The upcoming film Fahrenheit 451 is planned for release this spring, and HBO just released the first trailer. In it, we see a copy of Crime and Punishment, as well as several other “controversial” novels, being set ablaze by a fireman, presumably the film’s protagonist Guy Montag.
The movie is based on the classic 1953 Ray Bradbury novel, and it’s set in an alternate future where history is obliterated and mass media is an opiate. The film stars Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon, and is directed by Ramin Bahrani. “I have always loved Ray Bradbury’s prophetic novel Fahrenheit 451,” Bahrani said in a press release. “Two years ago, as I looked at the world around me, it seemed like the ideal time to do a modern interpretation.”
Today’s media climate seemed especially relevant, Bahrani told a panel at the Television Critics Association. “Politically things are going in a very strange direction in terms of what is real and what is not real,” he said. “I think we’ve been going in that direction for a long time, it’s just now kind of being revealed to us more clearly.”
After being exposed to “forbidden” literature, Montag begins to question his occupation and eventually joins a resistance group that memorizes entire books to keep them alive until society can once again accept its contributions.
The film was shot on location in Toronto, and also stars Sofia Boutella as Clarise, an informant caught in the middle, and Lilly Singh as Raven, a tabloid reporter who supports the book-burning propaganda.
Named after the temperature at which paper burns, the novel was developed out of a series of short stories Bradbury wrote in the ‘40s. Written when most people didn’t have televisions, or only tiny black-and-white screens, Bradbury envisioned a future where TVs were “walls” and actors were “families.”
Late in his life, Bradbury contended that his novel was not about government censorship, as many believe, but about how television could destroy literature. “Useless. They stuff you with so much useless information, you feel full,” he told LA Weekly in a 2007 interview. “I would worry about people being turned into morons by TV.”
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?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.