Alex Cranz

A Baldur’s Gate 3 character is now canon. Which sounds weird right? If they’re in Baldur’s Gate 3 wouldn’t they automatically be canon? But this character actually started in Dungeons and Dragons campaign played by the Baldur’s Gate 3 voice actors (all playing in character).

The lil imp Bing Bong is joined the game officially as part of the huge patch that just dropped earlier this week. First new armor and a new epilogue, and now Bing Bong? Larian Studios is really spoiling BG3 players.

You might have thought Bob Iger returning to Disney would have smoothed things over with the board and investors, but activist investor Nelson Peltz is back baby.

Peltz and his firm, Trian Fund Management are looking for two seats on the board. When Iger was asked about it yesterday at New York Time’s Dealbook conference he demurred.

But today the company responded to the proxy fight accusing Peltz of collaborating with Ike Perlmutter (who owns most of the shares Peltz is relying on). Perlmutter was fired from the board this year after losing more and more of his once iron grip on the Marvel franchise. He once called women-led superhero films a “disaster” and attempted to scuttle both the hugely successful Black Panther and Captain Marvel films for exactly the reasons you think.

Speaking during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023, he did not blame the actors' strike and lack of publicity for the film's performance. Nor did he blame the weird hatred of the film driven by sexism coming from a small and vocal cadre of Marvel fans upset over a film helmed by three women.

He did blame the sheer volume of content being created for making it more difficult to maintain quality and said, "The Marvels was shot during Covid, and there wasn't enough supervision on set" from executives.

But given that overreliance on executive creative control is one of the things that have driven the Marvel brand to its current nadir... that's certainly an interesting assessment.

Bill Hunt over at Digital Bits recently noticed it was awfully hard to buy a physical copy of Oppenheimer in 4K Ultra HD, and Universal has now confirmed the shortage is happening.

I’m personally just thrilled that in 2023 people are embracing physical media so much that a major film release could sell out.

If you had to sum up James Cameron’s whole cinematic career with a single one of his works The Abyss would be my choice. It’s one of his most personal films, and its technological achievements, like a whole monster created from water, were astounding in 1989, and remarkable even in 2023.

The film, about a crew of a submersible oil rig forced to partner with the government to recover nuclear warheads, was a famously grueling shoot full of technological innovations, and its returning to theaters December 6, with a remastered 4K print.

I won’t spoil things, but we spend quite a while talking about Humane’s AI Pin and what a device needs to be to get us to put down our phones.

We also talk about the other big AI news of the week: Open AI’s new app store. Its no-code approach to building new GPTs seems very cool, even if its approach to compensating new GPT builders seems decidedly less so.

All that plus a steamy lightning round.

Masters of the Air will be the third World War II miniseries produced by the two, and the first produced (and distributed) by Apple.

Based on the Donald L. Milller book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany, it chronicles the missions of the 100th Bomb Group as they flew B-17s in the European theater. If you like Band of Brothers and The Pacific it should be right up your alley, and if you’re curious if Austin Butler has shaken that Elvis-accent yet, you can hear for yourself in the teaser below.

I keep watching this very funny speech Julia Louis-Dreyfus gave that was penned by ChatGPT and wondering what prompt she used to cast her in so many romantic comedies of the early 90s.