Author: rb809rb

By the early ’90s, it had become clear that “Die Hard” was the most paradigmatic thriller of its era, imitated in scores of knockoffs that kept the spirit but changed the locale. Thus, we got “Die Hard on a Plane” (“Passenger 57,” “Air Force One”), “Die Hard on a Bus” (“Speed”), “Die Hard on a Train” (“Under Siege 2: Dark Territory”), “Die Hard in the White House” (“Olympus Has Fallen”), and the one that finally ran the cycle aground — “Die Hard on a Boat,” which served the first “Under Siege” well enough but stalled the overblown, too-slow-for-speed “Speed 2: Cruise Control.”

But “Mutiny,” a revenge thriller set aboard a giant cargo ship, shows you that there’s life in the “Die Hard on a Boat” concept. The film makes you think of Bruce Willis in other ways too, since its star, Jason Statham, boasts a macho chrome dome and offs his enemies with a blithe viciousness that evokes Willis at his ruthless best.

From Sly and Arnold to “John Wick,” mano-a-mano fight scenes in movies tend to revel in their showdown-to-the-death choreography, the more elaborate the better. “Mutiny” is different. The killings happen as fast as Cole Reed (Statham), a fallen-London-cop-turned-bodyguard out to avenge the murder of his Bangkok tycoon boss, can make them happen.

With bring-the-pain timing, he smashes heads and snaps arms and uses whatever cutting tools are available, at one point ripping a foe’s cheek with the hook of an open lock; moments later, when he jabs a dagger deeper into that same wound, it’s the essence of efficiency. Cole, who has to maneuver his way around 20 savage crew members, each of whom will need to be killed, doesn’t waste a homicidal movement. Yet it all feels brutally spontaneous. At one point he smashes the thug he’s holding, pauses to machine-gun another, coldcocks the original guy, then guns down two more, all in the space of nine seconds. The way Statham works, we should call this “Die Easy.”

In the film’s opening half hour, set in the luxe steel-and-marble corporate echelons of Bangkok, Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram), the worldly but now retiring Thai shipping-magnate boss Cole has become close to (the two love their chess games), celebrates the sale of his company, though a traitor within has other plans. As Cole is driving Tibu back from a passing-of-the-torch party, the two are ambushed, and Tibu is killed. The cops are in on it; it’s a major conspiracy. (Is Tibu’s ingenuous son, played by Chaneil Kular, in on it too? The film keeps you guessing.) Cole sneaks his way aboard the Artemis, the cargo ship on which one of the conspirators is set to make his escape, and it’s there that he discovers an ever darker conspiracy, in the form of a shipping container that’s full of desperate human cargo from Thailand, most of them children.

That feels like a lift from Angel Studios, but in its way it enriches the revenge plot. Cole isn’t just getting even — he’s saving the world from some very sick evil. His ally is Angie (Annabelle Wallis), the ship’s third mate, who’s an embattled innocent in all this. His antagonist is Marko, the ship’s captain, an amusingly middle-aged European bruiser played by the Danish actor Roland Møller in tattoos and an elegant beard, with an accent that’s a little bit Arnold, a little bit this-is-Matthias-Schoenaerts-in-15-years. He’s no Alan Rickman, but he’ll do.

“Mutiny” was directed by Jean-François Richet, who made the pretty good Gerard Butler movie “Plane,” and here, once again, he shows a flair for staging extreme misanthropic violence with a human touch. Richet turns the ship into an enthralling character, with its pipes and catwalks and tunnels and tubes, some of which become weaponry. Statham is one of the film’s producers, and you can tell that he wants you to feel each smashed limb and gunshot to the face. The ship’s crew members are anonymous enough, yet each killing is staged as an instant execution. It’s not that the violence is shocking — it’s that Jason Statham means it. (He’s a true actor of action.) At the preview showing I attended, people near me were laughing at the killings, something I almost never do, but at the climax, when Cole reached for a harpoon gun and used it, I had to give in and chuckle myself. It’s all in the timing — the rhythm of revenge murder that’s perfect, because it’s done by any means necessary. Jason Statham is keeping that dream alive.

In an era where AI music generation has ruptured the music industry, a social-forward music remixing app is aiming to stand out among the rest — with the help of one of the major labels.

Hook, an AI-powered app where fans can create minute-long clips that remixes or mashes up a licensed artist’s track to share on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, has struck a licensing deal with Universal Music Group to bring aboard a suite of the label’s artist catalogs from its host of sublabels — including Republic Records, Capitol Records, Virgin Music Group and more — for fans to experiment with. The deal expands the yearslong relationship between the two companies, which saw UMG push Hook to iron out its product experience to help convince artists why they should allow the platform’s users to modify their work.

“What we made sure is that [for] everything created on Hook, the artists have full control around the security needs that they have,” CEO Gaurav Sharma told Variety. “All the things that we had to do in figuring out streaming back in 2010 is effectively what we spent the last two years working on with UMG. So the idea of like I believe these sorts of licenses are possible through collaboration. It doesn’t need to be artists, labels, tech companies fighting each other.”

The company has spent years since its 2024 launch serving almost as a response to AI generation companies like Suno and Udio, opting against music generation and instead for a fan and social-focused approach to licensed music. Fans can apply filters to songs on the platform and produce “Hooks” to add to their own videos for social media, with the artist retaining ownership of the track and making money off the use of their song.

It has struck deals with labels such as Glassdoor Records and Downtown Music and has brought on songs featuring artists such as Justin Bieber, Teddy Swims, the Weeknd, Ty Dolla $ign, Kendrick Lamar, Charli xcx and more, a roster that the UMG deal will significantly expand. (Both companies declined to share what new artists will be immediately available.)

Michael Nash, UMG’s executive vice president, chief digital officer, said the collaboration stemmed from fans’ focus on social-media platforms as a method for engaging with an artist’s work, as social media platforms were a sector for the industry that has been “significantly under monetized and substantially disrupted by short format.”

“We’re eager to collaborate with innovators that are targeting purpose-built technology to go after some of the predominant use cases that empirically exist right now in the social sphere,” Nash said. “Invoking Oscar Wilde here, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then perhaps co-creation is one of the sincerest forms of fandom.”

Hook is financially backed by by Khosla Ventures, Point72, Imaginary Ventures and former Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s Waverley Capital, among others. Bronfman told Variety he viewed Hook as a unique opportunity to marry technology with an artist’s creative intent.

“That, I think, is very different than what I would call sort of generative AI or AI slop, which is just music’s [that’s] been written, and some AI algorithm changes it up,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a lasting phenomenon. I think people care about artists. They they want to go see artists. They believe in artists, and artists believe in in them.”

Bronfman wouldn’t comment on WMG’s settlement deal with Suno, leaving that for the labels to figure out. UMG and Sony Music are still in active litigation against Suno for alleged copyright infringement.

The deal also reflects UMG’s continued investment in the changing era of music consumption, which includes a legal settlement with Udio and, in May, a deal with Spotify to power the streaming service’s AI remixing and covers tool. Nash said the two deals represented “extremely complementary partnerships” in line with UMG’s “partnership portfolio approach.”

“Hook is enabling the specific, empirically demonstrated, very prominent and popular use cases of fan interaction, and it’s all about social,” Nash said. “It’s just a very specific targeted use case that is unique in our partnership portfolio.”

For Sharma, Spotify’s approach to remixing represented “validation.”

“Hook is focused on social, on community-driven creation and consumption,” he said. “When a user creates on Hook and they share to their TikTok, and these creations also exist within communities on Hook, tied to the activities, the feelings expressed in the larger [user-generated content] that that person made. So when we say social music, it’s not just the music; it’s the larger expression that the person has with the video and everything else around it… I believe that people will go to Spotify to hear how artists express themselves through music, and our hope is Hook can be that destination where people hear how social media expresses through music.”