Denzel Washington has had his fair share of Oscar success over the decades, and he isn’t sweating the fact that the Oscars ignored his performance in Gladiator II. In speaking with The New York Times, Washington said that he’s been around too long to care that much about recognition for individual performances.
“I was sitting there smiling [on nomination morning], going: ‘Look at you. On the day you didn’t get a nomination for an Oscar, you’re working on Othello on Broadway,'” he said. “Are you kidding me? Awww. Oh, I’m so upset,” he added sarcastically.
Washington added, though, that he was happy for the performers who had received some recognition.
“I’m happy for all that did, and I’m happy with what I’m doing,” he said. “Listen, I’ve been around too long. I’ve got — I don’t wanna say other fish to fry, but there’s a reality at this age. Going back to what I was saying: The beginning of wisdom is understanding. I’m getting wiser, working on talking less and learning to understand more — and that’s exciting.”
Although reviews for Gladiator II as a whole were a mixed bag, almost every critic singled out Washington as the standout performer. Washington plays Macrinus in the film, a striver and former slave who rises to great power inside of Rome. Washington is playing to the rafters in the part, but it’s undoubtedly what the movie calls for, and there are few who are better able to deliver that than Washington. The movie earned a single nomination for its admittedly lush costume design.
Washington has had Oscar success in the past, winning Best Supporting Actor for Glory in 1990 and Best Actor for Training Day in 2002.
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?