US game show host Wink Martindale dies at 91
Martindale died in Rancho Mirage, California, his manager, Dolores Cantu, said. No cause of death was provided.
Born on December 4, 1933, in Jackson, Tennessee, Martindale started his career in radio. While working at a station in Memphis, he met a young Elvis Presley and the two stayed friends until Presley's death in 1977.
A fan of game shows, Martindale tried his hand at the format in 1964 with "What's This Song?," earning fans with his baritone voice and pleasant demeanor. He hosted more than a dozen game shows over his career, including "Gambit," "Debt" and "Headline Chasers."
Martindale was given the first name Winston at birth and said Wink was inspired by a childhood friend.
"When I was a kid in Jackson, Tennessee, one of my playmates, Jimmy McCord, couldn't say 'Winston,' which is my given name. He had a speech impediment, and it came out sounding like 'Winky'," Martindale told ABC News in 2014. "So Winston turned into Winky, and then I got into the business and Wink it was! It served me well."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
11 hours ago
- Reuters
Hollywood's biggest AI debut? Las Vegas Sphere's 'Wizard of Oz'
LAS VEGAS, Aug 21 (Reuters) - When "The Wizard of Oz at Sphere" opens off the Las Vegas Strip on Aug. 28, audiences will experience the 1939 film classic in a way its creators probably never thought possible. Nearly 18,000 people will find themselves in the eye of the swirling tornado that rips Dorothy's Kansas farmhouse off its moorings and hurtles it onto Munchkinland. The film has been enhanced to fill a 160,000-square-foot wall of LED panels that spans three football fields, encircling the audience and reaching 22 stories high, as 750-horsepower fans kick up wind and debris to simulate the twister. The $104 or more per seat spectacle is more than meets the eye. "The Wizard of Oz" marks one of the most significant partnerships between a studio and technology company to use artificial intelligence to forge a new media experience. Reuters spoke with nine people, including principals directly involved in the project and senior entertainment industry experts, who told the story behind a project that some industry veterans see as a potential watershed moment in Hollywood's use of AI tools. "It definitely represents a really meaningful milestone in AI-human creative collaboration," said Thao Nguyen, immersive arts and emerging technologies agent at CAA. "I think it will set a precedent on how we reimagine culturally significant media." Bringing Dorothy and the Wicked Witch to the massive Sphere, a globe-shaped entertainment venue featuring advanced technology, took two years and brought together its creative team, Warner Bros Discovery executives, Google's DeepMind researchers, academics, visual effects artists -- more than 2,000 people, in all. The development occurred during intense apprehension over AI's impact on jobs in Hollywood and the desire to preserve human creativity. Some visual effects companies initially contacted to work on the project declined because they were not permitted to work with AI at the time. Getting here took the blessing of Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav, his studio chiefs and lawyers who established guidelines for using AI. "Wizard of Oz at Sphere" drew upon archival materials from the film -- including set blueprints, shot lists, publicity stills and film artifacts -- as well as some 60 research papers to help deliver the movie in resolution representing a ten-fold improvement over previous work. "We had to reimagine the cinematography, we had to reimagine the editing, and we had to do all of this without changing the experience," said Oscar-winner Ben Grossmann, who oversaw the project's visual effects. "Because if you touch anything about this sacred piece of cinema, you're toast!" Rather than exploiting AI to cut jobs, they sought to use it to breathe fresh life into a classic story and create new experiences with existing intellectual property. "Hollywood embraces new technology, and everyone can't wait to be the second one to use it," said Buzz Hays, a veteran film producer who leads Google Cloud's entertainment industry solutions group. "What 'The Wizard of Oz' is doing for us is giving that first opportunity where people go, 'Oh my god, this is not at all what I thought AI was going to be.'" The project began in 2023 with Sphere executives discussing which project would push the technological boundaries of the venue that had already hosted U2 and Darren Aronofsky's "Postcard from Earth." "The Wizard of Oz" quickly topped the list as a familiar, beloved film well-suited for the Sphere's enormous canvas, said Carolyn Blackwood, head of Sphere Studios. It presented an opportunity to re-introduce the classic to a new generation in a way that would place them inside L. Frank Baum's world. Symbolically, the team chose a classic film that was a technical marvel of its time. While not the first movie to use Technicolor, "The Wizard of Oz's" dramatic transition from sepia tones to hyper-saturated color marked a cinematic milestone. Sphere Entertainment's CEO James Dolan and creative collaborator Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca Film Festival co-founder and noted film producer, envisioned a more ambitious project than a mere digital remastering of a classic. Rosenthal tapped Hays to bring in Google as a technical partner. Dolan approached Warner Bros Discovery CEO Zaslav, a friend and business partner from the early days of cable TV, to propose bringing "Oz" to the Sphere. "I had just been to the Sphere with a friend and was really blown away," said Zaslav, adding that Dolan and Rosenthal also won over his studio chiefs, "who loved the idea. It's an example of the great IP we own at Warner Bros." Before turning over one of the world's most important entertainment properties, Warner Bros set strict ground rules. Google could train its generative AI models on each major actor to reproduce their performances, but the data would remain the studio's property. None of the "Oz" training data would be incorporated into Google's public AI models. "One of the things critical to getting this project started was creating a safe place for experimentation," said Grossmann. "Warner Brothers and Google and the Sphere created an environment where they said, 'We don't necessarily know how it's going to end, but we're going to create a little quarantine zone here.'" The visual effects team initially tried enlarging images using CGI, which would have created photorealistic animated versions of the characters. That approach was rejected because it would violate the integrity of the original performances. "AI was effectively a last resort, because we couldn't really do it any other way," said Grossmann, whose Los Angeles studio, Magnopus, worked on such photo-realistic computer animated films as Disney's 'The Lion King.' AI enhanced the resolution of tiny celluloid frames from 1939 to ultra-high-definition images. It restored details -- like freckles on Dorothy's face or burlap texture on Scarecrow's face -- obscured by Technicolor's process. AI also helped "outpaint" on-screen images to fill gaps created by camera cuts or framing, as when it took a close-up of the Tin Man chopping a door of the Witch's castle with an axe to free Dorothy and completed the image of the woodman. It took months of repeated fine-tuning and Google's DeepMind braintrust to elevate consumer-grade AI tools to deliver crisp images with the Sphere's 16K "super" resolution. Musicians re-recorded the entire film score on the original sound stage to take advantage of the venue's 167,000 speakers. The vocal performances of Judy Garland and other actors remain unaltered. Despite attention to authenticity, the project has attracted criticism from some cinephiles who object to altering the cherished film. Entertainment writer Joshua Rivera called it "an affront to art and nature." "None of these people criticizing this have seen the film or understand what we are doing," said Rosenthal. In a private midnight screening for Reuters, Grossmann offered a glimpse of what's to come. Some changes are subtle, as when Uncle Henry stands by the front door while neighbor Almira Gulch demands Toto. AI places the performer, who spends much of his time out of view, back into frame, stitching together a wider view to fill the Sphere's expansive viewing plane. Other changes aim to realize the filmmakers' vision in ways that weren't technically feasible 86 years ago. As Dorothy and friends encounter the Wizard in the Emerald Throne Room, a 200-foot-high green head looms over the audience, eyes bulging and voice booming, creating a more imposing depiction than the original image of an actor in green makeup projected on smoke. "Whenever we made a change, it was because we wanted the audience to experience what Dorothy was experiencing directly," said Grossmann. "We completed something filmmakers were intending to do but were limited by 1939's tools . Coordinated physical effects add another dimension. Flying monkeys will swoop into the Sphere as 16-foot-long helium-filled simians steered by drone operators, one of many Four-D effects. The result is an amalgam of cinema, live production and experiential VR. "I think that's going to change the way people think about entertainment and experience," Grossmann said.
Daily Mirror
a day ago
- Daily Mirror
Golden retriever demands owners check on baby and what they find leaves them in tears
A mum has shared her dog's heartwarming reaction after she brought her baby son home - and says her household has never been the same since her little one's arrival An adorable dog has stolen hearts after stepping up into a parental role after the birth of his human baby brother. Golden retriever Winston has been taking his duties seriously - and even keeps his owners Roissy and Alexander Koeneke in check. The 29-year-old mum, from San Diego, Califonia, has taken to social media to share a clip of her one-year-old dog in action, sharing how he keeps an eye on her baby. In a clip, Winston is seen standing starring at his owner from the hallway prompting her to follow him to the baby's bedroom. He refuses to move a muscle until she stands up and makes her way over. Following this, the pooch is seen checking on the three-month-old, making sure he's happy, healthy and all of his needs have been tended to. In her TikTok caption, Riossy, who is known as @ online, wrote: "We needs a nanny when you have a golden". Alongside this, she wrote in the video: "My dog will keep staring at my husband and I until either of us checks on our baby. And he will follow to make sure we actually stop making him cry." Speaking to Newsweek, she said: "He has such good hearing so he hears the baby before us, and that's when we know sometimes that a cry is about to come. Then he gives us such a sassy side eye when we don't stand up immediately! She says Winston was "full of excitement" when his baby brother came into the world - and is always nearby in case he needs anything. Dedicated to the job, she says the pooch even wakes up for midnight feeds and nappy changes. She added: "One time, we saw he left this toy in his water bowl, and he's never done this before, but he was probably just super-tired for choosing to wake up with the baby each time. "One of the sweetest things he does is try to soothe the baby with his paw. We're always careful when it happens." Commenting on her video, one user said: "Our dog howls if the baby is crying and he comes to get me (mum) if someone else is taking too long to soothe the baby." Another user added: "My girl was like this. Now my son, 5, is confused why she doesn't listen to him like she does me. "She will literally look at me so confused when he tries to do her training. She helped me raise you! "You literally learned to crawl to get to her and now you're boss? I'd be confused too. Went by so fast." A third user said: "He is so ashamed. He has taught y'all better than this. The disappointment is adorable." One more user added: "OMG, that's so adorable. Well done Winston. That's what you call protective. Bless him."
Reuters
2 days ago
- Reuters
Michelle Yeoh sees ‘Ne Zha 2' movie as homage to Chinese mythology
LOS ANGELES, Aug 20 (Reuters) - For Oscar-winning actor Michelle Yeoh, it is time for Hollywood to focus more on Asian mythological characters like the ones showcased in the Chinese film 'Ne Zha 2,' which has become the highest-grossing animated film in history worldwide. "They're warriors and demigods,' Yeoh, who voices the role of Ne Zha's mom for the film's English dub, told Reuters. 'I guess it's like Zeus, you know, and Thor, but these are ours. And I think that's very important because when you learn about another culture's myths, you have a nice, deeper understanding, and it teaches you to embrace something that is different,' the 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' actor added. 'Ne Zha 2," distributed by A24, follows the events of the first film, 1999's "Ne Zha." In the new film, the souls of Nezha and Aobing work to regain their physical bodies and protect their families. The original film grossed over $700 million worldwide. The English dubbed version of the fantasy film directed by Yu Yang and based on Xu Zhonglin's 16th-century novel called 'Investiture of the Gods,' arrives in U.S. theaters on Friday. The sequel, originally in Mandarin, made waves when it overtook Pixar's "Inside Out 2" in February to become the highest-grossing animated film globally in history, according to data from ticketing platform Maoyan. "Ne Zha 2" has amassed a total box office of 12.3 billion yuan ($1.69 billion) including pre-sales and overseas earnings, making it the eighth highest grossing box office film globally in history. While Yeoh emphasizes the cultural richness of the film, she wants audiences of all walks of life to understand that the most important thing is that it's 'a beautiful story.' 'I think we should stop seeing it as, 'Oh it's a Chinese film,'' she added. The 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" actor recalled watching the movie for the first time and not being able to tear her eyes away from the screen. 'You're going up to the heavens. You're going down to the bottom of the seas. You see the dragons. You see all these kind of things, and just for that two hours - be transported,' Yeoh said.
