The Clayface Trailer Turns a Batman Villain Into a Full-On Horror Movie

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Movies, Videos,

That is a genuinely strange pitch, and it might be the most interesting thing DC Studios has tried in a while. Clayface is a full R-rated horror origin story built around a classic Batman villain, and the trailer is far less interested in capes and punch-ups than in what it feels like to watch a person come apart from the inside out.

Click to continue reading The Clayface Trailer Turns a Batman Villain Into a Full-On Horror Movie

The LEGO One Piece Teaser Is Exactly the Goofy Detour This Story Needed

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Movies, Toys, Videos,

There is a particular kind of joy in watching a deadly serious adventure story get handed over to a pile of plastic minifigures, and Netflix just leaned all the way into it. The streamer dropped a teaser for LEGO One Piece, a two-part animated special that retells the first two seasons of its live-action pirate show entirely in brick form. It looks every bit as gleefully silly as that sentence sounds.

The special lands September 29, and the premise is smarter than a cash-in usually gets to be. Instead of a straight replay, it uses Usopp as the narrator, walking a wide-eyed Tony Tony Chopper through everything the Straw Hats got up to across the East Blue and the Grand Line. If you have never touched One Piece, that framing is basically a friendly on-ramp. If you have watched every episode twice, it is a chance to see the whole saga from a new angle, in a form that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Click to continue reading The LEGO One Piece Teaser Is Exactly the Goofy Detour This Story Needed

A Judge Just Hit Pause on the $110 Billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Home Entertainment, Movies,

The biggest media deal in years was supposed to be a done thing by September. Then a federal judge picked up the phone, so to speak, and hit pause. On Monday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin temporarily froze the $110 billion merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, and just like that, the plan to smash two of Hollywood's biggest companies into one got a lot less certain.

Here is why you should care even if you have never thought about a cable licensing agreement in your life. This is the deal that would have put Paramount+ and HBO Max under the same roof, along with CBS, MTV, CNN, and HBO. That is a staggering amount of what you watch, controlled by one company. A coalition of 12 state attorneys general looked at that and said: not so fast.

Click to continue reading A Judge Just Hit Pause on the $110 Billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

Netflix Used AI on Roughly 300 Titles This Year, and It Wants Investors to Know

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Movies, Software,

Netflix has a number it wants you to notice: 300. That is roughly how many titles the company says have used generative AI so far this year, a figure it dropped right into its Q2 shareholder letter. This is not a quiet experiment tucked into the corner of one show. It is a company-wide habit, and Netflix shared the count because it thinks the number is good news.

Most of that work is happening in post-production, the unglamorous stretch after filming where scenes get cleaned up, stitched together, and finished. Netflix says it is "increasingly leveraging these tools to deliver higher quality output more quickly and at a lower cost than traditional methods." Translate that out of investor-speak and it means one thing: AI is helping the company make stuff faster and spend less doing it.

Click to continue reading Netflix Used AI on Roughly 300 Titles This Year, and It Wants Investors to Know

Venom and The Equalizer 2 dropping on Blu-ray and DVD in time for the holidays

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Home Entertainment, Movies,

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #ManCaveMovieNight #CollectiveBias

Simply hover over the image above to click-through to purchase either movie!

If you're looking for a couple of great movies to put under the tree or into a stocking this holiday season, Sony Pictures is releasing two of its most recent blockbusters on Blu-ray and DVD just in time. You can pick up The Equalizer 2, which sees Denzel Washington reprise one of his signature roles (and acting in the first sequel he's ever done!) right now at Walmart, while Venom will be released on December 18th, one week before Christmas (but you can pre-order it at Walmart as well!)

I'm a big fan of movies that are centered around comic book characters, and when Sony sent over copies of each, I fired up Venom right away for a fun movie night with the fam. If you haven't heard, Venom is the story of journalist Eddie Brock and his attempt to bring down Carlton Drake. Drake is the mastermind behind the Life Foundation, which Brock discovers is using symbiotic lifeforms that require oxygen-breathing hosts to survive and thrive. Brock accidentally comes into contact with a symbiote, and thus begins his transformation into the superhuman title character, Venom, who tries to control Brock's new abilities.

Click to continue reading Venom and The Equalizer 2 dropping on Blu-ray and DVD in time for the holidays

Samsung Onyx: A premium 4K HDR movie theater experience

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Corporate News, Displays, Movies, Product Reviews,

Earlier this week, Samsung invited me to spend a day in Vegas to attend CinemaCon, where the company was announcing it’s line of Samsung Onyx 4K LED movie theater displays. CinemaCon is the largest gathering of movie theater owners in the world, where seemingly anyone who’s anyone in the movie industry can be found, making this the perfect place to show off trailers and extended previews of upcoming movies, as well as movie theater tech. This made CinemaCon the perfect place for Samsung to debut the Onyx.

Formerly known as Samsung LED Cinema Displays, the easiest way to describe the rebranded Samsung Onyx is to liken it to the high-end flagship 4K HDR displays that you can buy for your home, but on a much grander scale. What this means is you get a crisp 4K picture, you get the insane dynamic range from the HDR luminance, and you get the high contrast thanks to the True Black capabilities.

Click to continue reading Samsung Onyx: A premium 4K HDR movie theater experience

Win a copy of all three movies in The Purge series!

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Movies,

We are giving away an exclusive Purge Pack to two winners! What's a Purge Pack? Both winners will walk away with copies of all three films from the Purge franchise:

• The Purge
• The Purge: Anarchy
• The Purge: Election Year

Use the Gleam.io widget below to manage your entries, and good luck to all who enter!

THE ULTIMATE PURGE PACK GIVEAWAY

Top 10 Gear Live tech stories of 2015

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Editorial, Features, Handhelds, Mods / Hacks, Movies, Software, Transportation, Videos,

We've come to the end of another year, and as we wave goodbye to 2013, we figured it was only fitting that we share the most popular stories published on Gear Live this year, as determined by our readers (we've also got the top ten most read stories regardless of publish date, as well as the ten most popular Gear Live videos of 2013!) These are the ten stories that were read the most, and when you consider that fact, it's pretty surprising to see what made the list. Let's kick it off with our most read story of the year:

OS X El Capitan will be released on September 30:
Anticipation for Apple's newest desktop operating system, OS X 10.11 El Capitan, trumped all other news here on Gear Live in 2015!

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Where to see an exclusive Jurassic World 4K Ultra HD clip

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: HDTV, Home Entertainment, Movies,

When Jurassic Park was originally released back when I was a kid, I thought it was one of the best movies I had ever seen (in fact, it probably was, given my young age!) Seeing dinosaurs look so realistic was something you had to see, and the only way to truly experience the scope of the movie and the details in the CGI was to see it in a movie theater.

Now, here we are some 22 years later, and fourth movie in the series, Jurassic World, is set to be released in a week-and-a-half. Television technology has evolved to the point where the home viewing of today rivals the cinema experience of yesteryear. Last night I took a trip over to Best Buy so that I could check out the exclusive Jurassic World clip being shown on Samsung SUHD Ultra 4K television sets.

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The Interview now available, $5.99 to rent, $14.99 to buy

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Google, Internet, Microsoft, Movies,

The Interview, the movie release that’s been at the center of media hysteria for the past week, is now available to stream from the comfort of your home after having its theatrical release pulled. You can still catch the movie in theaters starting tomorrow, Christmas Day, but you’ll only find it in 300 select independent theaters. In order to reach the masses, Sony decided to partner with Xbox Video, YouTube, and Google Play in conjunction with its own SeeTheInterview.com site on streaming the feature into the homes of potential viewers.

As far as pricing goes, you can rent The Interview for $5.99, or buy it for $14.99. Will you be watching?

Click to continue reading The Interview now available, $5.99 to rent, $14.99 to buy