re hard to motivate. “Guys only get off their couches twice a year, to go to ‘Wild Hogs’ or ‘3:10 to Yuma,’ ” the marketing consultant Terry Press says. “If all you have is older males, it’s time to take a pill.”
Very strange. The Sun is reporting that for the third Christopher Nolan “Batman” film:
Eddie Murphy will play The Riddler.
Rachel Weisz will play Catwoman.
Shia Labeouf will play Robin.
Wondering if this is even true or just rumors. Weisz I can see, the other two casting choices are very strange, especially with the Robin character factored in at all.
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