International
Farley Granger no more
MUMBAI: Farley Granger, who played the likable tennis professional in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train has expired of natural causes in New York. He was 85.
In 1948, Granger had won acclaim for another Hitchcock murder thriller, Rope, in which he played a young pianist who perpetrates a Leopold Loeb-type murder with a fellow school chum.
Under contract to producer Samuel Goldwyn during his relatively short Hollywood career, he played a confused or neurotic young man who always faces a series of melodramatic problems. After appearing opposite Danny Kaye in Hans Christian Anderson in 1952, he bought out his Goldwyn contract and traveled to Europe in 1954 where he starred in Luchino Visconti‘s Senso.
In 2007, Granger published a memoir, Include Me Out, in which he confessed of being a bisexual. The book documented his affairs with Shelley Winters, Ava Gardner and Patricia Neal as well as playwright Arthur Laurents and a two-night fling with Leonard Bernstein.
Since ‘60s, he lived with his longtime partner Robert Calhoun, a soap opera producer, who died three years ago.
Granger made his movie debut playing a Russian in Lewis Milestone‘s The North Star, a war propaganda moved about the Soviet Union‘s resistance to Nazi Occupation, written by Lillian Hellman. He next appeared in another World War II film, The Purple Heart, as a US flyer court-martialed by the Japanese before joining the Navy in 1944. His last film appearance was in the art world satire The Next Big Thing in 2001.
International
Utopai Studios unveils 4K three-minute video generation for PAI platform
New Story Agent and editing tools aim to streamline AI-led filmmaking workflows
MUMBAI: Utopai Studios has announced a major upgrade to its PAI storytelling AI platform, introducing what it claims is an industry-first capability to generate three-minute videos in 4K resolution, alongside enhancements to its Story Agent feature.
The update, rolling out from April 15, expands the platform’s capabilities across the filmmaking process, from early concept development to post-production. The company said the new features are designed to help filmmakers maintain continuity across characters, scenes and visual styles, a key challenge in AI-driven storytelling.
At the heart of the release is a next-generation model that enables more structured narrative development, allowing creators to move more seamlessly from idea to execution. With tools such as multi-shot sequencing and multi-turn editing, the platform aims to give both studios and independent creators greater control over complex storytelling workflows.
Commenting on the launch, Utopai Studios co-founder and CTO Jie Yang said, “The next phase of AI in media will not be defined by isolated tools, but by systems that can carry story, continuity and collaboration across the full creative process.” He added that the update is a step towards enabling more practical, end-to-end narrative development at a professional level.
Echoing this, Utopai Studios co-founder and chief scientific officer Zijian He said, “Generative video is opening the door to a new production model, where creative ambition is less constrained by traditional cost and complexity.” He noted that the platform combines multimodal models with iterative editing to give creators more speed, control and consistency.
The company said PAI is already being used in professional film and television productions, particularly in Hollywood, for tasks such as pre-visualisation, scene design and post-production refinements. The latest update adds features including improved voice options, character consistency, unlimited editing and more flexible asset management.
Utopai also emphasised that its models are not trained on copyrighted material, positioning the platform as a cleaner alternative for creators and rights holders navigating the evolving AI landscape.
As AI continues to reshape content creation, Utopai’s latest push signals a shift from standalone tools to integrated systems, aiming to make high-quality filmmaking faster, more flexible and increasingly accessible.
