Nic Seresin, an award-winning Flame artist and VFX supervisor, has returned to Smoke & Mirrors, his professional home for many years before leaving to go freelance in 2010. Seresin has worked with a long list of top-shelf directors, including Michel Gondry, Tim Burton, Jonathan Glazer, Frank Budgen, Rupert Sanders, Stacy Wall, Tony Kaye, Spike Lee, Traktor, and Ulf Johansson. Seresin has also worked on several features, including 12 Monkeys, Sweeney Todd, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and the James Bond film, The World Is Not Enough…. Entertainment creative agency mOcean has added Brumby Boylston as group creative director, entertainment marketing, and David Kleinman as managing director of entertainment marketing. Kleinman arrives at mOcean following a six-year tenure as executive producer at Blind Visual Propaganda. Prior to Blind, he served as R&D Unit Manager at Lightstorm Entertainment, collaborating with filmmaker James Cameron and VFX supervisor Rob Legato to develop technologies and new workflow methodologies for the 2009 feature film “Avatar.” He entered the entertainment industry working on the live-action side as executive producer/head of production at Crash Films. Boylston was previously co-founder/creative director at National Television, a bicoastal production company specializing in design, animation, and live-action for brands and network clients, including American Express, ABC, Volvo, ING, ESPNU, SyFy and Disney. Prior to launching National Television, he was a writer/creator at The Walt Disney Company….
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More