“Museum workers, the police and government officials are rattled. They worry about how to protect France’s cultural patrimony in an era of increasingly violent criminal gangs, some of whom have broken into museums in broad daylight.” - The New York Times
When Paulson got the script from fellow actor and writer Cody Fern, “I thought he must have sent to Cate Blanchett or Kate Winslet. … It’s a part in the film space that I haven’t had the opportunity to embody.” - Variety
“While not necessarily his best photograph — he wished it had been sharper — the Davis picture became part of a portfolio of remarkable depth.” - The New York Times
Of course, the “request” came on conservative social media site Truth Social. It “underscores a perception that he sees himself as curator-in-chief of the nation’s national museum.” - The Guardian (UK)
Timnit Gebru: Sometimes “I read quotes to people about artificial intelligence that I’ve gathered in my research, and I ask, What decade was this statement made in? Sometimes people get it right, but a lot of times they do not, because it all sounds the same.” - Wired
Hm: “A judge has instructed Paramount, California attorney general Rob Bonta, and the Writers Guild of America to sit down and talk face-to-face in a month.” - Vulture
Oh, says the company doing the spying, not that much. “The word ‘continuously’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here as Gamers Nexus demonstrated on LG TV keeping extensive logs of ambient conversations.” This seems fine. - The Verge
What could justify moving the fragile tapestry to Britain this year? Probably politics: “Foot by foot, fiber by fiber, this is the material proof of England’s entwinement with the continent 21 miles from its coast.” - The New York Times
“Winning work highlighted during the 36th annual award ceremony” (which was in Zurich this year rather than Boston) “included hilarious research on the aerodynamics of nose blowing, gently stepping on venomous snakes, confirming that teenagers do indeed smell worse than babies and other side-splitting scientific undertakings.” - Smithsonian Magazine
In a tumultuous time for the industry, this transformation could help keep TIFF in the conversation, but as ticket prices rise, what does it all mean for the heart of this festival: the filmgoing public? - CBC
At this point in history, many of us think of the proscenium as conventional, perhaps limiting or even dull. Yet director Dominic Dromgoole describes it as “liberatingly restrictive,” like the sonnet form or the 12-bar blues. After all, the revolutionary work done by Chekhov and Brecht happened on proscenium stages … - The Guardian
The Chinese film and video industry is being transformed by AI-driven storytelling, fueled by rapid advances in video generation software, and at ground zero are the so-called micro dramas that play out on millions of smartphones. - Los Angeles Times
Flock was reported to have a valuation of more than eight billion dollars, with its biggest investor being the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Around forty per cent of the United States’ law-enforcement agencies now have contracts with the company, and a reported hundred and thirty thousand cameras monitor roads in every state but Alaska. - The New Yorker
As young people, the future billionaires were spending hours (under their covers with flashlights, I imagine) consuming stories about killer robots or Mars colonies. What they seemed not to get—maybe couldn’t get—was that these were cautionary tales, stories that projected deep societal worries into space or onto a future many millennia away. - The Atlantic
