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In 2020, it was estimated that around 276 million homes around the world had had smart speakers installed. That figure is expected to rise to 381 million by 2024. China and the United States are the two most popular markets for sales of smart speakers. Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Google Assistant are the two most popular brands. Understandably, though, the capacity of smart speakers to enable companies to listen into conversations in their customers' homes  has raised major concerns about privacy issues,  with reports that contractors are being paid to gather information amassed from them and other devices. Questions have also been raised about Amazon's willingness to hand over user data to law enforcement, with human rights activists concerned about the implications of all that for state surveillance. Against this backdrop, director Steven Soderbergh has decided to weigh into the debate with a timely thriller 'Kimi' starring Zoe Kravitz. Shot by him yet ag

  From childhood, Sally Kellerman always wanted to be an actress. Born into a Christian Scientist family in Long Beach California, she was initially shy but found her calling in her teenage years and eventually became one of America's most gifted comic actresses. Sally's mother was a piano teacher and her father was a Shell Oil executive who moved to the San Fernando Valley when she was in fifth grade. Kellerman told the Chicago Sun Times film critic  Roger Ebert in an interview in 1980  that she was a bit of a rebel in  Hollywood High School.  "It was the era of bobby socks and ponytails, high heels and makeup," she recalled.  "I was a bad girl. That meant I smoked, knew how to swear and sometimes I drank a beer.  "I was so dumb I had to be taught to swear. They called me Miss Innocent. I didn't smoke grass until I was 27." Academically she struggled but she got a taste of acting in a school production of 'Meet Me In St Louis'. Deemed to ha

It's not quite ' Batman versus Superman '. Nor is the pairing of Tyler Perry and Brendan O'Carroll the comedy equivalent of Pacino and de Niro in 'Heat' . However for Netflix subscribers in the UK and Ireland, the appearance of O'Carroll's Agnes Brown in Tyler Perry's latest Madea movie is a bit of a mindblowing development. Brendan O'Carroll's best known comic creation, Mrs Brown has been around since the 1990s. His Dublin mammy alter ego first got an airing on Gareth O'Callaghan's RTE 2FM radio show with five minute sketches. Those sketches were so successful, they convinced O'Carroll to write comic plays about the character and shoot conmdy DVDs, while a Hollywood movie 'Agnes Browne' was soon made with Anjelica Huston directing and playing a very different version of the Dublin mammy. While the movie bombed, O'Carroll's novels based on the character, his stage shows and his comedy DVDs thrived, convincing the B

Ireland's dodgiest well to do family are back. Series two of RTE and Acorn's thriller 'Smother' sees the Aherns trying to piece together their lives in Co Clare after the death of their patriarch, Stuart Graham's Dennis. However in order to do that, Dervla Kirwan's matriarch Val, her daughters Gemma-Leah Devereux's Anna, Seana Kerslake's Grace and Niamh Walsh's Jenny and Dennis's ex lover Justine Mitchell's Elaine Lynch have to stick to a pact they forged at the end of series one to hide the truth of what really happened to him. (SPOILER ALERT!!) In the final episode of the previous series, Anna's husband, Lochlann O Mearain's Rory Dwyer agreed with the five women to take the rap for Dennis' nighttime plunge from a clifftop. Dying from cancer Rory, who was Elaine's ex, also wanted to atone for engineering a fire in the family home which she was blamed for when their boys, James O'Donnoghue's hot headed Callum and Elij