“This is a social issue that’s been going on for years and years and years. How do we deconstruct a world to stop it from happening? Is there a way?,” Jude Law says of the plot of “The Order,” his film with director Justin Kurzel based on the true story of a neo-Nazi crime organization.
(Vianney Le Caer / Vianney Le Caer/invision/ap)
When Jude Law and Justin Kurzel set out to make “The Order,” a period piece about neo-Nazis in the Pacific Northwest, they couldn’t have known that the events of the early 1980s would be as timely as they are today. Yes, groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers had been in the news from the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., through the Jan. 6 insurrection in 2021, but the idea of an energized white power movement with tacit presidential approval had faded — until Donald Trump was reelected.
“We started developing the script, and then January 6 happened, and I’m seeing nooses outside the Capitol building, and there were pictures of people holding ‘The Turner Diaries,’” says director-producer Kurzel, referring to the 1978 novel that became a foundational text for white nationalists. “As we filmed and edited, and as the film played at festivals, it is interesting how it’s sort of sharpened up in terms of how much it’s speaking to the temperature at the moment.”
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During the campaign, Trump himself vowed to fight what he calls “anti-white feeling” in the U.S., and shortly after the election, the FBI said it was investigating threatening text messages sent to Black Americans, Latinos and people in the LGBTQ+ community around the country.
Based on a true story, “The Order” stars Law as Terry Husk, an FBI agent sent to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, in 1983 to investigate a string of bank robberies. He soon discovers they’re tied to a group called the Order, a splinter sect of the Aryan Nations led by Bob Mathews (Nicholas Hoult), a firebrand bent on a takeover of the U.S. government.
Jude Law stars as a damaged FBI agent, along with Jurnee Smollett and Tye Sheridan.
(Michelle Faye/Vertical)
“It’s important to say it didn’t start with Bob Mathews,” notes Law, who produced the film through his Riff Raff Entertainment banner. “Nor did it end with him. This is a social issue that’s been going on for years and years and years. How do we deconstruct a world to stop it from happening? Is there a way? What does it take to defy them, to break them down? You can start with basic answers like education and employment. It usually starts with the blame game and one side having what others don’t and who has more money.”
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Husk is a composite of the many law enforcement officials who took part in the investigation, a fictional character with whom the filmmakers could paint a portrait that would dramatically contrast with the real-life Mathews.
“We talked about damaging him and having him be under par,” Law says about Husk’s surgical scars, nosebleeds, prescription drugs and heavy drinking. “It’s important that Mathews underestimate him. And to do that, I wanted him to be busted, like, ‘Is this guy going to make it through the afternoon, let alone solve the case?’”
As Mathews, Hoult sports an unseemly Dutch-boy haircut masking steely determination. With leading-man good looks and sharp comedic timing, Hoult has only recently turned to his inner demons for inspiration, playing Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s upcoming reimagined “Superman.” As Mathews, he displays a charismatic pull that draws disaffected young men into the Order.
“We understand the danger in him. But why is he surrounded by kids?” wonders Kurzel. “Why is he surrounded by people that gravitate to him? Why is he having barbecues, what is that pull?”
It’s a question that resonates today as young men are increasingly drawn toward toxic male figures. “It wasn’t so long ago [when] it was a heavily male-dominated society,” says Law. “Women would probably say it still is, and it probably still is, unfairly, but it’s left young men feeling vulnerable. And vulnerable minds and hearts and bodies are easy to prey on. We’re driven by testosterone, which is easier to trigger. You set up a climate of haves and have-nots, and there’s a natural male need to have and to provide.”
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“As we filmed and edited, and as the film played at festivals, it is interesting how it’s sort of sharpened up in terms of how much it’s speaking to the temperature at the moment,” producer-director Justin Kurzel says of “The Order.”
(Chris Large/Vertical)
A two-time Oscar nominee (“The Talented Mr. Ripley” and “Cold Mountain”), Law has several projects in the works: Upcoming films include “Eden,” co-starring Vanessa Kirby, Ana de Armas and Sydney Sweeney, and he’s currently in preproduction on Olivier Assayas’ “The Wizard of the Kremlin” with Alicia Vikander, as well as “Sherlock Holmes 3,” in which he’ll reprise his role of Watson. He can be seen now in “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew” on Disney+, and next year in “Black Rabbit,” a Netflix miniseries Riff Raff produced. It was through that project that he met “The Order” screenwriter Zach Baylin and his wife, Kate Susman, who are its showrunners. (Kurzel directed two episodes of “Black Rabbit.”)
“The last couple of things I had that came out recently were delayed because of the [actors’] strike,” says Law about the sudden flurry of activity. “I’ve been fortunate enough to be asked to do some interesting work, and ‘Black Rabbit’ was something that came out of my production company. So I was excited to also be able to steer a piece I really believed in and wanted it to happen.”
A former executive at Live Nation, the world’s largest live entertainment company, is suing the company, alleging that he was wrongfully terminated after he raised concerns about alleged financial misconduct and improper accounting practices.
Nicholas Rumanes alleges he was “fraudulently induced” in 2022 to leave a lucrative position as head of strategic development at a real estate investment trust to create a new role as executive vice president of development and business practice at Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
In his new position, Rumanes said, he raised “serious and legitimate alarm” over the the company’s business practices.
As a result, he says, he was “unlawfully terminated,” according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
“Rumanes was, simply put, promised one job and forced to accept another. And then he was cut loose for insisting on doing that lesser job with integrity and honesty,” according to the lawsuit.
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He is seeking $35 million in damages.
Representatives for Live Nation were not immediately available for comment.
The lawsuit comes a week after a federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had operated a monopoly over major concert venues, controlling 86% of the concert market.
Rumanes’ lawsuit describes a “culture of deception” at Live Nation, saying its “basic business model was to misstate and exaggerate financial figures in efforts to solicit and secure business.”
Such practices “spanned a wide spectrum of projects in what appeared to be a company-wide pattern of financial misrepresentation and misleading disclosures,” the lawsuit states.
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Rumanes says he received materials and documents that showed that the company inflated projected revenues across multiple venue development projects.
Additionally, Rumanes contends that the company violated a federal law that requires independent financial auditing and transparency and instead ran Live Nation “through a centralized, opaque structure” that enables it to “bypass oversight and internal checks and balances.”
In 2010, as a condition of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger, the newly formed company agreed to a consent decree with the government that prohibited the firm from threatening venues to use Ticketmaster. In 2019 the Justice Department found that the company had repeatedly breached the agreement, and it extended the decree.
Rumanes contends that he brought his concerns to the attention of the company’s management, but his warnings were “repeatedly ignored.”
At the centre of Madhuvidhu directed by Vishnu Aravind is a house where only men reside, three generations of them living in harmony. Unlike the Anjooran household in Godfather, this is not a house where entry is banned to women, but just that women don’t choose to come here. For Amrithraj alias Ammu (Sharafudheen), the protagonist, 28 marriage proposals have already fallen through although he was not lacking in interest.
When a not-so-cordial first meeting with Sneha (Kalyani Panicker) inevitably turns into mutual attraction, things appear about to change. But some unexpected hiccups are waiting for them, their different religions being one of them. Writers Jai Vishnu and Bipin Mohan do not seem to have any major ambitions with Madhuvidhu, but they seem rather content to aim for the middle space of a feel-good entertainer. Only that they end up hitting further lower.
After more than two and a half years of research, planning and construction, Dataland, the world’s first museum of AI arts, will open June 20.
Co-founded by new media artists Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkılıç, the museum anchors the $1-billion Frank Gehry-designed Grand LA complex across the street from Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. Its first exhibition, “Machine Dreams: Rainforest,” created by Refik Anadol Studio, was inspired by a trip to the Amazon and uses vast data sets to immerse visitors in a machine-generated sensory experience of the natural world.
The architecture of the space, which Anadol calls “a living museum,” is used to reflect distant rainforest ecosystems, including changing temperature, light, smell and visuals. Anadol refers to these large-scale, shimmering tableaus as “digital sculptures.”
“This is such an important technology, and represents such an important transformation of humanity,” Anadol said in an interview. “And we found it so meaningful and purposeful to be sure that there is a place to talk about it, to create with it.”
The 35,000-square-foot privately funded museum devotes 25,000 square feet to public space, with the remaining 10,000 square feet holding the in-house technology that makes the space run. Dataland contains five immersive galleries and a 30-foot ceiling. An escalator by the entrance will transport guests to the experiences below. The museum declined to say how much Dataland, designed by architecture firm Gensler, cost to build.
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An isometric architectural rendering of Dataland. The 25,000-square-foot AI arts museum also contains an additional 10,000 square feet of non-public space that holds its operational technology.
(Refik Anadol Studio for Dataland)
Dataland will collect and preserve artificial intelligence art and is powered by an open-access AI model created by Anadol’s studio called the Large Nature Model. The model, which does not source without permission, culls mountains of data about the natural world from partners including the Smithsonian, London’s Natural History Museum and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. This data, including up to half a billion images of nature, will form the basis for the creation of a variety of AI artworks, including “Machine Dreams.”
“AI art is a part of digital art, meaning a lineage that uses software, data and computers to create a form of art,” Anadol explained. “I know that many artists don’t want to disclose their technologies, but for me, AI means possibilities. And possibilities come with responsibilities. We have to disclose exactly where our data comes from.”
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Sustainability is another responsibility that Anadol takes seriously. For more than a decade, Anadol has devoted much thought to the massive carbon footprint associated with AI models. The Large Nature Model is hosted on Google Cloud servers in Oregon that use 87% carbon-free, renewable energy. Anadol says the energy used to support an individual visit to the museum is equivalent to what it takes to charge a single smartphone.
Anadol believes AI can form a powerful bridge to nature — serving as a means to access and preserve it — and that the swiftly evolving technology can be harnessed to illuminate essential truths about humanity’s relationship to an interconnected planet. During a time of great anxiety about the power of AI to disrupt lives and livelihoods, Anadol maintains it can be a revolutionary tool in service of a never-before-seen form of art.
“The works generate an emergent, living reality, a machine’s dream shaped by continuous streams of environmental and biological data. Within this evolving system, moments of recognition and interpretation emerge across different forms of knowledge,” a news release about the museum explains. “At the same time, the exhibition registers loss as part of this expanded field of perception, most notably in the Infinity Room, where visitors encounter the 1987 recording of the last known Kauaʻi ʻŌʻō, a now-extinct bird whose unanswered call becomes part of the work.”
“It’s very exciting to say that AI art is not image only,” Anadol said. “It’s a very multisensory, multimedium experience — meaning sound, image, video, text, smell, taste and touch. They are all together in conversation.”
