Tag: hollywood

The Real-Life UFO Story That Led to a Famously Unmade Steven Spielberg Sci-fi Movie

Steven Spielberg has had a lifelong fascination with alien beings from beyond the stars. When the legendary director was just 17, he made a nearly two-and-a-half-hour epic on his 8mm camera called Firelight, a film that he more or less remade 14 years later as Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That 1977 classic would be the first of three professional movies Spielberg would make about aliens arriving on our planet, the other two being E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and War of the Worlds (2005). And each trip into the extraterrestrial has led to one of the director’s most successful and acclaimed films (we’re not counting 2008’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull since Spielberg didn’t actually want aliens in the movie).

It’s also a subject that continues to fascinate the filmmaker, with Variety recently reporting that Spielberg’s next film is going to be another UFO story based on his own original idea. But of the many announced films that Spielberg never made (and there are a bunch), one continues to intrigue his fans decades after he began developing it: Night Skies. Pitched as the darker, nastier flipside to the friendly aliens in Close Encounters, Night Skies was meant to follow a group of extraterrestrial beings that land on Earth and begin to terrorize a family on their isolated farm.

The idea for Night Skies came to Spielberg after he heard about an alleged real-life incident while doing research for Close Encounters that involved a family under attack by extraterrestrials. But what exactly was the incident, and why is it famous in Ufology? How did it influence Night Skies, and how did Night Skies itself morph into an utterly different film altogether? Well…

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The Ukraine war is lost, but Hollywood and DC don’t know it

On April 10, stars in Hollywood joined politicians in D.C. in demanding that Congress take up a war aid bill authorizing $60 billion in new assistance for Ukraine. 

But they’re all wrong. The war is lost. In fact, 90% of people in Europe believe that to be true. 

If that comes as a surprise, it shouldn’t. In late February, the Times of London published the results of a poll asking residents throughout the continent a very simple question: 

Can Ukraine win the war against Russia? Only 10% said yes. 

So, what do they see that Hollywood stars, the White House, and leaders on Capitol Hill do not? 

Three things. 

First, Ukraine lacks the soldiers to win. Kiev has lost at least 70,000 killed in action, with another 100,000 otherwise combat ineffective. 

And that’s a crisis. As Ukraine’s Commander of Joint Forces said on April 11, there are seven to 10 times more Russian soldiers than there are Ukrainians on the battlefield. 

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LA’s District Attorney Sued By Game Of Thrones Actor Over Dismissed Pedophilia Charges

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón is facing legal action after a “Game of Thrones” actor filed suit over dismissed pedophilia charges.

Joseph Gatt—best known for his role as “Thenn Warg” on the popular HBO television series—is suing the city of Los Angeles, the LAPD, and the District Attorney’s office.

The 52-year-old is seeking $40 million in damages, and says the allegations made against him were not only career-ending, but ruined his reputation by branding him as a “serial pedophile.”

The charges stem from a 2022 arrest after Mr. Gatt was accused of engaging in sexually explicit online communication with a minor across state lines. He notes the claims were inadequately investigated prior to his felony charges being publicly announced in an LAPD press release.

The alleged interaction resulted from a video on Cameo Mr. Gatt recorded for a fan’s 16th birthday, before being contacted by the teenage girl via social media on multiple occasions. Mr. Gatt did respond, but according to the suit it was in a manner that was “wholly appropriate and consistent with typical celebrity-fan exchanges.” The two, however, never met in person.

Cameo is a video-sharing website often used by public figures. Users can purchase a personalized video for the individual receiving it. This gives fans a chance to connect with their favorite celebrities with a video message for any occasion. A crucial bit of information the lawsuit says backs claims that the teenage girl was an “admittedly obsessed fan of Gatt.”

The 16-year-old went on to claim to have pictures of the supposed inappropriate conversations, but the defendants failed to “interview or even remotely assess for credibility.” Mr. Gatt was arrested in April of 2022 following a search warrant on his home. He called the act an “invasion of privacy” that deprived him of his “liberty and freedom.”

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Close-up of Death Culture: 1,000 in Entertainment Biz Proclaim Support for Gaza Slaughter

Last week, Variety reported that “more than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ Oscar speech.” The angry letter is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers’ own loved ones.

A few ethical words from Glazer while accepting his award provoked outrage. He spoke of wanting to refute “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” and he followed with a vital question: “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

Those words were too much for the letter’s signers, who included many of Hollywood’s powerful producers, directors and agents. For starters, they accused Glazer (who is Jewish) of “drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination.”

Ironically, that accusation embodied what Glazer had confronted from the Academy Awards stage when he said that what’s crucial in the present is “not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’”

But the letter refused to look at what Israel is doing now as it bombs, kills, maims and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where there are now 32,000 known dead and 74,000 injured. The letter’s moral vision only looked back at what the Third Reich did. Its signers endorsed the usual Zionist polemics – fitting neatly into Glazer’s description of “Jewishness and the Holocaust” being “hijacked by an occupation.”

The letter even denied that an occupation actually exists – objecting to “the use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years.” Somehow the Old Testament was presumed to be sufficient justification for the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, most of whose ancestors lived in what’s now Israel. The vast majority of 2.2 million people have been driven from their bombed-out homes in Gaza, with many now facing starvation due to blockage of food.

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Pirate Streaming Sites Cost Hollywood $30 Billion Annually

“[P]iracy involving illegal streaming services as well as file-sharing costs the US economy about $30 billion in lost revenue a year and some 250,000 jobs,” reports the far-left Bloomberg.

That estimate comes from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center. “The global impact,” the report adds, “is about $71 billion annually.”

“Ever since taking on Netflix Inc. at its own game, old Hollywood has struggled to turn a profit in streaming, with the likes of Disney+, Peacock and Paramount+ losing billions of dollars each year[.]” This has Wall Street living with the fear that streaming services will never match the massive income generated by cable TV. And that’s because they won’t.

“But the age of streaming has been a boon for some unintended winners,” Bloomberg found. Primarily “pirates that use software to rip a film or television show in seconds from legitimate online video platforms and host the titles on their own[.]” These “illegitimate services … rake in about $2 billion annually from ads and subscriptions.”

Because these pirate sites don’t share the burden of the costs associated with producing the movies and TV shows they stream for their subscribers, the Motion Picture Association (MPA) believes their profit margins reach as high as 90 percent.

The MPA says there are about 130 illicit streaming sites earning five to ten dollars a month from each of two million subscribers.

“Some of these pirate websites have gotten more daily visits than some of the top 10 legitimate sites,” Karyn Temple, the MPA’s general counsel, told Bloomberg. “That really shows how prolific they are.”

Within two years, starting with 2022, the cumulative losses will climb to $113 billion.

The article gives some of the two million illicit subscribers the benefit of the doubt. The pirate sites are sophisticated enough to look legitimate, so people might not know it’s illegal. Still, there is a full-court legal press to put a stop to this. Millions of unvetted illegal aliens flooding over the border? Hollywood doesn’t care. But don’t you dare not pay full price for Squid Game.

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Reddit must share IP addresses of piracy-discussing users, film studios say

For the third time in less than a year, film studios with copyright infringement complaints against a cable Internet provider are trying to force Reddit to share information about users who have discussed piracy on the site.

In 2023, film companies lost two attempts to have Reddit unmask its users. In the first instance, US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler ruled in the US District Court for the Northern District of California that the First Amendment right to anonymous speech meant Reddit didn’t have to disclose the names, email addresses, and other account registration information for nine Reddit users. Film companies, including Bodyguard Productions and Millennium Media, had subpoenaed Reddit in relation to a copyright infringement lawsuit against Astound Broadband-owned RCN about subscribers allegedly pirating 34 movie titles, including Hellboy (2019), Rambo V: Last Blood, and Tesla.

In the second instance, the same companies sued Astound Broadband-owned ISP Grande, again for alleged copyright infringement occurring over the ISP’s network. The studios subpoenaed Reddit for user account information, including “IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address, and other account registration information” for six Reddit users, per a July 2023 court filing.

In August, a federal court again quashed that subpoena, citing First Amendment rights. In her ruling, Beeler noted that while the First Amendment right to anonymous speech is not absolute, the film producers had already received the names of 118 Grande subscribers. She also said the film producers had failed to prove that “the identifying information is directly or materially relevant or unavailable from another source.”

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‘South Park’ Mocks Hollywood Trend of Recasting Characters as Minority Women

Paramount+ released the teaser for the new South Park special on Wednesday. The special “Joining the Panderverse” premieres Oct. 27 on the streaming service.

The teaser shows South Park boys Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny as women. Fan favorite Butters also makes the transformation.

In his original form, Kyle questions what sense this transformation makes. PC Principal tells him Kyle’s the one with the problem.

A synopsis reveals Cartman is dreaming about the end of the world while the adults of South Park contend with A.I.

Paramount+ specials are part of Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s 2021 deal with Viacom. The deal also keeps the South Park series on Comedy Central until 2030.

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Anti-Defamation League Launching Hollywood Watchdog to Monitor Anti-Semitism in Entertainment

The Anti-Defamation League — the left-wing political organization whose mission increasingly appears to be censoring conservatives and other non-leftists who disagree with its agenda  — is launching a new institute that will serve as a Hollywood watchdog to monitor for anti-semitic stereotypes in entertainment.

ADL leaders said the Los Angeles-based institute will work with industry leaders as well as other nonprofit organizations, including the left-wing Common Sense Media.

“It’s not uncommon to see Jews in movies and television, but it is most common to see Jews boxed into stereotypes and tropes that create a narrow — and often negative — impression of the Jewish people,” ADL CEO and national director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement issued Tuesday.

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Leah Remini sues Scientology over alleged ‘harassment, intimidation, surveillance and defamation’

Actress Leah Remini has filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology for being “dead set on making her life a living hell now that she’s no longer a part of the church,” TMZ reported on Tuesday.

Remini is “being stalked and harassed by the Church of Scientology as part of a coordinated campaign to destroy her life because she left the religion,” TMZ learned from the complaint.

“According to the docs, obtained by TMZ, Leah claims Scientology is stalking her and invading her privacy because the church is determined to silence her and others who are critical of the religion,” TMZ wrote. “Leah claims the alleged abuse coming her way is part of a broader policy and practice of intimidation within the Church of Scientology … which she says dates all the way back to founder L. Ron Hubbard.”

Remini posted a statement to Instagram outlining her reasons for suing the faith.

“After 17 years of harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and defamation, I am filing a lawsuit against Scientology and David Miscavige,” Remini said. “While advocating for victims of Scientology has significantly impacted my life and career, Scientology’s final objective of silencing me has not been achieved. While this lawsuit is about what Scientology has done to me, I am one of thousands of targets of Scientology over the past seven decades. People who share what they’ve experienced in Scientology, and those who tell their stories and advocate for them, should be free to do so without fearing retaliation from a cult with tax exemption and billions in assets.”

Remini added that she is advocating for Scientology’s alleged victims.

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Outspoken climate activist Steven Spielberg has taken delivery of his $250 million superyacht – Even longer than a football field, the diesel-powered 4,444 ton vessel has two swimming pools and, in all possibility, a plush movie theater and a helipad.

The thing about superyachts is that once you get on them, you never get off. Not literally but metaphorically. It stays in your spirit, features in your holiday plans, and there will never be a better way to unwind. This could be why despite selling the 282-foot-long superyacht Seven Seas for $150 million, Spielberg commissioned another Oceanco yacht, also called Seven Seas (named after his seven children). The original Seven Seas is now called Man Of Steel and is owned by Canadian steel billionaire Barry Zekelman.

This month, the 358 feet ship worth $250 million was delivered to the legendary American filmmaker. The Dutch shipyard, as expected, remained unfailingly tight-lipped about the owner’s identity. Still, it doesn’t take a genius to guess the boat with the same name could only belong to the world-famous director.

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