Matthew McConaughey may have figured out a potential way to fight AI using his image..
The Wall Street Journal reports that McConaughey has filed eight trademark applications to the US Patent and Trademark Office that featured videos and audio clips of him “staring, smiling and talking.”..
MORE..
All 8 have been approved..
“My team and I want to know that when my voice or likeness is ever used, it’s because I approved and signed off on it,” McConaughey told the newspaper in an email. “We want to create a clear perimeter around ownership with consent and attribution the norm in an AI world.”
The goal is to pave the way for litigation in case a company or individual were to attempt to profit from the actor’s likeness with the help of AI.
“In a world where we’re watching everybody scramble to figure out what to do about AI misuse, we have a tool now to stop someone in their tracks or take them to federal court,” one of McConaughey’s attorneys, Jonathan Pollack, told the newspaper.
No more frailty in Hollywood as this may lead the way for more such trademarks..
This news is coming from some LUCASFILM PR releases..
Lucasfilm announced that after 14 years of leading the studio, President Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down from her role. Kennedy will return to full-time producing, including the studio’s upcoming feature films The Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter.
So gone.. but not totally..
Dave Filoni, who worked closely with creator George Lucas to build the Lucasfilm animation department on Star Wars: The Clone Wars and helped launch Star Wars live-action series alongside Jon Favreau on The Mandalorian, will take on creative leadership of the company as President and Chief Creative Officer and Lynwen Brennan will serve as Co-President.
While she is not being trashed by Lucasfilm on the way out, fans are certainly pointing out her biggest flops..
This summation from detractors on social media:
– Over a dozen high profile canceled projects
A Star Wars Trilogy that damaged the brand
Indiana Jones 5 was seemingly meaningless
An inability to get anything made; even simple slam dunk projects like Rogue Squadron
The Willow Series was a complete disaster and there’s no way to legally watch it anymore Outside of Rogue One and Andor..
Another reaction: Finally, the long nightmare ends. Kathleen Kennedy is out as Lucasfilm president after 14 years of turning Star Wars into a lecture hall disguised as space opera.
New records from emergency responders obtained by The New York Times show that Good was not breathing but had an irregular pulse when local medics arrived at the scene, and had no pulse by the time they removed her from her car. This comes after an initial video captured by bystanders showed ICE agents screaming at a medic who offered help as Good lay dying in her car.
MORE from the account..
“Can I go check a pulse?” a man said after Good was shot, his hands in the air.
“No! Back up!” an ICE agent told him.
“I’m a physician!”
“I don’t care!” the agent replied, before another came up and said they had their own EMS on the way. They arrived and performed CPR on Good—who had two gunshots in her chest and one on her arm—before taking her to the hospital, where she later died.
DEVELOPING
Meanwhile..
Federal officers in the Minneapolis area participating in its largest recent U.S. immigration enforcement operation can’t detain or tear gas peaceful protesters who aren’t obstructing authorities, including when these people are observing the agents, a judge in Minnesota ruled Friday.
U.S. District Judge Kate Menendez’s ruling addresses a case filed in December on behalf of six Minnesota activists. The six are among the thousands who have been observing the activities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area since last month.
We are at a pivotal moment in time on another level.. especially with this:
🚨#BREAKING: The Department of Homeland Security has announced and is advising its U.S. citizens to be prepared to present proof of citizenship.
So this might be our last Stranger Things post…at least the last one about the actual writing of the show.
Get this…we still haven’t watched the documentary on Netflix, and honestly we’re not even sure we will. Between clips circulating online and commentary from people who already watched it, we feel like we’ve seen enough to know that maybe we don’t want to sit through it. One of the most poignant parts of the documentary seems to be a discussion about the ending sequence…and that’s the part that bothers a lot of people, including us. There’s this notion being floated that fans would experience “demo fatigue”…that there are too many Demogorgons, that viewers would somehow be tired of them by the final episode. Matt Duffer and Ross Duffer apparently point out that there are six Demogorgons attacking the kids simultaneously and maybe that’s enough.
But someone else…an astute writer involved with the show…correctly points out that it would be crazy not to have Demobats or Demogorgons in the abyss, because that’s their native environment. The response? A simple “hmm.” And then it went away.
Somehow this idea of demo fatigue took hold, despite the fact that no one actually had it. By episode 8, a lot of us weren’t fatigued by Demogorgons at all. We were fatigued by what we were being put through in season 5. Listen…it’s easy to do 20/20 hindsight, Monday-morning quarterbacking, all of those familiar terms. But there’s real criticism worth sticking here.
One of the greatest cinematic finales ever is Return of the Jedi. That movie had multiple battles happening all at once across the galaxy…and guess what? Viewers weren’t fatigued. They were on the edge of their seats. You had Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker facing off, the Ewoks taking down stormtroopers with sticks and stones, massive space battles unfolding, and the Emperor overseeing it all. It worked.
Stranger Things season 5 episode 8 could have been that. There could have been military battles on Earth…simultaneous battles in the abyss…chaos in the Upside Down…all happening at once. And we would have eaten it up, because that’s what we were waiting for.
If the Duffers still wanted the graduation scene and the nostalgic ending with Dungeons & Dragons, nothing would have stopped that. Those moments could still exist. What’s troubling is the documentary’s implication that episode 8 was still being written while episode 8 was already being filmed.
That’s not a minor detail.
It feels like they didn’t fully watch their own show, or weren’t mindful of its most basic promises…like Hopper spending years promising Joyce Chianti at Enzo’s, not Chardonnay. Basic things, Duffer Brothers. Basic things.
At this point it’s done. We’ll probably debate season 5 for a long time, and some people will choose to treat season 4 as their personal finale. But if there’s one last thought worth leaving here, it’s this…hubris.
The idea that success, praise, and constant fanfare can make people feel invincible. And when you’re making a show for fans, even if you don’t want to admit it, maybe you talk to them. Maybe you listen. Yes, it’s your show…but it was also ours. Collectively, Stranger Things belonged to all of us.
And it feels like, in the end, the Duffers took that away.
Deadline is among those reporting that this weekend there’s expectations that 28 Years Later will unseat Avatar from the box office.
It’s a four-day weekend for Hollywood and there’s hopes that the newest zombie flick will make more than 20 million. And you know what, the movie Primates didn’t do half bad last week so maybe in these cold January weeks we still love and have that affinity for horror.
Bone Temple releases Wednesday in the UK, France, Belgium and Indonesia, then in Australia/New Zealand, Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Italy, Netherlands and Saudi Arabia on Thursday, followed by Japan, Poland and Spain on Friday. That’s a 98% offshore footprint, except Korea and Thailand…
Timothy Busfield, the actor and director, turned himself in to the authorities in New Mexico on Tuesday and was booked on charges of child sex abuse, the Albuquerque police said. The case involves two boys who were appearing on a television drama that he was producing in New Mexico.
This is developing,,
The actor also released a video tape today denying accusations and saying he will fight the charges.
Tmz Splash this on their website today with other news networks quickly picking up on it, and insult her around the world along with a presidential response that in past administrations would have been considered scandalous. Now it’s just a blip on the nightly news.
TRUMP toured the Ford F-150 plant at the Detroit Economic Club before giving a speech … while walking the factory floor on his tour, someone began shouting at Trump. It’s hard to make out the full sentence shouted at Trump, but it seems to have included the words “pedophile protector.”
At this point it was pretty clear what the president was mouthing back to the worker followed by the one finger salute. No more information has been gathered but of course the media will be chomping at the bit to talk to the worker and find out more, meanwhile we will all simultaneously move on to the next big issue an hour from now…
The Defense Department has spent more than a year testing a device purchased in an undercover operation that some investigators think could be the cause of a series of mysterious ailments impacting US spies, diplomats and troops that are colloquially known as Havana Syndrome, according to four sources briefed on the matter.
A division of the Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Investigations, purchased the device for millions of dollars in the waning days of the Biden administration, using funding provided by the Defense Department, according to two of the sources. Officials paid “eight figures” for the device, these people said, declining to offer a more specific number.
In a world where everything is shocking, nothing is shocking.. at least not for very long.
Donald Trump posted an image to his Truth Social account early this morning, apparently reposted from another account. The image is grainy, black and white, and shows Trump standing on top of the White House. Above him is a single word: “Soon.”
Donald J. Trump – Truth Social 06:44 AM EST | 01.11.26
Naturally, commentary was immediate. Seeing something like this, it’s impossible not to speculate. What is “soon”? What’s coming? Is it symbolic? Is it a tease? A threat? A joke? Or nothing at all? More ICE raids ? Well yes that’s happening ..
Honestly, the image looks less like a political post and more like a horror movie cover. In fact, I saw it spreading across several horror-focused websites, where it was shared almost respectfully for the genuinely unsettling aura it gives off. Stark lighting. High contrast. A lone figure looming over an iconic building. If you slapped a studio logo on it, no one would question the genre.
What makes it even stranger is the idea of a president or former president leaning into imagery designed to unsettle or intimidate. Whether intentional or not, it flirts with fear as a form of messaging. And that’s the unsettling part. Not just the image itself, but how normalized this kind of thing has become.
But then again, this is the world we live in now—where politics, spectacle, and horror aesthetics blur together until it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Fans have been watching for breadcrumbs, but at this point it’s clear: there’s no bread at all. Last night, the big Stranger Things documentary aired on Netflix. You can watch it for yourself—and yes, we’re going to spoil it for you. It’s a documentary..
There was one revelation that is just shocking to really think about. The Duffer brothers did not have an ending for the show when they started filming episode 1. Think about that, 400 million and 3 years to film this and that is saying they do the ending for years. But this documentary showcases quite an office at story. But it’s also just a documentary.
That alone spoils a lot for people who were holding out hope for a Wes Craven’s New Nightmare–style twist, or that faint dream that Conformity Gate was finally going to happen. The goalposts keep moving, the dates keep getting reset, but with each passing “event,” Stranger Things continues to conclude itself more definitively. Conformity Gate is starting to feel no different than false prophets claiming different calendar months for the end of the world. I’ve already heard there’s a new date,January 14th, to look forward to. But at this point, it might be time to hop off the train.
Don’t get me wrong.. this has been fun. We were genuinely enticed by the idea that the documentary itself might pull a New Nightmare, that it might blur reality and fiction, that Vecna could still be alive and well in some meta, fourth-wall-breaking way.
And honestly? The hints were there. In the final season, many of the things fans pointed out—plot holes, unresolved threads, lingering imagery—were completely fathomable. It wasn’t crazy to think they could justify some kind of wrap-up, an Episode 9, or at least a tighter conclusion. But the documentary was just that: a documentary. Clean. Straightforward. And to be fair, it was a good one. Strong behind-the-scenes footage, thoughtful perspectives from the cast and crew, and a well-told story about how the show came together.
It just wasn’t what many fans were hoping for. What’s interesting is that the Duffer Brothers have said, multiple times, including in the documentary, that a bad ending can ruin an entire show. And while there’s a group of fans who believe Stranger Things ended exactly the way it should have, there’s also a sizable group who don’t. Even among those who were okay with the ending, plenty still wish it had been handled differently—more cohesively, with fewer dangling threads, or without such strong suggestions that Vecna was still in control.
And if I’m blaming anyone for Conformity Gate, it’s not the fans, and it’s not the Duffers. It’s the social media arms of companies like Netflix. The vague posts. The wink-wink captions. The algorithmic breadcrumbs that felt like confirmation. That’s where the gaslighting happened. Those accounts made it seem like something really was coming, like the prognosticators were onto something, like the Upside Down door was still cracked open. They’re the real villains here.
They took us all into the Upside Down for something that was never going to happen… just to keep us watching a few days longer.
