Latest news with #Karsh
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
PayPal Blockchain Lead José Fernández da Ponte Joins Stellar
José Fernández da Ponte, formerly the head of blockchain at PayPal, has left the fintech giant, where he oversaw the roll-out of digital currencies and stablecoins, to become president and chief growth officer of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF). The foundation also said it appointed Jason Karsh, a former Block and executive, as chief marketing officer. The Stellar blockchain operates a cash on and off-ramp network through MoneyGram as well as tokenizing real world assets with partners including Franklin Templeton. But going back over a decade, Stellar has kept in mind humanitarian missions such as improving financial inclusion in developing counties — a deciding factor in his decision to move, Fernández da Ponte said. 'I believe that blockchains are an artifact for a community of people working together in a decentralized way to fix problems,' he said in an interview. 'And if the problem that you're trying to work on is financial inclusion, which is the problem I am interested in, then there's no better place than Stellar to work on that.' Karsh, who has also held positions at Coinbase and security firm Blockaid, will bring together brand, product and ecosystem strategy to strengthen Stellar's presence with developers, institutions and the public. 'Stellar isn't just another blockchain project; it's financial infrastructure that is used each day by institutions and individuals around the world,' Karsh said in a statement. 'Our job is to accelerate adoption and usage for every organization, builder and blockchain enthusiast who cares about enterprise-grade security, transaction speed, and the ease of programmability that builders have come to expect.' Fernández da Ponte, who worked for Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), and McKinsey before PayPal, led the strategic launch of the payment firm's PYUSD stablecoin. Asked if he didn't have the stomach to stay in the trenches for the ensuing stablecoin wars, Fernández da Ponte said the move to Stellar was more about choosing to work at the infrastructure layer, ensuring applications like stablecoins can run at scale. 'The stablecoin wars are going to be interesting,' Fernández da Ponte said. 'But we need to have the technology primitives for those stablecoins to be useful, and that's why working at the blockchain level is so important.' Stellar's lumen (XLM) token has risen 38% this year, outpacing the CoinDesk 20 Index, to which it belongs, which has added 27%.Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
The Advertiser
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Cronenberg might be the king of shock but this left me a little cold
The Shrouds MA15+, 119 minutes 3 stars Be warned: this is not a film for all tastes. Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg, now in his 80s, has become indelibly associated with body horror - where the physical form is mutilated, infected, or otherwise treated badly. He's occasionally dabbled in somewhat more conventional fare but it's things like the exploding heads in Scanners and the grotesque transformation in The Fly that spring to mind when his name is mentioned. This film is no exception. The Shrouds has a poignant origin. Cronenberg's wife of more than 40 years, Carolyn, died several years ago from cancer at the age of 66 and he poured some of his grief and devastation into this film. But it's by no means a sentimental wallow. Like many Cronenberg films, it is cool and concerned with ideas as well as characters and story, perhaps easier to admire and think about and discuss than enjoy. Karsh (played by Vincent Cassel, styled to look rather like Cronenberg), a former industrial filmmaker, now has a restaurant, the unique selling point of which is that it's in a cemetery he runs. But it's not just any cemetery. When his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) died a few years earlier from cancer, the grief-stricken Karsh invented Gravetech. It's a technology allowing people to monitor the decay of their deceased loved ones in their graves via specially devised shrouds in which they are contained. The 3D images are live and interactive. It's certainly one way of maintaining a connection with a loved one. Karsh has a grave beside his wife's for when his time comes (I don't think mention is made of who might monitor that). Not surprisingly, this invention has been controversial and makes some uncomfortable. However, people have taken it up and national and international expansion plans are in progress. There's an awkwardly funny scene where Karsh demonstrates Gravetech to a woman while on a blind date their common dentist arranged. She is not seen again. While his dating conversation might need work, Karsh does eventually meet someone, Soo-Yin (Sandrine Holt). She's blind, meaning she can't see the decaying corpses, which might help. Besides monitoring his wife's decay on Gravetech, and conversing with the AI avatar Hunny (voiced by Kruger), Karsh also maintains a connection of sorts through his friendship with Becca's identical sister, Terry (Diane Kruger). His subconscious is haunted by dreams in which Becca comes home to him disfigured and depleted from cancer treatments administered by her oncologist (who's also her ex-lover). There's some very Cronenbergian imagery here. One night, some of the graves including his wife's are vandalised and hackers disrupt the network so the graves cannot be viewed. Both for business and personal reasons, Karsh wants to find out who did this. He calls on Terry's ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce), who had coded the system's security, to investigate. The character relationships are a bit complicated to unravel and some of the dialogue Cronenberg has written to clarify this comes off as a bit clumsy. Still, it does the job. While Cronenberg is associated with horror, a lot of the time is spent, here as elsewhere, with characters talking, often in subdued fashion. Patience and attention are required. Having begun with a science fiction/technology premise permeated by grief and loss, the film moves into conspiracy territory as Maury and Karsh look into the damage that's been done. Who's behind the sabotage and vandalism? What are the strange protrusions that are manifesting themselves on the corpses? It's intellectually interesting but a little emotionally arid, despite the film's very personal inspiration. Cronenberg to me is rather a cold and distant filmmaker, like the late Stanley Kubrick. But while Kubrick put his characters into a petri dish and observed them through a microscope, Cronenberg is more likely to dissect them. That said, it's impressive that Cronenberg has been able to maintain a long career mostly making original and provocative movies. The Shrouds MA15+, 119 minutes 3 stars Be warned: this is not a film for all tastes. Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg, now in his 80s, has become indelibly associated with body horror - where the physical form is mutilated, infected, or otherwise treated badly. He's occasionally dabbled in somewhat more conventional fare but it's things like the exploding heads in Scanners and the grotesque transformation in The Fly that spring to mind when his name is mentioned. This film is no exception. The Shrouds has a poignant origin. Cronenberg's wife of more than 40 years, Carolyn, died several years ago from cancer at the age of 66 and he poured some of his grief and devastation into this film. But it's by no means a sentimental wallow. Like many Cronenberg films, it is cool and concerned with ideas as well as characters and story, perhaps easier to admire and think about and discuss than enjoy. Karsh (played by Vincent Cassel, styled to look rather like Cronenberg), a former industrial filmmaker, now has a restaurant, the unique selling point of which is that it's in a cemetery he runs. But it's not just any cemetery. When his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) died a few years earlier from cancer, the grief-stricken Karsh invented Gravetech. It's a technology allowing people to monitor the decay of their deceased loved ones in their graves via specially devised shrouds in which they are contained. The 3D images are live and interactive. It's certainly one way of maintaining a connection with a loved one. Karsh has a grave beside his wife's for when his time comes (I don't think mention is made of who might monitor that). Not surprisingly, this invention has been controversial and makes some uncomfortable. However, people have taken it up and national and international expansion plans are in progress. There's an awkwardly funny scene where Karsh demonstrates Gravetech to a woman while on a blind date their common dentist arranged. She is not seen again. While his dating conversation might need work, Karsh does eventually meet someone, Soo-Yin (Sandrine Holt). She's blind, meaning she can't see the decaying corpses, which might help. Besides monitoring his wife's decay on Gravetech, and conversing with the AI avatar Hunny (voiced by Kruger), Karsh also maintains a connection of sorts through his friendship with Becca's identical sister, Terry (Diane Kruger). His subconscious is haunted by dreams in which Becca comes home to him disfigured and depleted from cancer treatments administered by her oncologist (who's also her ex-lover). There's some very Cronenbergian imagery here. One night, some of the graves including his wife's are vandalised and hackers disrupt the network so the graves cannot be viewed. Both for business and personal reasons, Karsh wants to find out who did this. He calls on Terry's ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce), who had coded the system's security, to investigate. The character relationships are a bit complicated to unravel and some of the dialogue Cronenberg has written to clarify this comes off as a bit clumsy. Still, it does the job. While Cronenberg is associated with horror, a lot of the time is spent, here as elsewhere, with characters talking, often in subdued fashion. Patience and attention are required. Having begun with a science fiction/technology premise permeated by grief and loss, the film moves into conspiracy territory as Maury and Karsh look into the damage that's been done. Who's behind the sabotage and vandalism? What are the strange protrusions that are manifesting themselves on the corpses? It's intellectually interesting but a little emotionally arid, despite the film's very personal inspiration. Cronenberg to me is rather a cold and distant filmmaker, like the late Stanley Kubrick. But while Kubrick put his characters into a petri dish and observed them through a microscope, Cronenberg is more likely to dissect them. That said, it's impressive that Cronenberg has been able to maintain a long career mostly making original and provocative movies. The Shrouds MA15+, 119 minutes 3 stars Be warned: this is not a film for all tastes. Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg, now in his 80s, has become indelibly associated with body horror - where the physical form is mutilated, infected, or otherwise treated badly. He's occasionally dabbled in somewhat more conventional fare but it's things like the exploding heads in Scanners and the grotesque transformation in The Fly that spring to mind when his name is mentioned. This film is no exception. The Shrouds has a poignant origin. Cronenberg's wife of more than 40 years, Carolyn, died several years ago from cancer at the age of 66 and he poured some of his grief and devastation into this film. But it's by no means a sentimental wallow. Like many Cronenberg films, it is cool and concerned with ideas as well as characters and story, perhaps easier to admire and think about and discuss than enjoy. Karsh (played by Vincent Cassel, styled to look rather like Cronenberg), a former industrial filmmaker, now has a restaurant, the unique selling point of which is that it's in a cemetery he runs. But it's not just any cemetery. When his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) died a few years earlier from cancer, the grief-stricken Karsh invented Gravetech. It's a technology allowing people to monitor the decay of their deceased loved ones in their graves via specially devised shrouds in which they are contained. The 3D images are live and interactive. It's certainly one way of maintaining a connection with a loved one. Karsh has a grave beside his wife's for when his time comes (I don't think mention is made of who might monitor that). Not surprisingly, this invention has been controversial and makes some uncomfortable. However, people have taken it up and national and international expansion plans are in progress. There's an awkwardly funny scene where Karsh demonstrates Gravetech to a woman while on a blind date their common dentist arranged. She is not seen again. While his dating conversation might need work, Karsh does eventually meet someone, Soo-Yin (Sandrine Holt). She's blind, meaning she can't see the decaying corpses, which might help. Besides monitoring his wife's decay on Gravetech, and conversing with the AI avatar Hunny (voiced by Kruger), Karsh also maintains a connection of sorts through his friendship with Becca's identical sister, Terry (Diane Kruger). His subconscious is haunted by dreams in which Becca comes home to him disfigured and depleted from cancer treatments administered by her oncologist (who's also her ex-lover). There's some very Cronenbergian imagery here. One night, some of the graves including his wife's are vandalised and hackers disrupt the network so the graves cannot be viewed. Both for business and personal reasons, Karsh wants to find out who did this. He calls on Terry's ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce), who had coded the system's security, to investigate. The character relationships are a bit complicated to unravel and some of the dialogue Cronenberg has written to clarify this comes off as a bit clumsy. Still, it does the job. While Cronenberg is associated with horror, a lot of the time is spent, here as elsewhere, with characters talking, often in subdued fashion. Patience and attention are required. Having begun with a science fiction/technology premise permeated by grief and loss, the film moves into conspiracy territory as Maury and Karsh look into the damage that's been done. Who's behind the sabotage and vandalism? What are the strange protrusions that are manifesting themselves on the corpses? It's intellectually interesting but a little emotionally arid, despite the film's very personal inspiration. Cronenberg to me is rather a cold and distant filmmaker, like the late Stanley Kubrick. But while Kubrick put his characters into a petri dish and observed them through a microscope, Cronenberg is more likely to dissect them. That said, it's impressive that Cronenberg has been able to maintain a long career mostly making original and provocative movies. The Shrouds MA15+, 119 minutes 3 stars Be warned: this is not a film for all tastes. Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg, now in his 80s, has become indelibly associated with body horror - where the physical form is mutilated, infected, or otherwise treated badly. He's occasionally dabbled in somewhat more conventional fare but it's things like the exploding heads in Scanners and the grotesque transformation in The Fly that spring to mind when his name is mentioned. This film is no exception. The Shrouds has a poignant origin. Cronenberg's wife of more than 40 years, Carolyn, died several years ago from cancer at the age of 66 and he poured some of his grief and devastation into this film. But it's by no means a sentimental wallow. Like many Cronenberg films, it is cool and concerned with ideas as well as characters and story, perhaps easier to admire and think about and discuss than enjoy. Karsh (played by Vincent Cassel, styled to look rather like Cronenberg), a former industrial filmmaker, now has a restaurant, the unique selling point of which is that it's in a cemetery he runs. But it's not just any cemetery. When his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) died a few years earlier from cancer, the grief-stricken Karsh invented Gravetech. It's a technology allowing people to monitor the decay of their deceased loved ones in their graves via specially devised shrouds in which they are contained. The 3D images are live and interactive. It's certainly one way of maintaining a connection with a loved one. Karsh has a grave beside his wife's for when his time comes (I don't think mention is made of who might monitor that). Not surprisingly, this invention has been controversial and makes some uncomfortable. However, people have taken it up and national and international expansion plans are in progress. There's an awkwardly funny scene where Karsh demonstrates Gravetech to a woman while on a blind date their common dentist arranged. She is not seen again. While his dating conversation might need work, Karsh does eventually meet someone, Soo-Yin (Sandrine Holt). She's blind, meaning she can't see the decaying corpses, which might help. Besides monitoring his wife's decay on Gravetech, and conversing with the AI avatar Hunny (voiced by Kruger), Karsh also maintains a connection of sorts through his friendship with Becca's identical sister, Terry (Diane Kruger). His subconscious is haunted by dreams in which Becca comes home to him disfigured and depleted from cancer treatments administered by her oncologist (who's also her ex-lover). There's some very Cronenbergian imagery here. One night, some of the graves including his wife's are vandalised and hackers disrupt the network so the graves cannot be viewed. Both for business and personal reasons, Karsh wants to find out who did this. He calls on Terry's ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce), who had coded the system's security, to investigate. The character relationships are a bit complicated to unravel and some of the dialogue Cronenberg has written to clarify this comes off as a bit clumsy. Still, it does the job. While Cronenberg is associated with horror, a lot of the time is spent, here as elsewhere, with characters talking, often in subdued fashion. Patience and attention are required. Having begun with a science fiction/technology premise permeated by grief and loss, the film moves into conspiracy territory as Maury and Karsh look into the damage that's been done. Who's behind the sabotage and vandalism? What are the strange protrusions that are manifesting themselves on the corpses? It's intellectually interesting but a little emotionally arid, despite the film's very personal inspiration. Cronenberg to me is rather a cold and distant filmmaker, like the late Stanley Kubrick. But while Kubrick put his characters into a petri dish and observed them through a microscope, Cronenberg is more likely to dissect them. That said, it's impressive that Cronenberg has been able to maintain a long career mostly making original and provocative movies.
Irish Independent
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
The Shrouds review: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and some icky ‘GraveTech' make for a lifeless horror
That man is Karsh (Vincent Cassel), a wealthy widower who invests his fortune in GraveTech – a ghastly burial enterprise that allows people like him to livestream images of their loved ones' decomposing corpses. It involves an elaborate shroud, and Karsh should probably see a therapist. Instead, he dreams of being reunited with wife Becca (Diane Kruger) and is devastated to discover someone has vandalised her grave. Becca's twin Terry (also Kruger) tries to help; so does Terry's ex, a greasy brainbox named Maury (Guy Pearce). Dicey love affairs and grisly medical conspiracies complicate matters. Cronenberg has made ickier horrors, but I'm not sure he's made a film quite as lifeless as The Shrouds. It's a personal project for the Canadian auteur, whose film editor wife Carolyn Zeifman died in 2017 – and if you look hard enough, you can see what he's trying to get at. Silly, superficial plot swerves and contrived, theatrical exchanges spoil the tension. A disappointment.
The Age
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
In what might be his final film, David Cronenberg keeps it perverse
THE SHROUDS ★★★★ MA, 120 mins Going by recent reports, The Shrouds may be the last film from 82-year-old David Cronenberg, Canada's onetime king of 'body horror'. If so, it's an apt farewell – typically morbid, perverse and self-mocking, but also emotionally direct in the manner of some of his most durable classics, such as The Dead Zone and The Fly. Vincent Cassel, who stars as an eccentric tech entrepreneur named Karsh, is a generation younger than Cronenberg but here bears an unmistakable resemblance to his director, with slicked-back white hair, a long bony face that lends itself to dramatic lighting, and the detached verve of a scientist who enjoys the process of dissection. He also recalls some of Cronenberg's earlier eccentric leading men, such as Christopher Walken as a troubled psychic in The Dead Zone, especially when he's flashing a disconcerting grin. Like Walken, Cassel has a knack for throwing us off-balance through his speech rhythms, though in Cassel's case this is partly the consequence of being a native French speaker acting in English. Loading Karsh, like Cronenberg, has 'made a career out of bodies,' in a very literal way. His ventures include a cemetery where the tombstones come equipped with screens, allowing you to log in and watch the corpse of your loved one rotting in real time. Naturally, there's an app for this, known as GraveTech (there's also a restaurant adjacent to the cemetery, encouraging visitors to make a day of it). How many takers there would be for the scheme in real life is hard to say. But this is Cronenberg world, although we're nominally in something resembling present-day Toronto. In any case Karsh is his own most enthusiastic client, maintaining an ongoing relationship with the body of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) years after her early death from cancer.
Sydney Morning Herald
03-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
In what might be his final film, David Cronenberg keeps it perverse
THE SHROUDS ★★★★ MA, 120 mins Going by recent reports, The Shrouds may be the last film from 82-year-old David Cronenberg, Canada's onetime king of 'body horror'. If so, it's an apt farewell – typically morbid, perverse and self-mocking, but also emotionally direct in the manner of some of his most durable classics, such as The Dead Zone and The Fly. Vincent Cassel, who stars as an eccentric tech entrepreneur named Karsh, is a generation younger than Cronenberg but here bears an unmistakable resemblance to his director, with slicked-back white hair, a long bony face that lends itself to dramatic lighting, and the detached verve of a scientist who enjoys the process of dissection. He also recalls some of Cronenberg's earlier eccentric leading men, such as Christopher Walken as a troubled psychic in The Dead Zone, especially when he's flashing a disconcerting grin. Like Walken, Cassel has a knack for throwing us off-balance through his speech rhythms, though in Cassel's case this is partly the consequence of being a native French speaker acting in English. Loading Karsh, like Cronenberg, has 'made a career out of bodies,' in a very literal way. His ventures include a cemetery where the tombstones come equipped with screens, allowing you to log in and watch the corpse of your loved one rotting in real time. Naturally, there's an app for this, known as GraveTech (there's also a restaurant adjacent to the cemetery, encouraging visitors to make a day of it). How many takers there would be for the scheme in real life is hard to say. But this is Cronenberg world, although we're nominally in something resembling present-day Toronto. In any case Karsh is his own most enthusiastic client, maintaining an ongoing relationship with the body of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger) years after her early death from cancer.
