'Mission: Impossible' theme composer Lalo Schifrin dies
He won four Grammys, including one for the Mission: Impossible theme set to an unconventional 5/4 time signature. The song was written for the CBS television spy drama that debuted in 1966 and became a blockbuster film franchise still running today.
Schifrin received an honorary Oscar for his lifetime of work in 2018. Clint Eastwood presented him with the award.
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NZ Herald
8 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Breaking Dad: Bob Odenkirk's Nobody 2 is all about making memories, one body at a time
There was a time when dinosaurs like Clint and Arnold and Sly plotted, with variable degrees of success, to graduate from action flicks and be taken seriously. That all changed early on in the Obama years, when Oscar-player allrounders like Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, and Liam Neeson decided, a couple of decades into their careers, that what they really wanted was to take a long detour into the throat-punching game. But even in such an environment, Odenkirk's admirably eclectic résumé makes him a uniquely left-field candidate. Discarding his many Emmy nominations for his role on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Odenkirk must be the only former off-camera Saturday Night Live writer to headline an action franchise more than 30 years later. This spring, his Broadway debut as sad-sack salesman Shelley Levene in a revival of Glengarry Glen Ross earned him a Tony Award nomination. Maybe if the yeggs and crooked lawmen he takes on in Nobody 2 knew about all that, they wouldn't be in such a hurry to bludgeon, stab, and/or shoot him. The setup this time around is that Odenkirk's Hutch, sensing that spouse Becca (played by Connie Nielsen) is losing patience with his late nights and absences from their kids' sporting events, proposes a family getaway to a decaying theme park/resort in the fictitious upper Midwestern everytown of Peary County, Wisconsin, the one place his father, played again by Christopher Lloyd, who looks roughly 10 minutes older than he did in Back to the Future 40 years ago, took him on a holiday when he was a kid. 'We're making memories,' Hutch tells his household, sounding more like he's trying to sell himself on the idea than to convince them. Despite his deep ties to the criminal underworld, Hutch is unaware that the town is effectively Sodom and Gomorrah, making a halfhearted attempt to pass itself off as Mayberry. Its org chart of creeps spans from Colin Hanks' crooked sheriff to John Ortiz's figurehead crime lord, to the one thug to rule them all – Sharon Stone! Given her humble beginnings in this genre, playing truly thankless roles like Steven Seagal's wife in Above the Law (1988), it's a delight to see Stone go full ham here. Like Orson Welles in The Third Man, she gets to flex by delaying her entrance until more than halfway through the picture, which, by the way, runs an anachronistically svelte 89 minutes. No one tries to charge her with smoking, but Hutch does take violent exception to her threatening his kids. Your ability to enjoy Nobody 2 will hang entirely upon how much nourishment and/or diversion you can wring from small cinematic pleasures: Odenkirk's gift for making a line like 'The cops over here – they're in league with the big syndicate' sound like something a human might say, for example. Christopher Lloyd (from left), Bob Odenkirk and Sharon Stone attend Los Angeles premiere of Universal Pictures' Nobody 2. Photo / Getty Images Or the fact that Tjahjanto or his music supervisor scored a hand-to-hand fight on a boat with a brass band instrumental of When the Saints Go Marching In, a funny needle drop in a movie that's otherwise full of rote ones. Or the way the movie joins the rarefied company of the third Die Hard and the second Captain America by making an impressive entry in the Elevator Fight Scene Hall of Fame. You also get a fun sequence in which Hutch and an unexpected ally booby-trap the theme park for a showdown with Sharon and the Family Stone – placing land mines in the ball pit and that sort of thing. Best of all, RZA returns as Hutch's brother, and this time he gets to do a sort of 60-second version of the samurai epic the Wu-Tang Clan frontman has always wanted to make. Making memories it ain't. But making 89 minutes of your life disappear almost painlessly has its place, too. Two and one-half stars. Nobody 2 is in New Zealand cinemas now.
RNZ News
a day ago
- RNZ News
NZ film, TV industry weighs pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence
AI was used to alter Adrien Brody's voice in The Brutalist. He won an Oscar for the role. Photo: Supplied Despite fears it may threaten the industry's very existence, Artificial Intelligence has quickly become a commonly used tool in film and television production. In Aotearoa, few rules or regulations are in place to control the rapidly evolving tech. Many in the industry say AI has been a gamechanger for productivity, cutting down time and cost on many tasks, but some creatives are worried their roles may soon become redundant. The spectre of AI first came to widespread attention during the 2023 screenwriters and actors strikes, which included demands that their work couldn't be used to train AI models. Two years later, actor Adrien Brody won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the Brutalist , which was controversial, because Brody's voice was altered by AI to create a more accurate Hungarian accent. Despite the outcry, the use of AI in film production has already been adopted globally, including here in Aotearoa. Owners of Fathom VFX, Rhys Dippie (left) and Damon Duncan. Photo: Supplied / ABC VFX artists Damon Duncan and Rhys Dippie, who co-own Fathom VFX, use to the tool speed up a sometimes tedious job. Previously, when their team were tasked with editing one five-second clip for a film, the process was long and drawn out. In one clip, a cheerleader somersaulted through the air, as other cheerleaders practiced in the background. The problem was it was raining, when it was not supposed to be, meaning every tiny droplet of water needed to be removed from the screen. Normally, this would have taken at least a week, working frame by frame, but Damon Duncan said AI could cut this time down dramatically. "If there is an AI approach or machine-learning approach that can save us time or get us to the result quicker, we will definitely look at it," he said. "One hundred percent of companies in this sphere are doing the same thing." While AI may be a gamechanger for productivity, Dippie said he feared where it would take the industry. "Unfortunately, if we're using bigger teams, we're not going to be competitive, and someone else who's using a smaller team and taking advantage of these tools is going to be winning the job - that's just the unfortunate reality." Duncan's concerns lie within the creative side of film-making. "What it doesn't allow for is education, it allows for answers without questions," he said. "We can teach software, we can teach techniques - we cannot teach things like eye, composition, colour theory, understanding what lenses do, understanding what light does." Screen Auckland chief executive Matthew Horrocks. Photo: Supplied As AI rapidly evolves, Screen Auckland chief executive Matthew Horrocks said it could threaten a large range of jobs within the industry. "The jobs that we should be concerned about are the ones that can be automated and the scope of what can be automated has radically increased," he said. ."Whether that's the first draft of a script or the first pass on a sound edit, or picture edit or VFX - all of those are potentially at risk here." According to Horrocks, it's not all negative, with AI opening doors to an industry notoriously difficult to break into, allowing film-makers to harness techniques that previously could have cost millions. "I think it could be highly beneficial for lower-budget projects and, in an Aotearoa context, we're a territory that's struggled in terms of capacity and budget internationally," he said. "What can be done by VFX in terms of a local company is expanding exponentially and that is incredibly exciting." Film-maker Arthur Machado is more than familiar with AI's abilities, after using it as a production tool for the past three years. In this time, he has made several fully AI-generated short films and advertisements. Despite his enthusiasm for the tech, he doesn't expect it to take over any time soon. "AI can't do all that those techniques can do on their own," he said. "AI is not a replacement for that, it's an addition. "AI can do a bit of everything on its own as well, so it's another option for production tools." Even Machado has his concerns. "It's a tool and that's how I use it., but I do think it's dangerous. There are many ways people could do harm, legislation is key here." In Aotearoa, however, legislation is practically non-existent, an issue NZ Writer's Guild executive director Alice Shearman holds deep concerns about. Shearman said screenwriters were now often asked to adapt AI-generated scripts. With little regulation in place, using AI in this way could be a minefield. "What we can't guarantee is that the data sets training and the outputs that they produce aren't utilising that stolen copyrighted work to generate other work. The moment you put your work into a tool, you can't guarantee that you're going to maintain control of your work." With AI now impacting nearly every aspect of the screen industry, Shearman said it was time for the government to step up. "Our current government is looking at copyright and AI with a wait-and-see perspective," she said. "They're waiting to see what's happening in Australia, they're waiting to see what's happening in the UK and the European territories, and I don't think we can continue to wait and see." She said, if the government didn't step in soon, the impacts on screenwriters could be significant. "The real-world implication is the loss of money or the loss of income for screenwriters, because if they can't prove copyright, they can't earn a living from their work." 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NZ Herald
3 days ago
- NZ Herald
Taika Waititi celebrates 50th birthday with star-studded Ibiza party, including guests Matt Damon and Cara Delevingne
Acclaimed New Zealand director Taika Waititi celebrated a milestone birthday over the weekend, drawing Hollywood celebrities, friends and family from around the world to the Mediterranean. Waititi, whose portfolio of work includes the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), Oscar-winning Jojo Rabbit and Kiwi favourite Hunt for the Wilderpeople, turned 50 on
