Category: Новини

LONDON — Prepare for Poppenheimer.

Poor Things and Oppenheimer are the leading contenders for the British Academy Film Awards, which will be handed out Sunday in front of an audience of filmmakers, movie stars and the heir to the British throne.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ gothic fantasia is up for 11 trophies, while Christopher Nolan’s atom-bomb epic has 13 nominations for the British prizes, known as BAFTAs. That’s the same number Oppenheimer has for the Oscars, where it is also the frontrunner.

The ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall will be a glitzy, British-accented appetizer for Hollywood’s Academy Awards, closely watched for hints about who might win at the Oscars on March 10.

Nominees including Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr., Rosamund Pike, Ryan Gosling and Ayo Edebiri are expected on the red carpet beside the River Thames, along with presenters such as Andrew Scott, Cate Blanchett, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Idris Elba.

Guest of honor will be Prince William, in his role as president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He’ll be without his wife, Kate, who is recovering after abdominal surgery last month.

The show will be hosted, with a dash of self-deprecating humor, by Doctor Who star David Tennant.

“People keep telling me I should be terribly nervous,” Tennant said about the notoriously pitfall-plagued role of awards show host. “But it’s not like I’m up for the award. I just get to hand them out.”

Historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon and Holocaust drama The Zone of Interest have nine nominations each for the prizes, officially called the EE BAFTA Film Awards.

French courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, boarding school comedy The Holdovers and Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro each have seven, while grief-flecked love story All of Us Strangers is nominated in six categories and class-war dramedy Saltburn in five.

Barbie, one half of 2023’s Barbenheimer box office juggernaut, also has five nominations, but missed out on nods for best picture and best director. Many see the omission of Barbie director Greta Gerwig — for both BAFTAs and Oscars — as a major snub.

Britain’s film academy introduced changes to increase the awards’ diversity in 2020, when no women were nominated as best director for the seventh year running and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white. But there is only one woman among the six best-director nominees: Justine Triet for Anatomy of a Fall. Emerald Fennell for Saltburn and Celine Song for Past Lives also failed to make the list.

The best film race pits Oppenheimer against Poor Things, Killers of the Flower Moon, Anatomy of a Fall and The Holdovers.

Poor Things is also on the 10-strong list for the separate category of best British film, an eclectic slate that includes class-war dramedy Saltburn, imperial epic Napoleon, south London romcom Rye Lane and chocolatier origin story Wonka, among others.

A woman of color could take the best actress BAFTA for the first time, with Fantasia Barrino for The Color Purple and Vivian Oparah for Rye Lane nominated alongside Sandra Hüller for Anatomy of a Fall, Mulligan for Maestro, Margot Robbie for Barbie and Emma Stone for Poor Things.

No British performers are nominated in the best-actor category, but Ireland is represented by Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer and Barry Keoghan for Saltburn. They’re up against Cooper for Maestro, Colman Domingo for Rustin, Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers and Teo Yoo for Past Lives.

Harrowing Ukraine war documentary 20 Days in Mariupol, produced by The Associated Press and PBS Frontline, is nominated for best documentary and best film not in the English language.

The ceremony is set to include musical performances by Ted Lasso star Hannah Waddingham and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, the latter singing her 2001 hit Murder on the Dancefloor, which shot back up the charts after featuring in Saltburn.

Samantha Morton will receive the academy’s highest honor, the BAFTA Fellowship, and film curator June Givanni, founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, will be honored for outstanding British contribution to cinema.

Sunday’s ceremony will be broadcast on BBC One in the U.K. from 1900GMT, and on streaming service BritBox in the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Africa.
…

paris — A new artificial intelligence tool that promises to create short videos from simple text commands has raised concerns along with questions from artists and media professionals. 

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and image generator DALL-E, said Thursday it was testing a text-to-video model called “Sora” that can allow users to create realistic videos with simple prompts. 

The San Francisco-based startup says Sora can “generate complex scenes with multiple characters, specific types of motion, and accurate details of the subject and background,” but admits it still has limitations, such as possibly “mixing up left and right.” 

Here are early reactions from industries that could be affected by the new generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool:   

Examples of Sora-created clips on OpenAI’s website range widely in style and subject, from seemingly real drone footage above a crowded market to an animated bunny-like creature bouncing through a forest. 

Thomas Bellenger, founder and art director of Cutback Productions, has been carefully watching the evolution of generative AI image generation.   

“There were those who felt that it was an unstoppable groundswell that was progressing at an astonishing rate, and those who just didn’t want to see it,” said Bellenger, whose France-based company has created large scale visual effects for such touring musicians as Stromae and Justice. 

He said the development of generative AI has “created a lot of debate internally” at the company and “a lot of sometimes visceral reactions.” 

Bellenger noted that Sora has yet to be released, so its capabilities have yet to be tested by the public. 

“What is certain is that no one expected such a technological leap forward in just a few weeks,” Bellenger said. “It’s unheard of.” 

He said whatever the future holds, they’ll “find ways to create differently.” 

Mixed reaction among creators

Video game creators are equally likely to be impacted by the new invention, with reaction among the sector divided between those open to embracing a new tool and those fearing it might replace them. 

French video game giant Ubisoft hailed the OpenAI announcement as a “quantum leap forward” with the potential to let players and development teams express their imaginations. 

“We’ve been exploring this potential for a long time,” a Ubisoft spokesperson told AFP. 

Alain Puget, chief of Nantes-based studio Alkemi, said he won’t replace any artists with AI tools, which “only reproduce things done by humans.” 

Nevertheless, Puget noted, this “visually impressive” tool could be used by small studios to produce more professionally rendered images. 

While video “cut scenes” that play out occasionally to advance game storylines are different from player-controlled action, Puget expects tools like Sora to eventually be able to replace “the way we do things.”   

‘A terrifying leap’

Basile Simon, a former journalist and current Stanford University researcher, thinks there has been “a terrifying leap forward in the last year” when it comes to generative AI allowing realistic-looking fabrications to be rapidly produced. 

He dreads the idea of how such tools will be abused during elections and fears the public will “no longer know what to believe”. 

Julien Pain of French TV channel France Info’s fact-checking program “Vrai ou Faux” (True or False) says he’s also worried about abuse of AI tools. 

“Until now, it was easy enough to spot fake images, for example by noticing the repetitive faces in the background,” Pain said. “What this new software does seems to be on another level.” 

While OpenAI and U.S. tech titans may promote safety tools, such as industry-wide watermarks that reveal AI-created imagery, “what about tomorrow’s competitors in China and Russia?” he posited. 

The Fred & Farid agency, which has collaborated with the Longchamp and Budweiser brands and where a studio dedicated to AI was opened in early January, anticipates that “80 percent of brand content will be generated by artificial intelligence.” 

“Creative genius” will no longer be limited by production skills thanks to generative AI tools, one enthusiast contended.   

Stephanie Laporte, chief executive and founder of the OTTA advertising and influencer agency, believes the technology will “force the industry to evolve.” 

She also anticipates ad companies with lean budgets will resort to AI tools to save money on workers. 

A possible exception, she believes, is the luxury segment, where brands are “very sensitive to authenticity” and “will probably use AI sparingly.” 
…

London — An original draft “Star Wars” script left in a London apartment by actor Harrison Ford, who played Hans Solo in the movie, sold at a UK auction for $13,600 on Saturday. 

The script was used when Ford was filming the first installment of the epic saga, originally entitled “The Adventures of Luke Starkiller,” at Elstree Studios north of London. 

The fourth draft of the screenplay, dating from March 15, 1976, was snapped up by an Austrian collector when it went under the hammer at Excalibur Auctions in Hertfordshire, north of London.   

Ford left the script at the London flat he rented at the time along with shooting schedules — which sold for more than $6,000 — and a letter from an agent or friend — which sold for nearly $225.  

The landlords renting the property found the items and kept them for more than 50 years. 

The incomplete and unbound script contains revisions and introduces Hans Solo on page 56. 

The 1977 film catapulted Ford to international fame and he starred in sequels “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980) and “Return of the Jedi” (1983), before taking on the role again in “The Force Awakens” (2015). 

“Although other copies of this script have come to market previously, this sale saw a new record set for a Star Walker script, which shows how a personal link to the items is so enticing to Star Wars fans,” said Excalibur Auctions’ auctioneer Jonathan Torode. “The personal provenance makes them totally unique. We hope they will be as treasured by their new owners as much as they were by the previous ones.” 
…