Earlier today, Spotify announced that Taylor Swift had pulled all of her albums off its music-on-demand service.

Since then, we spoke to an industry source familiar with firsthand knowledge of why and how this happened, and who is most responsible.

This source blamed one person: Scott Borchetta.

Borchetta is the president and CEO of Taylor Swift's record label, the Big Machine Label Group. 

Our source notes Borchetta is trying to sell Big Machine. Reports say he wants $200 million.

This source says Borchetta believes the only metric that will matter to potential buyers is the number of albums the label is able to sell. Our source says Borchetta doesn't think the number of plays Swift's songs have on Spotify will move the needle.

The source says Borchetta believes that pulling Swift's music off Spotify will create "scarcity" online, and drive CD sales and paid downloads.

Our source believes this is poor thinking on Borchetta's part. "[Spotify's] user base is 18-to-24. They’ve never seen a CD before."

That might be true, but Swift's new record is on pace to sell 1.3 million copies during its opening weekend, which would be the biggest opening weekend album sales since 2002, a year before the iTunes music store even existed. At $10 a pop, that's $13 million in revenue in one week. 

Our source says, "You don’t create any scarcity if you take [Swift's albums] off Spotify. If you type 'Taylor Swift MP3' into Google you can get her entire catalogue."

This source says that Universal Music Group, which distributes Swift's music for Big Machine, tried very hard to convince Borchetta that his thinking is very old-fashioned and that pulling Swift's music off Spotify is a shortsighted move.

"They did everything they could," says our source.

This seems plausible to us.

At the WSJ tech conference in Southern California last week, UMG CEO Lucian Grange was adamant that streaming is the future of the music business. He talked about how great it is that, in a streaming paradigm, artists will get paid for their songs throughout their long lives — not just once, when their albums are first published.

Our industry source says Spotify was blindsided by the news last week. The source says Spotify never expected to get Swift's latest album, "1989," on its service. It was happy to have — and to heavily promote — the first single only, called "Shake It Off."

Swift is very popular on Spotify: 25% of Spotify listeners have streamed her songs. Her songs were on 20 million playlists.

This source said that most artists are not able to do what Swift did today and simply pull their music off Spotify. The only reason this happened was that Big Machine has a special deal with Universal Music Group.

One reason Borchetta maybe be bent on selling now: 1989 is the second to last Taylor Swift album under her current contract with the label. 

Our source did not say where Swift herself stood on the Spotify issue. Her family is a part-owner of Big Machine, so she's probably happy to help increase its value.

Spotify declined to comment on this story. Big Machine did not respond to an email or several tweets.

SEE ALSO: Taylor Swift Admits To Stalking Her Fans' Instagram and Tumblr Accounts

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Lena Dunham went on a "rage-spiral" of a Twitter offensive Saturday after an article on the conservative website "Truth Revolt" accused the HBO star of "sexually abusing her little sister."

The allegations stem from a chapter in Dunham's new book "Not That Kind of Girl," in which she describes an incident that occurred when she was seven-years-old and she "spread open" her one-year-old sister's vagina to see whether it was "like mine."

While Dunham tweeted that Truth Revolt's allegations were "upsetting and disgusting," she also threatened to sue the site.

Truth Revolt today said they received a “cease and desist” letter from Dunham's camp, demanding they remove an article posted on sections of her book, and that legal action would follow if they did not both delete the article, as well as print a note, with the language suggested below:

We recently published a story stating that Ms. Dunham engaged in sexual conduct with her sister.  The story was false, and we deeply regret having printed it.  We apologize to Ms. Dunham, her sister, and their parents, for this false story.

Truth Revolt publicly responded by stating:

We refuse. We refuse to withdraw our story or apologize for running it, because quoting a woman’s book does not constitute a “false” story, even if she is a prominent actress and left-wing activist. Lena Dunham may not like our interpretation of her book, but unfortunately for her and her attorneys, she wrote that book – and the First Amendment covers a good deal of material she may not like...

We also look forward to asking her why she believes it is now appropriate for a 28-year-old woman to make light of opening her baby sister’s vagina...

...for a woman who proclaims to be an advocate for freedom of speech to attempt to shut down such speech based on her own apparent embarrassment at her own disclosures in her own book demonstrates the totalitarianism of those on the left.

While Dunham's own sister has come to her defense, as have her friends, many on Twitter are also disturbed by the book chapter:

Read Dunham's book excerpt in question below:

“Do we all have uteruses?” I asked my mother when I was seven.

“Yes,” she told me. “We’re born with them, and with all our eggs, but they start out very small. And they aren’t ready to make babies until we’re older.”

I looked at my sister, now a slim, tough one-year-old, and at her tiny belly. I imagined her eggs inside her, like the sack of spider eggs in Charlotte’s Web, and her uterus, the size of a thimble.

“Does her vagina look like mine?”

“I guess so,” my mother said. “Just smaller.”

One day, as I sat in our driveway in Long Island playing with blocks and buckets, my curiosity got the best of me. Grace was sitting up, babbling and smiling, and I leaned down between her legs and carefully spread open her vagina. She didn’t resist, and when I saw what was inside I shrieked. “My mother came running. “Mama, Mama! Grace has something in there!”

My mother didn’t bother asking why I had opened Grace’s vagina. This was within the spectrum of things that I did. She just got on her knees and looked for herself. It quickly became apparent that Grace had stuffed six or seven pebbles in there. My mother removed them patiently while Grace cackled, thrilled that her prank had been such a success.

The current controversy has caused Dunham to cancel her two upcoming stops on her current book tour:

SEE ALSO: Lena Dunham Goes On Twitter 'Rage Spiral' After Conservative Site Accuses Her Of Molesting Her Sister

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Nintendo's president, Satoru Iwata, told investors during a Q&A that the company might reverse its policy on region locking. 

Region locking is where a device, or in this case video game or console, is locked for a particular region. That means you can't play a game that's sold in the US in another country, such as China or Japan. 

Iwata explained that region-locking has existed because of various circumstances having to do with marketing or licensing in the different countries. 

"The game business has a history of taking a very long time with localization among other things, such as having to deal with various issues of marketing in each particular country, or games that have made use of licensed content that did not apply globally, and had all kinds of circumstances, so to say, that region-locking has existed due to circumstances on the sellers' side rather than for the sake of the customers," he said, as translated by NeoGAF user Cheesemeister.

Iwata stopped short of saying that the policy would definitely be reversed, however.

"As for what should be done going forward, if unlocked for the benefit of the customers, there may also be a benefit for us," he said. "Conversely, unlocking would require various problems to be solved, so while I can't say today whether or not we intend to unlock, we realize that it is one thing that we must consider looking to the future."

Nintendo was actually among the first companies to region lock its consoles, and it looks like it's one of the last to still do it. Sony and Microsoft no longer region locks their consoles. And Nintendo's handheld consoles prior to the DS were also region-free. The Wii U is the only current-gen console that's region-locked.

Iwata has even defended the policy as early as last year, according to Ars Technica.

Many fans disagree with region-locking. In fact, some even started a petition to get Nintendo to reverse its policies. 

Of course, region locking might not be a huge deal for a lot of consumers. As NintendoLife points out, most people don't import games from other regions anymore.

But the move would prove that Nintendo is finally looking to a future where games are distributed digitally, rather than on cartridges or discs. And, by removing its region locks, games could also be distributed more quickly and efficiently on a global scale. 

SEE ALSO: There's a 'Minecraft' version of Disney World, and it might be better than the real thing

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Teen star Ariana Grande has been showered with strange gifts by a very persistent fan, TMZ reports.

29-year-old Massachusetts resident Tom Normandin has been sending the star items like a huge pumpkin, animal calendars, and several mirrors from K-Mart.

TMZ says Normandin "has been told by authorities to stop sending items to the singer, or he could face criminal charges for harassment."

Other gifts include a $200 anklet from Kay Jewelers, and a rock.

SEE ALSO: Singer Rita Ora Claims Twitter Was 'Hacked' After Failing To Get Fan Response

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Taylor Swift has been named the "global welcome ambassador" of New York City and that has brought with it some very interesting reaction.

La Petite Mort, a vintage clothing store on Manhattan's Lower East Side, had the idea to commission a local graffiti artist to paint a memorial for Taylor Swift on the gate outside their store, according to The Huffington Post.

They posted a photo to their Instagram account with an explanation in the caption, which made their message quite clear.

From the caption:

We here at LPM have nothing but love for Taylor Swift. Rather, our comment is on the whitewashing and gentrification of New York. While we realize and appreciate that New York is ever changing, when a starving artist once representative of the New York spirit is replaced by the modern 19 million dollar condo owner who drinks lattes we have to shake our heads. We worked with a true NY graffiti legend (Chico LES) to paint our take on the situation. Chico got his start painting memorial murals in the lower east side in the 80's. While Taylor Swift is alive and well, and we wish her no harm, she did kill off yet another piece of that broken New York spirit. The idea of her being our spokesperson is DEAD and we expressed that through a ny artist. RIP TAYLOR SWIFT. #RIPTAYLORSWIFT #chico #chicoles #nyambassador #taylorswift #w2ny #bodegas #stoops #lattes #houston #graffiti #newyork #nyc #les #fbf #instagood #lapetitemort #LPM #37orchard

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The internet is an awesome, awesome place. 

Case in point: Thanks to the Internet Arcade, you can play more than 900 classic arcade games, right from your browser. 

It's part of a larger project, called the Internet Archive, that's aimed at building a library of all the things on the web. The video game section — which also includes console games— is part of the JavaScript Mess (JSMESS) project. Its goal is to emulate a bunch of video game systems to be played in a web browser. 

According to the Internet Arcade, "The game collection ranges from early 'bronze-age' video games, with black and white screens and simple sounds, through to large-scale games containing digitized voices, images and music."

That means you can play the 1982 hit "Joust," Atari's famous "Millipede," or my favorite, "Arkanoid." And a bunch of stuff in between.

Some of the pages give you a little history of the game and a description of how to play. Jason Scott, a developer who worked on this portion of the JSMESS project, writes in a blog post that some of the games might be a little buggy.

"Of the roughly 900 arcade games (yes, nine hundred arcade games) up there, some are in pretty weird shape — vector games are an issue, scaling is broken for some, and some have control mechanisms that are just not going to translate to a keyboard or even a joypad," he writes.

And, as TechCrunch points out, some of the controls might be a little wonky: "The 5 key lets you insert a coin; the 1 key is usually the Player 1 start button. Arrows are usually used for directional stuff, with CTRL/ALT/SPACE used for the three primary buttons. Beyond that, you’ll have to mash buttons a bit to figure it out (or hit TAB to dive into the key configurations)."

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The internet is freaking out over a possible "release confirmation" that Beyoncé is indeed dropping her second surprise 'visual album' on iTunes on November 14th. 

But many are skeptical of the leaked list, saying it may have been photoshopped. For one, the date on the memo says that the hard copy re-release is scheduled for Monday, Nov. 25 but Nov. 25 is a Tuesday. 

There are a few clues, however, that suggest this may be the real deal. 

As Vulture pointed out, the reported Nicki Minaj-collaboration, "DONK," was registered on ASCAP by Beyoncé herself just a few weeks ago.

The track listing "Cherry" was also registered on ASCAP and lists Rihanna, who is long rumored to be collaborating with the Queen B.

Furthermore, Amazon UK posted a placeholder for an untitled four-disc Beyonce set, with a release date of Nov. 24. 

Whether the news is true or not, the beyhive is buzzing!

Each year, Jimmy Kimmel pranks the innocent children of America by having their parents tell them they ate their Halloween candy and then videotaping the reactions.

For the third year in a row, parents obliged with Kimmel's request and uploaded their home videos to YouTube for the late-night host to air in a segment called “Hey Jimmy Kimmel, I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy.”

The best reactions ranged from "you ruined my life" and "I'm not going to talk to you for the rest of your life" to "you must have a bellyache."

Some kids tried to stop the candy snatching as it happened:

Other refused to believe it was actually gone:

And then some had complete meltdowns.

Watch the full, funny Kimmel segment below:

SEE ALSO: Jimmy Kimmel Pitched A Revolutionary Line Of 'Horse Pants' To 'Shark Tank' Investors

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As game graphics become more powerful, the level of detail inside video games is taking a giant leap forward.

Nvidia, a graphics card manufacturer, recently released a demo (via Gizmodo) that showcases just how insane that level of detail has become, simulating a field with millions of individual blades of grass.

In the demo, which is powered by NVIDIA's "Turf Effects" technology, each blade of grass is physically created by the graphics engine. There are even individual shadows for each blade.

Here's an example of the level of detail we're talking about.

Interestingly enough, when a video game character or object walks over the grass, the grass deforms like it does in real life.

Software developers will even be able to decide how long it will take for the grass to spring back to its original placement. It's easy to think up cool ways for this technology to be used. It will literally be possible for players to pick up someone's trail and track them through a field in open-world games like "Skyrim."

For now, this is still just a taste of what will be possible when Nvidia releases the technology to software developers, which is scheduled for early 2015.

We can't wait to see how game developers take advantage of this new technology.

SEE ALSO: This Is What Painting In Virtual Reality Looks Like

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Angelina Jolie may still be crushing box office records, but the actress may soon switch gears in her career.

In a new Vanity Fair cover story, the Oscar-winning Goodwill Ambassador admits she is "open" to a political career.

"When you work as a humanitarian, you are conscious that politics have to be considered," said Jolie, "Because if you really want to make an extreme change, then you have a responsibility."

Jolie, 39, became a UN Goodwill Ambassador in 2001 and has risen to the rank of director and special envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

In October, Queen Elizabeth II made her an honorary dame for her work to fight sexual violence and for services to U.K. foreign policy. 

Jolie's only hesitation in switching to a career in politics is that people won't take her seriously because she is an actress.

“I honestly don’t know in what role I would be more useful — I am conscious of what I do for a living, and that [could] make it less possible," Jolie told VF.

But, Jolie says, she is "open" to pursuing a life in politics, diplomacy, or public service.

SEE ALSO: Prankster Tricks Voters Into Actually Believing Angelina Jolie Is Running For Congress

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“Interstellar” is one of the year's most-anticipated films. It's expected to have a huge opening weekend making north of $50 million. So far reviews have been somewhat mixed and that may be because "Interstellar" is the sort of film that deserves to be watched twice, as is the case with many of director Christopher Nolan's complex films ("Inception," "The Dark Knight" trilogy).

The space voyage is easily one of Nolan’s most thought-provoking films yet. It’s definitely his most ambitious.  

In the not-too-distant future, we’re not fearing for our lives from zombies or a virus, but rather a food shortage brought on by the adverse effects of Mother Nature. Devastating dust storms that leave piles of soot and cause lingering respiratory issues are our biggest concern. 

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former test pilot and engineer, is told his daughter’s generation will be the last to survive on Earth. Their only hope is for Cooper to head to the stars and traverse through a wormhole in search of a habitable planet along with five other companions. 

At its best, "Interstellar" is a joyride through the great unknown while tearing at your heartstrings. The farther you get into the film the more abstract it becomes until you're floating, literally, into the bizarre unknown. There's a moment near the film's climax where you'll probably look at the screen, stop, gauge the audience's reaction, and then look back and wonder what the heck is going on because it's that out there.

The film's 2-hour and 47-minute runtime plays out in what I like to refer to as five acts. It builds as a slow crescendo from family film on Earth to space exploration with an unexpected twist to Kubrick-level crazy before coming back down to Earth for its final leg. 

At the surface level, “Interstellar” is Steven Spielberg’s "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" meets Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey.” It has the innocence and mysteriousness of an other-worldly being’s presence in “Close Encounters,” while there are an endless amount of comparisons to be made to “2001.” Nolan has said both served as inspiration for the film, along with other sci-fi films including "Metropolis" and "Star Wars,” and it shows. Many visual cues in space are taken from “2001” and a scene toward the final act feels like it could have had a place in the 1968 film. 

On a deeper level, Jessica Chastain may have said it best when telling Entertainment Weekly that  “Interstellar” is a love letter from Nolan to his daughter, Flora. The film’s production title was “Flora’s Letter.” Underneath it all, that's what "Interstellar" really is — a father-daughter story reflected in the relationship between Cooper and his daughter, Murph (MacKenzie Foy), the two lead characters at the center of the film.  

There's a line about half way into the film delivered by Anne Hathaway's character, Amelia Brand, in which she says "Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends time and space." That quote is very much the heart of "Interstellar," as McConaughey fights to get back home to his family.

Nolan’s movie isn’t just a letter to his daughter, it’s also one to the planet to make sure we don’t end up depleting our own resources foolishly. There are minor jabs to our heavy focus on gadgets and new devices consuming us.  

Time serves as a constant antagonist of the film. Cooper and Brand frequently discuss how much time it will cost them to travel to X planet vs. Y planet. It will take eight months to get to Mars and two years to get to Saturn. An hour scouring one foreign planet will cost them seven Earth years.  

We watch as time steals away precious moments Cooper has with his family while he fulfills a duty he feels obligated to do — save mankind. As he watches transmissions from his children over the years as they grow and he appears to stay the same, you can't help but want to tear up alongside the rough and tough McConaughey who is reduced to a puddle of tears onscreen. 

And while this may not be another Oscar-winning role, McConaughey delivers again. He has this easy-going, rugged demeanor that can equally charm you while he's embracing his daughter close or joking casually with one of two military droids and disarm you when butting heads with Brand. At this point in his ongoing McConaissance, he just has to show up to win you over.

Michael Caine — a Nolan favorite now appearing in six of the director's films — and Jessica Chastain also deliver strong performances, but the real breakout star is 13-year-old MacKenzie Foy, who plays Cooper's young daughter. 

You may recognize Foy from the "Twilight" franchise as a young vampire, but boy does she stand out here as a feisty and stubborn yet brilliant young girl who follows in her father's footsteps with a love for science. 

Comedian Bill Irwin is also a welcome delight bringing to life TARS, a sarcastic giant military droid whose concrete slab appearance parallels Kubrick's mysterious monolith from "2001." You'll probably be taken aback when you first see him moving strangely around on screen but you'll be entranced when you see him scurry back and forth on a water-logged planet.

The Moment Audiences Will Be Talking About

As cool as TARS and his counterpart CASE are, one of the best parts of the film happens about half-way through when a huge actor reveal occurs, shaking up Cooper’s mission. If you’ve been following along with casting announcements, you won’t be surprised, but a good many people should be shocked as the big star goes uncredited in the film. 

The Music Makes the Movie.

You can't talk about "Interstellar" without mentioning the music. The two go hand in hand, really. Nolan's fifth collaboration with composer Hans Zimmer is dynamic. His soundtracks always breathe life into Nolan's films and this time is no different. 

There's something about the ability of Zimmer's scores to make the film feel bigger than it really is and that's one perk of seeing it in IMAX. You can instantly be filled with an eerie sense of wonder of what it's like to be in space but at any second Zimmer can crank up the noise gradually or suddenly so that your heart tightens in your chest and your fingers clutch nervously at your sides.

Some of his darkest tunes in "Interstellar" bring to mind "Gotham's Reckoning" from "The Dark Knight Rises" soundtrack, another collaboration with Nolan.

You can sample a bit of what I'm talking about here:

The Moment That Will Make You Scratch Your Head

I mentioned earlier there's a strange moment that may make you raise your eyebrow and wonder what's going on. Without spoiling much, there's a moment late into the film that screams Kubrick. It's so bizarre and wacky at first that you'll either embrace this moment as a brilliant risky move or dismiss it as jumping the shark in trying to tie together the film's vast plot. I'm still grappling with whether or not I liked this Kubrick-esque fourth act in the film. A second viewing may help me enjoy it more.

Should you see it in IMAX?

People over the next week will surely ask whether or not they should see “Interstellar” in IMAX 70mm or which of the other five formats I recommend. Before seeing the film, I was ready to tell everyone to see this movie on the largest screen possible. After viewing it in IMAX 70mm at AMC's Lincoln Square, I'm not so sure that's the case.  

I know Nolan filmed the movie in both 65mm IMAX film and 35mm anamorphic film, but since the film goes back and forth between space and Earth and other planets in between, not every moment is filmed in IMAX. There were a handful of moments where I felt watching in IMAX was absolutely necessary: when you see the scale of the other planets being explored ranging from a water planet with waves cresting at what appear to be 100 ft tall or more to a tundra with clouds made of sharp ice.

There are two other moments in the fourth and fifth legs of the film, the latter housing an “Inception”-inducing moment from the collapsing dreams. (You’ll know it when you see it.)

There’s one must-see scene in IMAX about an hour into the film, when Nolan first takes us into space. When McConaughey, Hathaway, and the rest of their 6-team crew first shoot through the stars you feel like you’re right there with them, soaring through that wide expanse of space. And it’s such a strange and wonderful feeling because you’re not wearing 3D glasses or IMAX 3D glasses. You’re experiencing it all on screen with the naked eye. It’s a beautiful, mesmerizing depth perception trick that repeats when the crew heads through a wormhole soon afterward. Nolan says his main focus for the film was to try and put the audience in space and he succeeds in doing just that.

Will you get the best experience out of one of the IMAX screenings? Probably. Since Nolan filmed a large chunk of the movie that way you may as well pay to see it the way the director intended. It’s not like you’re shelling out the big bucks to see a post-converted 3D film. I just wasn't as blown away during my experience at the Lincoln Square theater as I was by last year's space epic "Gravity."

The film is not without its faults. 

Early on, Cooper just happens to stumble upon NASA at the exact moment when they need a pilot to command a space shuttle leaving in search of a new planet to sustain life. The whole bit seems rather convenient and contrived. Even Cooper points this out; however, it’s something that makes a bit more sense by the end of the film. 

Nolan consulted theoretical physicist Kip Thorne who serves as an executive producer on the film, but the science itself can be a bit dense and go over the average viewer's head as a NASA team tries to solve an equation about gravity and there are discussions about finding the shortest route to embark on their journey.

And while the many nods to Kubrick's filmmaking are there, I'm not sure if it works all the time. There's a particular scene where the camera cuts multiple times from no sound in space to sound onboard the shuttle with McConaughey, Hathaway, and others and it's a little bit jarring. Nolan says the scene is supposed to "emphasize the claustrophobia of the ships"; however, I'm not sure that completely works. Then again, there are some on Twitter suggesting the IMAX sound mix of the film may not be the best.

Recommend seeing INTERSTELLAR in 70mm at Ziegfeld in NYC. Several of us found sound mix at Lincoln Square IMAX obscures key dialogue.

— Lou Lumenick (@LouLumenick) November 3, 2014

Perhaps, one of the biggest flaws in "Interstellar" is that it feels slightly formulaic.  

Whenever I watch a Christopher Nolan film I’ve grown accustomed to obsessively looking for clues in the beginning of the film that will tell me something about its end. If you’ve seen the brilliant mind-boggling 2001 indie “Memento” or equally mind-bending “Inception,” you know how a Nolan film works. You need to go back and watch the film a second and possibly third time because there’s always something at the start of the film which may allude to the end. This is true of "Interstellar." I won't give anything away, but pay close attention to the start. *mini-spoiler*If you do, you won't be completely surprised by its end.*mini-spoiler* This common element makes Nolan's filmmaking process a bit predictable. Stick a hint about the end of the film at its start. Where's the fun in that for his biggest fans?

Overall, “Interstellar” makes you think a lot about survival, the future of the human race, and the lengths we’ll go in order to ensure that future.  

You'll leave the film thinking about it long after you've seen it. You may not even want to leave the theater right away. That may be why Nolan's credits are simple white text on black to let you ruminate on everything you just saw.

Is it Oscar gold? In the visual department, sure. It makes for one of the best cinematic experiences you'll see all year; however, in having so much occur in a nearly 3-hour film, Nolan's ambitious space film may have attempted too much. 

"Interstellar" is being released in in 70mm IMAX film, 70mm film, and 35mm film Nov. 5. It's everywhere Nov. 7.

SEE ALSO: Early "Interstellar" reactions are hailing it as the must-see event of the fall

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Jake Gyllenhaal's creepy new indie movie "Nightcrawler" just hit theaters on Friday and has already raked in over $11 million at the box office.

In the film, Gyllenhaal appears gaunt and as a much slimmer version of his usually more buff self.

For the majority of this year, Gyllenhaal was sporting a much leaner look while he shot "Nightcrawler."

"Nightcrawler," in which Gyllenhaal both stars and is a producer, is the story of a career-hungry young man who stumbles upon the underground world of L.A. freelance crime photojournalism.

Gyllenhaal spent three months in pre-production brainstorming with screenwriter and first-time director Dan Gilroy on the appearance of his character, Lou.

“I knew that [Lou] was literally and figuratively hungry,” Gyllenhaal told Us Weekly, adding that he got into character by transitioning into a "mode where I was always a bit hungry." 

In order to drop 30 pounds from his 180-pound frame, Gyllenhaal told Variety: “I would try to eat as few calories as possible. I knew if I was hungry that I was in the right spot. Physically, it showed itself, but chemically and mentally, I think it was even a more fascinating journey. It became a struggle for me.”

"He'd have a bowl of luxury chewing (gum) and they were, like, really elaborately flavored, to trick his brain into thinking he was having a meal," Gyllenhaal's co-star Riz Ahmed told The Canadian Press at the Toronto Film Festival this week. "So he was on his exercise bike having chewing gum and, like, almond tea with one calorie."

He also said Gyllenhaal was aware and apologetic about his sometimes-sour demeanor, "So he was like: 'Sorry I'm grumpy, I haven't eaten."'

On some nights during shooting, Gyllenhaal told Variety he wouldn’t eat at all, or he’d only take small bites of meat, crackers, or kale salad. To stay lean and fit, he would run 15 miles from his house to the film's set.

“There was a general sense that he was a coyote,” Gyllenhaal says. “I just wanted to live that way.”

Gilroy adds: “When you watch the film and see the angularity of his face, the hollow cheeks, the way that his eyes become prominent — it’s such a haunting look for a night shoot.”

Gyllenhaal's co-star and Gilroy's wife, Rene Russo, told E! Online, "It's incredible what he put his body through. I actually was worried."

But this isn't Gyllenhaal's first physical transformation for a film.

In 2010, the Oscar nominee added major muscle to his physique for "Prince of Persia." The actor told UsWeekly at the time that he would eat six small meals loaded with protein, carbs, and fats.

Gyllenhaal, however, says there was no special diet to shed pounds for "Nightcrawler." 

"I just love this movie," he said. "That’s how I did it. There really was no technique."

Watch the "Nightcrawler" trailer below. Gyllenhaal's performance is already being called "stunning":

SEE ALSO: Jake Gyllenhaal Goes Psycho In His Dark New Movie 'Nightcrawler'

MORE: Here's How Chris Pratt Got Ripped For Marvel's 'Guardians Of The Galaxy'

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DirecTV has been doubling down lately on commercials featuring Rob Lowe of "West Wing," and "Parks And Recreation" fame. And now one of those ads is getting some major heat from a surprising source, according to the AP.

Shy bladder sufferers want DirecTV to pull the ad.

The commercial features Rob Lowe playing two different characters, the first is a very "put together" DirecTV subscriber, and the second is a sloppy cable subscriber.

In the final scene, the sloppy and awkward character says "Fact: I can't go with other people in the room," while standing at a urinal in a public restroom.

As it turns out, shy bladder syndrome is not just a real thing, but there is an entire association called the International Paruresis Association. Its mission, as stated on its website, is "to cure paruresis and improve the lives of all people affected."

CEO Steve Soifer told the AP that "the ad is in poor taste and ridicules a serious problem."

"The ads will continue to run for the vast majority of viewers who have told us they enjoy the spots and understand that, like all of our commercials, they take place in a fantasy world and are not based in reality," a DirecTV spokesman told the AP.

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Soon, astrophysicists will receive a physics lesson from an unlikely source: Hollywood.

The movie-making business has, unintentionally, helped make something more: a scientific discovery. One that you can experience first-hand in the film "Interstellar," coming out in US theaters everywhere on Friday, Nov 7.

In the film, a crew of explorers travel through a wormhole to reach distant worlds orbiting other stars. Along the way, they cross paths with a monstrous, spinning black hole.

More impressive than the beauty of the black hole, is that this stunning rendition is the most scientifically accurate image of a spinning black hole ever created.

"Neither wormholes nor black holes have been depicted in any Hollywood movie in the way that they actually would appear," Kip Thorne said in a promotional video from Warner Bros UK.

"This is the first time the depiction began with Einstein's general relativity equations," Thorne said.

Thorne is an American theoretical physicist who has written academic books on general relativity, collaborated with Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, and is one of the world's leading experts on all things gravitational.

He is also the executive producer and scientific consultant for the film. It took Thorne's intellect, 30 special effects experts, thousands of computers, and a year of hard work to produce the black hole audiences see in the film.

You'd think that a black hole — which sucks traps everything, including light — would be invisible. But That's not true.

If you could look at a black hole at different angles, you would see a strange warping motion of the background starlight. This is because black holes warp the space around them, so what you're seeing is an altered version of the real thing — similar to how you see a distorted image of an object when it's immersed in water. See an animation of this warping below:

Physicists know from Einstein's general theory of relativity that a spinning black hole — like the one in the film — warps space differently than a stationary black hole. This process is called frame dragging.

Based on what we understand about frame dragging, Thorne and the special effects team thought that the image they would get out of their computations would be a bright band of light, or disc, around the equator of the spherical-shaped of the black hole. In fact, the wobbling of such a disc led to the first observations of frame dragging in the 90s.

What they saw, however, was something completely different and far more beautiful: Breath-taking circular halos of light across the top and bottom of the black hole, shown below.

At first, the team thought there was a bug in their system, but Throne soon realized it wasn't a glitch, but a direct result of the calculations. This unexpected light halo offers scientists new insights into how light behaves around a spinning black hole. It was a triumph for both Thorne as a scientist and director Christopher Nolan.

When Nolan first called upon Thorne's expertise for the film, he anticipated that the special effects team would have to tweak the scientifically-accurate image to make it more aesthetically appealing and understandable to audiences.

However, the shocking, gorgeous results that came from Thorne's physics equations was more than Nolan or Thorne could have hoped for and what audiences will see in the film.

"What we found was ...we could get some very understandable, tactile imagery from those equations," Nolan said in the video. "[The equations] were constantly surprising and it spoke to the maxim that truth can be stranger than fiction."

Thorne is planning on writing up the team's efforts in two scientific papers: one for the astrophysics community and one for the computer science community.

Check out the full video "Interstellar — Building a black hole" from Warner Bros. UK:

SEE ALSO: Astronomers Find Amazing Evidence Of A Star Escaping A Black Hole

SEE ALSO: 10 Mind-Blowing Facts About Black Holes

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In a post-earnings conference call, Activision Publishing CEO Eric Hirshberg said that work is already beginning on the second game in the "Destiny" franchise. 

"Work has also begun on future expansion packs as well as on our next full game release," Hirshberg said.

He didn't provide a launch date or any further details about what to expect. 

The first expansion pack for "Destiny," called "The Dark Below," will be released on Dec. 9. 

Activision posted better than expected earnings for its third quarter. Revenues were $1.14 billion, compared to $657 million for the same quarter last year. Earnings were 23 cents per share, compared to analyst expectations of 13 cents. 

And that's thanks in large part to "Destiny," which came out in September. 

In a statement, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said "Destiny" was the "biggest new videogame franchise launch of all time." It now boasts 9.5 million registered players, who are playing the game on average more than 3 hours per day. Business Insider's Dave Smith played the game for 5 hours, before the full version was even released. 

Activision Blizzard is also looking at "Call of Duty," which was released on Monday, to boost its revenue for the next quarter. 

A sequel to "Destiny" shouldn't come as a surprise, but not just because the game is such a hit. Details from Activision Blizzard's deal with Bungie in 2010 revealed that Bungie had several sequels in mind for "Destiny."

SEE ALSO: 7 of the coolest secrets in the game 'Destiny,' and how to find them

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Disney's Marvel Studios has dominated box offices in recent years with a series of fun, interconnected superhero movies. Warner Bros.' DC Comic movies, led by auteur director Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight Trilogy," have been darker and more critically acclaimed, if less prolific (so far).

Nolan's dismissive opinion of Marvel movies was indirectly revealed by Zack Snyder, director of Warner's "Man of Steel," in an in-depth profile by The Guardian's Tom Shone.

Snyder says he consulted closely with Nolan on that project and asked for the director's opinion when the studio asked him to include a comic post-credit sequence in the style that Marvel's movies are known for.

Nolan replied: “A real movie wouldn’t do that.”

Nolan's "Interstellar" comes out this week. Our Kirsten Acuna calls it "an ambitiously beautiful and wacky adventure into space."

Read more from Shone's excellent article on Nolan at The Guardian »

SEE ALSO: 10 striking insights about Christopher Nolan and his movies

DON'T MISS: Are Marvel's movies really crap? Not if Joss Whedon has anything to do with it

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There are countless anecdotes about the auteuristic quirks of director Christopher Nolan, whose "Interstellar" comes out this week. For some new ones, check out an in-depth profile by The Guardian's Tom Shone, which includes an amazing story about how Nolan got frequent partner Hans Zimmer to write the theme for his space epic.

“Chris said to me, in his casual way. ‘So, Hans, if I wrote one page of something, didn’t tell you what it was about, just give you one page, would you give me one day of work?’” Zimmer told Shone. “‘Whatever you came up with on that one day would be fine.’"

Zimmer agreed and then one day received a one-page typewritten letter. Per Shone:

On the paper was a short story, no more than a precis, about a father who leaves his child to do an important job. It contained two lines of dialogue – “I’ll come back” “When?” – and quoted something Zimmer had said a year before, during a long conversation with Nolan and his wife at the Wolesley restaurant in London. ... “There was no movie to be made, there was no movie to discuss, we were talking about our children,” said Zimmer, who has a 15-year-old son. “I said, ‘once your children are born, you can never look at yourself through your eyes any more, you always look at yourself through their eyes.”

Zimmer spends a day composing the theme and then shows it to Nolan, and Nolan loves it. It's only then that Nolan reveals what kind of movie he has in mind. As Zimmer told Shone:

"I asked him, ‘Well, yes, but what is the movie?’ And he started describing this huge, epic tale of space and science and humanity, on this epic scale. I’m going, ‘Chris, hang on, I’ve just written this highly personal thing, you know?’ He goes, ‘Yes, but I now know where the heart of the movie is’. Everything about this movie was personal.'"

Read more from this excellent profile of Nolan, featuring comments from Zimmer, Michael Caine, Zack Snyder, Quentin Tarantino and more, at The Guardian »

Also check out the "Interstellar" preview, which features some of Zimmer's music along with little more than the spare plot details Nolan originally gave Zimmer:

Nolan said of the soundtrack," I believe that Hans score for Interstellar has the tightest bond between music and image that we've yet achieved."

Nolan and Zimmer have previously collaborated on "The Dark Knight Rises," "Inception," "The Dark Knight," and "Batman Begins."

SEE ALSO: 'Interstellar' really is amazing

DON'T MISS: Christopher Nolan disses every Marvel movies with one cutting remark

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When I went to a screening of "Interstellar" Monday, two women sitting behind me were surprised we weren't seeing Christopher Nolan's film in 3D. 

When the the director's newest film rolls out in theaters nationwide Friday, you'll be able to see it in six formats, but not one of those will be 3D.

You will never see a Nolan film in 3D, at least not for now, anyway. 

In a 2012 interview from the Associated Press, the "Inception" director explained why his films aren't seen in digital 3D.

"The question of 3-D is a very straightforward one," said Nolan. "I never meet anybody who actually likes the format, and it’s always a source of great concern to me when you’re charging a higher price for something that nobody seems to really say they have any great love for."

Nolan has explained his view on 3D many times. In 2012, he told the Directors Guild of America why he refused to use 3D in "The Dark Knight Rises":

Warner Bros. would have been very happy, but I said to the guys there that I wanted it to be stylistically consistent with the first two films and we were really going to push the IMAX thing to create a very high-quality image. I find stereoscopic imaging too small scale and intimate in its effect. 3-D is a misnomer. Films are 3-D. The whole point of photography is that it’s three-dimensional. The thing with stereoscopic imaging is it gives each audience member an individual perspective. It’s well suited to video games and other immersive technologies, but if you’re looking for an audience experience, stereoscopic is hard to embrace. I prefer the big canvas, looking up at an enormous screen and at an image that feels larger than life. When you treat that stereoscopically, and we’ve tried a lot of tests, you shrink the size so the image becomes a much smaller window in front of you. So the effect of it, and the relationship of the image to the audience, has to be very carefully considered. And I feel that in the initial wave to embrace it, that wasn’t considered in the slightest.

Without the added boost of 3D ticket sales, "The Dark Knight Rises" made over $1 billion at the box office worldwide.

It's not that Nolan necessarily dislikes the format overall.

At CinemaCon earlier this year, the "Inception" director praised Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" in 3D after its release.

“My resistance to 3D is purely based on what I feel is right for the films I want to make," Nolan told The Wrap earlier this year.

The director said he even tested out "Inception" to be in 3D but ditched the idea saying there wasn't enough time to do "a quality 3-D conversion."

SEE ALSO: Our review of "Interstellar"

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While most people associate the Playboy Mansion with scantily clad playmates and sex-fueled debauchery, it served as the childhood home for Hugh Hefner's sons.

Now 23, Hefner's youngest son, Cooper, recounts his childhood spent in what many consider to be a sort of adult fantasyland. For Cooper, it was quite the opposite: a child's wonderland fueled by Indiana Jones-inspired adventures in the Grotto, a zoo full of exotic animals, and epic games of hide-and-seek played in the mansion's private forest of redwood trees.

Cooper shared his experiences growing up inside the mansion, and invited Business Insider along on a private tour of the grounds.

Produced by Graham Flanagan. Additional Camera by Ryan Larkin.

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"Star Wars" creator George Lucas is pulling out all the stops for his upcoming art museum in Chicago, and we're finally getting a glimpse of what it will look like.

The museum, which will be called the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, is being designed by Beijing architectural firm MAD, which recently revealed its preliminary design concepts.

The structure is almost alien in its design, and will be constructed from a single piece of stone, according to The Verge, which is topped off by a metal "floating" observation deck that's shaped a bit like a UFO.

Inside, the museum will house illustrations, artwork, and movie props taken from the personal collection of George Lucas, and will focus on exposing people to both the process and ideas behind story-based, narrative art.

The interior will feature four levels of exhibition space, which MAD calls "infinite loops."

The disk-shaped observation deck will reportedly include a restaurant, and will allow for a beautiful panoramic view of downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan.

The stone structure and otherworldly design will fit perfectly into the creative universe of Lucas — the museum's look is reminiscent of the curved white buildings of Kamino and Coruscant, two planets from his "Star Wars" series, and it even shares similarities with the look of Yoda's stone hut on Dagobah, seen in "Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back."

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is scheduled to open its doors in 2018. Learn more about the museum's mission and design over at the official website.

SEE ALSO: 'Interstellar' Director Christopher Nolan Doesn't Have An Email Address

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