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On a chilly day at a vintage studio building on the Eastside of Los Angeles, Natasha Lyonne sat in front of a large-screen TV and played with a joystick.

The device in her hand looked a lot like a vintage Atari 2600 paddle, and as she spun it one way, then the other, images appeared, shapeshifted and melted into various forms of digital surreality; at one point the model generated a tableau it called “Artpixel Monochromatic Media Shower Fractal 3.”

Lyonne would occasionally emote to the two men sitting near her, who sometimes took the paddle. “Go back to the Rothko,” she exclaimed in her unmistakable Long Island rasp at one point, as onscreen an image popped up in the style of the American abstract expressionist and then just as quickly disappeared.

Lyonne is the co-founder of Asteria, an AI entertainment startup of the kind that has begun to dot both coasts...

Natasha Lyonne had a long press line clamoring for her attention Thursday night at the second season premiere of Peacock’s Poker Face in Hollywood. The veteran actress, whose multi-hyphenate duties on the critically acclaimed comedy series include writing, directing, starring and executive producing, didn’t have time to stop for every outlet before she was needed on the American Legion Post 43 stage to introduce the screening alongside her partner-in-crime Rian Johnson.

So she did something rare (and appreciated among the journalists left waiting outside) by heading to the stage to deliver those comments only to return to the red carpet and give every reporter some of her undivided attention. After detailing the “magic” of the new season thanks to a killer line-up of high-profile guest stars, The Hollywood Reporter asked Lyonne about that other new project of hers on the horizon — an artificial intelligence-infused film Uncanny Valley.

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Natasha Lyonne first burst onto the scene in the late '90s with her work in movies like American Pie and But I’m a Cheerleader, but she’s embraced a new level of stardom in the last few years. She took her fame to new levels thanks to her role as Nicky Nichols in Orange is the New Black, and more recently, she’s become known for playing Charlie Cale in Poker Face. It was announced earlier this week that Lyonne would make her directorial debut on Uncanny Valley, a new film that will see her work with Asteria, "an artist-led generative AI film and animation studio." Lyonne recently sat down with Collider’s Christina Radish to talk Poker Face Season 2, and she spoke about the team tasked with bringing Uncanny Valley to life:

"The subject matter is something that’s not too unknown. There’s a lot of information on it.

Natasha Lyonne has racked up over 130 screen acting credits over the course of a career that stretches back to the mid-1980s – and now she’s ready to make her feature directorial debut. Variety reports that Lyonne, who has co-founded an AI production studio called Asteria, will be taking the helm of Uncanny Valley, a film that will be made by “combining AI tools with traditional filmmaking techniques.” Asteria is described as an “artist-led, ethical AI film and animation studio.”

Lyonne wrote the screenplay with Brit Marling, the co-creator and co-showrunner of The Oa and A Murder at the End of the World. Lyonne and Marling will both have acting roles in the film, which is set in a parallel present and follows Mila, a teenage girl who begins to lose her grip on reality as a globally popular augmented reality video game starts glitching feverishly with increasingly dangerous real-world consequences.

In the world of constantly developing and evolving technology and artificial intelligence, it seems like even Hollywood’s entertainment industry doesn’t seem to be exempt from inching closer and closer to becoming heavily invested in it. This comes amidst the latest reports about Russian Doll actress Natasha Lyonne’s upcoming directorial project.

While there is still a lot of skepticism around the use of AI in these entertainment pieces, the actress, writer, director, and producer all in one is reportedly not hesitating to take the leap and allow artificial intelligence to dominate greater parts of filmmaking. This is because her next directorial flick is reportedly set to be made with the heavy use of AI.

Natasha Lyonne’s next project will have heavy traces of AI Natasha Lyonne. | Credits: Russian Doll / Netflix.

Even though the world still isn’t willing to let go of the creative touch of human-made projects,...

From the Slums of Beverly Hills to the heart of Silicon Valley: actress, writer, and director Natasha Lyonne isn’t shying away from artificial intelligence, even as fellow creatives in Hollywood fret over what the tech means for their industry.

As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter, Lyonne is teaming up with The Oa co-creator Brit Marling and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier on a sci-fi film called Uncanny Valley. The movie will include AI-generated visuals from Asteria, a self-described “artist-led generative AI film and animation studio” co-founded by Lyonne and her partner,...

Gold Derby's top news stories for April 29, 2025.

Julia Garner is under suspicion in creepy Weapons trailer

Weapons, the horror thriller from director Zach Cregger (Barbarian), got its first trailer, which introduces the highly anticipated film's story. One day, none of the kids in Mrs. Gandy's (Julia Garner) room show up to school, because at 2:17 the night before, they all left their houses and disappeared into the night. According to Cregger, the mystery is just the starting point. "By the midpoint, we've moved on to way crazier s--- than that," he told Entertainment Weekly. The cast also includes Josh Brolin, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Cary Christopher, Benedict Wong, and Amy Madigan. Weapons opens in theaters on Aug. 8.

There’s something wrong in Maybrook. #WeaponsMovie - only in theaters August 8. pic.twitter.com/Jb8xd5xkfq

— New Line Cinema (@newlinecinema) April 29, 2025

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Conan O'Brien's Kennedy...

We’ve been waiting to see what some true Hollywood mainstays can do with artificial intelligence in filmmaking, and announced today is a project that has the potential to break through into the mainstream in a big way.

“Poker Face” and “Russian Doll” star Natasha Lyonnne is set to make her feature directorial debut based on a script she co-wrote with “The Oa” and “Another Earth” writer Brit Marling. But what really sets the film apart is that it will be a live-action feature film that will blend with it generative AI animation. Lyonne is also teaming with Jaron Lanier, the futurist, author, VR pioneer, and visual effects artist, on the project to give the film a new look and show what they believe AI can really do.

The film too is about that very gulf between live-action and AI and why even as the technology has improved immensely, audiences...

AI production studio Asteria revealed its first live-action feature, titled “Uncanny Valley,” which will also mark the feature directorial debut of studio co-founder Natasha Lyonne and will be made by combining AI tools with “traditional” filmmaking techniques. Asteria describes itself as an “artist-led, ethical AI film and animation studio.”

Lyonne and Brit Marling – co-creator and co-showrunner with Zal Batmanglij on “The Oa” and “A Murder at the End of the World” – co-wrote the screenplay and will co-star. Set in a parallel present, “Uncanny Valley” follows Mila, a teenage girl who begins to lose her grip on reality as a globally popular augmented reality video game starts glitching feverishly with increasingly dangerous real-world consequences.

The movie’s “open world video game” component will be co-created by Lyonne, Marling and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier, involving Moonvalley’s “Marey” foundational AI model.

“The scope of what’s possible with these new technologies...

Natasha Lyonne is set to make her feature-length directorial debut with a new AI-generated movie. Lyonne will be joined by computer scientist and visual artist Jaron Lanier for the project.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed news of Lyonne's Uncanny Valley, a feature film "set in the world of immersive video games"' that plans to make "abundant" use of artificial intelligence. The project is backed by Asteria, a new AI-based studio founded by Lyonne and LA filmmaker/entrepreneur Bryn Mooser. A representative for Asteria said the film will "blend" traditional storytelling techniques with cutting-edge AI tech to create a "radical new cinematic experience."

Uncanny Valley's story will be directed by Lyonne from a script she wrote with Brit Marling, although it wasn't made clear in the original announcement if generative A.I. was involved in creating the script. The story is centered on a teenage girl who becomes entranced with...

Natasha Lyonne is set to make her feature directorial debut — with a big assist from artificial intelligence.

The “Poker Face” star is teaming up with Brit Marling and renowned computer scientist Jaron Lanier to create “Uncanny Valley,” a “hybrid film” that combines live action and AI. The new flick was announced on Tuesday by Asteria Studios, the self-described “ethical AI film and animation studio” that Lyonne co-founded alongside Bryn Mooser.

“Uncanny Valley,” per a release from Asteria, will be “powered by ‘Marey,’ the first clean foundational AI model developed by the engineers at Moonvalley, ensuring creative integrity and copyright transparency.”

Lyonne, in a statement shared with TheWrap, said it is “astounding” what can be created with AI when it is used “ethically and creatively.”

“Bringing something so bold to life feels radically expansive and exciting,” she said. “I’m immensely grateful for this opportunity from Asteria and to witness this...

You are not a gadget — but you might be immersed in an artificial intelligence-generated film.

In one of the more unusual creative collaborations to come along in a while, The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Jaron Lanier — the longtime technology innovator and sometime-skeptic — is teaming with Natasha Lyonne and Brit Marling for a new feature film that will be set in the world of immersive video games and make abundant use of AI.

Uncanny Valley, as the project is called, is backed by Asteria, the new AI-based studio founded by Lyonne and Los Angeles-based filmmaker and entrepreneur Bryn Mooser. Lyonne will direct from a script she wrote with Marling; both will star.

Centered on a teenage girl who becomes unmoored by a hugely popular Ar video game in a parallel present, the movie will blend traditional live-action and game elements. The latter will be created by Lanier as well as Lyonne and Marling.

Watch Dancing for the Devil to uncover cults, scams, and social media critiques in a shocking docuseries. The Wilking family's online efforts exposed Shinn's alleged cult practices in the Shekinah Church. Explore the dark side of online dating in The Tinder Swindler and learn about a $10 million scam.

Several excellent documentaries like Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult critique social media, uncover scams, and expose cults. Dancing for the Devil unveils shocking revelations about the alleged cult within the Shekinah Church. The three-part Netflix docuseries delves into the past and present actions of Robert Shinn, a Los Angeles pastor, through the narratives of two pairs of sisters. Melanie Wilking is worried about her sister Miranda, who joined the church after signing with Shinn's management company, 7M Films. The Lee sisters, Melanie and Priscylla, former members of the Shekinah Church, recount their troubling experiences with Shinn.

The series...

In his 2013 book “Who Owns the Future?” author, scientist and musician Jaron Lanier states that only few “people realize the degree to which they are being tracked and spied upon”. It is certainly true that with the advent of big data and tracking technology, following a flu outbreak, for example, is much less time-consuming and more reliable, but on the other hand, we are experiencing the abuse of such technology all over the world. Authoritarian states and employers have been caught using said technology to monitor other people, often under the pretense of national security or increasing efficiency. In her new documentary “Total Trust”, director Jialing Zhang takes a look at how big data and the Chinese government work hand in hand to perfect their control over Chinese citizens, and how this example may serve as a grim vision of a possible future going far beyond the borders of the country.

Writer/Director Natasha Kermani (Imitation Girl, Lucky) uses cyberpunk horror to tap into contemporary anxieties over technology in her V/H/S/85 segment “Tknogd.”

The latest anthology installment rewinds to a grittier 1985 and arrives exclusively on Shudder on October 6.

Bloody Disgusting caught up with Kermani ahead of V/H/S/85’s Shudder debut to learn more about her segment and its cyberpunk origins.

There was no question for the filmmaker that she’d tap into her love of sci-fi horror for “Tknogd.”

“Yeah, I just love that stuff,” Kermani says. “I mean, Johnny Mnemonic and Lawnmower Man, it’s just a very weird sub-genre. That was our goal. The pinnacle was, ‘Can we do Lawnmower Man?’ I really love the cyberpunk thing. Like, ‘hack the world, man.’ That was totally my vibe for a long time. So it was fun to get to go back to that world that I...

As the most followed woman on Instagram with a staggering 429 million followers, Selena Gomez has never been much concerned with social media success.

“I’ve never really cared about that stuff,” Gomez said at Universal Music Group and Thrive Global’s Music & Health Conference on Tuesday afternoon. “I suppose I’m grateful for the platform, and I would love to continue to use it for what I’m able to do, but numbers are just numbers.”

Rather, she’s well aware of the responsibility that comes with such a far-reaching platform. In her position, Gomez has heard from several fans about how her work has helped them through extremely difficult times. “It can be a little heavy,” she continued. “I feel for people, and I think that’s what kind of keeps me in check, to be honest. I think I can be a little reckless with my emotions and having conversations with young people,...

Brett Leonard's 1992 film "The Lawnmower Man" shares its title with a 1975 Stephen King short story, but the film and the source material couldn't be more different.

In King's original story, a man hires an unusual-looking gardener to mow his lawn, only to find out that the gardener's lawncare process involves stripping naked and eating grass clippings. Before the end of the tale, the gardener reveals himself to be a satyr who works for the god Pan and murders the protagonist.

Leonard's film, meanwhile, is about a kind, simple-minded handyman named Jobe (Jeff Fahey). Jobe is beloved by the denizens of his small town but is grievously abused by his caretaker, the local priest. Just outside of town is an experimental, computer-based mind laboratory that has been using a combination of drugs and virtual reality equipment to transform chimpanzees into cybernetically enhanced soldiers. When a chimp experiment goes awry, one scientist named Dr.

Pharrell Williams is launching a new podcast company, OTHERtoneMedia, and will spearhead the network’s first show, OTHERtonewith Pharrell, Scott, and Fam-Lay, which is set to premiere December 7th, with new episodes available every Monday.

OTHERtone is spun-off from Pharrell’s Beats 1 Radio show, which he co-hosted with Scott Vener — a music supervisor for shows like Ballers, Entourage, and How to Make It In America — who will follow Pharrell to the new series. Fam-Lay (born Nathaniel Johnson), the show’s third co-host, is an artist, manager, and media exec, whose...

Jeff Orlowski’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” which was released on Netflix last month, lays out a compelling case that social media platforms are irresponsibly wielding their power, dividing society with addictive misinformation, and contributing to everything from genocide to suicide. Now, one of the companies in the film’s crosshairs, Facebook, is firing back, arguing that the movie unfairly scapegoats Facebook for problems that already exist in society and relies on sensationalism to prove its points.

“Rather than offer a nuanced look at technology, it gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems,” the Facebook rebuttal reads. “The film’s creators do not include insights from those currently working at the companies or any experts that take a different view to the narrative put forward by the film. They also don’t acknowledge — critically...

Financier and alleged sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein confided to prominent scientists and businessmen a vision of seeding the human race with his DNA by impregnating women at his sprawling New Mexico ranch. The disgraced hedge fund manager, who was charged in July with sex trafficking dozens of underage girls as young as 14, had discussed the idea since the early 2000s at assorted dinners and gatherings — outlining a plan wherein women would be inseminated with his sperm and birth his children, four unnamed sources told The New York Times.

While there...

Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Robert De Niro will hold a Tribeca Talk with Martin Scorsese Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

David O Russell with his Silver Linings Playbook; American Hustle and Joy star Jennifer Lawrence; Guillermo del Toro, director of the Oscar-winning The Shape Of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth; and Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro will participate in the Tribeca Talks: Directors Series during the Tribeca Film Festival. Sarah Silverman with Mike Birbiglia; Michael J Fox with Denis Leary; Rashida Jones, Questlove, and Jaron Lanier have been announced for the Tribeca Talks: Storytellers program.

David O Russell in a Tribeca Talk with Jennifer Lawrence Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

“Our Tribeca Talks have been so successful because they bring together cultural icons to discuss and debate a wide range of topics,” said Paula Weinstein, Evp of Tribeca Enterprises. “With each participant comes a different perspective and set of career experiences, which, when...

Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro are reuniting on stage for an in-depth conversation about their respective careers at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

The festival on Tuesday announced its lineup of Tribeca Talks, and Scorsese and festival founder De Niro’s conversation will headline the Directors Series.

The duo will talk about their long, intertwined careers, beginning with “Mean Streets” and through “The Irishman,” which will be released on Netflix later this year. That project is their first time collaborating since 1995’s “Casino.” Together they’ve worked on nine films, including “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “The King of Comedy” and “Cape Fear.” The chat between Scorsese and De Niro takes place on April 28 at the Beacon Theater in New York City.

Also Read: Danny Boyle's Beatles Musical 'Yesterday' to Close Tribeca Film Festival

Also added to the Tribeca Talks series as part of the Directors Series are conversations with Guillermo del Toro,...

The Tribeca Film Festival’s speaker lineup will feature collaborators Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, as well as directors Guillermo del Toro, David O. Russell and Dee Rees, producer Irwin Winkler and performers including Michael J. Fox and Queen Latifah.

Tribeca Talks, as the roster of discussions is known, will once again unite some interesting pairs, some familiar and others more surprising. In addition to Scorsese and De Niro, who first teamed on Mean Streets in 1973 and have The Irishman coming via Netflix this year, Denis Leary will speak with Fox, Mike Birbiglia will share the stage with Sarah Silverman, and Jennifer Lawrence will appear with Russell.

The director of American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook, both of which starred Lawrence, has long had ties to Tribeca and has worked several times with De Niro, the festival’s co-founder. During a conversation at last year’s Tribeca fest between...

Finding the Legendary booth on the floor of the main exhibition hall at Comic-Con is always fairly easy, because they don't do things by half-measures. This year, all you had to do was look for Ogrim, the giant Orc wielding the massive Doomhammer, and that's exactly where I found Duncan Jones, director of next June's "Warcraft." Google Cardboard struck a deal with Legendary to help them create a very nice viewer for the new Legendary Vr app that was being demoed at the booth. I got to run through all three of the experiences that they've put together, one of which was clearly based directly on last year's full-sized Jaeger Pilot exhibit. They've also created a "Crimson Peak" experience which is one long walk down a haunted hallway in the bones of the home that serves as the focus of Guillermo Del Toro's new film. Finally, they've created a...

Video Games: The Movie takes a breezy tour of history, but shows mainstream gaming in a less than favourable light, Ryan writes...

There is no propaganda in the Star Wars movies. You don't see posters devoted to praising Emperor Palpatine's benign leadership. You don't see adverts or bill board posters positioning Darth Vader as a wheezing man of the people.

But if you did see propaganda in the Star Wars universe, it might look a little bit like Video Games: The Movie - a slickly-produced, 105-minute hymn to an industry that is itself an all-conquering empire. Valued at approximately $66bn in 2013, gaming is now the most lucrative form of entertainment on the planet - and filmmaker Jeremy Snead's documentary charts the medium's rise with unquestioning fervour, from its bleeping, rudimentary inception in the middle of the 20th century to its technically astonishing achievements in the present.

There are contributions...

From new voices like NoViolet Bulawayo to rediscovered old voices like James Salter, from Dave Eggers's satire to David Thomson's history of film, writers, Observer critics and others pick their favourite reads of 2013. And they tell us what they hope to find under the tree …

Curtis Sittenfeld

Novelist

My favourite books of 2013 are Drama High (Riverhead) by Michael Sokolove, Sea Creatures (Turnaround) by Susanna Daniel, and & Sons (Harper Collins) by David Gilbert. Drama High is incredibly smart, moving non-fiction about an American drama teacher who for four decades coaxed sophisticated and nuanced theatrical performances out of teenage students who weren't privileged or otherwise remarkable and in so doing, changed their conceptions of what they could do with their lives. Sea Creatures is a gripping, beautifully written novel about the mother of a selectively mute three-year-old boy; when she takes a job ferrying supplies to a hermit off the coast of Florida,...

Odd List Ryan Lambie 16 Apr 2013 - 06:46

Eccentric and sometimes ungainly, here are seven 80s videogames that were full of innovative or outlandish ideas...

Placing our rose-tinted goggles of nostalgia aside for one moment, it's fair to say that a large percentage of games from the 1980s were painfully simplistic. But in among all the clones of popular arcade machines, which were ubiquitous on computers and consoles throughout the decade, there were legion lesser-known games which were full of innovative ideas and a sense of ambition that far outstripped their technical resources.

Not all of these ideas necessarily came off in the way they were intended, admittedly; while some are utterly brilliant, in other instances, their outlandish concepts were let down by some iffy execution. This list is devoted to the more eccentric games of the 1980s; the ones full of imagination and wit, and which, although not necessarily discussed much today,...

I'd been waiting to watch this. Jesse Jackson, Krs-One, Q-Tip, Estelle, ?uestlove, Touré, Michael Eric Dyson, Tricia Rose, dream hampton, P. J. O'Rourke, Jaron Lanier, and some 10 other rappers, poets, academics and pundits came together in London on June 26th, just 3 days ago, to debate the motion, "Hip-Hop on Trial: Hip-Hop Doesn't Enhance Society, It Degrades it," chaired by the BBC's Emily Maitlis, and moderated online by Jemima Khan. Presented by Intelligence Squared and Google+, it was the third in their new joint debate series, Versus.  Watch the 2 hour global debate below; a little something for when you've got some time...

Cosmopolis

Directed by David Cronenberg

Written by David Cronenberg

Canada / France, 2012

‘I know this’ is a frequent mantra of many of the broadly stricken characters in David Cronenberg’s film Cosmopolis, his new adaptation of the 2003 novella by Dom Delillo, as a statement of fact it is as reliable and secure as this wildly uneven post-millennium study which feels at least a decade behind the curve, as snarled up in its cultural critiques as Eric Packer’s unwieldy mode of transport is asphyxiating in the web of New York streets. As I took my seat in the local multiplex I was highly amused to bear witness to a seemingly endless parade of trailers for the most nauseatingly trite rom-coms - I just can’t imagine why they are anticipating a vapid female audience for this movie – as well as being presented with a first look at Soderbergh’s upcoming male stripper drama Magic Mike.

In his documentary feature directing debut Welcome to the Machine, Avi Zev Weider uses the occasion of the birth of his triplets to take a look at how technology intermingles with and affects our humanness. The SXSW competition documentary will have its world premiere Saturday, March 10, at the Vimeo Theater at 11 a.m. Ray Kurzweil and Jaron Lanier, who are both featured in the film, will participate in panels during the SXSW Interactive festival running concurrent with the film portion. THR here hosts an exclusive clip from the movie. Watch it above.    

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Amazon.com's movie studio promised to throw the development process open to the masses. One year on, how has the crowdsourced screenplay caught on?

There is something wrong with modern Hollywood – we can agree on that. Too many remakes and sequels and prequels; far too many computer game and toy adaptations. Everyone thinks the profit-focused, top-down system is too busy chasing "pre-branded content" to find new talent, and too risk-averse to take a chance on original stories. Industry insiders complain as much as moviegoers, but viable alternatives are thin on the ground. Until a year ago.

In November last year, Amazon.com, the online book merchants turned internet visionaries, announced the launch of a new kind of movie studio. Their idea was to throw open the gates to all comers, regardless of geographic location, industry connections or – some would say – talent. The goal, according to their own website is: "To...

Facebook is a 'beloved interface with reality' for its users and the previous generation doesn't get that, Zadie Smith has written

In the early 90s, before Google (founded 1998) and Facebook (2004), the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland popularised a term that described the post-baby boom generation: Generation X. But kids today aren't slackers, they're geeks, and it's clear that new terminology is needed for a new generation.

So it is that Zadie Smith, writing in the New York Review of Books, describes "2.0 people". These are the children of the internet who came of age with the social web and to whom concepts such as "privacy" are just plain alien. But credit where credit's due.

"You can't help feel a little swell of pride in this 2.0 generation," writes the novelist. "They've spent a decade being berated for not making the right sorts of paintings or novels or music or politics. Turns out the...

In the new issue of the New York Review of Books, literary bright young thing Zadie Smith reflects on "The Social Network," Facebook, Jaron Lanier's book "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto" and the mystery of Mark Zuckerberg.

Personally I don't think Final Clubs were ever the point; I don't think exclusivity was ever the point; nor even money. E Pluribus Unum--that's the point. Here's my guess: he wants to be like everybody else. He wants to be liked. Those 1.0 people who couldn't understand Zuckerberg's apparently ham-fisted PR move of giving the school system of Newark $100 million on the very day the movie came out--they just don't get it. For our self-conscious generation (and in this, I and Zuckerberg, and everyone raised on TV in the Eighties and Nineties, share a single soul), not being liked is as bad as it gets. Intolerable to be thought of badly for a minute,...

sachin_tendulkar_11.jpg

The annual Time 100 issue names the people who most affect our world.

Indians who made it to the list are Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (3rd time), Sachin Tendulkar (1st time) and Chetan Bhagat (1st time).

Unfortunately Shah Rukh Khan (0 times) couldn't make it to the list. Preity Zinta (0 times) was also said to be in the running, but she couldn't make it either!

Interestingly, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan made a wild card entry into the Time 100 Alumnae list along with the likes of Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Palin, Alicia Keys and Serena Williams. What is interesting to note is that, where as Singh, Srk, Preity, Bhagat made (or didn't make) to the list through votes, The Time 100 alumnae list was exclusively chosen by the Time panel of judges choosing the ones from the previous lists who had made the most impact and had the highest influence on the world...

"Nobody on the web has figured out how to make any money," I said one day before a screening at the Sundance Film Festival. I was talking to another movie critic whose reviews were also online.

"My wife has," said a voice behind me. I turned around and saw a robust man in a ski sweater who seemed to be bursting with things to tell me.

"Your wife?" I said.

"She has a Web site that's making a lot of money."

"Who is she?"

"Her name on the Web is Danni Ashe."

Danni Ashe! The name rang more than a bell. Danni Ashe, proprietor of Danni's Hard Drive One of those few webmasters capable of taking their shirts off without driving down the hit count.

That was 13 years ago. The last time I heard from Danni and her husband, Bert Manzari, they were living happily in one of those states with ski slopes.

Last night PBS's Frontline screened "Digital Nation," an excellent examination of the consequences of digital culture. It's all watchable online too. The show's expert correspondent is Douglas Rushkoff, an early Internet apostle who, like another Internet champion Jaron Lanier, is having second thoughts about what the cybergenie is ushering in now we've uncorked its botttle. In the show, we meet a video-game addicted South Korean teen; and a bunch of college kids who are multitasking whizzes -- supposed whizzes, that is, until we learn from a psych experiment that they're lousy at all the cognitive skills involved. Are we raising a generation of kids (man, their multitasking makes your head spin) who are lacking real analytic skills? But the show doesn't address one great elephant in the room: the devouring presence of digital porn. Too steamy for public TV? Too bad....