Hasta La Gadget!

“Ghost in the Shell” may have been doomed from the start because of the film’s whitewashing controversy, according to a Paramount executive. 

The big budget movie, based on a film adaptation of a popular Japanese manga, flopped over the weekend earning just $19 million at the box office. Compare that to the film’s $110 million budget and Entertainment Weekly’s modest prediction that the movie would earn at least $30 million.

Critics didn’t think much of the movie either. “Ghost in the Shell” earned 45 percent on the film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviewers saying the film lacked the magic of its source material.

An executive for Paramount, the studio behind the film, thinks that “Ghost in the Shell” performed so poorly because of the casting controversy that trailed the movie for years. After it was announced in late 2014 that Scarlett Johansson, a white actress, would be taking on the role of Major Motoko Kusanagi, critics complained that Hollywood was once again whitewashing a role that an Asian actress could’ve played. 

“We had hopes for better results domestically. I think the conversation regarding casting impacted the reviews,” Paramount domestic distribution chief Kyle Davies told CBC News.

“You’ve got a movie that is very important to the fanboys since it’s based on a Japanese anime movie,” Davies added. “So you’re always trying to thread that needle between honoring the source material and make a movie for a mass audience. That’s challenging, but clearly the reviews didn’t help.” 

Johansson defended the movie’s casting last week, saying that her character, who was renamed to “Major” for the film, did not have an ethnic identity. Johansson told Good Morning America that her character is a “human brain in an entirely machine body, she is essentially identity-less.”

“I would never attempt to play a person of a different race,” she added. “Hopefully any question that comes up of my casting will hopefully be answered by audiences when they see the film.”

But her defense didn’t quell the larger issue of white actors being cast in Asian roles.

The Hollywood Reporter invited several Japanese-American actresses to watch and discuss the film’s casting controversy and they all agreed: Major’s backstory, which Johansson hinted at, appeared to be a thinly veiled attempt to justify whitewashing the character of Major Motoko Kusanagi.

“We’re looking at these beautiful white bodies saying these Japanese names, and it hurt my heart a little bit,” Keiko Agena, who’s starred in “Gilmore Girls” and “13 Reasons Why,” told The Hollywood Reporter.

“As a fan, as a human Asian-American, I want to see that star being born. That was the part that hurt,” Agena added. “This is such a star-making vehicle. And they can find people …this could have made a young, kick-ass Asian actress out there a Hollywood name and star.”

“The Ghost in the Shell” took third place on its opening weekend, falling behind “The Boss Baby,” the animated film starring Alec Baldwin, which pulled in $49 million, and Disney’s highly anticipated remake of “Beauty and the Beast” starring Emma Watson, which made $48 million (adding to its $395.5 million domestic total).

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Samsung’s launch of the Galaxy Tab S3, though received with some mixed reactions, might have inspired the “Apple of China” to take another stab at the Android tablet market as well. It has been quite a while since Xiaomi has put out a Mi Pad, so you’d think it would make a big splash about it. The Mi Pad 3‘s … Continue reading

The Trump administration’s rollback on Obama-era internet privacy rules is “disgusting” and “appalling,” says the man who created the world wide web.

Tim Berners-Lee spoke out against the repeal of the Federal Communications Commission’s privacy rules Tuesday, soon after being declared the recipient of the 2016 ACM A.M. Turing Award ― a $1 million accolade dubbed the “Nobel Prize of computing.”

House Republicans voted on March 28 to allow internet service providers to share customers’ personal information (including browsing history) without their consent. President Donald Trump signed the bill into law Monday.

But Berners-Lee was far from happy.

“The attitude is really appalling,” the 61-year-old English computer scientist said in an interview with British newspaper The Guardian. “That bill was a disgusting bill because when we use the web, we are so vulnerable.”

Berners-Lee, who launched the world’s very first website in December 1990, noted how “when people use the web what they do is really, really intimate.”

“You have the right to go to a doctor in privacy where it’s just between you and the doctor,” he said. “And similarly, you have to be able to go to the web.”

Real the full Guardian interview here.

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Apple, to date, has had only two apps on Android (excluding a Beats-specific app), and both seem to be rather half-hearted attempts to wean users over to iOS. One is even called “Move to iOS”. Apple Music, which gives Android users access to the company’s music streaming service, hasn’t fared any better. It hasn’t seen some major action until today. … Continue reading

BEIRUT, April 5 (Reuters) – Warplanes mounted five air strikes on Wednesday in a rebel-held area of northwestern Syria where dozens of people were killed the day before in a suspected chemical attack, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

The Syrian army could not immediately be reached for comment on the reported air strikes in town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province on Wednesday. An Observatory report did not identify the warplanes.

The United States has blamed the chemical attack on Syrian government forces. The army has denied any role.

Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday that poisonous gas contamination in the area was the result of gas leaking from a rebel chemical weapons depot after it was hit by Syrian government air strikes.

The Observatory said the chemical attack was carried out by warplanes believed to belong to the Syrian military.

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