Guardians of Peace already claimed responsibility for the SONY hacking. Now it's trying to intimidate moviegoers from seeing the movie that motivated the massive data dumps.
On this special episode of GGN, cousin Ray J is back again to chop it up with Nemo Hoes about his show Love & Hip Hop Hollywood. The duo share valuable relationship advice about the finest of the finest. Also Thunder Claps gives a rundown of what's going down in Nebraska. Only on this week's episode of GGN u-bitch-u!
Chris Rock joins First Take's Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless to discuss athletes and current social issues, the state of the Knicks and Kobe passing Michael Jordan.
If you've only been paying attention to adidas lately in order to see its long-awaited collaboration with Kanye West, you're missing out. Because another G.O.O.D. Music artist worked with the brand recently, and the result is a banger. Complete with cracked Italian leather, Pyrex measurements on the sole, and fish scales on the heel, the $200 EQT Running Guidance '93 that Pusha T designed is as luxurious and cocaine-fueled as his braggadocios flow. Anyone familiar with Pusha's work should recognize where this shoe came from.
But this collaboration, at least in its present form, almost didn't happen. It's not what Pusha wanted to do with adidas. "I really came to adidas to try to do something with soccer, and it didn’t pan out. My thinking was a little off base," Pusha told us before a brief, one-song appearance at adidas Originals' pop-up gallery on Wooster Street in New York City. "Then they brought up a shoe, and I was like, ‘Nah, not really,’ because I’m really particular about my shoes. They came back to me with it, and I had some silhouette options. Then I was like, ‘This EQT Guidance, I can work with it.’"
In a special interview with People, Barack and Michelle Obama opened up about their lives and how racism has affected even them too.
“I think people forget that we've lived in the White House for six years,” Michelle said. “Before that, Barack Obama was a black man that lived on the South Side of Chicago, who had his share of troubles catching cabs.”
While the Obamas’ encounters with race haven’t placed them in mortal danger in the same way as happened to Michael Brown and Eric Garner, they still vividly recall times where Barack was mistaken for a valet or waiter and Michelle for a Target employee. “The small irritations or indignities that we experience are nothing compared to what a previous generation experienced,” said the President. “It's one thing for me to be mistaken for a waiter at a gala. It's another thing for my son to be mistaken for a robber and to be handcuffed, or worse, if he happens to be walking down the street and is dressed the way teenagers dress.”
The Obamas’ decision to chime in on the national conversation about race will hopefully help move the dialogue forward towards some meaningful change. In this unique period in our history, it’s an encouraging sign to see our leader actively getting himself into the mix.
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Young people aren't going out to see movies as much as they used to. A Nielson survey found movie theaters attendance by 12- to 24-year-olds has dropped 15 percent in the first nine months of 2014, and total attendance has dropped five percent. This is, of course, a huge problem for theaters and one they'll need to addres as streaming becomes more and more ubiquitous.
AMC Theaters might have found a solution with a monthly pass. The company is experimenting with monthly subscriptions that cost $35 and $45 and would allow passholders to see one movie each day. Denver and Boston will be the initial guinea pigs, with more cities to follow.
"It frankly wouldn’t be smart to ignore the success of subscription in other areas of media," AMC executive Christina Sternberg said. "The data will determine how fast we go. Sometimes you first expand the test, sometimes you accelerate the deployment."
It sounds like a great idea to us. Now we just need the experiment to succeed and spread so we're not all dropping buku bucks every time we want to see a movie in theaters.
NEW YORK (AP) — Threats of violence against movie theaters. The New York premiere of "The Interview" canceled. Leaks of thousands more private emails. Lawsuits by former employees that could cost tens of millions in damages.
The fallout from the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack that began four weeks ago exploded Tuesday after the shadowy group calling themselves Guardians of Peace escalated their attack beyond corporate espionage and threatened moviegoers with violence reminiscent of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The Department of Homeland Security said there was "no credible intelligence to indicate an active plot against movie theaters," but noted it was still analyzing messages from the group, dubbed GOP. The warning did prompt law enforcement in New York and Los Angeles to address measures to ramp up security.
Those security fears spurred Sony to allow theater chains to cancel showings of the Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy "The Interview," that has been a focus of the hackers' mission to bring down Sony.
A spokesperson for Landmark Sunshine cinemas said the New York premiere of "The Interview," scheduled for Thursday night, has been canceled. Carmike Cinemas, which operates 247 theaters across the country, was the first to cancel its planned showings of the film, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
GOP also released a trove of data files including 32,000 emails to and from Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton in what it called the beginning of a "Christmas gift."
And two former Sony film production workers filed lawsuits alleging the Culver City, California company waited too long to notify nearly 50,000 employees that data such as Social Security numbers, salaries and medical records had been stolen.
The filing follows another lawsuit this week from two other former Sony employees accusing the studio of being negligent by not bolstering its defenses against hackers before the attack. It claims emails and other leaked information show that Sony's information-technology department and its top lawyer believed its security system was vulnerable to attack, but that company did not act on those warnings. Sony potentially faces tens of millions of dollars in damages from a class-action lawsuit, said Jonathan Handel, an entertainment law professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.
In "The Interview," Rogen and Franco star as television journalists involved in a CIA plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Speculation about a North Korean link to the Sony hacking has centered on that country's angry denunciation of the film. Over the summer, North Korea warned that the film's release would be an "act of war that we will never tolerate." It said the U.S. will face "merciless" retaliation.
The film was slated to hit theaters nationwide on Christmas Day. It premiered in Los Angeles last week.
But on Tuesday, Rogen and Franco pulled out of all media appearances, canceling a Buzzfeed Q&A; and Rogen's planned guest spot Thursday on "Late Night With Seth Meyers." A representative for Rogen said he had no comment. A spokeswoman for Franco didn't respond to queries Tuesday.
The FBI said it is aware of the GOP's threats and "continues to work collaboratively with our partners to investigate this matter." FBI director James Comey last week said that investigators are still trying to determine who is responsible for the hack.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said his department takes the hackers' threats "very seriously" and will be taking extra precautions during the holidays at theaters. The National Association of Theatre Owners had no comment on the developing situation. Neither Sony nor representatives from individual theater chains, including Carmike, responded to requests for comment.
Since the hack surfaced late last month, everything from financial figures to salacious emails between top Sony executives has been dumped online.
The nearly 32,000 emails to and from Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Lynton leaked Tuesday include information about casting decisions and total costs for upcoming films, release schedules for Sony films through 2018 and corporate financial records, such as royalties from iTunes, Spotify and Pandora music services. They include information about new electronics devices such as DVD players and cellphones. They also include budget figures for the Motion Picture Association of America, of which Sony is a member, and at least one email about a senior Sony executive who left the company. The emails also include banal messages about public appearances, tennis matches, home repairs, dinner invitations and business introductions.
In their warning Tuesday, the hackers suggested Sony employees make contact via several disposable email addresses ending in yopmail.com. Frenchman Frederic Leroy, who started up the yopmail site in 2004, was surprised to learn the Sony hackers were using yopmail addresses. He said there was no way he could identify the users.
LOS ANGELES -- Every Los Angeles police officer will soon be equipped with a body camera, Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Tuesday.
Garcetti said at a press conference that the department will buy 7,000 on-body cameras for Los Angeles Police Department officers to expand transparency and accountability.
"The trust between a community and its police department can be eroded in a single moment," Garcetti said. "Trust is built on transparency."
The announcement comes two weeks after President Barack Obama announced a $363 million package that includes $75 million to pay half the cost of 50,000 officer-mounted cameras. The technology has been widely endorsed as a reform following the death of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager killed by Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in August.
"No big city department has done this," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said at the press conference. "Officers will have tremendously powerful evidence and the ability to collect it. We are starting a journey that will go on for decades."
Beck said he didn't expect that the cameras would be recording all the time. For example, cameras would not be used when officers interview victims of sexual abuse, but would likely be used when a suspect is in custody. Policies on proper use of the cameras will be considered in early 2015. The mayor's office said the city hopes to deploy the first 800 cameras within six months.
LAPD is not alone in its interest in officer-worn cameras. Police departments in Chicago, New York, Minneapolis and Washington, D.C., as well as in smaller cities like Ferguson, have started pilot programs with cameras or have announced plans to do so.
Police reform advocates have long called for police body cameras, arguing that the video can help eliminate bias and uncertainty when allegations of misconduct arise. One frequently cited officer body camera pilot program in Rialto, California, found that the number of complaints filed against officers fell by 88 percent and use of force by officers fell by almost 60 percent in the first year police used the cameras.
Garcetti's new plan would expand an LAPD pilot program that began early this year involving 600 officer-mounted cameras.
The announcement comes more than four months after Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old mentally ill man, was shot to death by LA police in a South LA neighborhood, just days after Brown was killed in Ferguson. Like the Brown case, eyewitness and police accounts of Ford's death vary.
Police have said that during an Aug. 11 "investigative stop," a struggle ensued in which Ford tried to grab an officer's gun and another officer fired at Ford.
The killing has led to multiple protests as well as some erosion of police-community trust.
The LAPD continues to investigate Ford's death.
Julian Michaels (Bruce Willis) has designed the ultimate resort: VICE, where anything goes and the customers can play out their wildest fantasies with artificial inhabitants who look, think and feel like humans. When an artificial (Ambyr Childers) becomes self-aware and escapes, she finds herself caught in the crossfire between Julian's mercenaries and a cop (Thomas Jane) who is hell-bent on shutting down Vice, and stopping the violence once and for all.
After being kidnapped by two criminals during birth, Chappie becomes the adopted son in a strange and dysfunctional family. Chappie is preternaturally gifted, one of a kind, a prodigy. He also happens to be a robot.
Liam Neeson returns as ex-covert operative Bryan Mills, whose reconciliation with his ex-wife is tragically cut short when she is brutally murdered. Consumed with rage, and framed for the crime, he goes on the run to evade the relentless pursuit of the CIA, FBI and the police. For one last time, Mills must use his “particular set of skills,” to track down the real killers, exact his unique brand of justice, and protect the only thing that matters to him now – his daughter.
