All posts tagged: Hoffman

Bewitched: ‘Practical Magic’ Author Alice Hoffman on the Hotly Anticipated Sequel and Why All Women Should Have a Coven

Bewitched: ‘Practical Magic’ Author Alice Hoffman on the Hotly Anticipated Sequel and Why All Women Should Have a Coven

Published by Sam Flores

I previously spoke to Griffin Dunne about directing the first Practical Magic, and he told me the set may have been cursed by a real-life witch. Have you ever had any witchy experiences of your own? I think it happens all the time. In that particular instance, I was only on the set for a day. This may have more to do with Griffin than it does with Practical Magic. I mean, I think he did a great job, but don’t ask me. [Laughs] I grew up reading magic, so I was ready to believe in it. I love this author called Edward Eager. He wrote about magic, but it took place in Connecticut, and in the everyday world. It just opened me up as a child to believe anything could happen anytime. Or maybe I just wished anything could happen. Why do you think Practical Magic still resonates decades after the original story and film? It’s so interesting because, as a book, it did okay. As a movie, it did terribly when it came …

Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman says Angie Craig sought his endorsement while he was in ICU

Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman says Angie Craig sought his endorsement while he was in ICU

Published by Sam Flores

Democratic Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman said Friday that Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., sought his endorsement for her U.S. Senate campaign while he was in intensive care following the June 2025 attempt on his life. Hoffman said in a statement to NBC News on Sunday that a “dear and trusted friend” approached him for an endorsement twice — once while he was in the intensive care unit and the second time while he was recovering at home — and that the friend “confirmed that the endorsement requests came from Congresswoman Craig.” Hoffman’s remarks came at a campaign event for Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who is also seeking the Democratic Senate nomination. “When [Craig] said she wanted my endorsement, she was doing that during moments when our family’s story had high visibility, and that’s all you need to know that the difference is between the opponent that Peggy has and Peggy Flanagan. Because Peggy Flanagan, she checked on us out of her love for how we were doing and if we were OK,” Hoffman said at …

Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise 0M

Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M

Published by skeptic

Prentis, a new AI research lab focused on computer use models, co-founded by serial entrepreneur Ritankar Das and tech heavyweights Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, is in talks to raise $100 million at a $1 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the discussions. Launched in April, Prentis is training models to learn how office workers navigate routine workflows across documents and systems, with the goal of building AI agents that can control computers to automate those tasks. Prentis will ostensibly develop agents tailored to these customers’ needs, such as handling insurance claims and automating customs duty refund exceptions without needing a human to hunt down paperwork. The startup has already signed contracts worth up to $50 million with several customers, including healthcare management service organization, a manufacturer, and goods and clothing manufacturers, the two people familiar with the discussions tell TechCrunch. This echoes investor materials obtained by TechCrunch that predict an estimated $75 million annualized run rate by the third quarter of this year. (Prentis’ pitch deck notes those figures reflect estimated annualized …

Who’s in the Royal Box at Wimbledon? Nicole Kidman, Dustin Hoffman and Ben Stiller among stars on Day 14

Who’s in the Royal Box at Wimbledon? Nicole Kidman, Dustin Hoffman and Ben Stiller among stars on Day 14

Published by Sam Flores

Hollywood stars were among those in attendance at Wimbledon on Sunday for the men’s singles final. Nicole Kidman, Dustin Hoffman, Ben Stiller, Raye and Rami Malek were among the celebrities spotted in the Royal Box ahead of the championship match between Jannik Sinner and Alexander Zverev. Some of the royal names in the box today included Lady Gabriella Windsor, Lord Frederick Windsor and Prince Michael of Kent. Nicole Kidman in the Royal Box Adam Davy/PA Wire Rami Malek and Ben Stiller sitting next to each other in the Royal Box Adam Davy/PA Wire Elsewhere, Lily Collins and fellow actress Daisy Edgar-Jones joined Emirates, Official Airline Partner of 2026 the Championships, for the final day. It’s another beautiful day in London, with temperatures a little cooler than earlier in the week, resting at 27C. The final sees both players looking to claim different back-to-back titles. World No.1 Sinner is looking to retain his Wimbledon title, while reigning French Open champion Zverev is looking to add a second consecutive Grand Slam to his collection after his breakthrough …

Dustin Hoffman on ‘The Graduate’ Role Casting and a “Divided America”

Dustin Hoffman on ‘The Graduate’ Role Casting and a “Divided America”

Published by Daniella Wilson

Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Man) just wanted to say one word to the huge crowd that came out to see him at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic on Saturday: Plastics. Sorry, I got carried away there by the famous line from the iconic The Graduate, a special screening of which Hoffman introduced on Saturday. No, the Hollywood legend had quite a bit more to say to an adoring audience in the Grand Hall of the Hotel Thermal, the legendary “headquarters” of the Czech festival, which welcomed him with a rousing standing ovation. Asked how he got cast in The Graduate, Hoffman replied: “It was an accident. Mike Nichols was the director of the moment. He was like Steven Spielberg today.” But the filmmaker faced a casting challenge. “He had spent almost two years looking for this person that was to be the graduate, and after two years, I know this because he wrote it later in his autobiography: he was willing to say we can’t make it, and he was …

Czech Film Fest in Karlovy Vary Honors Dustin Hoffman and Juliette Binoche

Czech Film Fest in Karlovy Vary Honors Dustin Hoffman and Juliette Binoche

Published by Sam Flores

Hoffman, who won the Academy Award for best actor for his role in “Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979) and “Rain Man” (1988), will be honored for his outstanding artistic contribution to world cinema on the opening night Friday. On Saturday, Hoffman will present “The Graduate,” his big movie from 1967 that earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Binoche, who won an Oscar for best supporting actress in “The English Patient” (1996) and a number of other prizes, will receive the same award as Hoffman at the closing ceremony on July 11. The festival will screen three of her movies: “Certified Copy” (2010), “Three Colors: Blue” (1993) and In-I in Motion (2025). American cinematographer Robert Richardson, who is known for his work for directors Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino, will be the third guest of the festival to receive the award. Richardson, the three-time Oscar winner for best cinematography, will introduce his feature documentary portrait “Robert Richardson: The White Devil” on Saturday. The grand jury of the festival, which takes place in the western …

Dustin Hoffman and Alison Brie Lead Drama

Dustin Hoffman and Alison Brie Lead Drama

Published by Daniella Wilson

Movies about writers face a rare challenge: After all, how cinematic is it to show someone tormented by a blank page or an unresponsive computer? The Oscar-winning Capote had the dramatic advantage of a protagonist investigating a horrific mass murder. But that was an exception. Defying those difficulties, Alex Vlack’s The Revisionist, a Tribeca world premiere, gives us not one but four main characters who are published or aspiring writers. Suffice it to say that the spectacle, while not exactly comparable to watching paint dry, is not always scintillating. The Revisionist The Bottom Line Hoffman saves the day — and the movie. Venue: Tribeca Festival (Spotlight Narrative)Cast: Alison Brie, André Holland, Tom Sturridge, Dustin HoffmanDirector-screenwriter: Alex Vlack 1 hour 30 minutes It definitely helps to have four such gifted actors engaged in the endeavor. We first meet old friends John, played by André Holland, and Jacob, portrayed by Tom Sturridge, when they accidentally run into each other after a long separation. Jacob is married to Elise, played by Alison Brie, who is struggling with her …

Reid Hoffman is leaving Microsoft’s board to go ‘founder mode’ with startup Manus

Reid Hoffman is leaving Microsoft’s board to go ‘founder mode’ with startup Manus

Published by skeptic

After a very profitable decade on Microsoft’s board, Reid Hoffman is stepping down, the company announced Thursday. Hoffman joined the board after Microsoft bought his company LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016. Hoffman was on Microsoft’s board when it invested its first $1 billion into OpenAI in 2019. Hoffman was one of OpenAI’s original investors and served on the model maker’s board until he stepped down in 2023, citing too many potential conflicts of interest to continue. He was also on Microsoft’s board when the tech giant entered into one of those non-acquisition, acqui-hire deals for $650 million with his AI startup Inflection AI. Microsoft hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman through that deal. Hoffman said on a recent episode of his “Possible” podcast, while talking with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that he’s ready to go “founder mode” with his latest AI startup, Manus. Manus is a drug discovery company that raised over $50 million through a couple of seed rounds last year. Hoffman is an investor, as is General Catalyst. Hoffman is cited as a …

Reid Hoffman Thinks Doctors Should Ask AI for a Second Opinion

Reid Hoffman Thinks Doctors Should Ask AI for a Second Opinion

Published by skeptic

Following a three-decade career at the helm of some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies—cofounding LinkedIn and sitting on the boards of PayPal and OpenAI—Reid Hoffman recently turned his attention to health care. Hoffman’s startup, Manas AI, is building an AI engine that aims to fast-track the traditionally slow process of drug discovery for various cancers. Inspired by a dinner with renowned cancer physician Siddhartha Mukherjee, the company’s cofounder and CEO, its mission statement is to “shift drug discovery from a decade-long process to one that takes a few years.” But Hoffman’s enthusiasm for generative AI, in particular, stretches far beyond novel drug targets and small molecules. He believes that frontier models—the most advanced, large-scale AI models currently available from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic—should be a cornerstone of health care itself. “If as a doctor, you’re not using one or more frontier models as a second opinion, my belief is you’re bordering on committing malpractice,” Hoffman said, speaking at WIRED Health in London on April 16. “These AI systems, even though many of them …

The Arimasen Dialogues by Michael Hoffman

The Arimasen Dialogues by Michael Hoffman

Published by Jenni Sidey

Some books you read. A few read you back. The Arimasen Dialogues by Michael Hoffman belongs firmly to that second, stranger category. Open it expecting orderly chapters and settled prose, and the book will politely close itself. Open it ready to eavesdrop on voices arguing, joking, confessing, prophesying, and contradicting themselves inside the same breath, and you have walked into one of the most original novels I have picked up in a long while. The Setting: A Place That Claims Not to Exist The story unfolds on Arimasen, a place that is “quite like Earth in other respects” save for one small detail: it lies beyond Space, Time, and Matter. The Japanese word arimasen means, roughly, “there is not” or “does not exist,” and Hoffman wastes no ink pretending otherwise. Whether Arimasen is a planet, a metaphor, a hallucination, or a long shared dream between reader and text is a question the book keeps asking and never quite answers. A Singularity, we are told, occurred on July 20, 1969, the same day Earthlings watched a …