Taco Art
One of the most unusual heists in America seems to be unfolding at Taco Bell
‘They made it sound like they were talking about the Mona Lisa’
When artist Mark Smith stepped off the plane from New York and arrived in Louisville, Kentucky, on that fateful day in the early 2000s, he knew he was about to enter one of the most important critiques of his entire career.
But Smith wasn’t doing a studio visit with the owners of a prestigious gallery — he was meeting with the corporate executives of Taco Bell, the California fast food chain that peddles Crunchwrap Supremes and Baja Blasts to the masses.
This was back in 2002 or 2003, before the company even created these artificial masterpieces. At the time, Smith was trying to convince them to let him make three paintings that would eventually get rolled out to most, if not all, Taco Bell locations in the U.S. At first, not everyone in the room was onboard with the concept because it was so expensive: It would require making prints of his Basquiat-like paintings, stretching them on canvas and then hanging them in each store to make them feel like real art as opposed to ubiquitous branded messaging.
But, against these odds, Smith got the green light of approval, and the pieces were distributed in 2003. Over the course of his expansive career, he’s been commissioned to work on projects for major clients like Absolut Vodka, DaimlerChrysler and the Olympics, cementing his status as a professional artist. Life went on, and the trio of paintings faded into memory.
Nasty
‘Nasty’: Watch Trailer For Cannes World Premiere Documentary On Ilie Nastase, A Tennis Bad Boy Before John McEnroe Ever Cursed An Ump
Days before the start of the French Open in Paris, there’s going to be some tennis action at the Cannes Film Festival – with one of the greatest players ever.
Thursday will mark the world premiere of Nasty, a documentary about the brilliant Romanian pro Ilie Nastase – who at the height of his career was one of the most gifted, entertaining, and polarizing figures in sport.
Tudor Giurgiu, Cristian Pascariu and Tudor D. Popescu directed the film, which debuts in the Special Screenings section of Cannes. Goodfellas is handling international sales as part of its new sports-focused sales label, Oui Michel. We have your first look at the film in the trailer above.
Demi On Nudity
Demi Moore defends nudity and gore in ‘insane’ Cannes film with 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Demi Moore has defended the extreme violence, nudity, and body horror in her shocking Cannes film that has received the festival’s longest ovation.
The Substance, directed by Revenge creator Coralie Fargeat, premiered at the French festival yesterday, with many lauding the Ghost actor’s, 61, performance.
Yet to receive a UK release date, the Palme d’Or contender sees Demi star as Elisabeth Sparkle, a fading Hollywood actor whose career is at risk of being axed until she discovers an experimental medical procedure to combat ageing.
The all-star cast is rounded out by Margaret Qualley, Hugo Diego Garcia, and Dennis Quaid, who replaced Ray Liotta in the film following his death aged 67 in 2022.
They’re Coming!
Watch moment giant meteor travelling at 1,700mph turns night sky blue over Spain and Portugal in rare spectacle
by Sayan Bose,
INCREDIBLE footage captured the moment a comet travelling at 1,700mph lit up the night sky in a rare spectacle.
Stargazers were left stunned as the fireball shot turned the pitch-black sky into greenish blue in parts of Spain and Portugal.
Amazing footage captured by the dashcam of a car in Portugal shows a dazzling blue-coloured fireball-shaped object with a long tail falling from the sky.
Within moments, the blazing object explodes to paint the entire sky in the shade of blue.
A different footage captured by the European Space Agency (ESA) showed the object illuminating the sky over the western Spanish city of Caceres into hues of blue and green.
Re-animator For Real
Maverick surgeon wants to transplant living human head onto dead body
After critics in the US objected to his plan to graft a living human head onto the body of a recently-deceased donor, Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero moved to China – but then his volunteer fell in love
A maverick surgeon says the ground-breaking operation of transplanting the head of a terminally-ill man onto a recently deceased donor is around the corner.
Many medical experts have weighed in to criticise the work of Italian neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero. Among them is bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe, from Emory University in the US, who said that Canavero’s so-called HEAVEN procedure “Walks a fine line between medical care and murder.”
Canavero had planned to perform the risky procedure on Russian computer scientist Valery Spiridonov, who suffers from a rare muscle-wasting disease. But while legal challenges in the US delayed the surgery, two major changes occurred in Spiridonov’s life.
Naked Wellness Cool
Estonia’s naked wellness tradition to cleanse both body and soul
By Hillary Millán
Used for centuries by rural Estonians to heal their aches and pains, smoke saunas are a soulful experience that clears the mind and cleanses the spirit.
It’s an uncommonly sunny March afternoon in Estonia but I’m in the dark cocoon of a smoke sauna, lying on a bench, completely naked. My feet are propped up on a sooty wooden beam and my head rests on a viht. This small bundle of thin oak branches is meant for lashing my bare body to slough off dead skin cells and boost circulation, but for the moment, it’s a pillow. The dried leaves are pliant, though, after being soaked in water. Their earthy smell and the tang of smoke fill my nostrils. The air is damp, and beads of sweat cover my body.
Eda Veeroja, the owner of Mooska Smoke Sauna, is also naked. She drizzles water onto hot rocks piled on top of the brick stove. “Olen tuul üle väljade… Sind hoian, hoian endas [I am the wind across the fields… I hold you, I hold you]” she sings, the tune like a lullaby, the words hanging in the air like leil, the steam rising off the rocks.
Amenhotep the Rich
Meet the ‘richest man who ever lived’: Scientists recreate the face of Tutankhamun’s grandfather, Amenhotep III, for the first time in 3,400 years
By SHIVALI BEST
He ruled ancient Egypt at the height of its powers, was worshipped as a living god, and was the grandfather of Tutankhamun.
And now the true face of Amenhotep III has been revealed.
The pharaoh, described by one archaeologist as ‘one of the richest men that ever lived’, led Egypt through a period of unprecedented prosperity and international power.
He’s considered one of the greatest pharaohs and has more surviving statues than any other, yet a scientific reconstruction of his face had never been made.
Now, using data from the skull of his mummy, a multinational team has revealed his true likeness for the first time in almost 3,400 years.
Go Go Malinois!
Pope Francis Digs Aliens
Pope to hold press conference on aliens and the supernatural – and people are confused
The last time the Vatican held a press conference about aliens and ‘supernatural phenomena’ was in February 1978, but what would tomorrow’s event mean for The Pope?
By Adam Cailler
The Vatican has announced that it is set to hold a press conference on “supernatural phenomena” tomorrow, and it will touch on aliens and how it will deal with potential encounters in the future.
According to a notice on the Vatican’s website, it will kick of at noon tomorrow, and will feature three prominent Vatican members.
Being held to “present the new provisions of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for discerning between apparitions and other supernatural phenomena,” it will be led by Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandex, Messenger Armando Matteo and Daniela Del Gaudio.
Radioactive Stinkbug
No-No Dock Ellis
Poochapalooza
The Wacky and Wonderful World of the Westminster Dog Show
A canine campaign can run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, not to mention all the brushing, trimming, blow-drying, and styling products. Did you think it was easy being top dog?
ernard de Menthon was born around the year 1000, near what is now the border of Switzerland and France. He was raised in a castle, given a first-class education, and, in time, affianced by his father to a noblewoman, as befit the scion of an ancient and wealthy family. By then, however, de Menthon had grown into a pious young man whose plans for the future did not include marriage. According to legend, the night before the wedding, he fled the castle by jumping out of a high window, whereupon a band of angels caught him and lowered him gently to the ground.
Ordained as a priest, de Menthon began preaching in villages throughout the region of Aosta, a territory that included a mountain pass already in use for at least a thousand years to cross the Western Alps. In de Menthon’s day, it was a popular route for Christians making the pilgrimage to Rome, but the journey was perilous. Bands of brigands routinely staked out the area to attack travellers, the pass itself was harrowing—eight thousand feet high, buried in snow, prone to avalanches—and de Menthon often found himself ministering to travellers who had been subjected to its terrors. And so, when he became the archdeacon of Aosta, he established a hospice in the pass, staffed by monks who offered aid to pilgrims venturing over the mountains.
At first, the hospice simply provided food, shelter, and a reminder to people inclined to make trouble that they did so under the watchful eye of God, or, anyway, of the godly. Over time, though, the monks began dispatching search parties to recover the missing. No one knows exactly when those search parties first began bringing along dogs, but by the early seventeen-hundreds the search parties were dogs—clever, indefatigable creatures capable of smelling a body under twenty feet of snow, who patrolled the area unaccompanied by humans. They generally travelled in pairs, so that, if they found someone too sick or hurt to move, one dog could return to the hospice to summon help while the other stayed behind, lying down atop the stricken person to offer warmth and hope. At some point, the hospice started keeping track of those rescues; by 1897, when one dog found a boy who had nearly frozen to death after falling into a crevasse, the dogs were known to have saved some two thousand people. Also by then, the long-dead Bernard de Menthon had been canonized, which is why the pass, the hospice, and the dogs themselves are all known today by the name St. Bernard.
Gorier and Gorier
Roger Corman interview: ‘Horror today just gets gorier and gorier’
The grand old man of B movies on discovering Coppola and Scorsese, making Jack Nicholson cry, and the problem with modern horror
by Tim Robey, FILM CRITIC
Roger Corman, director and producer of hundreds of films including 1960’s Little Shop of Horrors, has died aged 98. In this 2013 interview from The Telegraph’s archives, he spoke candidly about his long career, and the state of contemporary horror cinema.
At 87 years old, Roger Corman is a twinkly gent. He walks with a pronounced stoop, and speaks in careful, precise sentences, making considerable effort not to waste a word. It’s hard to believe the career this benign legend has had, not to mention the careers he’s given others – he gave Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Fonda, Jonathan Demme.
Along the way, Corman has written a handful of films, directed 56, had a couple of dozen, mostly uncredited acting cameos, and produced, in some capacity, about 400 movies. The titles include some of the most wonderfully lurid in film history – take 1957’s Attack of the Crab Monsters, or The Wasp Woman (1959), or Ilsa the Tigress of Siberia (1977). Astonishingly, he’s still working – something called Dance with a Vampyre would appear to be in production now – though he hasn’t directed a film himself since 1990’s Frankenstein Unbound.
Roger Corman Gone
Roger Corman, Giant of Independent Filmmaking, Dies at 98
The fabled “King of the B’s” producer and director influenced the careers of Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme and many others.
Roger Corman, the fabled “King of the B’s” producer and director who churned out low-budget genre films with breakneck speed and provided career boosts to young, untested talents like Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, Gale Anne Hurd and James Cameron, has died. He was 98.
The filmmaker, who received an honorary Oscar in 2009 at the Governors Awards, died Thursday at his home in Santa Monica, his family told The Hollywood Reporter.
Corman perhaps is best known for such horror fare as The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and his series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, but he became celebrated for drugs-and-biker sagas like The Wild Angels (1966), which was invited to the Venice Film Festival as the Premiere Presentation.
He also achieved notoriety for producing The Trip (1967), which starred Peter Fonda as a man on an LSD-inspired odyssey. Its controversy delighted Corman, who was one of the first producers to recognize the power of negative publicity.
Toadzac
Could a toad’s psychedelic venom be the next big anti-depressant?
by Hiyah Zaidi
A hallucinogenic toad’s venom could be a new form of anti-depressant, scientists say.
The Colorado River toad, also known as the Sonoran Desert toad, has psychedelic venom just below the surface, which they secrete through their glands when it is scared.
And although it is well known that this toad’s venom can cause intense hallucinations and trippy experiences, until now scientists have been unsure how exactly it influences the brain.
But a recent study has found that the toad’s hallucinogenic compound could be the basis of a new antidepressant.
AI Frey
James Frey: “I use artificial intelligence because I want to write the best book possible.”
James Frey is on holiday with his children by a lake in Wisconsin. Against this bucolic backdrop, the American writer with shaved head is lost in thought, working his chewing gum vigorously. He strikes the nonchalant attitude of someone who pays no heed to what others might think: writer, rebel, junkie, entrepreneur, subversive, pariah or genius. If the writer triggers such mixed feelings, it is undoubtedly because his arrival twenty years ago on the literary scene caused a stir like no other. Back in 2004, this Bukowski and Henry Miller fan from a good family who fantasised about being an outlaw burst riotously into the literary world with A Million Little Pieces (Doubleday Books), a brutal autobiography describing his struggle with drug addiction and alcoholism in a rehab centre. Hailed as one of the most visceral explorations of addiction, the work was admired by Gus van Sant, Bret Easton Ellis and Pat Conroy who deemed the account the “War and Peace of addiction”. A seismic shock, rarely seen in literature, selling ten million copies worldwide. Then as an investigative website asserted that many parts of his memoirs had been invented, his house of cards came tumbling down. The American media went wild, the author apologised, his agent dropped him, as did his publisher, and lawsuits piled up. Insulted, hunted down, the writer became the first target for what is now known as cancel culture.
Steve Albini Gone
Steve Albini Dies: Nirvana Producer Was 61
By Greg Evans
Steve Albini, a singer and guitarist best known for producing some of the most groundbreaking and influential albums of the alt-rock genre, died of a heart attack at his Chicago recording studio Electrical Audio. He was 61.
Albini’s death and cause of death was confirmed by Taylor Hales of Electrical Audio.
Born July 22, 1962, in Pasadena, Albini moved to the Chicago area after high school to study journalism at Northwestern University. While there, he began writing for local punk rock ‘zines and beginning to record and engineer albums for local bands.
Stubbornly opposed to the larger music industry and its exploitation of artists, Albini formed the Chicago-based band Big Black in 1981, recording the first of several albums, an EP for the Chicago label Ruthless Records, a label he co-managed. That band last until 1987.
Amish NASCAR
“TIME STOP!”
Paradance
Paramount’s Make-or-Break Deal Week Begins
A CEO shake-up, the home stretch of a takeover offer, a critical carriage negotiation and key advertising talks are colliding at the same time — and could decide the future of the storied company.
BY ALEX WEPRIN
It’s the moment of truth or consequences for Paramount Global.
The entertainment giant, controlled by Shari Redstone via her family’s National Amusements holding company, is in the middle of arguably the most fateful week in its history, with critical business decisions set to collide.
On Sunday, the group of David Ellison’s Skydance, Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital and KKR submitted a “best and final” offer that would see them acquire National Amusements and merge Paramount with Skydance, infusing the company with fresh cash and installing a new leadership team.
Android Dreaming
from The Las Vegas Review-Journal
An artificial mind, with a lifelike body
Amid a world of evolving AI, a Las Vegas man brings his creations to life
You wanna see her move? I think that’s the fun part.
The room is thick with anticipation and fabricated skulls.
She’s gonna wake up. Give her a second.
Matt McMullen eyes his creation as her eyes flutter open in return, her gaze settling upon all the disembodied faces and mechanical mandibles surrounding her in this workshop where fake hair co-mingles with real ambition.
Gradually, she stirs to life, this robot who doesn’t look like one.
Her arms flare out a bit, her head tilts downward then upward, a smile slowly, yet steadily blossoms on her face like time-lapse footage of a flower blooming in the sunlight.
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” renowned science fiction author Philip K. Dick once asked in the title of one of his most celebrated works, which would later be adapted into the film “Blade Runner.”
Nope, turns out they fantasize about visiting theme parks instead, as we learn on a recent Wednesday morning.
“So, who is going to take me to Disneyland?” the robot wonders, her words apropos of … well, we’re not quite sure.
Maybe she’s just reacting to her environment: on a table nearby rests a small sign adorned with an image of Mickey Mouse and a quote from Walt Disney.
Matrix Verified
A Scientist Says He Has the Evidence That We Live in a Simulation
The “Second Law of Infodynamics” could prove it.
BY DARREN ORF
In the 1999 film The Matrix, Thomas Anderson (a.k.a. Neo) discovers a truth to end all truths—the universe is a simulation. While this premise provides fantastic sci-fi fodder (and explains how Neo can learn kung-fu in about five seconds), the idea isn’t quite as carefully relegated to the fiction section as one might expect.
University of Portsmouth scientist Melvin Vopson, who studies the possibility that the universe might indeed be a digital facsimile, leans into the cinematic comparison. In an article published on website The Conversation this past October, Vopson invoked the Wachowskis’ sci-fi masterpiece, and around the same time, he published a book on the subject—Reality Reloaded, a subtle hat tip to the title of the less successful Matrix sequel. While he is just one among many who’ve contemplated the idea, Vopson claims to have one thing that those before him lacked: evidence.
DeathGPT
Urgent warning for anyone using scarily accurate ‘AI death calculator’
by Hiyah Zaidi
The team behind an ‘AI death calculator’ that can predict, well, when you’ll die, issued a stark warning for those keen to find out their life expectancy.
Danish researchers unveiled the Life2vec AI chatbot in December. They said the program can accurately predict not only how long you’ll live, but also how rich you will be.
Now, a number of copycat apps are appearing online that appear to be scams – while the original chatbot has not been released to the public.
The team have put out a warning that scammers have created fraudulent websites imitating the chatbot which ‘have nothing to do with us and our work’.
Waytoo Aggressive
Self-Driving Waymo Spotted Plowing Down Wrong Side of Street
“I think we can all agree that the decision making of the Waymo was not good.”
A video making the rounds on social media shows a self-driving Waymo car bombing down the wrong side of the road in downtown San Francisco — yet another glaring incident involving the company’s vehicles acting unexpectedly.
The footage shows the vehicle passing a group of electric-powered unicyclists and scooters in the city’s Mission and Market district last week.
Another video shows the same event from a different perspective, with the Waymo car seemingly trying to overtake the unicyclists — by taking over the entirety of the oncoming lane.
Fortunately, one of the unicyclists managed to get the vehicle to stop by getting in front of it.
Colonizing The Dark Side
China set to launch high-stakes mission to moon’s ‘hidden’ side
by Albee Zhang and Ryan Woo
BEIJING, April 29 (Reuters) – China will send a robotic spacecraft in coming days on a round trip to the moon’s far side in the first of three technically demanding missions that will pave the way for an inaugural Chinese crewed landing and a base on the lunar south pole.
Since the first Chang’e mission in 2007, named after the mythical Chinese moon goddess, China has made leaps forward in its lunar exploration, narrowing the technological chasm with the United States and Russia.
In 2020, China brought back samples from the moon’s near side in the first sample retrieval in more than four decades, confirming for the first time it could safely return an uncrewed spacecraft to Earth from the lunar surface.
This week, China is expected to launch Chang’e-6 using the backup spacecraft from the 2020 mission, and collect soil and rocks from the side of the moon that permanently faces away from Earth.
Humans Can Be Awesome
Apocalypse Megalopolis
For Francis Ford Coppola’s Go-for-Broke Movies, All Roads Lead to Cannes
The director readies his self-funded epic ‘Megalopolis’ for the Croisette, with echoes of his ‘Apocalypse Now’ journey 45 years ago accompanying him.
For his forthcoming one from the heart, Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola has once again violated the cardinal rule of the entertainment business: Never invest your own money in the show. Reports are that to bankroll the $120 million epic he has literally mortgaged the farm, or vineyard. The investment is slated to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 14.
We — and he — have all been here before. Coppola last went into hock for another long-aborning and cost-overrunning project, which 45 years ago, almost to the day, also premiered at Cannes: the now legendary Apocalypse Now (1979).
At the time, Coppola was bathing in the afterglow of one of the most astonishing back-to-back double, or triple, plays in the industry’s history: The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), the operatic two-part saga of mob family business in which organized crime serves less as a metaphor for American capitalism than its purest expression (“Michael, we’re bigger than U.S. Steel!”); and The Conversation (1974), a prophetic vision of the intrusion of high tech surveillance into private lives. Before Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) set the templates for the next half century of Hollywood cinema, Coppola was the singular visionary of what was already recognized as the Second Golden Age of Hollywood cinema.
Little wonder that Coppola’s next project was awaited with eager anticipation by most and, because this is after all Hollywood, knives out by a few.
Flame-throwing Robot Dog, Cool
A T-J to ’28 Years Later’
Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson & Ralph Fiennes To Star In ‘28 Years Later’ For Danny Boyle And Sony Pictures
By Justin Kroll
EXCLUSIVE: The new 28 Years Later trilogy from director Danny Boyle and Sony Pictures is gaining momentum, and some serious star power. Sources tell Deadline that Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes have boarded the first pic, a sequel to the original 28 Days Later.
Boyle is directing the first movie from a script by Alex Garland. Sony will release the film in theaters globally.
While plot details are vague, the original 28 Days Later in 2002 centered on a bicycle courier (played by Cillian Murphy) who wakes from a coma to discover the world had been overrun with zombies following the outbreak of a virus. The pic grossed more than $82 million worldwide and led to a 2007 sequel 28 Weeks Later, on which Boyle and Garland served solely as EPs.
Endosymbiosis
Two lifeforms merge into one organism for first time in a billion years
‘The first time it happened, it gave rise to all complex life,’ scientists say
For the first time in at least a billion years, two lifeforms have merged into a single organism.
The process, called primary endosymbiosis, has only happened twice in the history of the Earth, with the first time giving rise to all complex life as we know it through mitochondria. The second time that it happened saw the emergence of plants.
Now, an international team of scientists have observed the evolutionary event happening between a species of algae commonly found in the ocean and a bacterium.
“The first time we think it happened, it gave rise to all complex life,” said Tyler Coale, a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the research on one of two recent studies that uncovered the phenomenon.
“Everything more complicated than a bacterial cell owes its existence to that event. A billion years ago or so, it happened again with the chloroplast, and that gave us plants.”