Photo: Warner Bros. I was excited to watch Cold War, the new film from Ida director Paweł Pawlikowski, now that it’s streaming on Amazon. Like Ida, Cold War is shot in gorgeous black and white and has a zoomed-in focus on the oppression felt by an individual during war. Cold War jumps forward again and again so we can see the isolating effects over time, which is a really neat way to structure a movie that’s trying to show the impact of a seemingly endless standoff. It effectively turns into a series of connected shorts, showing various blips in a couple’s life. What I found even more confusing was the relationship that it depicted. It’s torn apart and trampled again and again by war, then brought together again by a passion that’s never clearly developed. In the end, the film is effective at showing the destructive forces of war, but I felt lost wondering why this specific couple went through this. Check out 10 trailers from this week below.
The Mandalorian Okay, okay. I’ll sign up for Disney .
Motherless Brooklyn Edward Norton wrote, directed, and stars in this adaptation of one of Jonathan Lethem’s best-known novels. It looks like a richly drawn re-creation of the novel’s take on Brooklyn, with plenty of famous faces on board. The film will come out on November 1st.
The Morning Show Here’s the first trailer for what’s likely to be Apple’s first big TV series. It looks like a fictionalized take on a Matt Lauer / Today show situation, with everyone looking a little sad but also very ready to be inspirational. It’ll likely come out later this year.
Bombshell Somehow, the director behind the Austin Powers films is making a movie about the ouster of Roger Ailes at Fox over sexual harassment allegations. It may be an odd pairing, but it has three major stars leading the film and somewhat uncomfortably dressing up as Fox News personalities. It comes out in December.
Marriage Story Netflix put out a pair of teasers this week for its upcoming Noah Baumbach film, which has Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver starring as a couple whose marriage appears to be going through ups and downs. Obviously, I’m going to watch it. It’ll come out this fall, and it will be in some theaters, too.
The Report Somehow, we’re lucky enough to be getting two Adam Driver trailers in one week. This one has him playing a congressional staffer who begins to investigate the CIA’s torture program and discovers just how much went wrong. It will come to theaters on November 15th and will start streaming on November 29th.
Midnight Traveler Director Hassan Fazili tracks his family’s escape from Afghanistan after a documentary he made angered the Taliban and led to the killing of its subject. It looks like a unique and intimate view into the experience of being a refugee. It’ll come to theaters on September 18th.
The Politician Here’s the first trailer for the first Netflix series from Ryan Murphy, the Glee and American Horror Story creator who struck a huge deal with Netflix last year to make shows for the streaming service. It looks stylized and sharp in a very entertaining way. It’ll come out on September 27th.
Welcome to The I-Land Netflix is now cashing in even more on the Fyre Festival disaster by turning it into the premise for a thriller that seems to have partygoers being hunted while stranded on an island. How did this get made so quickly? It’ll come out on September 12th.
Underwater …this is Alien but underwater. I cannot believe how much this is just Alien underwater. It’s amazing. The film will come out on January 10th.
Ewan McGregor’s long-rumored Obi-Wan series is officially coming to Disney , the company confirmed today. McGregor was onstage at D23, the company’s biennial convention, to make the announcement. “It feels so nice to say,” McGregor said. Disney and Lucasfilm originally planned a feature-length theatrical Star Wars spinoff, according to a Hollywood Reporter story from 2017. But after two Star Wars spinoff films, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Solo: A Star Wars Story, didn’t perform as well as Disney had hoped, the Obi-Wan side story was reportedly taken off the table. A third spinoff movie was planned (reportedly poised to focus on Boba Fett), but Disney and Lucasfilm decided to not move forward. The company ended up pushing back future Star Wars installments — including a trilogy from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson and a trilogy from the Game of Thrones creators— to 2021. No launch date for the Obi-Wan spinoff has been announced at this time. The company plans to begin shooting in 2020.
Image: Knightscope Humans haven’t quite reached a WALL-E-like society where robots care for our every possible need, but we do have a few roving security robots that can monitor places like banks, casinos, malls, and hospitals so human security guards can catch a break. Some people don’t seem to like the new robot cops: earlier this month in Hayward, California, a security robot captured video of an alleged attacker shortly before he bowled it over. Here’s a video from Knightscope, which makes the robot that was attacked:
If you recognize this person, the Hayward Police Department could use a hand.
Knocking over one of these robots isn’t something you’d likely do by accident — Knightscope says it weighs 398 lbs. But most people shouldn’t worry about running into them at all, for now. Knightscope tells The Verge that there are only about 75 Knightscope robots deployed in 15 US states right now, and a report at Vox suggests these types of bots won’t replace security guards anytime soon: Slack has two robots from Cobalt to help secure its offices, but still employs the same three night guards it did before it got the robots. The bots help on-duty guards with minor tasks like scanning a doorway, but humans still need to intervene if a robot detects something out of the ordinary, and robots from both Knightscope and Cobalt don’t have weapons, so they can’t use any force. So tackling one of these robots is a bit of a cheap shot. Knightscope says the robot that was attacked has made a “speedy recovery.” Let’s just hope it can stay away from toddlers and fountains.
Image: Apple Apple’s new Goldman Sachs-backed credit card launched to all US iPhone users just yesterday, and now we’re learning all sorts of fun facts about the physical, titanium card the company is shipping to likely thousands of users at this very moment. Namely, that it can be easily damaged. Thanks to a support webpage unearthed by MacRumors, Apple is advising against keeping your Apple Card in a leather wallet or in direct contact with denim, as such fabrics “might cause permanent discoloration that will not wash off.” Apple claims its credit card, one of the heaviest cards on the market, is “laser-etched with the card holder’s name and the Apple logo” and contains a bright white finish “achieved through a multi-layer coating process that’s added to the titanium base material.” In other words, if any kind of metal comes into contact with it, including the edges of another credit card, it could suffer some serious scratches or other damage to the finish. The Apple Card is a status symbol, and Apple wants you to treat it as such As for how to safely store the card, Apple is advising customers store it in some container made of soft material — but not leather — and to make sure it doesn’t come into contact with any loose metal objects (and of course magnets, as that could demagnetize the strip). The company also advises cleaning the card with only a slightly damp microfiber cloth dipped in water or isopropyl alcohol. “Don’t use window or household cleaners, compressed air, aerosol sprays, solvents, ammonia, or abrasives to clean your titanium Apple Card,” warns the support page. This all sounds a little excessive, as most people don’t take such studious care of their credit cards, let alone forgo a leather wallet just to avoid discoloration. But it’s important to remember that the Apple Card, with its rather standard benefits, is not intended to be the best credit card out there with top-tier benefits. The 3 percent cash back is nice, as are the built-in security features that protect the card number by removing it from the physical card itself and generating a virtual number online for merchants that don’t accept Apple Pay. But what you’re mostly signing up for here is the Apple Card as a status symbol. Even though it’s backed by literal bank Goldman Sachs, Apple refers to the card as a product “created by Apple, not a bank.” Essentially, Apple is promoting the Apple Card as a manifestation of its brand’s philosophy around luxury, privacy, and outside-the-box thinking, something it doesn’t want associated with stodgy, controversial financial institutions. And sure, it looks super sleek, too. That’s part of the pitch, and it makes sense then that Apple would have an entire support page dedicated to helping you properly clean the card and take care of it, as if it were an iPhone. That said, it’s going to be quite the surprise when people find out that they can’t store it next to other cards, or in a leather wallet they might have been using for years. The only solution to that, I’m guessing, is the advent of the Apple Card case. Seems like an obvious accessory opportunity that won’t go untapped.
Image: BattleBots We all knew it would happen someday. Google, which believes in AI so much it rebranded its Google Research division as Google AI, has begun to side with the robots. On Monday, it was reported that Google’s YouTube took down videos of robots fighting each other (think: BattleBots), saying they violated policies against showing displays of animal cruelty. Here’s one of the videos that had been determined to show animal cruelty:
This video was posted by Jamison Go, who competed in the last season of BattleBots. Yesterday, he says he received the following takedown notice from YouTube for that video and eight others:
According to the YouTube channel Maker’s Muse, Sarah Pohorecky, who also competed in the last season of BattleBots, got a similar takedown from YouTube. Motherboard reported her channel was also given a strike. The speed and volume with which these videos were taken down suggests that it was due to some overactive moderation on YouTube’s end. The company has since confirmed to The Verge that the videos were removed in error and that it has no policies prohibiting videos of robots fighting (yet). It appears most of the videos that were taken down are back up… for now. But watch them quick — you never know when YouTube’s AI will find another way to protect its robot brethren.
The Microsoft Project 2019 A to Z bundle is a set of online courses that are on sale for $29.99, a savings of $167
We all claim to be proficient in Microsoft’s big-name programs, but it’s actually some of its lesser-known programs that can catch a recruiter’s eye. For example, Microsoft Project. A tool within the Microsoft Suite, this well-regarded project management tool allows you to streamline project, resource, and portfolio management. With the tool handy, you’ll be able to help your team stay on track and be productive, as well as use its advanced analytics functions to best understand your business’s needs and important decisions. Read more…
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