CTV National News: AI-generated music blurs lines for listeners
John Vennavally Rao reports on AI-created songs going viral and the accompanying debate over whether they should be clearly labeled for music fans.
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CTV News
2 hours ago
- CTV News
Singer Sean Kingston sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for US$1 million fraud scheme
Sean Kingston arrives at the 40th Anniversary American Music Awards in Los Angeles, on Nov. 18, 2012. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File) FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Singer Sean Kingston was sentenced to three and a half years in prison Friday after being convicted of a $1 million fraud scheme in which he leveraged his fame to dupe sellers into giving him luxury items that he then never paid for. Kingston, whose legal name is Kisean Paul Anderson, and his mother, Janice Eleanor Turner, were convicted in March by a federal jury of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and four counts of wire fraud. Turner was sentenced to five years in prison last month. Before U.S. Judge David Leibowitz handed down Kingston's sentence, the singer apologized to the judge in the South Florida courtroom and said he had learned from his actions. His attorney asked if he could self-surrender at a later date due to health issues, but the judge ordered him taken into custody immediately. Kingston, who was wearing a black suit and white shirt, removed his suit jacket and was handcuffed and led from the courtroom. Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Anton described Kingston as someone addicted to his celebrity lifestyle even though he could no longer afford to maintain it. 'He clearly doesn't like to pay and relies on his celebrity status to defraud his victims,' Anton said Friday. The federal prosecutor described a yearslong pattern by Kingston of bullying victims for luxury merchandise and then refusing to pay. 'He is a thief and a conman, plain and simple,' Anton said. Defence attorney Zeljka Bozanic countered that the 35-year-old Kingston had the mentality of a teenager -- the age he was when he vaulted to stardom. The attorney said Kingston had almost no knowledge of his finances, relying on business managers and his mother. 'No one showed him how to invest his money,' Bozanic said. 'Money went in and money went out on superficial things.' Bozanic said Kingston has already started paying back his victims and intends to pay back every cent once he is free and can start working again. Leibowitz rejected the idea that Kingston was unintelligent or naive, but the judge said he gave Kingston credit for accepting responsibility and declining to testify rather than possibly lying in court. That was in contrast to Kingston's mother, whose trial testimony Leibowitz described as obstruction. Kingston and his mother were arrested in May 2024 after a SWAT team raided Kingston's rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Turner was taken into custody during the raid, while Kingston was arrested at Fort Irwin, an Army training base in California's Mojave Desert, where he was performing. According to court records, Kingston used social media from April 2023 to March 2024 to arrange purchases of luxury merchandise. After negotiating deals, Kingston would invite the sellers to one of his high-end Florida homes and promise to feature them and their products on social media. Investigators said that when it came time to pay, Kingston or his mother would text the victims fake wire receipts for the items, which included a bulletproof Escalade, watches and a 19-foot (5.9-meter) LED TV, investigators said. When the funds never cleared, victims often contacted Kingston and Turner repeatedly, but were either never paid or received money only after filing lawsuits or contacting law enforcement, authorities said. Kingston, who was born in Florida and raised in Jamaica, shot to fame at age 17 with the 2007 hit 'Beautiful Girls,' which laid his lyrics over Ben E. King's 1961 song 'Stand By Me.' His other hits include 2007's 'Take You There' and 2009's 'Fire Burning.' By David Fischer.
National Post
4 hours ago
- National Post
Sex and the City costume designer shines in own film
Quick — name the five best costume designers in television. OK, the three best. Still can't get there? We're not surprised. There's arguably only one costume designer who's changed the visual language of television in the last quarter-century and become a household name in the process: Patricia Field. Article content Known for her work on Sex and the City — but boasting other credits such as Ugly Betty and Emily in Paris — Field concocts outfits that mix colours and textures, as well as couture and bargain fashion, with wild abandon. She's also won two Emmys and earned an Oscar nomination for her work on The Devil Wears Prada. Article content A documentary that spotlights her — titled Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field — is making its Canadian broadcast debut on Aug. 22. Airing on Super Channel Fuse, it originally premièred at the 2023 Tribeca Festival and had a limited theatrical release. (A memoir titled Pat in the City also came out in 2023.) Article content 'I had a great time on Happy Clothes, the documentary I worked on with the director Michael Selditch,' Field told The New York Times last September. 'Part of the fun was being filmed tooling around Brooklyn in my T-Bird with the top down.' Article content Of course, there's more to the film than that. There's the story of how she opened a clothing store in 1960s New York City, catering to underground culture. There are interviews with Kim Cattrall, Lily Collins, Sarah Jessica Parker, Darren Star and Vanessa Williams, among others. And there are her inspirations — both professional and personal. Article content 'The women in my family, my aunts, my grandmother — they were achievers,' Field told The New York Times. 'They inspired me. They taught me: Do what you like and what you're good at, and you'll make things happen. I've always liked fashion, so working in fashion was easy for me.' Article content Field, 84, is also excited by the exuberance of youth. Speaking last May on the CBC radio show Q with Tom Power, she explained why it has fuelled her creativity over the decades. Article content 'Young people love imagination,' she said. 'Their brains are open. They haven't solidified their brain matter yet and I love working with young people for that reason, because even though I may not be young, my brain is still open, I think.' Article content As for the title of the documentary — Happy Clothes — Field explained that the term refers to garments that both make you feel good and represent your authentic self. Article content
CBC
5 hours ago
- CBC
Maggie Kang created the extreme faces of KPop Demon Hunters
KPop Demon Hunters is big in every way possible — it's visually stunning, it's wildly emotional, and it's insanely popular. The movie follows K-Pop girl group Huntrix, a fictional trio of superheroes, as they use the power of song to protect the world from demons. The animated superhero movie has been near the top of the Netflix rankings for weeks, it's critically acclaimed, and its songs are so catchy that they made it to the Top 10 of the Billboard Global 200. But before KPop Demon Hunters became the megahit we know today, director Maggie Kang spent many years writing and animating her idea. And part of that hard work involved the animators acting out their own movie. "As an animator, it's really important to feel the acting that you are going to portray," Kang tells Q guest host Gill Deacon. "Even when you draw, you want to feel the expressions." WATCH | Maggie Kang's full interview with Q guest host Gill Deacon: Kang's animation team physically performed almost all the reference footage for the film, from sobbing fans to the K-pop girls thirsting over the demons' abs. Usually, they were excellent at contorting their faces for all of the larger-than-life characters, but there were some instances where Kang had to record herself being extra goofy for the good of the film. "Sometimes the acting is not quite as I want it," she says. "So I will sit in the room and do the faces for them and act it out, so that we get what we need." Maggie Kang didn't just do it for the laughs though; it was important to her to make female superheroes who are actually "real and relatable and not afraid to look silly." All three members of the K-girl group Huntrix chug food, burp, and even pretend to gag and barf. "I've worked on a lot of films where, you know, female characters are not really the silliest ones," Kang explains. "There's, like, a fear to make [female characters] look ugly. And I really wanted to break all that and go for the silly faces." WATCH | Official trailer for KPop Demon Hunters: KPop Demon Hunters is also rooted in Kang's deep connection to her heritage. Growing up in the '90s, she lived in Toronto but spent many summers in Seoul. Kang is happy that her movie celebrates so many elements of Korean culture on screen — especially in the opening montage, which reveals that generations of Korean musicians have taken on the sacred duty of banishing all demons from the earth. " When I first came up with the idea, it felt like just purely a superhero film about Korean women and K-pop," Kang says. "Once we really grounded the mythology into Korean shamanism, it really opened up this opportunity to feature so many different eras of Korea, really show the history of how Korean music evolved through the ages." As someone who loved Korean music long before it was cool, Kang feels like the world has finally realizedvindicated what she felt all along. She's proud to see K-Pop become a global sensation, and she's amazed to see her film making history. "You don't really expect this kind of reaction," says Kang. "I honestly didn't think it was even possible for a movie to be this popular, really. So it's incredible."
