Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
The Rock, Pitbull, DJ Khaled bring South Florida flavor to Daytona 500
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. | The 3-0-5 took over the Daytona 5-0-0.
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Pitbull and DJ Khaled represented South Florida at the Daytona 500, as the trio of Sunshine State celebrities brought a dose of star power to Sunday’s scheduled race day that was washed out by rain.
Johnson, the wrestler/actor, said he would stay for Monday’s rescheduled race and honor his role as Daytona 500 grand marshal and give the command for drivers to start their engines.
Pitbull was scheduled to perform the pre-race concert in the Daytona infield, but it was scrapped because of steady rain. He agreed to return in 2025 for the same event. Khaled said he unable to stay Monday for his role as honorary starter.
The last time the Daytona 500 was postponed a full day was in 2012.
“Who would have ever thought,” Pitbull said, “The Rock, Khaled and Pit at the Daytona 500?”
Khaled moved to Miami — home of the 305 area code — in 1998 to kickstart a radio career that led to Grammy wins and a successful run as DJ, producer, and song writer. Known as “Mr. Worldwide,” Pitbull was born in Miami and named his debut album “M.I.A.M.I.” before he released massive hits such as “Timber” and “Fireball.”
“It’s incredible to see us all come together for the Daytona 500,” Khaled said. “But to represent Florida is beautiful.”
The 51-year-old Johnson is set to return to wrestling for WrestleMania in April in Philadelphia. The “Fast and the Furious” franchise star played football at Miami and was a reserve on the team’s 1991 national championship team.
“Best college in Florida,” Johnson said.
The A-listers stuck around the track to promote their current projects.
Johnson posted an Instagram video of himself driving past Daytona International Speedway late Saturday night, joking he was “up to no good. Trouble. With a capital T.”
“I got a little cooky last night because I couldn’t sleep,” Johnson said Sunday. “I went to the gym at midnight. I drove by the Speedway, all the lights were on, just immediately felt the energy.”
FINALLY, THE ROCK HAS COME BACK TO DAYTONA
The Rock offered some advice to NASCAR villain Denny Hamlin: roll with it.
Johnson, whose recent return to the WWE has come in a heel role, said Hamlin should embrace the boos and make them part of his racing persona.
Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner, has suddenly become public enemy No. 1 in the Cup Series. He gets jeered more than Kyle Busch when he wins and has leaned into it a little by saying things like “I just beat your favorite driver.”
The Rock would like to see more.
“Being the villain is the greatest thing in the world,” The Rock said. “Everybody wants to be a good guy or good girl, everyone wants to be loved and cheered and considered the hero, which is great and it’s natural; it’s just human psychology and desire.
“But I have felt in my career and through my experience — that I’ve been very fortunate to have — is that the rare air is when you have the opportunity and you grab it by the throat and you don’t let it go and that’s the opportunity to be a great bad guy.”
Johnson has experienced both sides as an actor and as a professional wrestler.
“I always think that the best and greatest bad guys, bad girls and villains out there are coming from a place of truth. So one of the cool things that being a great bad guy and a great villain offers — and this is my advice to Denny — is not only do you embrace it, but also you get the opportunity to say and do a lot of things that people can’t.
“A lot of people wish they can, but they don’t. So you don’t have to. Let me and Denny do the talking and get the boos.”
MR. WORLDWIDE
Pitbull still considers himself a NASCAR underdog.
Despite six wins and 36 top-five finishes in three seasons as co-owner at Trackhouse Racing, the Grammy Award-winning singer says “this is just the beginning.”
“Underdogs, one thing we love is a challenge,” Pitbull said. “We love when people tell us no, don’t, won’t, never will happen, crazy, stupid, impossible. Those are words that fuel us.”
He then explained how easy it is to flip those from negative to positive: changing can’t to can, don’t to do and won’t to won.
“And if you really put it together, just put an apostrophe between I, M and Possible, it’s I’m possible,” he added.
“So when you bring that mentality to a whole sport who is hungry to feed the world and teach different communities, different cultures that, ‘Hey, there’s opportunities here,’ then you in the ultimate world of do good and be well.
“So for Trackhouse to be underdogs, that was a beautiful thing in the beginning, but we’ll forever be underdogs and that’s why we’ll fight the way that we fight and we’ll continue to build the way that we build and continue to inspire and motivate others out there.”
Pitbull, who co-owns the team with retired driver Justin Marks, now has two full-time cars driven by Ross Chastain and Daniel Suárez. He also fields a third car at select races for road-racing specialist Shane van Gisbergen.
He recently released a new NASCAR-themed album featuring songs with Tim McGraw, Dolly Parton and Nile Rodgers. He also has a song dedicated to the late Jimmy Buffett.
WE TAKIN’ OVER
Could DJ Khaled add NASCAR team owner ready to win, win, win no matter what to his already loaded resume of hype man, producer, writer?
Khaled says he’s the one.
Khaled said he envisioned a time when he would return to the Daytona 500, not as part of race day entertainment, but as a celebrity owner much like Pitbull and 23XI Racing’s Michael Jordan.
“I would love to be a team owner,” Khaled said. “Look at Michael Jordan, the beautiful things he’s doing. All the other great team owners. One day, God willing, I’ll have a ‘We the Best’ car out there, bringing home a trophy.”
NASCAR is littered with celebrities who have moved through media centers making the same bold statements about team ownership without a deal ever panning out. Khaled said he’s been a race fan since childhood.
The DJ-producer, whose real name is Khaled Mohamed Khaled, said he attended a Daytona 500 or two as a kid because of his love of cars. Khaled brought his wife and two young sons with him to the track.
Khaled flexed when he said he put his hands in the air and practiced waving the green flag.
He also teased new music would drop soon.
“Everybody take it easy, the title is coming soon,” Khaled said to laughter standing over the Harley J. Earl Trophy. “It’s going to touch everybody worldwide.”
Some video game actors are letting AI clone their voices
If you are battling a video game goblin who speaks with a Cockney accent, or asking a gruff Scottish blacksmith to forge a virtual sword, you might be hearing the voice of actor Andy Magee.
Except it’s not quite Magee’s voice. It’s a synthetic voice clone generated by artificial intelligence.
As video game worlds get more expansive, some game studios are experimenting with AI tools to give voice to a potentially unlimited number of characters and conversations. It also saves time and money on the “vocal scratch” recordings game developers use as placeholders to test scenes and scripts.
The response from professional actors has been mixed. Some fear that AI voices could replace all but the most famous human actors if big studios have their way. Others, like Magee, have been willing to give it a try if they’re fairly compensated and their voices aren’t misused.
“I hadn’t really anticipated AI voices to be my break into the industry, but, alas, I was offered paid voice work, and I was grateful for any experience I could get at the time,” said Magee, who grew up in Northern Ireland and has previously worked as a craft brewery manager, delivery driver and farmer.
He now specializes in voicing a diverse range of characters from the British Isles, turning what he used to consider a party trick into a rewarding career.
AI voice clones don’t have the best reputation, in part because they’ve been misused to create convincing deepfakes of real people — from U.S. President Joe Biden to the late Anthony Bourdain — saying things they never said. Some early attempts by independent developers to add them to video games have also been poorly received, both by gamers and actors — not all of whom consented to having their voices used in that way.
Most of the big studios haven’t yet employed AI voices in a noticeable way and are still in ongoing negotiations on how to use them with Hollywood’s actors union, which also represents game performers. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s strikes by the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists but when it comes to game studios, the union is showing signs that a deal is likely.
Sarah Elmaleh, who has played the Cube Queen in Fortnite and numerous other high-profile roles in blockbuster and indie games, said she has “always been one of the more conservative voices” on AI-generated voices but now considers herself more agnostic.
“We’ve seen some uses where the (game developer’s) interest was a shortcut that was exploitative and was not done in consultation with the actor,” said Elmaleh, who chairs SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee for interactive media.
But in other cases, she said, the role of an AI voice is often invisible and used to clean up a recording in the later stages of production, or to make a character sound older or younger at a different stage of their virtual life.
“There are use cases that I would consider with the right developer, or that I simply feel that the developer should have the right to offer to an actor, and then an actor should have the right to consider that it can be done safely and fairly without exploiting them,” Elmaleh said.
SAG-AFTRA has already made a deal with one AI voice company, Replica Studios, announced last month at the CES gadget show in Las Vegas. The agreement — which SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher described as “a great example of AI being done right” — enables major studios to work with unionized actors to create and license a digital replica of their voice. It sets terms that also allow performers to opt out of having their voices used in perpetuity.
“Everyone says they’re doing it with ethics in mind,” but most are not and some are training their AI systems with voice data pulled off the internet without the speaker’s permission, said Replica Studios CEO Shreyas Nivas.
Nivas said his company licenses characters for a period of time. To clone a voice, it will schedule a recording session and ask the actor to voice a script either in their regular voice or the voice of the character they are performing.
“They control whether they wish to go ahead with this,” he said. “It’s creating new revenue streams. We’re not replacing actors.”
It was Replica Studios that first reached out to Magee about a voice-over audio clip he had created demonstrating a Scottish accent. Working from his home studio in Vancouver, British Columbia, he’s since created a number of AI replicas and pitched his own ideas for them. For each character he’ll record lines with distinct emotions — some happy, some sad, some in battle duress. Each mood gets about 7,000 words, and the final audio dataset amounts to several hours covering all of a character’s styles.
Once cloned, a paid subscriber of Replica’s text-to-speech tool can make that voice say pretty much anything — within certain guidelines.
Magee said the experience has opened doors to a range of acting experiences that don’t involve AI — including a role in the upcoming strategy game Godsworn.
Voice actor Zeke Alton, whose credits include more than a dozen roles in the Call of Duty military action franchise, hasn’t yet agreed to lending his voice to an AI replica. But he understands why studios might want them as they try to scale up game franchises such as Baldur’s Gate and Starfield where players can explore vast, open worlds and encounter elves, warlocks or aliens at every corner.
“How do you populate thousands of planets with walking, talking entities while paying every single actor for every single individual? That just becomes unreasonable at a point,” said Alton, who also sits on the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee for interactive media.
Alton is also open to AI tools that reduce some of the most physically straining work in creating game characters — the grunts, shouts and other sounds of characters in battle, as well as the movements of jumping, striking, falling and dying required in motion-capture scenes.
“I’m one of those people that is not interested so much in banning AI,” Alton said. “I think there’s a way forward for the developers to get their tools and make their games better, while bringing along the performers so that we maintain the human artistry.”
‘Oppenheimer’ wins seven prizes at the British Academy Film Awards
LONDON | Atom bomb epic “Oppenheimer” won seven prizes, including best picture, director and actor, at the 77th British Academy Film Awards on Sunday, cementing its front-runner status for the Oscars next month.
Gothic fantasia “Poor Things” took five prizes and Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” won three.
British-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan won his first best director BAFTA for “Oppenheimer,” and Irish performer Cillian Murphy won the best actor prize for playing physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb.
Murphy said he was grateful to play such a “colossally knotty, complex character.”
Nolan noted that nuclear weapons are “a nihilistic subject and the film inevitably reflects that,” telling the movie’s backers: “Thank you for taking on something dark.”
Emma Stone was named best actress for playing the wild and spirited Bella Baxter in “Poor Things,” a steampunk-style visual extravaganza that won prizes for visual effects, production design, makeup and hair and costume design.
“Oppenheimer” had a field-leading 13 nominations, but missed out on the record of nine trophies, set in 1971 by “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”
It won the best film race against “Poor Things,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Holdovers.” “Oppenheimer” also scooped trophies for editing, cinematography and musical score, as well as the best supporting actor prize for Robert Downey Jr., who played Atomic Energy Commission head Lewis Strauss.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph was named best supporting actress for playing a boarding school cook in “The Holdovers” and said she felt a “responsibility I don’t take lightly” to tell the stories of underrepresented people like her character Mary.
“Oppenheimer” faced stiff competition in what’s widely considered a vintage year for cinema and an awards season energized by the end of actors’ and writers’ strikes that shut down Hollywood for months.
“ The Zone of Interest,” a British-produced film shot in Poland with a largely German cast, was named both best British film and best film not in English — a first — and also took the prize for its sound, which has been described as the real star of the film.
Jonathan Glazer’s unsettling drama takes place in a family home just outside the walls of the Auschwitz death camp, whose horrors are heard and hinted at, rather than seen.
“Walls aren’t new from before or since the Holocaust, and it seems stark right now that we should care about innocent people being killed in Gaza or Yemen or Mariupol or Israel,” producer James Wilson said. “Thank you for recognizing a film that asks us to think in those spaces.”
Ukraine war documentary “20 Days in Mariupol,” produced by The Associated Press and PBS “Frontline,” won the prize for best documentary.
“This is not about us,” said filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov, who captured the harrowing reality of life in the besieged city with an AP team. “This is about Ukraine, about the people of Mariupol.”
Chernov said the story of the city and its fall into Russian occupation “is a symbol of struggle and a symbol of faith. Thank you for empowering our voice and let’s just keep fighting.”
The awards ceremony, hosted by “Doctor Who” star David Tennant — who entered wearing a kilt and sequined top while carrying a dog named Bark Ruffalo — was a glitzy, British-accented appetizer for Hollywood’s Academy Awards, closely watched for hints about who might win at the Oscars on March 10.
The prize for original screenplay went to French courtroom drama “Anatomy of a Fall.” The film about a woman on trial over the death of her husband was written by director Justine Triet and her partner, Arthur Harari.
“It’s a fiction, and we are reasonably fine,” Triet joked.
Cord Jefferson won the adapted screenplay prize for the satirical “American Fiction,” about the struggles of an African American novelist
Jefferson said he hoped the success of the movie “maybe changes the minds of the people who are in charge of greenlighting films and TV shows, allows them to be less risk-averse.”
Historical epic “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Leonard Bernstein biopic “Maestro,” grief-flecked love story “All of Us Strangers” and class-war dramedy “Saltburn “ all won nothing despite multiple nominations.
“ Barbie,” one half of 2023’s “Barbenheimer” box office juggernaut and the year’s top-grossing film, also came up empty from five nominations. “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig failed to get a directing nomination for either the BAFTAs or the Oscars, in what was seen by many as a major snub.
Britain’s film academy introduced changes to increase the awards’ diversity in 2020, when no women were nominated as best director for the seventh year running and all 20 nominees in the lead and supporting performer categories were white. However, Triet was the only woman among this year’s six best-director nominees.
The Rising Star award, the only category decided by public vote, went to Mia McKenna-Bruce, star of “How to Have Sex.”
Before the ceremony, nominees, including Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Emily Blunt, Rosamund Pike, Ryan Gosling and Ayo Edebiri all walked the red carpet at London’s Royal Festival Hall, along with presenters Andrew Scott, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba and David Beckham.
Guest of honor was Prince William, in his role as president of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He arrived without his wife, Kate, who is recovering from abdominal surgery last month.
The ceremony included musical performances by “Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham, singing “Time After Time,” and Sophie Ellis-Bextor, singing her 2001 hit “Murder on the Dancefloor,” which shot back up the charts after featuring in “Saltburn.”
Film curator June Givanni, founder of the June Givanni PanAfrican Cinema Archive, was honored for outstanding British contribution to cinema, while actress Samantha Morton received the academy’s highest honor, the BAFTA Fellowship.
Morton, who grew up in foster care and children’s homes, said that “representation matters.”
“The stories we tell, they have the power to change people’s lives,” she said. “Film changed my life, it transformed me, and it led me here today.”
‘Bob Marley: One Love’ stirs up
$27.7M weekend
NEW YORK | Paramount Pictures’ Bob Marley biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” outperformed expectations to debut at No. 1 at the box office with a $27.7 million opening weekend, while Sony’s “Madame Web” flopped with one of the lowest debuts for a movie centered on a Marvel character.
Both films launched in theaters on Tuesday to rope in Valentine’s Day moviegoers. But on a weekend that was once expected to go to “Madame Web,” “One Love” emerged as the much-preferred option in theaters, despite largely poor reviews.
Instead, “One Love,” starring Kingsley Ben-Adir and produced with the involvement of the Marley estate, performed roughly on par with previous hit musical biopics like “Rocketman” and “Elvis.” Paramount is forecasting that “One Love” will gross $51 million over its first six days, including estimates for President’s Day on Monday. It added $29 million from 47 international territories.
Chris Aronson, distribution chief for Paramount, noted that pre-release projections forecast a six-day total closer to $30 million for “One Love.” But moviegoers from a wide range turned out for the first big-screen biopic of the Rastafarian legend.
“It was across all generations. It wasn’t just a movie for an older audience that grew up with Bob Marley’s music,” said Aronson. “Our highest quadrant was (age) 18 to 24. A third of the audience was under 25. That, to me, speaks volumes.”
Produced for about $70 million, “One Love,” directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, chronicles Marley during the making of the 1977 album “Exodus” while leading up to a pivotal concert for his native Jamaica. Among the movie’s producers are Marley’s children, Ziggy and Cedella, and his wife, Rita.
Ziggy Marley, in a statement Sunday, said: “We thank the people for embracing this film and in so doing helping to highlight the message of one love.”
Though critics dinged the film (43% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes) for relying on biopic conventions, audiences gave it a much higher grade, with an “A” CinemaScore. That kind of audience response plus the strong opening should bode well for the film’s run.
“Madame Web,” however, was dead on arrival. Over six days, Sony is estimating a $15.2 million weekend and a six-day $25.8 million haul. Audiences (a “C+” CinemaScore) agreed with critics (13% “fresh”).
Such launches were once unfathomable for stand-alone superhero films. But the film, an extension of Sony’s universe of Spider-Man films, struggled to shed the bad buzz surrounding the $80 million project. In it, Dakota Johnson stars as a New York paramedic with clairvoyant powers.
“The entire superhero genre has had a really rough go of it over the past year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. “Certain things are no longer a sure bet. Except maybe now, the musical biopic has become the go-to genre. It just shows how tastes can change.”
Sony’s Spider-Man spinoffs have been mostly hit and miss. Its two “Venom” films have together surpassed $1.3 billion worldwide. But 2022’s poorly received “Morbius” collected just $167.4 million globally. “Madame Web” still couldn’t come close to the $39 million domestic opening weekend for “Morbius.” In 61 overseas markets, “Madame Web” added $25.7 million.
The better news for Sony’s Spider-verse came Saturday night at the 51st Annie Awards, where “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” won best feature and collected seven prizes in total. “Across the Spider-Verse” is nominated for best animated feature at the Academy Awards — and the Annie Awards can often be a good predictor of winner.
The 2024 box office has gotten off to a sobering start for Hollywood, and the disappointing result for “Madame Web” won’t help. Moviegoing has slowed to a crawl in recent weeks, while 2023’s strikes have impacted this year’s release schedules. Even with the strong “One Love” opening, ticket sales were down 15% on the weekend compared to 2023, according to ComScore.
Expectations are high for “Dune: Part Two,” opening March 1. Until then, “Bob Marley: One Love” will be jammin’.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
—From AP reports
