WASHINGTON – Actor Tim Allen has joined the cast of new movie aimed at disrupting the liberal and PC culture in Hollywood, on college campuses and in comedy.

Allen’s “Last Man Standing” sitcom was canceled last year and outraged fans believe ABC pulled the plug because the family comedy highlighted conservative values. ABC denied it was over politics.

Allen has signed onto the docudrama “No Safe Spaces” that’s expected to hit theaters in the fall.

Fellow comedian Adam Carolla and conservative radio show host Dennis Prager are making the movie to promote free speech at a time they say the entertainment industry, media and college campuses too often shut down or blackball controversial viewpoints.

When it came out in 1995, Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell showed the world what the art of Japanese animation could do with the kind of gritty, tech-saturated, globalized cyberpunk visions popularized in the previous decade by William Gibson and other writers. The film's particularly successful release in the United Kingdom got some culturally savvy marketers in Ireland thinking: why not use this sort of thing to sell beer?

But rather than ripping it off and watering it down — all too par for the course in advertising — they hired animators straight from Production I.G., Ghost in the Shell's studio, to create a whole new animated cyberpunk reality, the one in which Last Orders, the minute-long spot above, takes place. The 1997 commercial tells the story of six samurai rushing through a cityscape that has everything we've now come to expect from this genre: forests of high-rises, bustling streets, mysterious women, artificial humanoids, the technological everywhere merged with the organic, and neon signs aplenty.

http://www.openculture.com/2018/01/when-japans-top-animators-made-a-thrilling-cyberpunk-commercial-for-irish-beer-watch-last-orders-1997.html

Steve Wynn is under siege. The casino magnate is facing a range of allegations—from sexual harassment to forced sex—from former female employees, according to The Wall Street Journal. Then on Saturday, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel announced she had accepted Wynn’s resignation as the RNC’s finance chair. Wynn called the claims of assault “preposterous” in a statement, but the board of directors of Wynn Resorts has formed a committee of independent directors to investigate the allegations in the article.

But there’s no indication that President Donald Trump is moving to sever ties with his fellow mogul. Trump loves people who flatter him, and Wynn flatters him profusely. In other words, Wynn may be the most controversial example of Trump’s insistence on surrounding himself with successful businessmen despite the baggage they bring—but he’s also part of a larger pattern.

The close relationship between the two men is a recent development. During the Republican primary, Senator Ted Cruz met privately with Wynn to discuss a potential endorsement when he was in Las Vegas for a primary debate, in December of 2015. Wynn, whose net worth Forbes estimates at $3.5 billion, had given money to Cruz in the past, and the Texas lawmaker’s team hoped to score his official imprimatur.

The meeting went well. According to a person with direct knowledge of the gathering, who requested anonymity so as to discuss a confidential conversation, Wynn expressed optimism about Cruz’s chances within the crowded GOP field. Wynn then lambasted Trump, the frontrunner at the time, castigating the real-estate mogul’s record as a “businessman” and “casino owner.” Wynn snickered about how Trump’s Vegas property stood pitifully far from the Strip, the stretch of land coveted by any hopeful casino or hotel owner in the city. “He was just clowning on him,” the source recalled. (Asked about this account, a spokesman for Wynn said, “Mr. Wynn does not reveal personal conversations.”)

Twenty-six percent of the Netherlands lies below sea level, making the country vulnerable to floods. This is especially true of the 2000-year-old city of Nijmegen, which straddles the Waal river. The town is home to many examples of flood-resistant infrastructure, but one footbridge there works a bit differently. Instead of building it around the threat of rising waters, the designers of the Zalige bridge made a crossing that changes along with its environment, according to Co.Design.

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NEXT writes on the project webpage, "As a crest above the river, the bridge emphasizes the dynamic character of water by letting people see and experience the changing river landscape."