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Welcome to Cheat Sheet, our breakdown-style reviews of festival films, VR previews, and other special event releases. This review comes from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

When a real-life killer finds fame on a forum or a social network a trend thats become depressingly frequent in recent years there are two common conclusions. The first is that social media is some kind of new, unprecedented evil, as if the Zodiac killer never crafted an elaborate brand strategy through local newspapers, or TV news never helped turn mass shooters into celebrities. The second is that modern web platforms simply produce their own distinct kinds of nightmares, ones that twist their wholesome promises of openness and trust.

Spree, a horror-comedy directed by Eugene Kotlyarenko, captures the latter with remarkable style. It uses an experimental blend of naturalistic filmmaking and footage from phone apps, following a man who wants desperately and pathetically to be noticed even if that involves a mass murder campaign with a viral hashtag.

Sprees plot is basically a Black Mirror episode, and its aesthetic blends found-footage techniques with the screen film style of movies like Searching and Unfriended. Most action is shot diegetically through GoPro and phone cameras, including a lot of Periscope-esque vertical video overlaid with audience reactions.

Tonally, its a sometimes queasy mix of satire and slasher film, carried by an over-the-top performance from Stranger Things star Joe Keery. The plot isnt based on true events, but its tied fairly realistically into the world of tech and social media, fictionalizing some controversies and referencing an actual mass murder by an Uber driver in 2016.

A failed pseudo-Uber driver and internet content creator (Keery) decides to go viral by embarking on a livestreamed murder spree called #TheLesson. This is unbearably and intentionally cringeworthy.

Kurt (who introduces himself as KurtsWorld96) is a social media strategy guide made flesh. Hes a self-described content creator who produces hours of bad electronic music and introspective videos that nobody watches. His idea of a conversation-starter is how did you grow your following?, and his face is set permanently in a manic grin. As a driver for the ride-hailing app Spree, he obsessively asks riders to tag him on Instagram and swears that he always follows back.

#TheLesson, an elaborate scheme to kill Spree users, is Kurts final attempt to grow his audience. But a depressingly mediocre streamer who murders people... is still just a depressingly mediocre streamer. So to his horror, nobody really cares or even believes the deaths are real. As Kurt goes to greater and greater lengths to impress viewers, he becomes fixated on a successful social media star named Jessie Adams (Sasheer Zamata), who has started to have her own misgivings about being famous online.

Spree is a savage dissection of digital social climbing. Kurt is at the bottom of the ladder, obviously. But as the film expands its focus to Jessie, we see the same dynamics play out at other levels of internet stardom. Characters engage with each other by carefully identifying their relative status, then trying to film or be filmed by the biggest star in the room conveyed through some effective editing tricks, like scenes playing out across footage from several peoples phones at once.

This behavior looks a lot like old-fashioned power jockeying. But Spree emphasizes the specific pressure of social medias instant feedback loop and hyper-quantification. Comments from fans pop up at the bottom of the screen, sometimes mocking the characters and sometimes egging them on. Instead of subjectively judging somebodys influence, people rely on the merciless metrics of views and follower counts.

Spree also puts forward a bleakly amoral vision of the internet economy. Kurts politics are all monetization strategies hell call out a white supremacist on his live murder stream because platforms dont like racism, and he despises homeless people because they arent online enough. His hashtag, #TheLesson, evokes an aggrieved alt-right troll or an overzealous social justice crusade. But its actually a literal guide for getting famous, including an instructional video for a deadly craft project.

Jessie, meanwhile, is a black woman whose comedy calls out racism and misogyny. But in Spree, shes stuck playing the same game as Kurt any genuine idealism is quickly captured, repackaged, and posted online. The real-world internet culture wars still exist here, but theyre just opposing corners of one big content farm.

Keery pulls off the trick of being creepy, sad, and fun to watch even as hes descending deeper and deeper into monstrosity. And the film leans hard into dark comedy rather than outright horror, which saves it from seeming like technophobic scaremongering or a kids these days moral panic. If youre the kind of person who can laugh at slapstick murder vignettes, a lot of Spree works very well.

On the other hand, those vignettes eventually start feeling repetitive. Spree stalls out in the middle with some scenes that are fun on their own, but dont add enough to the films central joke that social media fans are shallow and think everything is a prank. Kurts victims are usually as unpleasantly self-obsessed as he is, so with the exception of Jessie, its hard to get invested in their fates. And when Spree fully commits to the idea that Kurts murders are a microcosm of... *film gesticulates wildly at social media*, it doesnt have enough time to make its case.

Spree is currently seeking distribution.

More:
Spree review: in search of an audience - The Verge

Theres a flip side to N.J.s federal tax story

Your front-page article New Jersey last in rate of return on federal taxes raised a lot of questions. When was the last year New Jersey got more in return than what it sent to Washington in federal taxes? Since we have not had a Republican senator representing us since 1972, you would think that might be something important to include in your article.

The article quotes New Jersey lawmakers as knowing what the problem is, citing the presidents tax law and its $10,000 cap on state and local taxes that can be deducted.

Is the average New Jerseyan paying less in federal taxes under the new tax law in spite of the $10,000 cap? If so, then perhaps the three years Trump has been president is not the problem. However, to raise these issues in your article might make some readers wonder just what have these Democratic congressmen and senators been doing for New Jersey all these years.

Armand Rose, North Arlington

Some crimes are worse than others

Paul Mulshine misses some important points in his column, Bridgegate case may take a toll on feds power.

First, although Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly may not have technically committed a federal crime (yet to be decided by the Supreme Court), they certainly abused their power by inconveniencing thousands of people who were just trying to get to work. And they should be punished for doing so.

Second, although I dont agree that significant financial contributions to a college should provide a persons child admission to that college, it is certainly better than bribing a college employee for the same purpose. Mulshine contends that both cases resulted in an unqualified kid taking the seat of a better student. This is true. But the significant contribution to the college allows the school to subsidize the tuition for many better students who otherwise could not afford to attend that school. A bribe to a college staff member, however, benefits only the staff member and the unqualified student.

The latter case should not be tolerated.

Richard Andersen, Somerset

Murphys been a wreck for a while

Why did it take columnist Tom Moran so long (Murphy stands in way of clearing up campaign controversy,) to realize Gov. Phil Murphy is damaged goods?

Gaither Shaw, Mountainside

Murphys successes are too costly for me

In his State of the State address, Gov. Phil Murphy trumpeted his successes over his first two years. Among his favorites are his new family leave and temporary disability programs. He calls it a win for the middle class. Now comes word in The Star-Ledger (Expansion of family leave, disability hits paychecks,) how much that win will cost us: Middle-class workers will pay up to an extra $480 per year for this benefit. Employers will bear none of the extra cost. Please, governor. No more wins for me. I cant afford it.

Michael Pickert, Livingston

Column wrong on anti-Zionism

David Letwins guest opinion column is riddled with falsehoods. It was not the Trump State Department that adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. In fact, it was the Obama State Department that did so, a fact that will doubtless cast the decision in a different light for some readers.

It is wrong to write that responsibility for resurgent anti-Semitism lies with a white nationalist alt-right just weeks after horrific attacks against Jews in Monsey, New York, and Jersey City. Neither attacks was carried out by white supremacists.

It is disingenuous to portray Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the boycott-divestment-sanctions movement, as a paragon of democracy and acceptance. Heres another Barghouti quote: Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.

Indeed, the entire column rests on the incorrect assertion that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. Anti-Zionists say that, alone among the nations of the world, Jews should not have a state, even while calling for the creation of a Palestinian state.

What should we call national discrimination against Jews if not anti-Semitism?

Seffi Kogen, Fair Lawn; Global director of young leadership, American Jewish Committee

The Star-Ledger/NJ.com encourages submissions of opinion. Bookmark NJ.com/Opinion. Follow us on Twitter @NJ_Opinion and on Facebook at NJ.com Opinion. Get the latest news updates right in your inbox. Subscribe to NJ.coms newsletters.

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Were getting less cash from Washington? So just what has our Congressional delegation been doing for us? | L - NJ.com

Facial recognition is really bad at recognizing faces. As The Denver Post recently reported: A test done by a grassroots campaign to ban facial recognition technology in Denver found it falsely matched Denver City Council members to people in the sex offender registry. The people behind an initiative to ban facial recognition surveillance in Denver, said they believe the technology isnt ready for law enforcement.

A big concern that our group has is the proliferation of false positive responses that this technology puts out there, said committee member Connors Swatling. Swatling ran a test with Amazons Rekognition software. He compared the photos of Denver City Council members to about 2,000 photos from the Denver County Sex Offender Registry. It took him three days to run the data.

The results we got back were pretty astounding, Swatling said. In some cases, as many as four false positives from a pool of 2,000 images, which is a very small pool.

Merlin facial recognition. Image courtesy The New York Times

Swatling said Council member Chris Hinds photo falsely matched with four different registered sex offenders. Their crimes ranged from sexual assault of a child to criminal attempt sexual assault on a child. His test found nine council members had photos that matched with someone in the sex offender registry. In some cases, the software was 92% confident the photos were a match.

There are ways this technology can do a lot of good, but its not ready to be implemented by Denver municipal agencies just yet, Swatling said.

What is even more troubling is that someone has claimed that he and his company have solved these problems. And theyve done it by scraping pictures of people off of social and digital media sites. Scraping is using machine learning programs to go and search for data using a set of parameters and once the data is found it is grabbed and returned to the person who initiated the search.

Scraping imagery from social and digital media sites is also a violation of almost every social and digital media platforms and companies terms of service. What could make this even worse? The guy who now has more than three billion peoples digital pictures just handed them over to law enforcement. Not because warrants were issued, not because a subpoena was issued, but because he can make money from doing it.

From The New York Times:

Until recently, a fellow named Hoan Ton-Thats greatest hits included an obscure iPhone game and an app that let people put Donald Trumps distinctive yellow hair on their own photos.

Then Ton-That an Australian techie and onetime model did something momentous: He invented a tool that could end your ability to walk down the street anonymously. He provided it to hundreds of law enforcement agencies, ranging from local cops in Florida to the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security.

His tiny company, Clearview AI, devised a groundbreaking facial recognition app. You take a picture of a person, upload it and get to see public photos of that person, along with links to where those photos appeared. The system whose backbone is a database of more than three billion images that Clearview claims to have scraped from Facebook, YouTube, Venmo and millions of other websites goes far beyond anything ever constructed by the United States government or Silicon Valley giants.

Federal and state law enforcement officers say that while they have only limited knowledge of how Clearview works and who is behind it, they have used its app to help solve shoplifting, identity theft, credit card fraud, murder and child sexual exploitation cases.

Until now, technology that readily identifies everyone based on his or her face has been taboo because of its radical erosion of privacy. Tech companies capable of releasing such a tool have refrained from doing so. In 2011, Googles chairman at the time said it was the one technology the company had held back because it could be used in a very bad way.

Facial recognition technology is not always accurate at correctly identifying faces. Image by Rapid API.

Some large cities, including San Francisco, have barred police from using facial recognition technology. But without public scrutiny, according to the company, more than 600 law enforcement agencies have started using Clearview in the past year. It declined to provide a list. The computer code underlying its app, analyzed by The New York Times, includes programming language to pair it with augmented-reality glasses; users would potentially be able to identify every person they saw. The tool could identify activists at a protest or an attractive stranger on the subway, revealing not just their names but where they lived, what they did and whom they knew.

What could possibly go wrong?

Begin with the fact that Ton-That advertised his services as being available for use to influence elections. Add that he sold this technology to white supremacist, anti-Semite Paul Nehlen, who attempted to run for Speaker Paul Ryans seat in Wisconsin, until the Wisconsin state Republican Party rightly kicked him out of the party for his egregious views. Then add that he has cozied up to alt-right, Holocaust denier Chuck Johnson, who was banned from Twitter and with whom the Capitol Police had to intervene because he was stalking Speaker Boehner.

From Buzzfeed: Originally known as Smartcheckr, Clearview was the result of an unlikely partnership between Ton-That, a small-time hacker turned serial app developer, and Richard Schwartz, a former adviser to thenNew York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Ton-That told The Times that they met at a 2016 event at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, after which they decided to build a facial recognition company.

The following February, Smartcheckr LLC was registered in New York, with Ton-That telling The Times that he developed the image-scraping tools while Schwartz covered the operating costs. By August that year, they registered Clearview AI in Delaware, according to incorporation documents.While theres little left online about Smartcheckr, BuzzFeed News obtained and confirmed a document, first reported by the Times, in which the company claimed it could provide voter ad micro-targeting and extreme opposition research to Paul Nehlen, a white nationalist who was running on an extremist platform to fill the Wisconsin congressional seat of the departing speaker of the House, Paul Ryan.

A Smartcheckr contractor, Douglass Mackey, pitched the services to Nehlen. Mackey later became known for running the racist and highly influential Trump-boosting Twitter account Ricky Vaughn. Described by the Huffington Post as Trumps most influential white nationalist troll, Mackey built a following of tens of thousands of users with a mix of far-right propaganda, racist tropes, and anti-Semitic cartoons. MITs Media Lab ranked Vaughn, who used multiple accounts to dodge several bans, as one of the top 150 influencers of the 2016 presidential election ahead of NBC News and the Drudge Report.

Right now the only thing standing between significant numbers of U.S. Federal, state, and local law enforcement officers (perhaps under the guise in facial recognition use to identify potential suspects) gaining access to pictures of your face, without any legal justification for getting the pictures is whether or not Mr. Ton-Thats scraping algorithms have collected every picture of you thats ever been posted on line. Current federal and state law and regulations, as well as local ordinances, do not really address this. There is almost no existing protection for any of us, from whatever Mr. Ton-That decides he wants to use our pictures for in pursuit of his personal profit.

The only real deterrent, which does not seem to be doing any actual deterring, is the potential that Facebook or Twitter or YouTube (Google) or Vimeo, etc. might sue Mr. Ton-That for violating their terms of service. Right now Mr. Ton-That, based on pictures of you posted on the Internet, knows if youve been sleeping, he knows if youre awake, he knows if youve been bad or good, so Well you get the idea and it isnt a pleasant one!

Read this article:
Thinking Security: Facial Recognition - Really Bad at Recognizing Faces, With Odd Links to Bad Guys - by Jan Wondra - The Ark Valley Voice

Reading Time: 3 minutes

LONDON Ricky, Ricky, Ricky (Gervais), what have you done? You crazy, mixed-up comedy kid (aged 58). I love your work, dude. The Office, Extras, and After Life are innovative comedy gold in the Larry David class, but your edgy Golden Globe monologue roasting Hollywood pieties has been reverse-engineered into a monster on social media.

So if you do win, dont use it as a platform to make a political speech to lecture the public If you do win come up accept your little award. Thank your agent, thank your God and f**k off, you told the glitzy audience and it was sweet music to the angry Trump/Brexit echo chamber. Last week, it was even weaponized to take aim at the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, well, Captain Jean-Luc Picard to be precise, in the shape of the actor Sir Patrick Stewart.

Sir Patrick, a high-profile campaigner to stop the UK leaving the European Union, told a reporter Brexit was the grimmest thing to have happened to him in his political life. Cue the social media pile-on and the brandishing of the Gervais monologue as the go-to cudgel to beat him into silence.

Twenty-four hours later and the same cohort produced what is known in British newspaper slang as a reverse ferret: A sudden reversal in an editorial or political line on a certain issue (a ferret being a domesticated polecat trained to drive rats from their burrow). This time an actor spouting off about politics was hailed as an anti-woke hero, by the same voices who had roared their approval when Gervais told the Hollywood liberal establishment to button-it.

Laurence Fox, a scion of the Fox acting clan (his uncle, Edward, played the upper-class English assassin in the 1973 classic political thriller The Day of the Jackal), blew up Question Time, the flagship BBC debate show in which guests from the worlds of politics and the media answer questions posed by members of the public. Inevitably, it was the national fixation Meghan Markle and Prince Harrys decision to consciously uncouple from the British royal family aka the worlds greatest soap opera that triggered the (lights, camera) Action!

Fox accused Rachel Boyle, a university academic, of being racist after she called him a white privileged male for denying the Duchess of Sussex was hounded from Britain for being mixed-race.

Fox groaned and banged his head on the table theatrically, claiming Britain is the most tolerant, lovely country in Europe. He added: Oh my God. I cant help what I am, I was born like this, its an immutable characteristic: to call me a white privileged male is to be racist youre being racist.

To press home his point, the white victim of racism later tweeted a Martin Luther King quote suggesting he and the great civil rights leader were on the same page. Thats what George Soros might call chutzpah.

Little known for hiw work, the actor is now the UK poster boy for the angry white man on social media, and revelling in his newfound alt-right fame. After being targeted with a wave of online outrage, the actor goad-tweeted: To be clear, I am in no way having the best day of my life ever drinking all these leftist tears. My cup it overfloweth. But please dont stop. With the chances of more acting roles open to question, he is on the brink of a new career as yet another agent provocateur of clicks.

But Gervais was mistaken to demand actors, artists, and singers to stay on script and not ad-lib about causes they believe in. Ever since the dawn of mass entertainment, performers have leveraged their fame to promote important causes they believed in Paul Robeson for example. Is Gervais saying Bob Dylan, Paul Newman, and 1960s A-listers who went to the South to support the desegregation struggle should have stayed home? Should the Live Aid artists have ignored the plight of starving Ethiopians and stuck to sex, drugs, and rock n roll?

Meanwhile, those who denounce the lily-livered liberal artists would do well to remember that Ronald Reagan was a chip off the Hollywood block. Indeed, President Donald Trump began his journey to the White House when his fame really kicked in as an entertainer, via The Apprentice reality series.

As Shakespeare said: All the worlds a stage, And all the men and women merely players, in what now appears to be a prophecy of the digital age and its hyper-reality.

Or as Ricky Gervais himself put it, at the conclusion of the Golden Globes ceremony: Thats it, were done. Thank you. Have a good night. Please donate to Australia

Keep it civilized, keep it relevant, keep it clear, keep it short. Please do not post links or promotional material. We reserve the right to edit and to delete comments where necessary.

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Acting Up: Meghan Markle, Ricky Gervais, and the Other 'Fox News' - WhoWhatWhy

If theres one thingfurries have (aside from their own distinct fursonas), its morals. Last year, the Midwest Furry Furrie Fandom said no to the fur-right when they banned alt-right controversialist and all-round douchebag Milo Yiannopoulos from attending FurFest in Chicago.

Now, in a trippy turn of events, a group of furries attending a convention in California rescued a woman from an alleged assault, pinning down the suspect in full furry attire until the police arrived.

The alleged assault took place last week outside the FurCon convention in San Jose, California, where a number of furries intervened upon spotting the incident. One attendee, who was having a smoke outside when the victims car pulled up in front of them, caught the incident on camera. In the footage, taken outside the Marriott Hotel, the group stepping in can be seen wearing shades of furry pink,reportedly dressed as adinosaur, tiger and cowboy, with FurCon lanyards. The furry heroes prise open the car door, where the assailant and victim were in the front seats, and pull the man from the vehicle.

We heard a womans screams coming from inside and saw the passenger throwing full fists at whoever was driving. We got up and ran towards the car, my friend pulled open the door and we both held onto the attacker, Robbie Ryans, 26, told NBC.

Even though were wearing animal costumes, weve got some humanity as well, fellow convention attendee who went by the name Khord Kitty added. Its just a natural thing to want to help someone in need.

Four or five furries followed suit by jumping on the suspect, Demetri Hardnett, 22, who was then arrested at the scene on suspicion domestic violence charges, as police reports show.The release from authorities mentions the act of bravery from bystanders (although their furry attire is not). Not all superheroes wear capes, clearly.

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God bless the furries who stopped a domestic violence incident - Dazed