Jean-Pierre Dorléac, the costume designer behind “Somewhere in Time” and “Battlestar Galactica,” died July 23 from natural causes. He was 83.
Dorléac earned an Oscar nomination for the 1981 film “Somewhere in Time.” He also landed 11 Emmy nominations for his TV work, winning two for “Battlestar Galactica” in 1979 and “The Lot” in 2001.
Dorléac was born in Toulon, France, in 1943 to an American military service member stationed with his family in Europe. There he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in France. After his family moved back to the United States, he started his career as an actor in Hollywood. But when one of his theater productions was looking for a costume designer, he took that opportunity, which led him to design the costumes for the play “Marat/Sade” in 1973 for West Coast Theatre in Los Angeles, earning critical acclaim and a Drama Critics Circle Award.
He became Edith Head’s protégé, and as a film and television costume designer he designed for multiple productions. Dorléac was also a writer. Among his works, he wrote “Abracabra Alakazama” in 2005, and “The Naked Truth: An Irreverent Chronicle of Delirious Escapades” in 2015.
He frequently shared gossip and opinions on social media, where he became a controversial figure. Back in 2021, he took to Twitter and made several comments about “Battlestar Galactica” actor Patrick Macnee. He wrote, “Patrick Macnee was just as abysmal, conniving, nasty and evil as the part he played [Count Iblis]. He was a horrid person and a lousy actor who went out of his way to make life miserable for others on the show. The only thing of value to him was his ego. A major, terrible disappointment.”
In his tell-all, “The Naked Truth,” he wrote, “I think this business is like King of Hearts, where they opened the asylum doors and let the patients loose. No one in production knows much about anything, and all the behind-the-scenes people are merely pretending, just like actors. They have no inkling regarding good taste, flair or panache, or the ability to create.”
He is survived by his spouse, Gilberto Mello, whom he met 41 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has appointed longtime ecosystem contributor pcaversaccio (known as “pc”) to its board, expanding the group’s leadership as it continues to refine the governance of the organization behind the world’s second-largest blockchain.
pc, a security researcher and co-founder of the emergency response initiative SEAL 911, joins the board for an initial one-year voluntary term. He has also served on the EF’s Silviculture Society, an advisory group that provides informal guidance on preserving the foundation’s core principles, including censorship resistance, open source development, privacy and security.
The appointment brings the Ethereum Foundation’s board to four members: President Aya Miyaguchi, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Swiss legal counsel Patrick Storchenegger and pcaversaccio.
The board is responsible for setting the EF’s strategic vision and ensuring management’s decisions remain aligned with the organization’s values, accordinfg to the Foundation. It also serves as a “security council” tasked with safeguarding the foundation’s mission and ensuring compliance with the laws of Switzerland, where it is currently based.
Jared Leto faces new sexual misconduct accusations from multiple women, with some of the allegations occurring when the women were teenagers.
On Wednesday, the BBC revealed that in total 10 women have come forward with allegations against the Oscar-winning actor and frontman of rock band Thirty Seconds to Mars as part of a new BBC documentary titled Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.
Four of the women have accused Leto of criminal sexual conduct, all occurring when they were teenagers, according to the BBC. The allegations against the 54-year-old stem from incidents between 2002 and 2016.
In the BBC report, one of the women claims she was sexually assaulted by Leto in a motel bathroom when she was 17.
A second woman says Leto threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19, after being “unexpectedly” left alone with him in a hotel.
The third woman reveals she had sex with Leto when she was 17 in California, in a state where she would have been underage and the act classified as statutory rape. This same woman also claims she had a conversation with the actor about her age and he “shrugged off” concerns about California’s age of consent.
The fourth woman claims she groomed by Leto, saying he “abused his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16.” She adds that on at least one occasion, Leto suggested they should have sex. This fourth woman also alleges that she was subsequently sent a non-disclosure agreement to prevent her from talking about her relationship with Leto, but that she refused to sign it. The BBC says it has seen the NDA.
A fifth woman claims that when she was 14, Leto had made a lewd comment about her chest during an autograph-signing event and then instructed a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival. The woman claims her mother confronted Leto at the time, but the actor repeated the lewd comment.
An additional four women claim they received calls from Leto when they were younger that were “strange and often very sexual.”
The BBC says it has “corroborated” a number of the women’s accounts with friends and family who were told about the encounters with Leto at the time. In some cases, the British broadcaster states, reporters have also seen pictures and messages that support the claims.
Two men who worked with Leto’s band told the documentary staff were “uncomfortable” about the way Leto would interact with teenage girls. They say he would sometimes invite them backstage to his dressing room or invite them to the house where he was recording. “I think everyone thought the age gap was way too big,” one of the men, unnamed in the BBC report, says.
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Jared Leto’s reps for comment on the investigation, but had yet to hear back when this story was published.
Sexual misconduct allegations have long dogged the Dallas Buyers Club and Tron star. In June 2025, Leto‘s reps denied that the actor engaged in sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships with women after an Air Mail exposé. That investigative report contained interviews with nine women, the majority of whom are anonymous. They alleged that Leto behaved inappropriately with them, and some say they were underage at the time they came in contact with the actor.
The Air Mail piece also published a viral Twitter post shared by actor Dylan Sprouse in 2018. It reads: “Yo Jared Leto, now that you’ve slid into the DMs of every female model aged 18-25, what would you say your success rate is?” Filmmaker and DC chief James Gunn replied: “He starts at 18 on the internet?”
The Locarno Film Festival, whose 79th edition takes place Aug. 5-15, always features world premieres from around the world by established and up-and-coming auteurs, new hidden gems and cinematic discoveries, along with highlights from the festival circuit.
But audiences can also expect the unexpected. After all, Locarno also features quirky, edgy and offbeat movies just waiting to unspool.
So, buckle up for a ride on the wilder and more unorthodox side of the cinematic spectrum as THR presents its look at some of the more unusual-sounding films at Locarno79.
Wandering Trees(Alberi erranti) Director: Salvatore Section: International competition
Once upon a time in Sardinia. Piero and his son Giuliano lived alone in a farmhouse filled with injured animals that they cared for. But the local notables wanted to drive them out because they lived like vagrants. One day, snow fell, and Piero disappeared, while the animals were killed. So, Giuliano had no choice but to search for his father. On his journey, he met Maddalena, and it was love at first sight.
Giuliano’s dreamlike search across a wounded landscape explores the wonder and special experience of childhood, a time in life that provides a possibility of resistance against the violence of the adult world.
The filmmaker puts it into magical images – and words. “To tell a love story, you mustn’t be afraid to open up emotionally,” says Mereu, who also wrote the script with Alberto Capitta, in a director’s note. “But to embark on a fairy tale, you need to risk something. When you accept its rules, you have to accept everything – even the unthinkable.”
Objet A Director: Ann Oren Section: International competition
‘Object A’
Courtesy of Juan Sarmiento G./Schuldenberg Films
Ready for a bold, playful and stylized excursion into fragile relationships between humans as well as humans and nature, intimacy, desire, identity – and kleptomania – that uses the body as the core of its cinematic language? Well, Objet A is ready to bend your mind and leave you unsettled!
“Ingeborg and Adam are visionary hand surgeons bound by love, control and irresistible fixations,” teases a synopsis. But there is more: “She is compelled to steal objects; he longs to become one. When an accident brings the enigmatic Gaia into their lives, unexpected desires begin to take shape, unsettling the careful balance that has long defined their relationship.”
Berlin-based visual artist and filmmaker Ann Oren (Piaffe) returns to Locarno to serve up a film, which she wrote with Geoffroy Grison, that features cinematography by Juan Sarmiento G. (The Voice of Hind Rajab, A Poet) and editing by Hansjörg Weißbrich (Rose, Late Shift). It stars Aenne Schwarz (All Is Well, Every You Every Me) as Ingeborg, Louis Hofmann (All the Light We Cannot See, The Forger, Dark), and Simone Bucio (Piaffe, The Ivy) as Gaia. “I’m interested in human desire and how it connects us to other species,” Oren says in a director’s note. “The human body is the starting point for my cinematic language: the more control we have over it, the more we separate ourselves from the natural world.”
Bloody Tennis Director: Nikias Chryssos Section: Out of competition
‘Bloody Tennis,’ courtesy of augenschein Filmproduktion
The world of elite sports is taken to disturbing new heights full of brutality and painful ambition in the new film from Nikias Chryssos (The Bunker, Rave On, A Pure Place). “Sophie joins a prestigious tennis academy where the brutality of competitive sports is taken to its extreme, and only the hungriest survive,” warns a synopsis.
Sandra Guldberg Kampp (Assassin’s Creed, Electric Child), Helena Zengel (News of the World, The Legend of Ochi, System Crasher) and others star in the movie, along with Elina Löwensohn (Schindler’s List), and Zlatko Burić (Triangle of Sadness), with an original score by Jim Williams (Titane, Raw).
If that’s not enough for you yet, the press notes also promise, or should that be: threaten, “blood-sucking leeches, hard-hitting serves and delicious nightmares.” Game on!
Bakma Abdelhamid Bouchnak Section: Out of competition
‘Bakma,’ courtesy of Chams Ghorab
You have surely never seen Tunisia like this. And you likely haven’t seen a film from Tunisia like this before. What Bouchnak unleashes onto Locarno screens is an urban horror thriller, which he also wrote and edited, with cinematography by Chams Ghorab.
Animalistic violence takes on a different meaning in this movie. Commissioner Ali and Khaled investigate the ritualistic murder of a young woman. So far, so horrible. But there is more, as a synopsis highlights: “Her limbs have been severed, her head is missing, and in its place, the killer has grotesquely sewn the head of a dog.”
Locarno artistic director Giona A. Nazzaro, in unveiling this year’s festival lineup, highlighted said about Bakma: “It’s a film that, in a very specific way, addresses the political corruption in Tunis at the moment. It’s also a very bitter commentary on what’s left of the so-called Arab Spring that ignited the overthrow of some regimes – and, as you’ll remember, it originated in Tunis.”
Tomorrow a Long Time Ago(Morgen vor langer Zeit) Director: Luise Donschen Section: Filmmakers of the Present Competition
Not much dialogue is used, or needed, in the new film from Donschen (Casanovagen), which stars Gerti Drassl and Manuela Biedermann and others. After all, life and actions say more than words.
Amid German reunification in 1990, the 50-year-old Patty first loses her job and then her friend Jelena. “In a small East German town, she collects discarded objects and meets the younger Franz,” teases a synopsis. “When her flat becomes so full of belongings that she can no longer enter it, she sets out into a colorful forest. A journey through landscapes and history begins, carrying away more than just her.”
The movie has a personal dimension for the filmmaker who grew up in the GDR. “Inspired by my childhood experience of German reunification, the film captures the moment when the present splits into ‘before’ and ‘after’,” the moment when everything seems completely unseen and very familiar at the same time.”
Donkey Princess(Princesa Burro) Directors: Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña Section: International competition
‘Donkey Princess’
Courtesy of Benjamin Echazarreta
Once upon a time… wait a second, isn’t that how we started this journey into the mind- and genre-bending films at Locarno79!? But wait, this one is different, although love plays a key role again.
Diana is the princess of an ancient kingdom. Her father, King Arthur, has forbidden love. So, when Diana falls in love with Lalo, the King banishes him. A synopsis teases where things go from here: “Using a magical bracelet, Diana travels to other worlds in search of her love. Discovering that her father manipulates her decisions, she must face her fears and change her destiny.”
The travels of the protagonist allow the director duo to play with the look and feel of the places she visits. “Diana travels through parallel worlds where each universe transforms the film’s genre,” León and Cociña explain. “The film brings this constant mutation of realities into live action, where fantasy reshapes everything.”
HBO Max is the latest streaming platform to roll out a TikTok-style vertical short-form feed and an AI Search experience to help users quickly find their next watch.
“HBO Max Shorts” will initially be limited to iOS users in the US. You can tap the new Shorts icon, next to the Home tab, to access the feed, which will feature trailers, clips, and bonus content based on your viewing history and preferences.
If a clip prompts you to watch the show, you can tap the episode number to start watching or add it to your My List to watch later. The clips are selected by HBO Max editors, who pick from a pool of videos gathered by a built-in AI tool.
“Once the tool has suggested these clips, HBO Max editors decide which best represent the stories viewers love and capture jaw dropping moments, pivotal plot twists, and visually stunning sequences,” Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company, said in a press release.
In the future, HBO Max Shorts will include sports content and expand to more devices and markets, the company added. ESPN, Disney+, Prime Video, and Netflix already have similar vertical video feeds.
How to Use Natural Language Search on HBO Max
(Credit: Warner Bros. Discovery)
Alongside the new video feed, WBD announced an experimental AI search experience called “Ask HBO Max.” The idea is to let users describe what they’d like to watch in plain language. They could, for example, use terms like “in the mood for a comedy,” “dysfunctional family drama,” or “best movie for a girls night in,” and find relevant results.
Recommended by Our Editors
The feature is limited to Android users aged 18 and older at launch and can be accessed from the search page. As with HBO Max Shorts, Ask HBO Max will eventually expand to more devices and markets, WBD said.
The parent company is currently in the middle of a controversial merger. After Paramount-Skydance agreed to take over the company earlier this year, 12 states challenged the merger on antitrust grounds. Last week, Paramount and WBD decided to delay the merger until June 1, 2027, or five days after a court reaches a decision on the lawsuit.
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Banijay Entertainment has posted it first financials since its mega-merger with All3Media was completed.
Half-year revenues at the TV giant were down slightly in the first half of 2026, reaching at €1.37 billion ($1.56 billion), with production volume falling, a drop of 2.2% on the same six months in 2025.
However, the latest results do not yet include the performance of All3Media, whose figures will be included as part of the results from the second half of this year.
Meanwhile, Banijay Entertainment’s production revenue dropped 11.9 percent, with the company citing “anticipated phasing in production.” But distribution revenue rose 10.5 percent, something it said was “fueled in particular by a format sale in the first quarter” without detailing the particular format in question.
There was an unprecedented growth in Banijay’s live event business, which is grouped with Banijay Entertainment, where revenues soar almost 50% thanks to both the Winter Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup.
“The FIFA World Cup generated unprecedented player acquisition and engagement, supported double-digit pro forma revenue growth and strengthened our ability to grow across all products,” the company said. “In Entertainment & Live, record live activity and continued momentum across our content portfolio in distribution partly offset the anticipated phasing of content production, demonstrating the strength and diversification of our business model.”
Earlier this month, Banijay completed the merger of its entertainment arm with RedBird IMI’s All3Media to create an $8 billion Goliath, with the combined group — housing shows such as “The Traitors,” “Big Brother” and “Peaky Blinders” — spanning 25 territories and housing one of the largest content catalogues in the industry, with more than 265,000 hours of content. Banijay Entertainment Chair Jeff Zucker asserted it was the largest indie producer ever created.
“2026 is definitely a transformational year for Banijay Group,” said François Riahi, CEO of Banijay Group, of the latest results. “In the second half, we will enhance the integration processes in our two business units and will start delivering synergies.”
World soccer governing body FIFA and its controversial CEO Gianni Infantino are under fire over plans to sell off a stake in FIFA’s commercial operations to private equity investors.
The plan would see FIFA set up a new entity, called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), that would bundle all the money-making operations associated with the soccer World Cup — including broadcast rights, sponsorship, ticket sales and licensing fees — and sell a significant stake in the new operation to private investors. FIFA is valuing the new commercial venture at around $20 billion.
After news of the plan broke on Tuesday, FIFA confirmed it is working with U.S. investment bank JP Morgan to set up the new entity. Thrive Capital, an investment company founded by Joshua Kushner, brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, is leading the search for investors.
The backlash was immediate.
European soccer governing body UEFA condemned the plan, saying the sport “isn’t FIFA’s to sell.”
“This crosses a line that football’s governing institutions should never cross,” UEFA said in a statement. “The soul and governance of football are not assets to trade — especially with zero transparency as to who gains financially.”
U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham joined the fray, taking to social media to post that “football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and who stand on the touchline week in, week out, rain or shine. The World Cup is not a product. It is the greatest competition in world sport, and it was never anyone’s to sell. Dress the deal up however you like. Once you have sold a piece of it, you have sold out.”
Let me say this very directly.
Football does not belong to investors. It belongs to the people who fill the stands and who stand on the touchline week in, week out, rain or shine.
The World Cup is not a product. It is the greatest competition in world sport, and it was never…
FIFA says the FFE could raise an additional $10 billion for its member organizations, the 211 national soccer leagues that make up the association. If members approve the plan, FIFA said it could more than double funding to its member associations from $8 million to $20 million a year, a huge sum for the majority of FIFA members. Infantino defended the plan as a way to spread the wealth generated by the World Cup globally. “This is about the democratization of football worldwide,” he said in a statement.
Others see a money grab.
FIFA and Infantino have been sharply criticized for the commercialization of the recent World Cup, held in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. FIFA expanded the event from 32 to 48 teams, greatly increasing the number of games, allowed a pricey resale market for tickets, and introduced controversial “hydration breaks” which stopped play and allowed for additional advertising during matches. The 2026 tournament was the most lucrative in history, with FIFA expected to announce revenues of more than $15 billion for the event.
Given Joshua Kushner’s connection, via his brother, to President Trump, many also see a potential political conflict of interest.
Infantino already has close ties to the U.S. President. After Trump complained about not winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Infantino invented the “FIFA Peace Prize” and then awarded it to POTUS in December.
UEFA claims FIFA undermined the integrity of this year’s World Cup when it intervened to overturn a red card given to USA striker Falorin Balogun after Trump called and asked Infantino to do so.
This week, Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, launched an investigation into Infantino and FIFA’s ties to Trump’s administration and businesses.
$IOTA has connected its L1 network to Pyth Pro, the new price feed infrastructure developed by Pyth, a decentralized oracle network providing financial market data for blockchain applications. The update gives developers access to more than 3 000 institutional-grade price feeds, lower latency, and faster data updates.
Previously, $IOTA used Pythnet, Pyth’s original decentralized infrastructure that delivered price data through the Wormhole bridge. As part of a network-wide upgrade, Pyth is retiring Pythnet and moving all supported blockchains to Pyth Pro. The change is not exclusive to $IOTA and affects the entire Pyth ecosystem.
Developers building on $IOTA can already migrate to the new service by subscribing to a Pyth Pro data plan and updating their integrations. The transition becomes mandatory on August 18. After that date, Pyth Core price feeds will stop working, and applications that have not migrated will lose access to market data.
Three Bitcoin holders have sued Apple in California federal court, saying a counterfeit Sparrow Wallet app took a combined $1.8 million.
One plaintiff reported the app to Apple; another downloaded it nine days later and lost $840,000, the complaint says.
Sparrow Wallet developer Craig Raw has publicly flagged copycat iOS apps since January 2024.
Three Bitcoin holders have sued Apple over a counterfeit Sparrow Wallet app they say drained a combined $1.8 million. The complaint, filed on July 24 in the Northern District of California, brings eight counts including fraud, negligent misrepresentation and strict products liability.
Each plaintiff entered a seed phrase into the app, according to the filing. James Ramirez lost 7.4 BTC, put at $875,000; Christopher Ellis $840,000; and Jalen Delgado 1.05 BTC, put at $120,000. Sparrow Wallet runs only on Windows, macOS and Linux and has never shipped an iOS version, so any App Store listing under that name is an impersonation.
Ramirez reported the app and his loss to Apple on July 25, 2025, the day it happened. Ellis downloaded a Sparrow app from the store nine days later. No one from Apple has contacted Ramirez about that report, the complaint says, and fraudulent Sparrow apps were still listed when it was filed.
The filing also alleges, on information and belief, that Apple ranked the fake app and included it in curated cryptocurrency collections, “effectively recommending a fraudulent application to consumers alongside legitimate ones.”
The developer’s warning
Craig Raw, who built Sparrow Wallet and holds the U.S. trademarks on the name, has flagged copycat malware on Apple’s App Store since January 2024, when he tweeted that a scam version was still live weeks after being reported.
There is still a scam ‘Sparrow Wallet’ app on the @Apple App Store, despite myself and others having reported it weeks ago.
Worse, you have to install it to report it.
Always go to the wallet’s website to find the link to download it. App stores will not protect you.
He later stated that he had submitted an App Store listing whose only purpose was to tell iOS users that Sparrow is desktop-only. Apple rejected it as “placeholder content,” then flagged his developer account for termination over “dishonest activity,” a decision reversed on appeal.
Apple declined to comment on the lawsuit to TechCrunch, instead pointing to its latest ecosystem analysis which found that it rejected more than 371,000 malicious App Store submissions. The firm noted that there are currently no Sparrow Wallet copycats on the App Store.
Count seven asks the court to treat the App Store as a product placed into the stream of commerce, which would expose Apple to strict liability for failing to warn. The complaint argues Apple’s contrary disclaimers sit buried “deep within” click-through terms.
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Kavinsky, the French electro music producer and DJ whose hypnotic anthem “Nightcall” became a cult classic after opening Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film “Drive,” died on Tuesday. He was 50.
The artist was found dead at his Paris home on Tuesday evening. Authorities have opened an investigation into the circumstances of his death, though no foul play has been reported. French media said the musician had complained of headaches in the days leading up to his death, according to Reuters.
While Kavinsky had long been a respected figure on France’s electronic music scene, “Nightcall” transformed him into an international cult favorite. Produced with Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo of Daft Punk and featuring vocals from Lovefoxxx of Brazilian band CSS, the song helped define the film’s aesthetic and became one of the signature electronic tracks of the 2010s.
Kavinsky most recently performed the song alongside Phoenix and Angèle at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games closing ceremony, which was broadcast globally, introducing it to new audiences over a decade after “Drive’s” release.
Born Vincent Belorgey in Seine-Saint-Denis in 1975, he came to music relatively late after first working as an actor and appearing in films by longtime friend Quentin Dupieux. Inspired by 1980s action movies, arcade games and sports cars, he developed the fictional persona of Kavinsky, a mysterious, undead driver said to have returned from a fatal Ferrari crash to make electronic music.
He emerged in the mid-2000s through the influential French label Record Makers, releasing the EPs “Teddy Boy,” “1986” and “Nightcall” before touring alongside artists including Daft Punk and Justice. His debut album “OutRun,” released in 2013, expanded on the retro-futuristic sound that would become synonymous with the growing synthwave movement. After a long hiatus, he returned with a second album, “Reborn,” in 2022.
Although he never achieved the mainstream commercial profile of fellow French electro artists such as Daft Punk or Justice, Kavinsky had a large influence on a generation of producers drawn to nostalgic, cinematic electro music, and helped popularize the synthwave genre well beyond France.
