DT’s weekly entertainment show, Between the Streams, is your guide to all of the hottest, most important, and (of course) dumbest new developments in streaming and entertainment, providing a handy recap of the week that was. Follow us here every Friday or add us via RSS, iTunes, or Stitcher at the links above to take BtS on the road!
It’s another week in entertainment, and while there’s plenty we’ll be talking about on today’s show, it’s hard to keep our excitement contained about one show in particular. Atlanta, the new show from producer/actor/rapper and all around-renaissance man Donald Glover is awesome. No other way to say it. The show is unique in some ways, and in others it seems to tread a similar path to shows like Ballers and, before that, Entourage. However, if the first episode is any indication, this show does with music what Ballers is trying to do with sports — only much better.
Donald Glover, who most people probably know best for his role as Troy Barnes on Community, is electric in Atlanta — his comedic timing is spot-on (as always), but his dramatic efforts might shine even brighter. The relationships we’re exposed to are rich and complex, the dialog is witty without feeling unrealistic, and there are also some big moments that take place right away. The best part? The full first episode is available on YouTube right now. Apparently, Atlanta is employing this crack sales method — the first one’s free, kids. But Atlanta is far from the only thing we’ll cover on this week’s show.
How about that box office, huh? It’s looking … well, it’s looking a bit rough. It seems that studios are trying to recover after a somewhat odd summer blockbuster season, and there’s just not much left in the tank at the moment. The one highlight to talk about this week is Sully. While it may be one of the lamest names for a blockbuster ever, the Tom Hanks vehicle about Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (how’s that for a name?), is pretty much the only reason to drag your butt to the theater this weekend. The movie depicts Capt. Sullenberger’s miraculous water landing on New York’s Hudson River, which preserved all 155 lives on board after the plane lost both engines when they Hoovered a flock of birds, as well as the aftermath that followed. Sullenberger was apparently given the third degree when the Federal Aviation Administration deemed the airplane could have made it back to the airport. Is the film exaggerating the fallout for effect? Probably. But how else are you going to make a full-length feature film about a minute and a half of action?
Along with Sully, there’s also a strange turn for one Mr. Tom Hardy, along with one of our favorite rising actresses from the British Isles, Olivia Colman (The Night Manager). The movie, called London Road, is actually a musical about a small town in England in which five bodies of young girls are found, and a mystery ensues. If nothing else, the fact that this is a murder drama/musical with Tom Hardy in it is of note.
We’ve also got some interesting DC and Marvel tidbits to talk about this week. On the DC side, it appears the new villain in the Ben Affleck-directed Batman movie has been cast. Joe Manganiello (True Blood, Spider-Man) will be playing Deathstroke, the powerful mercenary in the DC universe who, interestingly enough, was the original inspiration for another mercenary on the Marvel side, Deadpool. In fact, Deadpool was actually created as a parody of Deathstroke, and the two share several similarities in both origin and attributes. It’s unclear at this point whether or not Deathstroke will be a part of the new Justice League film, but he’s expected to be the primary villain in Affleck’s Batman film.
On the Marvel side, there are plenty of puzzle pieces being collected, as per usual, as a part of the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe. Those include possible plans for a Mr. Marvel TV show or movie, the latest photo from the Dr. Strange film, and plans for a Squirrel Girl movie. Never heard of Squirrel Girl? Don’t worry, we’ll break it all down for you.
We’ll have all that, and more on this week’s Between the Streams, so catch us live today at 2 p.m. PT, or take us on the road via the links above.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?