In prior years, security at the Golden Globes had been relatively lax, but according to Deadline, the police presence at this year’s event was beefed up — substantially.
Amid renewed concerns about terrorism in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino attacks, heavily armored police mingled with gown-bedecked and tux-clad celebs at both the award show itself and at star-studded after parties hosted by Fox, Warner Bros, and other high-profile entertainment companies.
The Beverly Hills Police Department cooperated with federal law enforcement in efforts to keep the Beverly Hilton Hotel safe for the event, and the new security measures were conspicuous to say the least.
“It was nuts this year,” a top publicist told Deadline. “I was actually scared. And we know this is only the beginning. We are going to see this all the time now. The only thing that is going to change is that it will be more professional. This is going to be like Israel in how they check your bag and your car everywhere you go.”
While there had been relative freedom of movement in years past, this show was reportedly a horse of a different color. Celebs and press alike were shepherded through metal detectors as they entered the event and journalists had their badges checked at every individual point of of entry, even after they had been cleared to enter the show.
Absent any specific, credible threat, the military-style security is certainly a bit curious and you do have to wonder if we’re getting the whole story here.
Luckily — other than a couple of snubs that may have bordered on robbery — the Golden Globes went off without incident and the celebratory atmosphere wasn’t sullied by any ugliness. Though one could certainly argue that the preventative measures themselves were a bit of a mood killer.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see what the security looks like at the Dolby Theater when the Academy Awards come to town next month. Hopefully, fears of additional attacks will have subsided by then, but we certainly wouldn’t advise holding your breath.
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?