French director Luc Besson is back with a new sci-fi film called 'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’. The story is based off a French comic book that was first published in the late 60's called 'Valerian and Laureline'.
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Singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has died at 82, his official Facebook page confirmed on Thursday.
"It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter, and artist Leonard Cohen has passed away," the post from Sony Music Canada read. "We have lost one of music’s most revered and prolific visionaries."
Cohen was one of the most enduring and beloved voices in folk and rock music. The Canadian native's work spanned from the 1960s all the way up to this year, when he released his last album, "You Want It Darker." As the title suggests, Cohen was commited throughout his life to plumbing the depths of human feeling, romance, morality, and spirituality, and was known for his dark sense of humor.
He was also one of the most poetic singer-songwriters of his time, second in profile only to Bob Dylan, and published a number of poems.
True to himself to the end, Cohen confronted death very bluntly in his later work.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008.
His early work including "Songs of Leonard Cohen" (some of which provided the soundtrack for Robert Altman's classic film "McCabe and Mrs. Miller") and "Songs of Love and Hate" proved hugely influential. But he is now best known for his "Hallelujah," originally released in 1984, in part because of a cover by '90s singer-songwriter Jeff Buckley, whose work owed much to Cohen.
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The New Yorker's first cover produced since Donald Trump won Tuesday's presidential election has been revealed, and it features a colossal brick wall.
The illustration, by Bob Staake for the November 21 issue, alludes to one of Trump's most infamous campaign promises — to build a wall along the US-Mexico border — but it was also designed to capture the shock many Americans received Tuesday night after Trump's upset victory.
"When we first received the results of the election, we felt as though we had hit a brick wall, full force," art editor Françoise Mouly wrote on the website.
New Yorker editor-in-chief David Remnick has been a vigorous critic of Trump, and he lamented the impact he said Trump's victory would have on Americans' civil liberties, the Supreme Court, and the newly emboldened Republican-controlled Congress.
"The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the force, at home and abroad, of nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny, and racism," he wrote.
SEE ALSO: The latest New Yorker cover perfectly captures America's election despair
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Bruce Pavitt is considered one of the founding fathers of the Seattle grunge scene.
The Sub Pop alternative music label he cofounded with business partner Jon Poneman in the late 1980s kickstarted the global success of bands including Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Mudhoney.
But in 1996, a year after Sub Pop sold a 49% stake of the business to Warner Music Group, Pavitt had become "bored with the industry," he told Business Insider at Web Summit in Lisbon earlier this week.
"I'm an entrepreneurial type; I'm a creative person. Typically, as businesses grow, by nature they have to become more bureaucratic and ruled by committee — and I don't thrive in that type of environment," Pavitt said.
"My background goes all the way back to the '80s, with fanzines, and supporting indie music with cassette demos. The decade of the '80s, that culture, a lot of the underground bands did not sell very much music, but that's why it was interesting. You had Fugazi, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana in the 1980s and the personalities were pioneers, iconoclasts. They weren't making money. They were doing art because they had to make art. To me that was — even though I was broke in the '80s — that was much more interesting," he added.
"But post-'Nevermind' [Nirvana's 1991 album, released by Sub Pop] you had big majors starting indie bands to make money. The music, and the dialog, and the interviews: the culture became safer. Sub Pop was more bureaucratic and the culture wasn't more interesting. There was more money, but I feed off creative," Pavitt said.
Now Pavitt works a five-person company that plugs his desire for creativity.
Founded in 2015 with Pavitt's business partner Adam Farish, 8Stem is a free mobile app that lets users remix music tracks. Like a recording studio mixing console, the app breaks out the stems of each track — the guitar, drums, bass, and vocals, for example — and makes it easy to switch them around or add new effects without needing to have the expertise and expensive software of a studio engineer.
There are a number of music remixing apps on the market, but 8Stem differentiates itself with its monetization model. Remixers on the app can opt to have their masterpieces uploaded to Apple Music and Spotify. The original artist gets compensated when the remixes are streamed and 8Stem makes its money by taking a cut of that revenue.
8Stem also has a partnership with DubSet, a company that provides music fingerprinting technology that scans each track to ensure users haven't, for example, added an unauthorized sample of a Michael Jackson song to their remix. The expense and complication of licensing is one of the reasons why manymusicapps find it difficult to take off, but partnering with a fingerprinting service like DubSet gives labels and platforms assurances about the protection of original copyright.
Pavitt is the company's creative director and chooses the artists whose tracks appear in the app. So far there are 40 artists on board, such as Telekenisis, an indie rock artist who had an 8Stem remix of his track "Sleep" uploaded to Apple Music this week.
Pavitt is treating the startup very much like his former label. Around 75% of the current artists on 8Stem are from Seattle and the company's $500,000 funding to date has been raised from Pavitt and Farish's friendship network.
"When you think about friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, it's a pretty large network. One approach is to go to VC firms and try to get $1 million, another way is to get investments of $25,000 to $100,000 a pop. It's been coming in and keeping us going. I strongly prefer doing business that way, it's a lot more creative," Pavitt said.
The app is currently in its early days, but Pavitt predicts 2017 is when "we are going to blow up" thanks to the growing popularity of music streaming and remixes.
Pavitt explained: "Go to YouTube and search for any pop song. There will always be a remix after that [original song]. And in almost every case there are more remix views than the original song. Up until now, remixers were considered criminals as the artists haven't been compensated and record labels were apprehensive to support remixes because of all sorts of complications, [but with fingerprinting technology] we are now seeing record labels encourage remixes."
But 8Stem is likely to get its biggest shot in the arm if it can convince an artist with a huge fanbase to come on board.
Hypothetically, Pavitt references hip hop artist Macklemore, who has 6.5 million fans on Facebook. Were an act of that size to offer a track up to 8Stem, he predicts the app could see "100,000 downloads in a week or a day" — not to mention a spike in the amount of streams of the remixed song.
The aim is to get more global artists on board, but Pavitt remains incredibly loyal to the Seattle music scene.
"I'm very bullish in general on local music scenes. My theory has always been that every community has a talented artist. The challenge is to recognize the genius in our own community and recognize its importance," Pavitt said.
"I think that Sub Pop, as much as they have done a really good job, they have definitely shied away from supporting what's in their own back yard. They're a global brand. You can create a lot of heat with what's in your own back yard," he continued. "I think the Seattle scene is thriving right now, but you wouldn't know that looking at the Sub Pop catalog. That's not a diss on Sub Pop, but I saw a kind of vacuum there."
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Over 30 years ago, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System. In 2016, it's releasing a miniature, digital version of the same console: the NES Classic Edition.
The adorable little box is reminiscent of the original NES from 1985, but it's far smaller — as seen above, it fits in the palm of your hand.
The NES Classic Edition is out now — today, November 11 — and we've put together everything we know about it:
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Stephen Colbert reviewed the "awkward" start of the transfer of power to President-elect Donald Trump, which included a motley crew of potential cabinet picks and an "enemies list."
On Thursday, President Barack Obama hosted Donald Trump at the White House for a meeting to talk about the transition between their administrations. In light of the men's history, Colbert imagined that the private meeting was probably very uncomfortable.
"The first African-American president sitting down with a president-elect who was endorsed by the Klan," the host said on Thursday's "Late Show." "A guy who spent five years, created his political career, demanding Obama prove where he was born, then denying he did it. What did they talk about?"
Things got even stranger for Colbert when he saw the news leaks of people Trump has been considering for cabinet positions in his administration, which include Rudy Giuliani for attorney general, Newt Gingrich for secretary of state, Dr. Ben Carson for education secretary, and Sarah Palin for secretary of the interior.
"That's right. Trump's plan to drain the swamp of corruption means bringing back Giuliani, [Chris] Christie, Gingrich, and Palin," Colbert said. "It makes sense. They're exactly what I expect to find at the bottom of a drained swamp."
Omarosa Manigault, who did African-American outreach for Trump's campaign, gave another look at what to expect when Trump is in power when she told press that the Trump team is keeping a list of its detractors.
"Mr. Trump has a long memory and we’re keeping a list," she said of Trump's "enemies."
In response, Colbert said, "Wow, an enemies list. They went from zero to Nixon in no time flat."
But just in case his name was on the reported enemies list, Colbert had no problem throwing other late-night hosts under the bus.
"It was Sam Bee and Seth Meyers," Colbert yelled. "They’re the ones who said all those horrible things about you. I was just joking. All hail our glorious leader! Giant hands! You’ve got giant hands! You’re going to be great!"
But then he composed himself and said, "Is what a p---y would say."
Watch the video below:
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Nintendo's mini nostalgia machine, the NES Classic Edition, is selling out everywhere and popping up on eBay for hundreds of dollars more than the retail price tag.
We've known that finding the new Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition would be tough. It's a hot Christmas item after all, and Nintendo game consoles are notoriously in short supply.
The 30-games-in-one micro-console packs in some of your favorite childhood gaming memories for just $60 on store shelves. However, after it went on sale at midnight Friday, people who got in line early are already laughing their ways to the bank.
As reported by Polygon, people are hawking their NES Classic Editions on eBay for hundreds of dollars. They're hovering around $200 on the low end and as high as $999, but the most someone has paid for one at the time of writing is $499.
Unless you're a collector, it's probably not the best idea to spend hundreds of dollars on an NES Classic. The game console is essentially a chip containing 30 old games housed inside a plastic shell. For the same amount of money as some of the eBay listings, you could get a solid aluminum fan-made console that can play every NES game, not just 30 of them. But it's worth noting that at that price point, you could also buy a PS4 and Xbox One.
There's no official word on whether or not Nintendo will ship more NES Classic Edition consoles or open the supply floodgates before it's time for holiday shopping. Until we know more, though, it's probably not worth spending more than $60 on an NES Classic Edition.
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HBO is releasing a new documentary about Slender Man, a tall, shadowy monster that has terrified people on the internet for years. The character may be fake, but he has also inspired some tragic real-life attacks. Here's a look at the origins of Slender Man and how he has captured the imagination of people online.
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Laura Benanti didn't get the "home run" she was looking for.
In October, the Tony Award winner spoke with The Washington Post after her second spot-on impression of Melania Trump aired on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."
The first two spoofs were quite successful, currently having been viewed 8.8 million and 6.3 million times, respectively. But as for a third, Benanti told The Post that she and the "Late Show" team were only interested in doing it "if it’s going to be a home run."
Unfortunately, that didn't happen in Benanti's eyes.
Benanti reprised her role as Melania on Colbert's hour-long Showtime election special Tuesday night but soon into Wednesday, she was tweeting her regrets.
People saying the Melania sketch wasn't funny last night...I know. I'm so sorry. If I had anticipated this outcome I wouldn't have done it.
— Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) November 9, 2016Business Insider sat down with Benanti before an event to promote the special theatrical release of the filmed version of "She Loves Me," the show that garnered Benanti her latest Tony nomination and was the first musical ever to be streamed live.
Benanti told us she would not have done the third spoof had she known the outcome of the election. Benanti had been — and continues to be — politically vocal on her Twitter in her disapproval of the now President-elect Donald Trump.
"I think timing is everything with comedy, and unfortunately the timing of [the third sketch], although no one could have anticipated the timing of it, made it, to me, not funny," Benanti told Business Insider. "I can only speak for myself — I’m literally in shock. I’m devastated. I haven’t felt this way in a very, very long time."
But that doesn't mean her Melania impression is gone for good.
The actress said once things settle in, she could see herself portraying Trump's spouse again if it brought "levity" and "awareness."
"I do think eventually we have to pick ourselves up and mobilize and unite and figure out a way to come together and figure out a way to make sure that the voices of women and minorities and the LGBTQ community are not lost," she said. "And then I think once we start doing that, that is the time to once again start using humor as a spotlight to the reality of our situation."
Until then, don't expect Benanti's killer Melania pout and twirl.
"I’m not going to do it just to do it, so I have a job, or so that people think I’m funny," she said.
Watch Benanti's third impression of Melania Trump on election night:
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Brace yourselves, "Grame of Thrones" fans. Trevor Noah has found a way to liken Donald Trump to Jon Snow.
To do so, the "Daily Show" host explained on Thursday night who was chiefly responsible for electing the real-estate mogul to the highest office in the land. He was elected by Middle America, a part of the country that has seen their industrial areas gutted and their jobs leave the country. And the host warned against jumping to the conclusion that racists elected Trump.
"Yes, there were plenty of racists and bigots among [Trump voters], but far from all of them," the host said on Thursday's episode of "The Daily Show." "The final results of the election also showed that a lot of Trump voters had previously voted for President Obama, which doesn't seem like something a racist person would do — unless they're racist and cross-eyed."
The show then ran news clips about the devastated towns all over Middle America after their factories closed and jobs went elsewhere.
"When you look at the election results, the color red doesn't necessarily mean white power," Noah said. "It can also mean there are people who wanted the world to pay attention to them, the unseen."
And here's where he gets to the "Thrones" comparison: "If this were 'Game of Thrones,' Trump is basically Jon Snow. He realized that the Wildlings were registered voters, too. And now, their support has brought him to power."
Watch the segment below:
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From the trailer for "Arrival," which just showed at the Toronto International Film Festival, you'd assume it's a CGI-heavy sci-fi movie about aliens coming to earth to make contact. If they come in peace or to destroy us is the question that's left open.
But that's just the hook to get you in the theater. The truth is "Arrival," directed by Denis Villeneuve ("Sicario," "Prisoners") and starring Amy Adams, is a moving story that is more about humanity than whether beings from the sky come in peace.
Based on a short story by sci-fi author Ted Chiang titled "Story of Your Life," "Arrival" follows linguist Dr. Louise Banks (Adams), whom the military calls on to help start a dialogue once the aliens have landed.
The world goes crazy when 12 large pod-shaped ships suddenly show up in different areas of the world. There's one placed in the US, in an open field in Montana. Dr. Banks and scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are the brains behind the US operation to figure out what the aliens want.
They communicate with all other countries investigating pods. But the head of the military arm of the operation, Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), is getting pressure from the White House to get answers. And the stakes grow higher when China decides to disband from the process and attack the pod that's within its borders.
It's all thrilling, and the science is not heavy-handed and very easy to understand, but it's all a MacGuffin, a device Alfred Hitchcock loved to use. It's a detail in a story that is important for the characters but turns out to be less important for the audience's needs.
The real story (and warning: spoilers here) is the relationship that Dr. Banks builds with the aliens inside the pod, playfully named Abbot and Costello, the legendary comedy duo. Through her continued conversations with the duo in trying to understand their language, she begins to uncover what they want, but by delving into her own memories.
There are certainly thrills, helped by a dramatic score and use of pauses for tension, but the movie really runs off of the captivating emotions of Dr. Banks, delivered perfectly (as usual) by Amy Adams — who will definitely receive an Oscar nomination for this performance.
Another way of capturing that emotion is the beautiful cinematography by Bradford Young, who gives the movie a very Terrence Malick-like quality with sweeping views of nature and closeups of intimate interaction.
All elements come together under the direction of director Villeneuve, who has taken one step closer to becoming a top auteur working in Hollywood.
"Arrival" will certainly be an Oscar contender in numerous categories, but outside of awards, it's a film that should be celebrated for its masterful storytelling.
"Arrival" is currently screening at the Toronto International Film Festival and will hit theaters on November 11.
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Legendary actor Robert Redford has announced that he will retire from acting once he's done with the two films he's currently working on.
The 80-year-old Oscar winner revealed the news in an interview with his grandson, Dylan, for the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, which is doing a retrospective on the actor that concludes on Saturday.
"I’m getting tired of acting," Redford said. "I’m an impatient person, so it’s hard for me to sit around and do take after take after take."
Redford is currently working on two projects, "Our Souls at Night," starring Jane Fonda, and "The Old Man and the Gun," which will star Casey Affleck and reteam Redford with his "Pete's Dragon" director David Lowery.
"Once they’re done then I’m going to say, 'Okay, that’s goodbye to all that,' and then just focus on directing," Redford said.
It's still going to be a little while until Redford packs it in, however. "Our Souls at Night" is still in postproduction and "The Old Man and the Gun" hasn't begun shooting yet.
But this looks to mark the retirement of one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen.
Redford is known for starring in all-time classics like "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "All The President's Men," and "The Sting," to name just a small few.
He won a best director Oscar in 1981 for "Ordinary People," and has not said he'll retire from directing.
In 1978 he founded the organization that would become the Sundance Film Festival, which has largely fueled the current independent film industry in the US.
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In August, Vice CEO Shane Smith predicted that 2017 would be a "bloodbath" of consolidation in the digital-media industry.
The reason was simple: so-called old-media companies want to buy scale online, and new-media players need cash. Smith said Vice, valued at $4 billion, was building a war chest of funding to "go out there and buy market share."
"What you're going to see is a mergers-and-acquisitions frenzy where the last two or three big boys buy the last scale plays to say, 'We've got digital, we've got mobile, so we're smart,'" Smith said. "And the digital guys are going to go, 'F---, thank God — we've finally got money.'"
There have already been whispers of this in 2016, with TV giants investing big money in digital upstarts.
Perhaps the cleanest example of consolidation was the creation of Group Nine Media last month, which tied together four media companies, with $100 million in extra investment from Discovery Communications (Thrillist, The Dodo, NowThis, and Seeker, Discovery's digital network).
At the time, Ben Lerer, Thrillist's CEO who now heads up Group Nine, told Business Insider that in tying the companies together, each one got safety, security, and strength. And Lerer predicted more would follow his lead.
"Consolidation is coming to media," he said in an October interview, mentioning big investments by NBCUniversal in Vox and BuzzFeed as well as the pickup of Gawker's assets by Univision and the sale of Business Insider to Axel Springer.
Are Smith and Lerer right? Will 2017 see a wave of consolidation in the industry?
As 2017 inches closer, we talked to industry insiders and analysts to get a sense of why this consolidation could happen and whether it was really on the immediate horizon. The consensus: It's coming.
Here's why:
To create a successful digital-media startup, you have to build two basic pieces, which sometimes don't go together. The first is a strong brand that snags you a valuable audience — one that is huge, loyal, or of a sought-after demographic. The second is a business side that can effectively turn that audience into cash.
In a recent interview with Business Insider, Refinery29 co-CEOs Philippe von Borries and Justin Stefano explained that while a handful of digital-media companies had built valuable brands, not all of them had built a revenue machine to match.
These companies are ripe for consolidation, they said.
For certain companies, it's simply not worth it to spend the time and money to build up the business side, especially if they have fallen behind in that regard. Since its founding in 2005, Refinery29 has helped pioneer many business-side elements of the industry, especially in native advertising, that have proved intensely lucrative (the company said earlier this year it was on track to do over $100 million in ad revenue in 2016). As Refinery29 grew, it built its audience and business side by side.
But that isn't the right path, or even possible, for some digital-media startups. Stefano even said that if he were creating a media company from scratch today, he might instead go for "scale, scale, scale" and then sell — depending on the company's focus.
Creating an efficient revenue machine is tough in digital media and is not something every company is predisposed to be good at, even if the company delights its audience.
But the problem for some startups isn't just that they have failed to build strong-enough business teams; they are also stymied by the basic fact that advertisers prefer to deal with bigger entities when making direct deals.
"Advertisers are looking for a one-stop shop," Tina Exarhos, the head of content for the Group Nine member NowThis, said in an interview last week.
SpinMedia CEO Stephen Blackwell expressed a similar sentiment in a recent interview with Business Insider. In addition to Spin, SpinMedia is made up of Vibe, Stereogum, Death & Taxes, and The Frisky, among other brands.
Spin, from its magazine roots, is the recognizable brand for advertisers, Blackwell said. It is the known entity that can often bring them in. But once the conversation gets started, Blackwell can show how the portfolio of brands can deliver across a bunch of different demographics. He can show his company to be that one-stop shop.
As Group Nine's Lerer said, there is a strength in tying brands together, particularly when scale is needed for the advertiser to be interested. And for some startups, when the venture-capital money begins to run out and they need to start making real money, creating a bigger coalition of brands can look attractive.
There is strength in scale, but the digital-media "bloodbath" won't be driven only by that. It will also continue to be fueled by the TV ambitions of digital startups.
It's no secret that digital-media companies really, really want to get onto traditional TV. Vice has gone the furthest so far, landing not only two HBO shows but also its own cable channel. But other companies including Vox, BuzzFeed, Mic, Ozy (which already has a show on PBS), and every company in Group Nine are also plotting to make a splash in traditional, or linear, TV.
The reason? "Linear TV isn't dead yet," Lerer said. TV still has huge audiences and big-time ad money, and it is "probably one of the most efficient businesses that exist in media today," von Borries of Refinery29 said last month on a Wall Street Journal podcast.
Contrast that with digital.
"The challenges are huge in the digital ads business," Mic CEO Chris Altchek told Business Insider. It's, quite simply, hard to make money online. And while many people we spoke with thought that eventually the ad dollars would shift to digital, that's something people have been saying for years, and TV is still holding its own.
"It's hard to ignore the mature, established economic model" of TV, BuzzFeed Studios' head of development, Matthew Henick, told Business Insider.
BuzzFeed is hoping to create "many, many" BuzzFeed-affiliated TV shows — some with the BuzzFeed name on them, some not.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Vox is in "advanced talks" with a cable network for a TV special next year starring Liz Plank, who moved from Mic to Vox this year and anchored the election-themed digital series "2016ish." Vox's real-estate site, Curbed, had already announced a show earlier this year called "Prefabulous" with A&E Networks.
Though cable TV is a popular target, digital companies aren't limiting their ambitions to that platform. They are also exploring options on new premium streaming services like Netflix or Amazon.
"We love anyone who is willing to pay us for content," Henick of BuzzFeed said when asked about Netflix or other streaming services.
"People spend a couple hours per day on Netflix," Altchek of Mic said in response to a similar question. The premium streaming video platforms, he said, "don't have a 'news voice' — it's a huge opportunity."
So what does TV have to do with consolidation?
While the piles of cash at the end of the longform TV tunnel already have digital startups salivating, it takes a lot of money to get there. Making premium TV isn't cheap.
That's one reason many are taking huge "strategic" investments from established TV giants. Disney has $400 million invested in Vice, NBCU has put $400 million in BuzzFeed and $200 million in Vox, Refinery29 snagged $45 million from Turner this summer, and so on.
Henick said BuzzFeed had a "very strong partner" in NBCU and there had been an ongoing and open strategic conversation around how to get BuzzFeed on TV.
Here's the basic premise of a union like BuzzFeed and NBCU's: BuzzFeed gets hundreds of millions of dollars and access to the people who can help make its TV dreams a reality, and NBCU gets a huge foothold in the digital world.
And don't underestimate the "strategic" power of having an established TV partner for these startups.
Lerer said that just a day or two after the announcement of Group Nine, he had gotten six notes from TV executives asking about creating something together. He is being taken more seriously as a partner for TV thanks to the $100 million Turner investment.
For digital-media companies that don't have a dance partner, however, the going will most likely get tough next year. Smith of Vice said in August he thought there would be 30% fewer digital players by the end of 2017.
Smith said changes in Facebook's and Google's algorithms would help push a wave of consolidation forward. "What does this do?" he said. "Well, it's bad. It means a lot less traffic and a lot less money."
Mic's Altchek said that as Facebook had changed its algorithm in ways that hurt text articles, short-form web video had emerged as a big driver for growth for Mic. That trend was corroborated by other publications (though some, like Bustle, have continued to grow without huge investments in video).
But while web video isn't as expensive as TV to produce, it isn't exactly cheap and requires special resources.
In April, Mashable laid off about 30 workers, a week after a $15 million investment round led by Turner. The cuts were part of a "strategic shift" toward video and TV, which involves a partnership with Turner Broadcasting, according to CNN. Others contemplating an embrace of video to juice growth might not have $15 million to fund a painful transition.
Some, no doubt, will die.
Altchek said he thought there would be a shakeout of media brands more generally, as the walls separating cable TV, streaming services like Netflix, and social-mobile video collapse.
"As these ecosystems come together, strong content brands will thrive," Altchek said. "Weak brands, both in digital and TV, will be abandoned. This dynamic will drive consolidation as businesses fight to make sure they are too big to be left behind."
The consensus: 2017 will be the start.
Previous reporting by Jake Kanter.
Axel Springer, which owns Business Insider, is an investor in Group Nine, Mic, and Ozy.
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Nicolas Cage is an Oscar-winning actor who has built his career on choosing movies and characters that never pigeonhole him into one type of movie star.
But there’s another tool in Cage’s arsenal that sets him apart from most actors. His over-the-top performances are can’t-miss spectacles that you can't really compare to anyone else.
When many actors turn up the crazy, it looks forced and is embarrassing for all involved to watch. But when Cage does it, it’s unlike any movie experience you’ve ever had. The beady eyes, weird voices, and disregard for his own safety is an art form in itself.
And right now you can stream two new Cage movies that fall under this special category: “Dog Eat Dog” and “Army of One.”
If you’ve never seen movies like “Vampire’s Kiss,” “The Wicker Man,” “Deadfall,” “Zandalee,” “Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” or “Face/Off,” you aren’t familiar with Cage’s ability to do strange and peculiar things on-screen.
Here’s a montage for you (warning: NSFW):
Cage isn’t the first person to “chew the scenery” in movie history. Johnny Depp, David Caruso, Marlon Brando, Matthew McConaughey, Jim Carrey, and Al Pacino all come to mind.
But none of them has made it into a highly anticipated moviegoing experience in the way Cage has.
Sure, Pacino yelling out “Great ass!” in “Heat” is incredible because he goes from calm and collected to lunatic in five seconds flat, but Cage stretches out that intensity for a full feature film. It's practically an athletic talent.
“That can’t be easy,” Cage’s “Army of One” costar Wendi McLendon-Covey told Business Insider about Cage as Gary Faulkner, the real guy who tried to hunt down Osama bin Laden with just a samurai sword because he says God told him to.
The movie is vintage crazy Cage as he plays Faulkner with a high-pitched voice and long gray beard and hair that goes into a ponytail. It’s a character that McLendon-Covey said Cage had been doing for months before she came on the film. And he rarely ever broke character.
“I mean, my God,” McLendon-Covey said, “he must have just been dying to shake it off by the time I met him.”
But seriously, would you see a movie about a guy who single-handedly tried to hunt down bin Laden if Nicolas Cage weren't playing the character?
There are just some roles that can’t be done by normal actors.
Nicolas Cage has realized that he doesn’t have to play the Hollywood game anymore to make a living. The actor has made a healthy income the past few years through the straight-to-VOD market because audiences will happily spend a weekend renting a movie of his at home rather than going to the theater.
“Dog Eat Dog” director Paul Schrader told Business Insider the “good news” and “bad news” of working with Cage.
“Nic gets your movie financed,” Schrader said. “That's the good news. The bad news is that he eats up most of your budget in the process of getting it financed because you end up basically paying him the budget. But he still commands those big numbers.”
But you get your money’s worth. Because Cage’s involvement likely means your movie will become instantly memorable. (Trust me, I would not be writing about either of these movies if Nic Cage didn't star in them.)
In Schrader’s film, Cage is an ex-con who along with his two buddies (one played by Willem Dafoe) takes on jobs from the Cleveland underworld to make a living, until things go horribly wrong on one job.
Sounds like you’ve seen that movie before, right? But in the last 10 minutes of the movie, Cage’s character suddenly thinks he’s Humphrey Bogart, with Cage delivering a Bogie impression that you will likely rewind just to make sure you really did just witness it.
Even Schrader was surprised when he first saw it.
“He kind of stunned this on me on the day we were shooting that,” the director said. “We went through it and all of a sudden he's doing it as Bogie and I was like, ‘Whoa, you sure you want to do that?’ And he said, ‘Look, you've been telling me for five weeks that we have to be bold. This is the only way you can do this genre today.’ He said, ‘I think this is a bold choice.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think it is, too. Let's do it.’"
In a movie with many flaws, it’s Cage’s unthinkable morphing into Bogart that is worth the price of the movie.
And that’s the magic of Cage’s performances. Though they seem to be awful ideas on paper, when they pop off the screen, you are overjoyed watching someone who will take chances with such disregard for second-guessing or criticism.
There are many things we can complain about in today’s movie industry: the lack of originality from major studios, how expensive it is to go to the multiplex, bland young stars. But as the latest work of Nicolas Cage proves, there are still some things we can celebrate.
Don’t ever change, Nic Cage!
“Army of One” is currently available on iTunes and “Dog Eat Dog” will be available on Friday. Both titles are also currently in limited theatrical release.
SEE ALSO: 29 movies you have to see this holiday season
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Nintendo's got a new video game console that costs just $60 and is adorably small.
Behold, the NES Classic Edition:
As you might already expect from the console's price and delightful size, Nintendo fans everywhere are freaking out and buying it up in droves.
That's understandable: It's just $60, it's got 30 classic NES games (from "Super Mario Bros." through to "The Legend of Zelda", and more more), and it's a near-perfect replica of the first ever Nintendo game system (the Nintendo Entertainment System, or "NES).
Unfortunately, the system is selling out everywhere after going on sale Friday morning. Business Insider staffers managed to snag one only by lining up at a Manhattan GameStop location at 8 a.m., and we weren't the first people in line. The location we went to only got 13 consoles in total!
This is what the line outside of Nintendo's flagship Rockefeller Center store looked like just before the doors opened at 9 a.m. on Friday morning:
But here's the thing: don't panic.
Aside from the fact that, ya know, it's just a luxury item, Nintendo's gonna make more. And how do we know that?
Because Nintendo just said so:
There will be a steady flow of additional systems through the holiday shopping season and into the new year. 2/3
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) November 11, 2016It's not clear exactly how this will work, or when new systems will arrive in stores, but more are coming.
Considering how much of an obvious holiday gift the console is at just $60, it seems a given that Nintendo will want to get more out to consumers as fast as humanly possible. In the meantime, we'd suggest calling around to your local retailers and keeping an eye on Amazon. You could also buy one for an insanely high price on eBay, but then isn't that defeating the whole point of this thing? Indeed it is. Patience is your friend.
SEE ALSO: How to find the new $60 miniature Nintendo console that's selling out everywhere
DON'T MISS: A complete history of Nintendo consoles, by the numbers
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Books can be incredibly powerful. They have the ability to suck us in, take us on adventures, and influence the way we think.
They can teach us, move us, give us new perspectives, and help shape us. And the most powerful ones change our lives forever.
I asked my Business Insider colleagues to share the one book that has significantly influenced them.
If you're looking for life-changing books to read this fall, you may want to check these out:
SEE ALSO: 24 books that will make you a more well-rounded person
"This book gave me a real sense of my own mortality. I'm usually grateful for this, but not always! It also made me appreciate fatherhood more."
—Nicholas Carlson, editor-in-chief of INSIDER
Amazon synopsis: A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food — and each other.
"'The Road' is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."
"This book introduced me to the idea that simplicity isn't the enemy of satisfaction; it's the essence of it. The inclusion of such familiar and beloved characters also helped the ideas stick in my mind."
—Christina Sterbenz, weekend and features editor
Amazon synopsis: The how of Pooh? The Tao of who? The Tao of Pooh!?! In which it is revealed that one of the world's great Taoist masters isn't Chinese — or a venerable philosopher — but is in fact none other than that effortlessly calm, still, reflective bear. A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh! While Eeyore frets, and Piglet hesitates, and Rabbit calculates, and Owl pontificates, Pooh just is.
"And that's a clue to the secret wisdom of the Taoists."
"It was the rare work of fiction that actually changed how I saw the world. It made me want to be a more moral and better person."
—Paul Schrodt, entertainment editor
Amazon synopsis: "Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written, 'Anna Karenina' is Tolstoy's classic tale of love and adultery set against the backdrop of high society in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
"A rich and complex masterpiece, the novel charts the disastrous course of a love affair between Anna, a beautiful married woman, and Count Vronsky, a wealthy army officer. Tolstoy seamlessly weaves together the lives of dozens of characters, and in doing so captures a breathtaking tapestry of late-nineteenth-century Russian society. As Matthew Arnold wrote in his celebrated essay on Tolstoy, 'We are not to take 'Anna Karenina' as a work of art; we are to take it as a piece of life.'"
Chris Sacca is back on ABC's "Shark Tank" on Friday for the first time this season. And if you've seen the previews, you know that he and fellow billionaire Mark Cuban will be going toe-to-toe again.
"I see my role on the show as keeping Mark honest," Sacca, 41, recently told Business Insider. "I’ve known him for years. The nature of our friendship is ball-busting. And I feel almost like that’s what I’m there to do, is bust Cuban’s balls for all those who are at home watching who can’t do it from home, but really want to."
That's just part of the reason Sacca signed on to guest for several more episodes this season. After all, he has plenty of entrepreneurs to pitch him — "Shark Tank" or not. He's one of the most sought-after investors in Silicon Valley. Through his venture capital fund Lowercase Capital, Sacca was an early investor in companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, and Kickstarter.
So what is it about "Shark Tank" that makes him want to return?
"'Shark Tank' actually brought me back to my very first days where it was just a couple of guys or gals working on a fun idea, written a few lines of code, maybe had a few users," Sacca said. "The conversation wasn't about the big bucks. It was just about, how do we make this thing better? Can we help each other do that? I really miss that. I realize that despite the success of our business, the passion had sort of fallen out of it for me. And 'Shark Tank' brought me back to why I care about this."
And while Sacca and Cuban may have held an advantage over the other sharks when it came to tech companies on "Shark Tank," Sacca admits the other sharks are nipping at their tails.
"There are some tech companies this season with a very high likelihood of success and you can see the thirst on the panel to own pieces of these companies," he said. "I really do see the sharks evolving their perspective. In the early days of the show, if you brough them an app, they would've turned their noses up. But now they know how indispensable those apps are, even to their own traditional businesses."
Sacca admitted that he has gleaned some lessons from the other sharks as well.
"When someone comes in with a product they want in Bed Bath & Beyond, that's way out of my comfort zone," Sacca told us. "I may be the only shark who hasn't been on QVC, but I have learned a lot from those folks about what it takes to get a product on store shelves."
SEE ALSO: Watch billionaires Mark Cuban and Chris Sacca battle on the next 'Shark Tank'
DON'T MISS: The 5 biggest mistakes small business owners make according to 'Shark Tank' stars
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NOW WATCH: BARBARA CORCORAN: Chris Sacca is 'probably the most arrogant Shark we've ever had'
Actor Shia LaBeouf shocked Twitter and the hip-hop world at large on Friday when he gave a surprisingly impressive performance in the "5 Fingers of Death" freestyle rap challenge on SiriusXM's "Sway in the Morning" radio show.
LaBeouf rapped for about four minutes over five classic hip-hop beats from artists like The Notorious B.I.G. and Dr. Dre while promoting his new film "American Honey."
"Get ready, get set, this a meme," LaBeouf began. "This is wild, this is a childhood dream."
Labeling himself the "Jewish Pac" (in a flippant reference to rapper Tupac Shakur), the 30-year-old actor's rhymes ultimately earned the respect of host Sway Calloway, who pronounced LaBeouf the "No. 1 MC in Hollywood" at the end of it.
The Twitter-sphere immediately took notice of LaBeouf's shockingly competent performance.
Shia LaBeouf is literally how I see myself in the future, rich, mentally troubled and somehow still finessing all art forms
Trump is president
a new tribe album
a fire Shia LaBeouf freestyle
all in one week
2016 is wild
Shia LaBeouf's freestyle is the craziest thing that's happened all week
— Zack Marshall (@zackmarshall69) November 11, 2016
I can't even lie Shia labeouf freestyle wasn't bad I cringed at the delivery but he was spitting and he went at drake and Lil Yachty 😂💀
— ZayEsco (@ZayEscobar) November 11, 2016
Shia Labeouf actually can rap. Wow.
— ™ (@akaLeoh) November 11, 2016Watch the video below:
SEE ALSO: Shia LaBeouf is Oscar-ready in first look at John McEnroe biopic
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The original Nintendo Entertainment System introduced countless people to video games. Many of those people may have lapsed in the three decades since, but the love for those games is still there.
With the new Nintendo Entertainment System Classic Edition, you can relive the classic games of your childhood in one tiny package. Here's how it looks:
When you buy a tiny Nintendo this holiday season (which won't be easy), it actually comes with 30 classic games you can play — no additional purchases needed. It's out now, so here are the games you can expect to take you on a trip down memory lane.
SEE ALSO: How to find the new $60 miniature Nintendo console that's selling out everywhere
A Facebook bug caused people's profile pages to display that they have died on Friday.
Multiple Business Insider employees reported seeing the message at the top of their Facebook profiles Friday afternoon, and the bug even affected Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
As of around 4 p.m. ET, people started reporting that the message was gone from their profiles. Facebook later apologized for the "terrible error" in a statement to Business Insider.
“For a brief period today, a message meant for memorialized profiles was mistakenly posted to other accounts," a Facebook spokesperson said. "This was a terrible error that we have now fixed. We are very sorry that this happened and we worked as quickly as possible to fix it.”
Before the bug was fixed, visitors to the Facebook's CEO profile were greeted with a somber notification:
"We hope people who love Mark will find comfort in the things others share to remember and celebrate his life," the message read. The message included a link to Facebook's request form for memorializing the account of someone who has died. People using Facebook's app also reported seeing the message.
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NOW WATCH: A Facebook bug was telling people they died
