Ever since he stepped down as host of The Daily Show, ceding his position to Trevor Noah, many of us have had a big, Jon Stewart-shaped hole in our hearts. Since then, he has been rather quiet (apart from bashing John Cena with a steel chair); luckily, he is about to show up on our (digital) doorsteps.
Despite losing all the color in his hair (sorry, Jon), the 54-year-old comedian and political critic has not lost his acerbic sense of humor and he plans on proving it. On Wednesday, as part of Stewart’s four-year deal with HBO signed in 2015, HBO president Casey Bloys announced Stewart will headline two stand-up specials for the premium network, as well as hosting the seventh annual Night of Too Many Stars, a sort of one-night comedy variety benefit for Next for Autism.
Before landing the The Daily Show gig in 1999, Stewart (born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, he changed his name because it “sounded too Hollywood”) cut his teeth performing at various clubs in New York City, including the famed Comedy Cellar, where he regularly appeared in late-night sets before moving on to more television work during the 1990s. At one point, Stewart was even a finalist to replace David Letterman on NBC’s Late Night but lost out to Conan O’Brien.
The stand-up specials mark a return to HBO’s comedy section after a 21-year hiatus following 1996’s Jon Stewart: Unleavened. Although networks like Comedy Central and Netflix are now more closely associated with stand-up comedy, HBO was once a heavy hitter, with myriad famous comedians (plus then-up-and-comers who are now staples in the comedy scene) appearing on programs like One Night Stand and HBO Comedy Half-Hour.
“We’re excited to bring Jon to the network with this pair of specials,” Bloys said. “We’ve all missed his uniquely thoughtful brand of humor.”
In response, Stewart was typically tinged with humor: “I’m really thrilled to be able to return to stand-up on HBO. They’ve always set the standard for great stand-up specials. Plus, I can finally use up the last of the Saddam Hussein jokes left over from my first special.”
The Night of Too Many Stars will air live from The Theater at Madison Square Garden on November 18. The event, founded by Robert Smigel in 2010, includes sketches, stand-up comedy performances, and short films. Dates and locations for the stand-up specials are as yet unconfirmed.
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?