Welcome to
Overnight News Digest, where the usual crew, consisting of founder Magnifico, regular editors maggiejean, wader, Man Oh Man, side pocket, rfall, and JML9999, alumni editors palantir, Bentliberal, Oke, Interceptor7, jlms qkw, and ScottyUrb, guest editors annetteboardman and Doctor RJ, and current editor-in-chief Neon Vincent, along with anyone else who reads and comments, informs and entertains you with tonight's news.
OND is a regular community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing each day near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Please feel free to share your articles and stories in the comments.
From the New York Post: NYPD using ‘Road House’ movie to teach cops how to ‘be nice’
The NYPD has turned to Patrick Swayze to teach city cops how to behave.
Police bosses are using a scene from the 1989 action flick “Road House” as part of the mandatory, three-day retraining course for 22,000 cops, The Post has learned.
“You have to have a thick skin,” an instructor told cops forced to take part in the $35 million program before hitting play on the two-minute clip from the cult classic, sources said ... The use of “Road House” as a training tool was revealed after The Post exclusively reported that the lecture portions of the sessions were so boring that many cops have been falling asleep in their seats.
Cops also told The Post that they were told to “take a step back, close your eyes and take a deep breath” when dealing with angry people, despite the potential danger in that advice.
From the
New York Times:
3 Brooklyn Men Accused of Plot To Aid ISIS’ Fight
Two young men living in Brooklyn were arrested on Wednesday and charged with plotting to travel thousands of miles to fight under the banner of the Islamic State, the terrorist organization that has seized a wide expanse of Syria and Iraq.
A third Brooklyn man was charged with helping organize and fund their activities.
Even as the Islamic State has been waging a brutal war in the Middle East, it has been spearheading an aggressive campaign to recruit Muslims to its cause, using social media to target young people across the world.
From the
Wall Street Journal:
Barack Obama Warns Federal Officials Could Disregard His Immigration Measures
President Barack Obama on Wednesday warned that some officials within the federal bureaucracy could disregard his executive actions shielding millions of illegal immigrants from deportation.
“There are going to be some jurisdictions, and there may be individual [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] officials or Border Patrol who aren’t paying attention to our new directives,” the president said at a televised town hall in Miami, Fla.
”But they’re going to be answerable to the head of the Department of Homeland Security, because he’s been very clear about what our priorities should be. And I’ve been very clear about what our priorities should be.”
Mr. Obama’s remarks in an event that aired on MSNBC and Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo came a week after a federal judge in Texas temporarily blocked the implementation of his executive actions. Meanwhile, Republicans have sought to overturn the actions in Congress by tying Department of Homeland Security funding to their repeal.
From
NPR:
High Court Leans Toward Religious Protection In Headscarf Case
At the U.S. Supreme Court, you know that it's going to be a hot argument when the usually straight-faced Justice Samuel Alito begins a question this way: "Let's say four people show up for a job interview ... this is going to sound like a joke, but it's not."
The issue before the court on Wednesday was whether retailer Abercrombie & Fitch violated the federal law banning religious discrimination when it rejected a highly rated job applicant because she wore a Muslim headscarf.
Alito's hypothetical continued this way: The first of the four applicants to show up at Abercrombie is a Sikh man wearing a turban; the second is a Hasidic man wearing a hat; the third is a Muslim woman wearing a hijab; the fourth is a Catholic nun in a habit. Now, Alito asked Abercrombie's lawyer: "Do you think that those people have to say, we just want to tell you, we're dressed this way for a religious reason? We're not just trying to make a fashion statement." Or, might we reasonably conclude that Abercrombie knows why they are dressed that way?
Not surprisingly, Abercrombie's lawyer fudged his answer.
From the
Dallas Morning News:
Donald Trump 'more serious' than ever about running for president
This time, Donald Trump says, he really means it.
The billionaire real-estate mogul — long amounting to a one-man circus sideshow in GOP presidential politics — said in an interview Wednesday that he is “more serious” than ever about pursuing a run for the White House in 2016.
In recent days, Trump said, he has hired staffers in key primary states, retained an election attorney and delayed signing on for another season as host of NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice” because of his political projects.
“Everybody feels I’m doing this just to have fun or because it’s good for the brand,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post. “Well, it’s not fun. I’m not doing this for enjoyment. I’m doing this because the country is in serious trouble.”
The moves are the most significant steps yet by Trump, 68, toward a bona fide presidential bid, which he considered briefly and flamboyantly in 2011 before deciding against a run.
From the
Los Angeles Times:
N.Y. maraschino cherry tycoon kills self as inspectors discover pot business
Like most businesses near the waterfront in Brooklyn's Red Hook neighborhood, Arthur Mondella's maraschino cherry factory had seen its ups and downs. It survived Superstorm Sandy, recession and America’s finicky tastes to keep churning out millions of the sweet, gooey accoutrements that grace Shirley Temples, hot fudge sundaes and Manhattans.
When investigators checking on possible environmental violations visited the business Tuesday, though, Mondella's confident facade collapsed.
After excusing himself to use the toilet, Mondella shot himself to death, bringing a shocking end to the cherry maker's life and leaving officials to sort out how much of his money came from growing marijuana and how much came from maraschino cherries.
By Wednesday, Mondella's story was captivating New York and drawing comparisons to the TV hit "Breaking Bad," about a struggling high school chemistry teacher who turns to making methamphetamine to take care of his family.
From
Al Jazerra:
Washington DC set to legalize recreational marijuana at midnight
Recreational marijuana use will become legal in the nation’s capital on Thursday unless Congress makes a last-minute move to block the initiative. The measure, approved by voters in November, permits the possession of a small amount of pot for home use by adults over 21 in Washington, D.C.
Mayor Muriel Bowser this week announced the city's plans to move forward with the initiative, despite an attempt by Congress in December to block it. City officials believe they have the legal authority to proceed because the measure was enacted before Congress tried to intervene. The law, known as Initiative 71, allows possession of up to two ounces of marijuana and six pot plants. It also allows the gift of up to one ounce (28.4 grams) of pot, but the initiative has no provision for sales. Initiative 71 also legalizes the possession of drug paraphernalia, including "bongs, cigarette rolling papers and cigar wrappers," according to the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, D.C.
But the police department said individuals could still be arrested for selling any amount of marijuana to another individual, or for "smoking, eating or drinking marijuana ... in any public space" or "selling any amount of marijuana to another person."
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, sent a letter to Mayor Muriel Bowser late Tuesday asking her to reconsider moving forward with legalization, The Associated press reported. Chaffetz chairs the House Oversight Committee, which has authority over the District of Columbia’s government.
From
ABC News:
Morgan Stanley to Pay $2.6B to Settle Charges Over Mortgages
Morgan Stanley said Wednesday that it has agreed to pay $2.6 billion to settle with the federal government over its role in the mortgage bubble and subsequent financial crisis.
The settlement makes Morgan Stanley the latest Wall Street bank to reach a settlement with federal authorities, following the billions paid by JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.
The $2.6 billion will go to "resolve certain claims" the Justice Department intended to bring against Morgan Stanley related to its mortgage division, the bank said in a regulatory filing.
The Justice Department declined to comment. In the regulatory filing, Morgan Stanley said the agreement is not been finalized and could fall though.
The New York bank said it will restate its 2014 results as a result of the settlement. It is increasing its legal reserves by $2.8 billion, which will decrease its full-year operating profit by $1.35 per share.
From
Slate:
Less Than 40 Percent of People Worldwide Have Ever Connected to the Internet
As the net neutrality debate rages on, it's easy to forget that there are people who have never experienced the injustice of an endlessly buffering Netflix movie. And it's staggering to be confronted with the reality that only 37.9 percent of humans have access to the Internet once a year or more. That's right: More than 60 percent of us have never connected.
Of course, for net neutrality advocates, the goal is to have a stable, open Internet available whenever this population can gain access, and that's what Facebook's Internet.org initiative is working on. On Tuesday, the group released its State of Connectivity report for 2014, which shows progress, but also challenges. The report points out that only 32 percent of peope in developing countries have Internet access, compared with 78 percent in the developed world.
The report also says that people are gaining Internet access at a slower rate, a trend that has been going on for four years. The Internet added users at a rate of 6.6 percent in 2014 compared with 14.7 percent in 2010. Though the number of people connected will reach 3 billion in 2015, "at present rates of decelerating growth, the internet won’t reach 4 billion people until 20197." That's awhile from now.
From
Sploid:
First images of the world's largest airplane
Holy crap, it's real! Behold the first glimpse of Microsoft's co-founder Paul Allen's crazy space venture: The largest airplane in history, a 385-foot (117-meter) wingspan beast designed to carry and launch a giant rocket to space, with a combined weigh of 1,200,000 pounds (540,000 kg)!
From
The Guardian:
No evidence of NSA and GCHQ Sim card hack, says allegedly compromised firm
The firm allegedly hacked by the NSA and GCHQ has stated that it cannot find any evidence that the US and UK security services breached and stole the encryption keys billions of Sim cards.
The alleged hack was revealed by documents from the NSA files provided by Edward Snowden, which detailed attacks on Gemalto – the world’s largest Sim card manufacturer – which allegedly saw them steal encryption keys that allowed them to secretly monitor voice calls and data from billions of mobile phones around the world.
But after an investigation, the Dutch security company, which supplies Sim cards to all of the major UK mobile phone networks and 450 operators globally, has said that no evidence of a theft of Sim card security details has been found.
From
Wired:
Google’s AI Is Now Smart Enough to Play Atari Like the Pros
Last year Google shelled out an estimated $400 million for a little-known artificial intelligence company called DeepMind. Since then, the company has been pretty tight-lipped about what’s been going on behind DeepMind’s closed doors, but here’s one thing we know for sure: There’s a professional videogame tester who’s pitted himself against DeepMind’s AI software in a kind of digital battle royale.
The battlefield was classic videogames. And according to new research published today in the science magazine Nature, Google’s software did pretty well, smoking its human competitor in a range of Atari 2600 games like Breakout, Video Pinball, and Space Invaders and playing at pretty close to the human’s level most of the time.
Google didn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars because it’s expecting an Atari revival, but this new research does offer a hint as to what Google hopes to achieve with DeepMind. The DeepMind software uses two AI techniques—one called deep learning; and the other, deep reinforcement learning. Deep-learning techniques are already widely used at Google, and also at companies such as Facebook and Microsoft. They help with perception—helping Android understand what you’re saying, and Facebook know who’s photo you just uploaded. But until now, nobody has really matched Google’s success at merging deep learning with reinforcement learning—those are algorithms that make the software improve over time, using a system of rewards.
By merging these two techniques, Google has built a “a general-learning algorithm that should be applicable to many other tasks,” says Koray Kavukcuoglu, a Google researcher. The DeepMind team says they’re still scoping out the possibilities, but clearly improved search and smartphone apps are on the radar.
From
The Atlantic:
Rape in the American Prison
His first cellmate was an older man, black like John, who was serving a life sentence, and he didn’t say much. But something about him seemed a little off, and that night, John says he awoke and saw this man sitting at a desk, wide awake, and staring right at him. John requested and received a new cell assignment. His second cellmate was also a lifer, and friendly enough, but after a few days the man asked to be paired with another lifer, so John was moved again.
It was around this time that the letters started sliding under his cell door. John would get a lot of letters from other prisoners over the next few months, and while they weren’t always explicit, some certainly were. “You are one sexy nigger,” one read. “You need a white man to show you how to act ... When the opportunity comes I want to sneak in your house and hit that.” Another letter said he had a “fan club.” John didn’t take these letters seriously; he threw many of them away. He settled into GED classes and shifts serving breakfast and lunch. From the prison library he pulled volumes ranging from the poems of Langston Hughes (“They’re so simple, but they explain so much”) to thriller paperbacks by Dean Koontz and James Patterson.
His new cellmate, whom we’ll call David, had already served a little more than a year out of a minimum of eight for robbery. He was in his early 20s, over six feet with a tuft on his chin and a thin mustache. They talked about their families and the crimes that had gotten them locked up.
But then David said something that struck John as strange. He asked him if he would ever get involved sexually with a man. John knew himself to be heterosexual; he had lost his virginity to a girl the year before. “I just kind of laughed it off,” he recalled. And then it happened. One night after the last count before bed, John says, his cellmate suddenly attacked him, pulling down both of their pants and wrestling him onto the bottom bunk. John tried to resist, but he was less than 140 pounds, and next to David’s bulk of more than 200 he stood little chance as this powerful man forced his way in, slowly and painfully and in silence, without a condom or lubricant.
From
CNN Money:
Bill O'Reilly now scrutinized for story of murdered nuns
The questions keep piling up for Bill O'Reilly, and increasingly those questions are being raised by a liberal media watchdog that has long feuded with the conservative Fox News host.
For the second time in as many days, Media Matters for America on Wednesday released a report detailing "an apparent fabrication" by O'Reilly. The latest round of scrutiny is over a claim by O'Reilly that he witnessed the murder of nuns in El Salvador.
Media Matters produced two clips of O'Reilly talking about the murders. During a December 2012 broadcast of "The O'Reilly Factor," the host recalled describing the atrocity to his mother. "When I would tell her, hey, mom, I was in El Salvador and I saw nuns get shot in the back of the head, she almost couldn't process it," O'Reilly said. "She couldn't process it, you know."
O'Reilly didn't detail when or where in El Salvador he saw those murders.
In a statement to CNNMoney on Wednesday night, O'Reilly said that reporters covering the conflict in El Salvador were shown "depictions of nuns who were murdered." He noted that his reference to the nuns in 2012 came on the day of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
From the
Wall Street Journal:
U.S. Productivity Now Grows Faster Than Jobs. What Changed?
Some economists call it the “great decoupling.”
For decades, U.S. productivity and total employment rose in lockstep. From 1953 to 1999, average annual growth in productivity was 2.1%, exactly the same as growth in jobs. As the U.S. grew richer and its workers generated more output with the aid of better machines, it created a correspondingly healthy number of new jobs.
But at the turn of the century, something changed. Since 1999, productivity growth kept rolling along at 2.1%–but job growth has slumped to an average of 0.5%. Part of the problem can be traced to the last recession, which hit the job market hard and was followed by an extremely slow recovery.
Beyond that, economists see two other longer-lasting forces at work: globalization and technological advances. The offshoring of work has helped make U.S. businesses more efficient, while new machines allow the remaining U.S. workers to produce more with less.
From
BBC News:
'Gerbils replace rats' as main cause of Black Death
Black rats may not have been to blame for numerous outbreaks of the bubonic plague across Europe, a study suggests. Scientists believe repeat epidemics of the Black Death, which arrived in Europe in the mid-14th Century, instead trace back to gerbils from Asia. Prof Nils Christian Stenseth, from the University of Oslo, said: "If we're right, we'll have to rewrite that part of history."
The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The Black Death, which originated in Asia, arrived in Europe in 1347 and caused one of the deadliest outbreaks in human history. Over the next 400 years, epidemics broke out again and again, killing millions of people. It had been thought that black rats were responsible for allowing the plague to establish in Europe, with new outbreaks occurring when fleas jumped from infected rodents to humans.
However, Prof Stenseth and his colleagues do not think a rat reservoir was to blame. They compared tree-ring records from Europe with 7,711 historical plague outbreaks to see if the weather conditions would have been optimum for a rat-driven outbreak.
He said: "For this, you would need warm summers, with not too much precipitation. Dry but not too dry. And we have looked at the broad spectrum of climatic indices, and there is no relationship between the appearance of plague and the weather."
From
Popular Science:
FOUND: YOUNG BLACK HOLE 12 BILLION TIMES MORE MASSIVE THAN OUR SUN
Deep within the universe, there lies a gigantic black hole in the midst of an extremely luminous disc. This space-time warp is so gigantic, it’s estimated to be 12 billion times more massive than our own Sun. That makes it one of the most massive deep-space black holes ever recorded.
Researchers from Peking University recently discovered this monster using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Two Micron All-Sky Survey, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. To measure its size, the team analyzed the luminosity surrounding the supermassive black hole. With their immense gravity, black holes are constantly sucking in gas and other materials from nearby. This process heats up the gas so much that it emits intense energy and thermal radiation that’s unbelievably bright.
This luminous energy is known as a quasar, and it can hold many clues about the black hole harboring within. “Using spectroscopy we can detect the emission of light surrounding black holes, then we can use the properties of this gas and the distance of this gas to estimate the mass of the black hole,” Xue-Bing Wu, the lead researcher on the Nature study, tells Popular Science.
From
Bloomberg:
Apple ordered to pay $533 million for infringing patents with iTunes
Apple Inc. was told to pay $532.9 million after a federal jury said the company’s iTunes software used a Texas company’s patented inventions without permission.
Closely held Smartflash LLC, which claimed that Apple infringed three patents, was seeking $852 million in damages, while Apple said it was worth $4.5 million at most. A federal jury in Tyler, Texas, where Smartflash is based, on Tuesday rejected Apple’s arguments that it didn’t use the inventions and that the patents were invalid.
The dispute is over digital rights management and inventions related to data storage and managing access through payment systems. Smartflash claimed that iTunes used the inventions in applications such as Game Circus LLC’s Coin Dozer and 4 Pics 1 Movie. Apple pledged to appeal.
From
ESPN:
Season feels as if it's over for Bulls
Late Monday night, after an unimpressive Bulls win over the Milwaukee Bucks, I found myself in the hallway outside of the United Center media room talking to one of Derrick Rose's close friends, Andre Hamlin, one of his former coaches at Simeon Career Academy.
We talk often at games, and this time we were chatting about Rose's off night -- he had missed 12 of 13 shots but still had eight assists. Hamlin didn't know what was up, exactly, with Rose's game, but he carried with him the optimism that Rose would be ready for the playoffs.
After all, aside from the MVP season, that was the story of Rose's career. He could coast at times, but he always came up big when it mattered.
"All he cares about is winning," Hamlin said. Fast-forward to late Tuesday night. I thought back to that conversation when I sat down, jarred by the news and empathetic to the person, to write about Rose's medial meniscus tear in his right knee, his second in 15 months.
So much changed in just a night.
From
NBC News:
Madonna Falls Off Stage During Brit Awards Performance
Pop diva Madonna says she's fine after a scary fall during a performance of her song "Living for Love" at the 2015 Brit Awards.
Things went wrong when Madonna's devilish dancers tried to remove her lengthy black cloak as she was perched precariously near the edge of the stage. That's when she tumbled backwards down a flight of stairs.
The seasoned pop star was able to finish the performance and later joked on Instagram about the irony of falling during her song about how love "lifted me up."
From
Rolling Stone:
Lady Gaga to Star in 'American Horror Story: Hotel'
After blowing away Academy Award audiences with her Sound of Music medley, Lady Gaga will return to the small screen in a much more terrifying role this October: The singer announced on Twitter that she will appear in the fifth season of FX's American Horror Story. The Hollywood Reporter takes it one step further, writing that Gaga will "star" in the fifth chapter of the anthology series, which the singer revealed would be called Hotel. "Make your reservation now," she tweeted.
Aside from headline-grabbing cameos in Machete Kills, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Muppets Most Wanted, AHS represents the Born This Way star's first reoccurring role and the first time where she wasn't "As Herself" on a television show.
AHS creator Ryan Murphy has often looked to the music world to flesh out his cast: On the Coven season, Murphy recruited Stevie Nicks to portray herself, albeit as a "white witch." Murphy also recently added Ariana Grande and Nick Jonas to his new Fox series Scream Queens. And a whole gamut of artists have appeared on Glee, which also once featured an entire episode dedicated to Gaga's music.
From
/Film:
Neill Blomkamp’s ‘Alien’ Will Disregard Half the Franchise to Finish Ripley’s Story
Fox is making Neill Blomkamp‘s new Alien movie, and Sigourney Weaver is definitely on board to reprise her Ellen Ripley role. And while we still don’t know the story, despite the teasing glimpses provided in concept art such as the pieces above, we do know something new: Blomkamp’s Alien will basically disregard Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection as the director says he’s designing the film to sit in sequence after Aliens.
There’s reason to be interested here. Blomkamp is clearly a guy with a vision (see: District 9) even if that vision doesn’t always work out (see: Elysium). And Weaver isn’t quick to sign on to sequels like this, so clearly she sees some reason to give the go-ahead nod.
But I’m also slightly irritated with this development, specifically the idea of disregarding the third and fourth films. Alien 3 and Resurrection don’t need me to defend them, as they can stand or fall on their own. But the implication here is that those two films blew it with respect to Ripley’s story, and now this is a chance to pretend they didn’t happen so as to give her, as Weaver says, “a proper finish.”
But Weaver is a big part of the reason Ripley didn’t get a proper finish in the past. Her ideas, and the “no guns” mandate, were very influential in the development of Alien 3. (Which is, I would argue, a pretty great end for Ripley’s story.) Weaver’s ideas and restrictions were also part of the DNA of Alien: Resurrection. This isn’t the time where she’s going to get candid about the past films and say “hey, I shoulder some of that responsibility.” But it would be nice to hear eventually, and also respectful to the people who worked hard on those movies.
From
Uproxx:
With ‘Parks and Recreation’ Over, Is The Network Primetime Comedy Dead?
Last night, after Parks and Recreation — a low-rated, but much beloved comedy – ended its seven-season run on NBC, it marked the end of an era. NBC and its primetime comedies have been a staple of, to borrow their tagline, must-see television since the mid-1980s, when The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Cheers, and Night Court were all shown on the same evening.
The NBC Thursday night lineup used to be so strong that even bad shows could do pretty okay if they were sandwiched in between, say, Friends and Seinfeld, which was NBC’s strategy: Move higher rated shows to another night to foster in new comedies. This was a smart strategy in theory, but it rarely worked. And it led to nights of true must-see television being short lived, as popular shows were jettisoned off to Tuesday to be replaced by something no one wanted ... For the 2014-2015 season, NBC aired The Biggest Loser on Thursday for the good portion of the season and is now airing The Slap and The Blacklist. It’s revealing that NBC didn’t even want to take a chance on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, a show produced by the powerhouse team of Robert Carlock and Tina Fey. It will now air on Netflix, where it will probably survive. And, not surprisingly, this is where the television comedy is most-likely headed. And that’s fine, but there was something nice about the communal experience of NBC’s Thursday night block of comedies.
So, is the television comedy dead? More specifically, is the network television comedy dead? As I type, there are (kind of surprisingly) 17 network comedies still airing — eight of those on ABC — and most of them (a show like Brooklyn Nine-Nine is an exception) seem aimed at the kind of person who enjoyed Everybody Loves Raymond. Basically, “easy” television. Just 10 years ago, there were 33 network sitcoms, and yes, most of those were for the Raymond crowd, too (including the actual Everybody Loves Raymond), but things were about to change. The Office had just premiered, and Arrested Development was on the air. Risks were being taken.
From
Billboard:
Mark Ronson & Bruno Mars Top Hot 100 Again; The Weeknd Enters Top 10
Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk!," featuring Bruno Mars, rules the Billboard Hot 100 for an eighth week, while The Weeknd's "Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey)" enters the top 10. The latter song joins another song from the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack in the top 10: Ellie Goulding's "Love Me Like You Do," which bounds 6-3.
It's a brand-spanking (to invoke Grey terminology) new Hot 100, so let's run down the key numbers in the top 10 on the sales/airplay/streaming-based chart, as we do each Wednesday.
"Funk!," released on RCA Records, leads Streaming Songs (19.8 million U.S. streams, up 9 percent, according to Nielsen Music) and the subscription services-based On-Demand Songs (5.4 million, down 1 percent) for a sixth week each.
On Radio Songs, "Funk" reigns for a fifth week with a 3 percent lift to 187 million in all-format audience. In the airplay chart's 24-year history, only eight songs have posted higher audience totals, led by Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," featuring T.I. and Pharrell, which peaked with 228.9 million on the Aug. 31, 2013, tally.
From
Hitfix:
What are Katee Sackhoff and James Van Der Beek doing in Joseph Kahn's 'Power/Rangers'?!
"The irony here is that I wouldn't even want to make "Power Rangers: The Movie' for real. Like if I had to make a 'Power Rangers' movie, this is it. It's 14 minutes long and it's violent and this is what I have in me. If they offered me the 200 million version, the PG-13 version, I literally wouldn't do it. It's just not interesting to me."
The first two words that come to mind are, indeed, "dark" and "gritty," and in this case, when I think those words, I start laughing. When I talked to Kahn about this originally, it was clear that he was going to push those two exact words as far as possible, in a very straightfaced way ... Let's be clear… I have no idea what Lionsgate is doing with their upcoming feature film version of the "Power Rangers" franchise, and I hope they pull off whatever it is they're going to try to do.
This is a fan film, and as such, it's amazing, because it is not an act of devotion to a property. Instead, it's a lacerating straight-faced comment on where we are with these movies. It's not just the "dark and gritty" approach, it's the use of a property that was little more than a cynical merchandising trick the first time around.