EDITORIAL

APPLE TV
The best home-theater experience coming to the market? According to Apple, it’s one you’ll be able to strap onto your head. Apple unveiled several new entertainment experiences that will be available on Apple Vision Pro — its expensive new mixed-reality headset — when it begins shipping on Feb. 2. The tech giant touts visionOS, a platform that lets developers tap into the Vision Pro to make the viewing experiences within their apps “even more immersive.” Apple Vision Pro Will Feature 150-Plus 3D Movies at Launch, Immersive Originals, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and More...

Jason Statham movies typically don’t wrestle with current events, but a twist deep into his newest feature, the just-released “The Beekeeper,” has some fans thinking that Joe and Hunter Biden are the the inspiration for the villains. At the end of the second act, it’s revealed that asshole tech CEO/nepo baby Derek Danforth is the son of the president, and used her name to push his shady business operations forward. From there, it’s also mentioned that President Danforth wasn’t justly elected because of dirty money that was injected into the election. If “Beekeeper” was released in another decade, audiences might not think much about the twist. But in an era of accusations of Hunter Biden profiting off of his father’s name, as well as Donald Trump’s false accusations of election fraud, some audiences are determined to find echoes of real life in the film’s final act...

As Russia’s war in Ukraine approaches its second anniversary, leading Russian director Aleksey German Jr. (“House Arrest,” “Under Electric Clouds”), is currently giving “Air,” his state-funded WWII thriller, a commercial release in Russian cinemas. Russian films and filmmakers have been excluded from attending many film festivals since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. Russians have also been excluded from international sports. Musicians are also banned. And filmmakers...

The life and accomplishments of Brian Eno are prodigious enough to fill several films, but until hearing the pitch for “Eno,” the composer, producer, self-professed “non-musician” and visual artist associated with groups including Roxy Music and U2 was resistant to be the focus of even one. “I usually can’t stand docu-bios of artists because they are so hagiographic,” Eno says. Rather than charting a chronological path through Eno’s career, documentarian Gary Hustwit proposed using generative artificial intelligence to create a film that would literally be different for every audience that screened it. “The use of randomness to pattern the layout of the film seemed likely to override any hagiographic impulses,” Eno says....

Ahead of the Sundance Film Festival, Adobe and the Adobe Foundation have announced the creation of a Film & TV fund, committing $6 million to support underrepresented creators on-screen and behind the camera. The inaugural fund aims to address the inequity in funding and career and training opportunities in the entertainment industry via grants, contributions, fellowships and Adobe Creative Cloud product donations with the goal of “tracking inclusion in the industry and directly accelerating the careers of thousands of global creators.” “Diversity in front of and behind the camera is key to unlocking more diverse and more inclusive storytelling across TV and film,” said Stacy Martinet, VP Marketing Strategy and Communications, Adobe, and a member of the Adobe Foundation board, in a statement announcing the new fund. She added that Adobe is “looking to leverage its leadership position in the creative industry to unlock new opportunities for underrepresented creators.”...

Creature from the Black Lagoon’ Comic Book Coming from Robert Kirkman’s Skybound Entertainment is the second title to come out of Skybound's partnership with Universal Products & Experiences and continues its trend of taking on the studio's famous screen monsters. The story is not an adaptation of the 1954 black and white classic (Arthur Adams did that in 1993 for Dark Horse Comics) but is a modern day-set tale of suspense, intrigue, and terror that connects to the original movie. The limited series introduces new characters such as journalist Kate Marsden and serial killer Darwin Collier while also bringing back Dr. Edwin Thompson, the scientist whose face got mangled by the Gill-man and was later covered in bandages...

TikTok may have just saved romantic comedies from being banished forever from the big screen to the hinterlands of streaming. Sony’s Anyone But You, based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, has become a box office darling and could reach $85 million to $100 million domestically against a $25 million budget, despite mediocre reviews and an equally meh B+ CinemaScore. It has impressed Hollywood to the point where normally adversarial studio heads are gushing over the film’s astounding run as if it were their own. After opening to a lowly $8 million over Christmas weekend, the Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell romancer went viral after moviegoers began flooding TikTok with videos of themselves reenacting the film’s credit sequence, which is overlaid with actors from the film dancing to and singing snippets of Natasha Bedingfield’s 2004 single “Unwritten.” The self-made videos have become so well known that in cinemas across the country, many audience members seem to be waiting for the end so they can begin singing and waving their arms...