bombs

via Lionsgate Back in the day, Roland Emmerich was one of the most reliable hit-makers in Hollywood, but it’s been a long time since the “Master of Disaster” delivered anything that even remotely resembled a hit. In fact, you’d have to go all the way back to 2009’s 2012 for Emmerich’s last hit, with the former titan of blockbuster cinema having fallen on hard time since then, regardless of what genre he’s dipping his toes into. However, he’s orchestrating a brand new shared universe regardless, and Space Nation…

Credit: The Conversation Pressure on the Biden administration to provide Ukraine with cluster bombs has refocused attention on the legal and moral use of such weaponry. The U.S. has been here before. It provided Saudi Arabia with cluster munitions—which contain bomblets that can scatter across a wide area, often not exploding until…

Images via Marvel Studios/DC Studios 2023 hasn’t exactly been a banner year for the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, but unless something goes hideously wrong with The Marvels, the studio can likely rest easy that the most notorious superhero movie bomb of the year is going to come from DC’s camp, thanks to ever-decreasing box office predictions for The Flash. Elsewhere, unearthed Chris Hemsworth comments from a full decade ago appear to prove he really has time-traveled through the Quantum Realm. Marvel…

via Warner Bros./Universal New box office forecasts for July suggest that Greta Gerwig’s Barbie will win the July 21–23 weekend over Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. This makes sense, since one seems like a fun PG-13 romp that subversively critiques gender roles and the other is a three-hour, R-rated accounting of one of the worst things that’s ever happened. To be clear, we think both films look really good; we’re just scratching our heads over why this wasn’t considered a foregone conclusion weeks ago. Per The…

Humans today are developing perhaps the most powerful technology in our history: artificial intelligence. The societal harms of AI — including discrimination, threats to democracy, and the concentration of influence — are already well-documented. Yet leading AI companies are in an arms race to build increasingly powerful AI systems that will escalate these risks at a pace that we have not seen in human history.The Boogeyman's Sophie Thatcher Reveals What Draws Her to Dark Characters | io9 InterviewAs our leaders grapple…

via DreamWorks It’s not easy being a box office success, critical darling, awards season juggernaut, game-changer, and trailblazer all at once, but it can’t be argued that Ridley Scott’s Gladiator managed to do all of the above and more with aplomb. $460 million at the box office and five Academy Award wins from a dozen nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor was only the beginning of its legacy, although things never got any better than they did when Russell Crowe’s Maximus cut a swathe through his…

The revolving door of rebooted IPs continued spinning this weekend when Disney Plus premiered Peter Pan & Wendy, which marked the third big budget adaptation of the source material to arrive in the last 20 years alone. While none of the trio will be regarded in the future as classics, it’s safe to say that Joe Wright’s Pan will always be known as the worst. In theory, the filmmaker behind several acclaimed prestige pictures including Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, Hanna, and Darkest Hour making the…

Everybody knows that you’re not supposed to plug a random USB stick into your computer. Worst case scenario, you’re typically looking at a desktop full of malware. However, it now appears that someone has come up with a much worse thing to load USBs with than malicious software: bombs.Multiple news outlets are reporting that USB sticks rigged with explosives have been mailed to journalists throughout Ecuador. The little clandestine incendiaries have been sent to at least five different newsrooms, sometimes accompanied…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeShazam! director David F Sandberg has vowed to leave the world of superheroes behind for a while after his sequel bombed at the box office.Shazam: Fury of the Gods took just $30.5m on its opening weekend at the US box office, down more than $20m from the first film’s domestic opening in 2019.The DC Comics film cost $110m to make and Warner Bros spent another $100m in marketing, making…

Photo by Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images for Warner Bros. It’s been a tough weekend for David F. Sandberg, with the director forced to sit on the sidelines and watch as his superhero sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods crashes and burns at the box office. At the rate things are going, the sophomore outing for the primary-colored family will be lucky to reach $30 million in its opening weekend, a massive drop from the opening installment’s $53 million bow. Searching for the tiniest sliver of light at the end of the…