12th HOUR, narrated by David Morse, the new film by Susan Kucera, the multi award winning director of Living in the Future’s Past produced by Jeff Bridges.
Much of our population currently lives with hopeful delusions about climate change. These delusions, many of which are built in by evolution, hamper our ability to meaningfully address the problem.
Our brains evolved to solve short-term challenges for our survival. Climate change is a long-term challenge to our survival. Can we bridge the gap between these modes of thinking?
Emmy-nominated actor David Morse narrates the brutally honest 12th hour with insight from noted evolutionary biologists, climate scientists, cognitive researchers and psychologists.
Visionary thinkers like Peter Russell, Dr. Paul Piff, Dr. Kari Norgaard and dozens of the brightest minds in academia lay out an unflinching look at mankind: our past, our abilities, our shortcomings and what may be humankind’s final destination.
If we have any hope to survive the changes we’ve locked in to our climate, we need to be honest with ourselves and our limitations. The 12th Hour lays out our biases so that we may overcome them.
Vanessa Hudgens almost “gave up” on dating after her split from Austin Butler in January 2020. Less than a year later, she met her future husband in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I remember in quarantine I was like, Cool, I’m single now and I can’t meet anybody, so I guess I’ll go on a dating app,” Hudgens said during an appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show in May 2021. “But I always said I would never go on a dating app, and then I found myself on a dating app and I was like, ‘I hate myself!’”
Turns out, Hudgens wouldn’t meet MLB player Cole Tucker on Raya, but in a weekly Zoom meditation group during the lockdown. “I’m such a go-getter. If I want something or someone, I’m going after him,” she continued. “I fully just slid into his DMs and was like, ‘Hey, it was nice to meet you.’ I think there’s no shame in making the first move. If you want it, why wait for someone else to give you what you want?”
Here’s a complete timeline of Vanessa Hudgens and Cole Tucker’s relationship.
January 2020: A source confirms to Us Weekly that Butler and Hudgens have split after nine years. “Vanessa and Austin are officially broken up, and Vanessa has been telling those close to her about their breakup,” the insider said in mid-January.
January 14, 2020: Hudgens makes her first appearance since her breakup on the red-carpet at the premiere of Bad Boys for Life. It’s a mood.
During the lockdown, a friend invited her to join their weekly Zoom meditation group and text chain with everyone from Joe Jonas to Wilmer Valderrama. “Everyone’s sending, like, GIFs of themselves,” she told Barrymore in May 2021. “Then there’s, like, a GIF in the group chat of a baseball player, and he’s slamming onto a base and I thought it was a joke. So I just responded, ‘Hot.’” It turned out to be a gif of Tucker, who was in their next Zoom meeting.
The Coterie crew continues to lean on each other as their lives change. Has the Good Trouble TV show been cancelled or renewed for a sixth season on Freeform? The television vulture is watching all the latest cancellation and renewal news, so this page is the place to track the status of Good Trouble, season six. Bookmark it, or subscribe for the latest updates. Remember, the television vulture is watching your shows. Are you?
What’s This TV Show About?
A drama series airing on the Freeform cable channel, the Good Trouble TV show stars Cierra Ramirez, Tommy Martinez, Emma Hunton, Sherry Cola, Zuri Adele, Josh Pence, Bryan Craig and Booboo Stewart. Maia Mitchell and Brooke Nevin recur. The story centers on Mariana (Ramirez) from The Fosters series and the other residents of the communal living apartment building called The Coterie in Downtown Los Angeles. These young people juggle careers, love, and the growing pains at a time in your life where your friends are your family. In the fifth season, they face their toughest obstacles yet as they’re confronted with evolving relationship challenges and new career opportunities. Through highs and lows, romance and heartbreak, The Coterie crew lean on each other while they navigate the next stage of adulthood.
Season Five Ratings
The fifth season of Good Trouble averages a 0.03 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 87,000 viewers. Compared to season four, that’s down by 17% in the demo and down by 7% in viewership in the live+same day ratings (including DVR playback through 3:00 AM). While these numbers don’t include further delayed or streaming viewing, they are a very good indicator of how a show is performing, especially when compared to others on the same channel. There can be other economic factors involved in a show’s fate, but typically the higher-rated series are renewed and the lower-rated ones are cancelled. Find out how Good Trouble stacks up against other Freeform TV shows.
O F F I C I A L S T A T U S
As of April 14, 2023, Good Trouble has not been cancelled or renewed for a sixth season. Stay tuned for further updates.
Telly’s Take
Will Freeform cancel or renew Good Trouble for season six? In the past, this show was one of the channel’s highest-rated shows, but those days are now gone. Scripted shows on Freeform don’t typically last as long as this one had, but it’s a good fit for the channel’s target audience. I think this show’s fate could go either way, but I’m leaning toward a renewal. I’ll update this page with breaking developments. Subscribe for free alerts on Good Trouble cancellation or renewal news.
Good Trouble Cancellation & Renewal Related Links
What do you think? Do you hope the Good Trouble TV show will be renewed for a sixth season? How would you feel if Freeform cancelled this TV series instead?
Check out our status sheets to track new TV series pickups, renewals, and cancellations. You can find lists of cancelled shows here.
Fox is making a case for its crime anthology series “Accused” for this year’s Emmys.
The freshman broadcast series will vie for consideration in the limited or anthology series categories, and Variety can exclusively reveal the creative teams’ plans for submitting its sprawling ensemble and its respective races.
Despite each episode tackling a new story with different characters, setting and subject matter, the actors have opted to divide themselves into separate acting races.
Emmy winner Michael Chiklis (“The Shield”), who stars in the pilot episode titled “Scott’s Story,” portraying a successful neurosurgeon on trial for providing material assistance to a school shooter, will be submitted in the lead actor limited category. His episode will also serve as the writing submission for creator and executive producer Howard Gordon. Furthermore, Chiklis stepped behind the camera as a director for the “Jack’s Story” episode with Jason Ritter. He’ll be among three directing submissions for the anthology, including debut TV directors who are already household names — Oscar-winner and four-time Emmy nominee Marlee Matlin for “Ava’s Story” and Emmy winner Billy Porter for “Robyn’s Story.”
Other leading candidates from the cast include Whitney Cummings, who stars in the episode “Brenda’s Story,” where she plays a stand-up comic who is assaulted by a fellow comedian. She’ll be the sole submission for lead actress limited.
It’s been 37 years since Malcolm-Jamal Warner received his sole Emmy nom for playing Theo Huxtable on “The Cosby Show.” Coming off his second Grammy nom for best spoken word album, he’s hoping to be a surprise lead actor inclusion for his role as Kendall Gomillion, a father whose daughter is sexually assaulted and takes justice into his own hands. In addition, his co-star from “Kendall’s Story,” veteran actor Wendell Pierce as the detective investigating the case, will campaign for his first career Emmy nom for supporting drama actor.
Nonbinary actor J. Harrison Ghee has already exhibited a breakout year. Kicking it off as one of Variety’s 10 Broadway Stars to Watch, they have chosen to submit as lead drama actor alongside Chiklis and Warner for the Porter-helmed episode in which they play Kevin, a drag performer who falls for a closeted gay man.
“Accused” will mark one of four possible shots at Emmy recognition for three-time Emmy winner Margo Martindale. The veteran character actress will be submitted for her episode “Laura’s Story” and her role as Maureen on “The Watcher” in supporting actress limited. She’s also eligible for guest drama actress for Peacock’s “Mrs. Davis” and Showtime’s “Your Honor.”
Fox also plans to submit the series in casting, cinematography, editing, sound editing and sound mixing categories.
It’ll be difficult for the show to crack the lineup, with multiple series angling for only five or six available slots (pending the number of submissions) and competing against Apple’s “Black Bird,” HBO’s “Love & Death” and Netflix’s “Beef.”
The singer will be joined by a string ensemble for three shows in June and July
For three nights this summer, Halsey will take the stage at small venues alongside a complete string ensemble. The shows — scheduled for cities in Florida, Indiana, and California — will be presented in partnership with Hard Rock Live, with proceeds benefiting two LGBTQ+ organizations.
Tickets are on sale now for the three concerts scheduled for June 24 in Hollywood, Florida; June 30 in Gary, Indiana; and July 2 in Wheatland, California. The singer’s announcement follows the previously announced live ensemble performances she has planned at New Jersey Performing Arts Center on June 21 and 22. Those two performances are not connected to the Hard Rock benefit shows.
Halsey and Hard Rock will put forth proceeds and donations from the events to Hard Rock Heals and Outright International & Human Rights Campaign.
Outright International & Human Rights Campaign works in tandem with local, national, regional, and global organizations to advocate for collective laws and protections for LGBTQ+ individuals. The organization also strives to provide representation, funding, and access to services, emergency relief and response, and more.
“Outright International works with partners around the globe to strengthen the capacity of the LGBTIQ human rights movement, document and amplify human rights violations, and advocate for inclusion and equality,” the organization’s mission statement reads.
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The Hard Rock Heals Foundation was founded in 2016 to pursue charity opportunities in connection to live music. “The foundation’s motto, Love.Amplifed., seeks to inspire us all to turn up the volume and deliver the message that lives can be improved by the healing power of music,” the Hard Rock website reads. “The Hard Rock Heals Foundation provides grants and assistance to health and wellness, disaster relief, humanitarian causes and more around the world.”
Following up on their previous films, The Killer Robots and the Battle for the Cosmic Potato and The Killer Robots! Crash and Burn, theatrical rock band The Killer Robots! take on a trio of deadly rocker robots in Robotica Destructiva.
In the year 8675309, and in another dimension, the utopian planet of Radia lived in peace thanks to the fearsome and powerful weapon, the Arculon Destroyer. Thanks to the Arculon, no one dares approach Radia for its abundance of rich resources.
On this day, the notorious Killer Robots! Auto (Sam Gaffin), Trog (Charles Harris), Max (Mike McGowan), and Strobo (Samuel Williams) somehow penetrate the planet’s energy defense shield and steal the Arculon Destroyer. The quartet plan to sell it to the pirate Krogarr (John Schumann) but instead plans to use it to obtain time crystals for its nefarious use for time travel.
The leaders of the now defenseless Radia decide to release three ancient android warrior sisters, known as the Destructivas, Mytra (Amber Belko), Azalla (Torie Martin), and Luna (Kristal Theron), from their 10,000-year sleep. Angered that they were released from their dream state of the Doors of Enlightenment, the Destructivas agree to take back the Arculon with the promise to be returned to their former dreamlike stasis.
The Destructivas are now on a race for time to recover the Arculon and prevent The Killer Robots! from attaining the ability to time travel.
I’ll just say while watching Robotica Destructiva, I didn’t exactly understand the whole mythos of the story. But, then again, the fun of this film is not the story but the universe created by the band Killer Robots! that will leave you in awe.
“…the now defenseless Radia decide to release three ancient android warrior sisters, known as the Destructivas…”
Simply put, this sci-fi universe blends CG animation and live-action actors with heavy vibes of the original 1982 Tron. Actors wear “robot” suits accented and accentuated by CG effects. I’d describe the world they live in as urban techno. Everything is run by wires and circuits in order to sustain its Android population. Our heroes and villains navigate through this world through a blending of natural and cartoon movements giving off an authentic anime feel to the action.
Its cadre of spaceships is equally impressive as the worlds where they soar, blending practical model spaceships flying through CG space and planetary landscapes. It’s not just the spaceships but the crew’s robot companions and security droids. I’ll describe the film’s visual style to George Lucas’ prequels, but hip and cool.
Robotica Destructiva also boasts a killer soundtrack with Sam Gaffin’s blending of rock metal and 80s synth music. This soundtrack simply builds upon the violent feast of android action along the way. Though the music is cool, its driving beat that rarely takes a break left me feeling physically exhausted by the end of its 78-minute runtime.
I also mentioned that there’s not much of a story as the film’s foundation. The film takes us from one action piece to the other while introducing us to exciting characters along the way. Though I love this movie’s visual style and animated action, finding a deeply emotional back story of the Destructivas only helps elevate the overall film to the next level and keeps it from feeling like a relentless violent action movie with no soul. Exactly, who are the Destructivas? Why were they put in sleep chambers? What did they leave behind thousands of years ago?
You are most likely going to see Robotica Destructiva somewhere other than theaters. Let me urge you to see it as I did on my giant 4K television—parts of the film feel 3D at times. The art design and model rendering is absolutely gorgeous. The detail and quality of the planets, building,s and spaceships is impressive. This is important…these are not CG matte paintings. They are fully-rendered 3D models, and the design and detail rival anything you’ll see from the big studios. Watch Robotica Destructive and prepare to have your mind blown.
This is the terrifying moment a man plunged down a ravine when an ‘astronaut training chair’ suddenly fell apart while he was being spun around.
The video starts off with the man strapped into the seemingly safe chair on the side of a ravine at the Cabrapata viewing point in Ayacucho, Peru – but it soon ends up with him cheating death.
At the beginning, the person filming can be heard laughing and joking as he watches the operator spin his friend on top of the cliff with panoramic views across Peru.
But as he continues to be twisted around, the chair’s frame begins to wobble and without warning suddenly tumbles over the cliff edge.
The laughter in the background soon turns into a panicked scream as the man’s friend disappears from sight.
This is the terrifying moment a man plunged down a ravine when an ‘astronaut training chair’ suddenly fell apart while he was being spun around
The video starts off with the man strapped into the seemingly safe chair on the side of a ravine at the Cabrapata viewing point in Ayacucho, Peru – but it soon ends up with him cheating death
As he continues to be moved around, the chair’s frame begins to wobble and without warning suddenly tumbles over the cliff edge
Despite falling down the cliff, the man survived the fall and is recovering after being rushed to hospital
The camera cuts away as the man falls down the steep incline – as concerned onlookers fear for his life.
Fortunately, the man survived the fall, possibly because the frame he was strapped to protected his head, according to local media.
He was rushed to hospital but is now said to be recovering.
The chair is a budget version of the state-of-the-art Multi Axis Trainer used by space agencies to teach astronauts how to survive high-speed spins in weightless conditions.
The cliffside viewing point is popular with tourists for its spectacular views.
Extreme rides and walkways have sprung up on the beauty spot to cash in on thrill-seeking tourists who expect theme park safety standards.
Officials are now cracking down on all of them over safety fears and have closed them down pending safety checks.
Ayacucho, southeast of Peru’s capital Lima, has had a tumultuous few months prior to this incident.
Extreme rides and walkways have sprung up on the beauty spot to cash in on thrill-seeking tourists who expect theme park safety standards
Officials are now cracking down on all of them over safety fears and have closed them all pending safety checks
Another one of the rides that are seen at the Cabrapata viewpoint which has panoramic views
In December, ten people were killed during clashes with the ouster of former president Pedro Castillo after he tried to illegally dissolve Congress to avoid an impeachment vote he feared losing.
He was voted out of office shortly after and arrested for alleged ‘rebellion’. He denies the charges.
His arrest triggered an outpouring of anger at the country’s political elite and Congress, widely reviled as corrupt and self-serving, especially in Peru’s poor southern mining regions where rising food and energy costs have hit people hard.
Protesters tried to take over the city’s airport, which was defended by Peru’s police and army, but ten were gunned down and several more were injured.
More details about Drake Bell’s supposed disappearance are coming to light with the release of the 911 call regarding the actor going “missing.”
Per the 911 call, obtained by TMZ on Friday, April 14, police were concerned with a “possible attempted suicide” after Bell allegedly sent concerning texts from an Orlando hotel room to family members in California.
The Drake & Joshalum, 36, was found “safe” on Thursday, April 13, the Daytona Beach Police Department said in a statement hours after they issued an alert earlier that morning claiming the “Found a Way” singer was “considered missing and endangered.”
“Basically, there is a celebrity who had a falling out with his wife,” a 911 operator said on the call.
The release of the audio comes one day after a source exclusively told Us Weekly that there was “some communication [between Bell and] family members that caused concern so they are worried about him and looking for him,” the insider told Us on Thursday, shortly before the Nickelodeon alum was found. The insider noted that the family members were “all just listening and waiting and hoping” to hear from Bell, who shares a son with estranged wife Janet Von Schmeling. (Schmeling moved to Florida with their child, whom they welcomed in 2021, after their split.)
“You leave your phone in the car and don’t answer for the night and this? ?,“ he quipped via Twitter.
Von Schmeling, meanwhile, took to social media on Friday to share a clip of Taylor Swift’s “You Need to Calm Down” — with no further explanation.
“Say it in the street that’s a knockout / But you say it in a tweet, that’s cop out,” the lyrics flashed across the screen in her Instagram Story. “‘And I’m just like, ‘Hey’ / ‘Are you OK?’”
Bell and Von Schmeling tied the knot in 2018 and went on to welcome their son in July 2021 — the same month that the Yours, Mine & Ours actor was sentenced to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service in California after he pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted endangering children and disseminating matter harmful to juveniles in 2017.
Graphics card sagging, while once a non-issue, has become a genuine threat to their lifespan, causing them to fail much sooner than normal. As cards become more powerful, they also become much larger and heavier in design, which means they tend to sag if not supported on both sides in the PC case.
As German computer repair technician KrisFix (opens in new tab) explains (and reported on by Tom’s Hardware) when a graphics card sags as a result of this increased weight, “memory modules can lose connection with its associated solder points on the PCB.” There’s also the issue of thermal variance, caused by the daily use of the card under sag conditions.
According to KrisFix, This seems to be a major cause for why the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, considered one of the best graphics cards ever (and still an excellent contender today), has been failing sooner than anticipated.
And since the 2080 Ti, graphics cards have only become heavier, which puts the RTX 3000-series and especially the brick-like 4000-series at an even higher risk for failure later on in its life.
What is being done about it?
It seems that manufacturers are finally becoming more aware of the issues surrounding graphics cards sag, and more are coming up with a simple way to combat it: using some kind of support beam to keep the card level on the unsupported side.
Some have those supports built-in the PC case like Cooler Master’s support bracket, while others like the Manli Gallardo RTX 4090 graphics card itself are equipped with two spirit levels. And as the concept becomes more widespread, we should be seeing more of them cropping up and eventually becoming a standard in both PC cases and graphics cards.
But what about the current users, the ones who already made their purchase years ago and could be facing imminent catastrophic GPU failure? You can have your PC modded by official or unofficial repair services to give it a bracket or level, but that could be quite expensive.
Naturally, there are cheaper alternatives and guides on how to go about building them, everything from Lego blocks to hooking string around your GPU to stabilize it. So there is hope for you as long as too much damage hasn’t already been done to your beloved graphics card just yet. Otherwise, you might have to invest in a brand new one, like the RTX 4070 that launched on April 13.
“Tiny Beautiful Things” showrunner Liz Tigelaar and author Cheryl Strayed designed the show’s central character Clare (Kathryn Hahn) based on the question: what would it have looked like if Strayed hadn’t hiked the Pacific Crest Trail.
Clare’s life mirrors Strayed’s before she became a well-known writer, taking on the mantle of an anonymous advice column called “Dear Sugar” from an old colleague in “Tiny Beautiful Things,” just as Strayed did in real life for the online literary magazine “The Rumpus” in 2010. The Hulu adaptation comes from Hello Sunshine, the production company of Reese Witherspoon, who portrayed the version of Strayed that did make the 1,100-mile solo hike in “Wild” based on Strayed’s 2012 memoir.
“We have this narrative of this adult character who isn’t me, but then that young character very much acts out many of the most painful, powerful, beautiful, true scenes from my own life. We knew that our Clare who was writing the ‘Dear Sugar’ column had to have had some of the experiences I had so those stories would make sense,” Strayed told TheWrap. “She had to be somebody who lost her mother young, she had to be somebody who had a kind of path very similar to mine, and so the past Clare has a lot of stuff in common with me and then the present day Clare took another path.”
Present-day Clare attends therapy sessions with her husband Danny (Quentin Plair). She also has a strained relationship with her own daughter Rae (Tanzyn Crawford).
“Clare is loving her daughter with full throttle attention — that’s how she was loved as a daughter. She’s wounded because she lost her mother when she was just becoming a woman,” Strayed said. “Part of her process as a mother is, ‘How do I not wound my daughter in the same place that I am wounded? We see Clare grappling when she’s saying things like, ‘Don’t say that to me because you could die tomorrow,’ it’s one way of saying, ‘I love you,’ but sometimes we say I love you in a voice that speaks through our pain, or through the ways that we were wounded and sometimes we say I love you in the ways that we were given the greatest gifts by our own mothers.”
Clare draws from her own experience (as dysfunctional as it is) for her response letters, revisiting the grief of losing her mother at a young age as well as other difficult parts of her current life.
“There are themes from [the letters] that obviously pervade the whole series. In terms of approach, there wasn’t a formula. It wasn’t like we choose the letter first and then we create the story from it,” Tigelaar said. “It was almost looking at all arcs simultaneously. We knew that, as nonlinear as the past story was, there needed to be a beginning and middle and end to that, that was going to center around the loss of her mother, and even just the different points of how things happened. They really had to all operate on these three parallel tracks. You couldn’t kind of figure out one piece without figuring out the other pieces.”
Sarah Pidgeon as Young Adult Clare in “Tiny Beautiful Things” (Hulu)
Sarah Pidgeon portrays the young adult version of Clare, who first appears in flashbacks to moments like Clare’s college acceptance as well as receiving news of her mother’s cancer diagnosis.
“One of the most powerful things about Katherine’s Clare is that she also shows us the full range of daughterhood and the full range of motherhood, and that inevitably contains darkness and light mistakes and things that were done beautifully, things that that she could go back in time and would do the exact same way and things she would do differently,” Strayed told TheWrap. “And that’s what this show is about is to say, ‘Love is not just one thing it’s all many things all at once.I hope that we showed that in those relationships between the mothers and daughters in this show.”
Emotional scenes weave a fabric of memory together between Hahn’s Clare, Pidgeon’s Clare and the childhood version portrayed by Marlow Barkley, flashing between the three women in singular moments.
“The idea is that whatever she’s feeling inside in that moment gets manifested. It’s to show [her] outsides don’t always match [her] insides. She might look like Kathryn Hahn, but she might feel like Sarah or Marlow. Katherine’s Clare is being re-inserted into these memories of her past, to have a different relationship with them,” Tigelaar told TheWrap. “That’s kind of all a part of this healing. Whether she’s telling Sarah Pidgeon, don’t give up, keep going, keep writing, or she’s holding her mother’s hand after her diagnosis, or she’s watching her mother kind of ride freely. It’s showing what healing can look like.”
All episodes of “Tiny Beautiful Things” arrive on Hulu Friday, April 7.
The makers of Flashdancehoped for a hit, but no one had a feeling it would become a generation-defining sensation.
The Paramount film marked the first collaboration of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, later known for blockbusters like Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun. With a script co-written by Joe Eszterhas (Basic Instinct), Flashdance centered on Alex, a teenage welder in Pittsburgh who spends her nights performing at a cabaret bar but dreams of becoming a professional dancer.
Bruckheimer remembers the film’s team struggling to choose the lead, but that director Adrian Lyne was sold on newcomer Jennifer Beals. “The bosses at Paramount couldn’t make up their minds, so they brought all the secretaries in to view the screen tests, and they all picked Jennifer,” Bruckheimer tells The Hollywood Reporter.
Among the performers in the mix for the male lead of Nick, the steel mill owner who falls for employee Alex, was a young Kevin Costner, who read audition scenes with Beals and other actresses. “He definitely was considered,” Bruckheimer recalls. As for why Michael Nouri was ultimately the right fit for the part, the producer explains, “He’s handsome and a very good actor, and he did an excellent job.”
Michael Nouri and Jennifer Beals in Flashdance
Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
Regarding the audition process, Nouri — who has appeared with Costner on Yellowstone — says, “Kevin is a friend, and he has, in the days since, confirmed that yes, he auditioned for the role.” As for having prevailed over such fierce competition, Nouri adds, “It was a great compliment.”
Beals tells THR that she was working in Paris that summer after finishing high school and hoped to save up some money when she received a written letter from her agent — as she didn’t have phone access on her trip — asking her to stop by New York City on her way home to Chicago. Upon landing in NYC, the actress spent a night sleeping outside in a park until her mother implored her to stay with a relative in the city throughout the audition process.
When she learned that the part was hers, Beals had already briefly started at Yale University that fall before deferring. She was asked early on to do a nude scene but demurred. “Adrian called me and was trying to convince me that he would make it tasteful. I just said, ‘No disrespect to you, but I don’t know you,’ ” she says with a laugh. Lyne was swayed, and Beals emphasizes that she would love to work again with the filmmaker, who is also known for such titles as Fatal Attraction (1987) and last year’s Deep Water.
Jennifer Beals and director Adrian Lyne on the Flashdance set
Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
Flashdance launched fashion trends, with women mimicking Beals’ off-the-shoulder sweatshirt that became one of the film’s signature looks. Beals recalls having previously created her own DIY cutoff sweatshirt during an early wardrobe fitting for the film, which helped inspire her character’s unique sartorial choice. “I had left my sweatshirt in the dryer too long, and so I couldn’t get my head through the hole,” Beals says about the fateful fitting. “So I cut out the hole to make it bigger. And then [costume designer] Michael Kaplan just made it cooler and better.”
THR’s review praised the film’s “bounding, upbeat energy and sensational dance sequences,” but other critics were less impressed. Still, Flashdance was an immediate hit when it debuted April 15, 1983, collecting $92.9 million ($280 million today) to become the year’s No. 3 title domestically. It went on to earn four Oscar noms, including a best song win for Irene Cara’s “Flashdance… What a Feeling.”
Nouri remembers the mixed critical reaction to the film, which holds a 35 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, he remains proud that the movie is such a crowd-pleaser: “It wasn’t favored by the critics, and that really didn’t make any difference in terms of the movie becoming iconic.” And Bruckheimer quips, “One reviewer called it a toxic waste dump and revisited it like 20 years later and said, ‘I missed it.’”
Jennifer Beals in Flashdance
Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
For Beals, whose recent credits include Netflix’s 2022 feature Luckiest Girl Alive and Disney+’s The Book of Boba Fett, the film’s enduring legacy stems in part from its inclusion of themes that weren’t as common for studio films of the era. She says, “When I think about that scene where she’s walking down the hallway, and there are all the ballerinas there, it’s not only a classist image, it also speaks volumes about barriers in regards to race as well.”
The Hollywood Reporter
A version of this story first appeared in the March 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
At first, when suburban mom Kristin gets the mysterious call to head to Italy to settle the affairs of a dead relative, she protests she’s too busy. Then she realizes there’s not much keeping her: Her son is off to college, her job is dead-end, and her husband? He’s cheating with the school guidance counselor.
So why not treat herself to a me-focused trip, a la Julia Roberts? Maybe an “Eat, Pray, Love” trip, muses Kristin (Toni Collette), to which her friend (Sophie Nomvete) replies that what she really needs, bluntly, is to “Eat, Pray, $%&$.”
Soon that’s the slogan for her trip. It also would a great alternative title for “Mafia Mamma,” if they could get away with it. And really, they try to get away with most everything else.
That includes some cringe-worthy slapstick, some Tarantino-level violence, and also every Italian stereotype you can imagine (Grape-stomping? Check. Gelato, gnocchi and cannoli? Check. Speaking of cannoli: “The Godfather?” Check. Stanley Tucci’s food show? Check!) Some of this is to be expected, but “Mafia Mamma,” directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is over-saturated with shtick. And in a script which seeks to empower its protagonist by having her don a tight dress and commit murder with a stiletto heel to the groin (and eyeball), the goriest death is by cliché. Nobody escapes it.
Not even the wonderfully versatile Collette, who does yeoman’s work selling the increasingly repetitive plot developments, especially in the latter half, and maintaining sympathy for her character, who’s such a wide-eyed fish out of water, she’s never even seen “The Godfather” (a running joke, which like many jokes here is funny the first time).
The opening scenes are promising. We begin with always-welcome Monica Bellucci, as hardened consiglieri Bianca, surveying a crime scene full of dead bodies, including her boss Giuseppe Balbano, and declaring: “This is war.” Soon, Kristin gets Bianca’s call about grandad, whom she never knew. Kristin grew up in America and always assumed grandad was a vintner (and Tony Soprano was in waste management…).
Soon Kristin arrives in Rome, ready to eat, pray and you-know-what. (After all, her husband’s you-know-whatting with the guidance counselor, who has one of the film’s funnier lines when she says, caught in the act: “I want you to know I’m a feminist!”) It seems like the you-know-what is about to happen quickly for Kristin too, because an impossibly handsome guy just happens to show up at the airport and take her number.
At the funeral, Kristin narrowly escapes death when the procession itself is attacked by the rival family (a cascade of oranges running down the cobblestoned street is a clever “Godfather” reference, until the joke gets tired). At the family home, she’s shown a video message designating her as the successor. She tries to flee, but Bianca tells her she can’t run from her destiny.
And so the film chronicles her making peace with that destiny, even if peace means severing a few eyeballs from their sockets along the way.
Not that Kristin becomes evil or anything. Most of her bad deeds are done by accident or in self-defense. But the worst deed of all is that the movie can’t decide what it wants her, or itself, to be. It’s not fully slapstick comedy — wine-stomping scenes aside — and hardly a serious crime saga.
Most of all, it seems to want to tell a story of female empowerment; at one point Kristin is reminded to never let a man dictate who she can be or what she can do. Nice message, but it’s muddled. Who exactly is dictating? Surely not her husband, a caricature of a doofus.
And so, despite some satisfying moments, by the increasingly cringe-worthy last third of the movie you’re just annoyed that it seems to want to cover all bases — to have its, er, cannoli and eat it, too. Maybe Kristin should just eat, pray, you-know-what, and head on home.
“Mafia Mamma,” a Bleecker Street release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for bloody violence, sexual content and language.” Running time: 101 minutes. Two stars out of four.
___
MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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In one corner, the Rupert Murdoch-owned conservative cable network that has a powerful and often polarizing influence on political discourse in the U.S., irritating liberals and providing sustenance to Donald Trump’s supporters.
Across the ring is the Denver-based voting equipment maker, which says Fox News damaged its reputation to the tune of $1.6 billion dollars when guests and hosts on the network falsely said the company was a central player in rigging the 2020 election for President Biden, a myth promoted by the Trump camp.
Dominion is arguing the network perpetuated Trump’s lies through his attorney Sidney Powell and adviser Rudy Giuliani in order to keep its unhappy viewers from fleeing to upstart conservative channel Newsmax.
Opening arguments begin Monday in Delaware Superior Court — a development that is stunning in itself as legal experts noted that such defamation cases rarely go to trial.
If sports books offered a line on a settlement, most lawyers would have bet it would be done before evidence was gathered for discovery. As a result, the dishy internal communications by Fox News talent and executives have been sprayed out by the press like candy from a piñata.
Rupert Murdoch introduces Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Herman Kahn Award Gala, Oct. 30, 2019, in New York.
(Mary Altaffer/AP)
“I’m very surprised it didn’t settle before discovery and before Fox had to produce all of this stuff that garnered all this publicity,” said Lee Levine, a veteran 1st Amendment attorney.
Texts, emails and deposition testimony provided a glimpse into the inner workings of Fox News, showing how executives and hosts tried to balance their own disbelief of Trump’s allegations with their perceived need to mollify his supporters who habitually watch the network.
Documents also revealed disdainful comments about Trump and Powell and tensions between the right-wing commentators and straight-news journalists working at the network.
Judge Eric Davis has already ruled that Fox News did present false information, citing programs hosted by Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs. Murdoch acknowledged as much in his deposition testimony given in January.
The ruling rejects the network’s defense that the false claims were newsworthy because they were made on behalf of the president, which legal experts believe is a huge advantage for Dominion.
The 12-person jury in Delaware will have to decide whether Fox News acted with malice by presenting the claims while knowing the information was false or displaying a reckless disregard for the truth.
Jurors will probably see the network’s talent take the stand to defend their actions. The 92-year-old Murdoch could be among the first witnesses called with his son Lachlan, executive chairman of Fox News parent Fox Corp, not far behind.
Donald Trump calls into Fox News a month before the 2020 election.
(Fox News )
The high-profile nature of the case and its witnesses will put courtroom sketches and video in heavy rotation on the network evening news and cable outlets CNN and MSNBC, who are more than happy to report on the troubles of a competitor. (So far, Fox News has seen no ratings erosion related to the case as it has maintained its dominant share of the cable news audience).
The defense is likely to lean heavily on the on-air-talent-turned-witnesses to show they were trying to get answers on the voter fraud claims being made and did not present them as fact. Their experience in front of the TV camera is expected to help.
“They are going to have these stars and these people are very polished performers and that can be very attractive before a jury,” said Stuart Brotman, a journalism professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Dominion will argue that executives and producers throughout Fox News knew the allegations from Powell and Giuliani were false — often describing them as “nuts” and “crazy” in private — but did not act to stop them from being repeated on the air.
Fox News attorneys are also likely to assert that Dominion’s business has not been damaged by any of the statements made on the network.
In a hearing Wednesday, Fox News attorneys noted that Dominion had its second best revenue year in its history in 2022, outperforming the company’s projections. The point will probably be part of their argument that the $1.6 billion damages the company is seeking is way out of proportion to its asset value.
But the walk-up to the trial has not gone well for Fox News. On Wednesday, Davis sanctioned Fox News attorneys for “discovery misconduct” after it was revealed that taped conversations with Giuliani, Powell and an unnamed Trump campaign official were not submitted in evidence.
Davis is considering a special master to investigate whether Fox News has withheld other evidence. Dominion can also conduct further depositions at Fox’s expense.
“I think it’s a lawyer’s worst nightmare to come up on the eve of trial and realize that you have so totally offended the judge,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
If the court finds other instances of evidence that was not submitted, Davis could inform the jury and cut into their trust of the defense.
“It would be a really serious sanction if he tells the jury Fox has withheld information,” Brotman said. “That would hurt.”
Fox News is trying to make the case that a Dominion victory would weaken 1st Amendment protections.
“While Dominion has pushed irrelevant and misleading information to generate headlines, Fox News remains steadfast in protecting the rights of a free press, given a verdict for Dominion and its private equity owners would have grave consequences for the entire journalism profession,” the company said in a statement.
Dominion has challenged Fox News’ 1st Amendment defense.
“As long-settled law makes clear, the First Amendment does not shield broadcasters that knowingly or recklessly spread lies,” a Dominion representative said in a statement. “The Court has rejected Fox’s First Amendment ‘newsworthy allegation’ defense and held that Dominion’s lawsuit is consistent with the First Amendment.”
Levine believes if Dominion prevails, it will actually dampen efforts to overturn New York Times vs. Sullivan, the landmark decision that sets the standard for malice in defamation cases. Some conservative leaders have expressed a desire to change the law because they believe burden of proof is too high.
“Nobody sees this as some sort of threat to mainstream news organizations and in fact most people, including me, see it as a ironically as a boon to press freedom,” Levine said. “There will probably be a short period of copycat cases where people out there have been criticized in the press and try to see a payday. They’ll be dealt with in due course, and long term, I don’t think it will have any impact.”
The third installment of Guardians of the Galaxy debuts next month and Disney World is celebrating! A new Premium Skyliner Bucket is coming to EPCOT in just a few days!
Popcorn bucket alert!! Disney collectors and Marvel fans get ready because this is adorable!
Photo: Disney Eats
Disney Eats shared the news today on Instagram. The caption reads, “These new popcorn buckets are out of this world!”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
This highly anticipated film is bittersweet as it will conclude the trilogy. Fans have been speculating about what will occur in the plot, after seeing some emotional images and videos.
Photo: Marvel
Several theories are circulating, regarding the fate of the characters. Find out what happens when Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 hits theaters on May 5, 2023.
Premium Skyliner Bucket
Disney Eats shares “You’ll be able to bring your favorite Guardians of the Galaxy along with you on your own foodie adventures with this new Premium Skyliner Bucket.”
Photo: Disney Eats
It will be available at any of EPCOT’s popcorn carts starting April 17! Fans are getting a sneak peek at one side of the collectible today for Foodie Friday.
This Premium Skyliner bucket is predominately blue, and says “Disney Skyliner” on the side. Groot and Rocket are hanging out of the window, which features a galactic background.
Photo: Disney Eats
The strap says “Guardians of the Galaxy” in bright orange tones. So, what do you think of this design?
Is it something you plan on adding to your collection? If so, make sure to plan accordingly, when the Guardians of the Galaxy Premium Skyliner Bucket arrives at EPCOT on April 17!
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!
MGM was once the most powerful studio in Hollywood. The makers of The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind once even had their own police station on the studio lot. But although the name MGM might not carry the same weight it once did, the company still exists, and Amazon recently acquired them. Now, according to Deadline, Amazon is looking to expand those MGM IPs into series and films for Prime Video and theatrical. Among them are beloved sci-fi franchises like Stargate, RoboCop, and many more.
MGM
Stargate, already a long-running sci-fi franchise with multiple series, is looking to hit the reboot button for both film and streaming television. The same goes for Robocop. Whether these will be full-on reboots are legacy sequels is still up in the air. We think Peter Weller returning as Alex Murphy/Robocop would probably get a lot more traction than another remake. Legally Blonde is another movie franchise that Amazon is looking at for both film and TV. Other titles named include Fame, Barbershop, The Magnificent Seven, Pink Panther and The Thomas Crown Affair. Although TV seems to be the place for most of these. .
The one we’re most potentially excited (and nervous) about is a potential Poltergeist project. The 1982 film is one of the most seminal horror movies ever made. Neither the first two sequels nor the remake were ever really worthy of the original Tobe Hooper film, which Steven Spielberg wrote. But a series picking up forty years after the original (and maybe ignoring the sequels) could be very interesting. Last year, Amazon acquired MGM for a staggering $8.5 billion. So expect to see lots of old franchises dusted off and given a 21st-century shine in the coming years. Even some deep-cut ones you may never have heard of before.
Microsoft is making it easier to view your photos in File Explorer. The latest Windows 11 developer preview rolling out today includes Gallery, a new feature that lets you view the Photos app’s image library while browsing files and folders.
The Gallery view, the shortcut to which is found in the File Explorer’s navigation panel, arrives in Windows Insider Build 23435. After selecting Gallery, the main file-browsing window will show thumbnails of the same images from the All Photos view of the Photos app. Microsoft says it’s optimized for accessing your most recent photos if you have OneDrive Camera Roll Backup activated on your phone; they’ll display right up top.
It should also make it easy to find content from specific folders. “You can choose which folders are shown in Gallery through the Collection dropdown,” Microsoft’s announcement reads. “You can also add subfolders of existing sources to filter to a subset of your content, such as desktop backgrounds and SD card/camera imports.” In addition, Gallery will appear as an option in the file-picking dialog, which should simplify attaching images to emails, PowerPoint presentations or social posts.
Gallery in the Windows 11 file-picker view
Microsoft
Microsoft says the feature is rolling out gradually and won’t be available to all Dev Channel Insiders immediately. Instead, the company will “monitor feedback and see how it lands before pushing it out to everyone.” Although it seems like a feature that will make its way to future stable releases, it’s still in beta and could (theoretically) end up on the cutting-room floor if the company receives negative feedback or changes course.
Editors note:This review was originally published May 22 after its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.The film opened in New York on Wednesday and today in Los Angeles.
Timing can be cruel. Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli’s second feature, Sick of Myself, has the misfortune to arrive in the Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section in the slipstream of Ruben Östlund’s divisive but funny competition title Triangle of Sadness; the latter being a broader, sillier but much more brutal dissection of class and culture. Sick of Myself also has to compete with the unexpected longevity of fellow countryman Joachim Trier’s hit The Worst Person In The World, which last year went from the Cannes competition all the way to the Oscars.
The net result is that despite another great, gutsy central performance from Ninjababy star Kristine Kujath Thorp, Sick of Myself won’t get the attention it might have had in previous years, which is a shame since there are some interesting ideas in the mix here and some dark laughs to be had.
Thorp plays Signe, a young woman whose boyfriend Thomas (Eirik Sæther) is a conceptual artist with a sideline in kleptomania (in the film’s somewhat misleading opening scene, we see the pair conspiring to steal a very expensive bottle of wine from a restaurant). Both are struggling, and Signe works in a coffee shop where the mundanity of everyday work is suddenly shattered when a female customer is mauled by a savage dog. Signe comes to her rescue and heads home in a daze, still covered in lashings of the other woman’s blood. It’s subtly expressed, but the attention she receives — from the police, the people she passes, and subsequently the media — plants a seed.
Later, when Thomas has unexpectedly become a rising art star with his weird compositions, some of it made from stolen furniture, Signe attends a fancy dinner in his honor.
Uncomfortable with the fact that Thomas is in the spotlight and no one is listening to her attempts at party talk, Signe affects a nut allergy. The concern she is shown emboldens her to take it further, and while Thomas is trying to make a heartfelt speech she fakes anaphylactic shock and steals his thunder.
This moment is the catalyst for what happens next: after reading about a dodgy Russian mood-altering drug called Lidexor, which is linked to a mysterious flesh-eating skin disease, Signe orders boxes and boxes of the stuff, with full knowledge of the drug’s side effects.
There’s a really good foundation for jet black satire here, and Thorp excels in the film’s superior first half, popping pills in scenes that show her effortless knack for goofy physical comedy. There’s also a little hint of Fight Club in Signe’s race to the bottom that echoes that film’s gleefully perverse embrace of nihilism, and — this is a stretch, admittedly — maybe even a touch of John Waters’ Female Trouble in Signe’s berserk pride in her willful self-mutilation when she becomes a tabloid star and even fashion model.
But somehow, Sick of Myself never quite blossoms; Signe and Thomas simply remain locked in a toxic co-dependent relationship that somehow carries on regardless, and Thorp’s expressive face starts to disappear under distracting layers of latex.
There’s fun to be had from Signe’s shameless narcissism, and her deluded fantasy scenes really lift the film when it gets a little stodgy (the best involves an in-jokey cameo from Anders Danielson Lie as a deadpan doctor). It’s not quite enough, though, to justify spending 90 minutes in these people’s company, and Borgli seems to know that, with an ending that appears to wrap things up nicely without actually doing anything of the sort.
There are two very intriguing stories going on here; one is an irreverent skit on society, the media and the celebrity of victimhood, the other is a tender portrait of a sad, lonely woman who’ll do anything to feel seen. But there’s a yawning gap in the middle — and it’s the sense of what’s missing here that lingers, not what’s there.
Title:Sick of Myself Distributor:Utopia Release date: April 12, 2023 (NY); April 14, 2023 (LA) Director-screenwriter: Kristoffer Borgli Cast: Kristine Kujath Thorp, Eirik Sæther, Fanny Vaager, Sarah Francesca Brænne, Fredrik Stenberg Ditlev-Simonsen, Steinar Klouman Hallert, Andrea Bræin Hovig, Henrik Mestad, Anders Danielsen Lie Running time: 1 hr 37 min
Saint Laurent is getting into the movie making business after Hollywood stars have commandeered the red carpet in Cannes and elsewhere wearing creations from the legendary fashion house.
Saint Laurent Productions, a division of the iconic design house, will be led by house creative director Anthony Vaccarello. The move also follows film directors and actors long being part of glitzy fashion shows, whether by sitting in the front row or making grand entrances on runways with top designers.
Now Saint Laurent’s new film production banner will launch in Cannes with its first production, Pedro Almodóvar’s Strange Way of Life. The short sees Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal play two middle-aged gunslingers with a deep connection who meet up again after a 25-year separation.
And the luxury brand’s film production arm also has two projects involving David Cronenberg and Paolo Sorrentino in the works. “These directors never fail to open my mind and, in a way, the singular, radical vision they bring to cinema has made me the person I am today,” Vaccarello said in a statement.
Canadian director Cronenberg is a favorite of Cannes and most recently premiered his latest film, Crimes of the Future, on the Croisette. And Italian director Sorrentino has also debuted his films in Cannes, including The Hand of God in 2021.
The late French designer Yves Saint Laurent launched and ran the luxury couture house with his business and life partner Pierre Bergé. The upcoming movies from Saint Laurent Productions will feature costumes by Vaccarello for his fashion house.
“I want to work with and provide a space for all the great film talents who have inspired me over the years,” Vaccarello added.
Maitland Ward , who played Rachel McGuire on ABC’s “Boy Meets World” from 1998 to 2000, said that “girls were treated like meat,” by the “Disney machine.”
“You had to be virginal, but you also had to be sexual,” Ward told Fox News Digital in an interview published Friday.
The actress, who is now an adult film performer, said the problem wasn’t her co-stars or ABC. “The issues mainly came from Disney, and that it wasn’t so much with the cast members. It was more the whole Disney machine back then, especially back in the late ’90s and early 2000s when the girls were treated like meat.”
She previously spoke out about her time on the sitcom when her memoir “Rated X: How Porn Liberated Me From Hollywood,” was published in September.
In the sixth chapter of her book, Ward said she was asked to try on lingerie for “Boy Meets World” producers, “primarily men,” in the office “more than once,” and that the experience made her “uncomfortable.”
“My confidence was low with my body,” said the actress, who is now 46. “I was young, impressionable and thought this is what you do. It would never happen today because somebody would get called out on it. And let me just say, I’m in porn, and I’ve never had to walk into a producer’s office or whatever and try on the lingerie for a shoot.”
She added, “Even though there were issues with Disney and production and my character and relationships, I do remember it as an innocent time, though, with a cast that was very much family.”
Ward continued, “It’s a family. It’s complicated. Like maybe you have issues with your father, but you work them out later or something. But the Disney stuff, I don’t know if they’ll ever work it out. That’s different.”
Unfortunately, Ward’s accusations only add to a series of claims stemming from the treatment of female stars of the ’90s and ’00s. Much of that treatment and the public’s reception of it have been reassessed in the last few years with Britney Spears gaining her freedom from her father’s conservatorship, Joss Whedon coming under fire for allegedly running an “extremely toxic” set on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Wonder Years” star Fred Savage getting fired from the series reboot over “inappropriate” behavior.
For the first time in 334 podcasts, we’re switching things up a bit. Yes, Cecily Knobler from the “Rose Pricks” podcast has joined us before (in podcast #320), but never before I have I done a movie review for the weekly podcast – until today. When I last appeared on the “Rose Pricks” podcast, Cecily and I realized we both had quite the infatuation with the movie “Pretty in Pink,” the mid-80’s movie directed by John Hughes. As you know (or maybe you don’t), both songs that open and close my two podcasts are from this movie, in the same scene actually, by the same band, the Rave Ups. “Rave Up (Shut Up)” is for the Daily Roundup, and “Positively Lost Me” is the music for the weekly podcast. So we dive into that and all things “Pretty in Pink” during this hour review of the movie. We recorded this last week, so I let Cecily take the reigns since it was when I was still heavily congested. But I fight through it. Anything for one of the all-time classics from the 80’s. And yeah for the longest time, one of the major plot points of the film I didn’t even know about because I didn’t see this movie til it came on cable, and I never seemed to catch the beginning of the movie.
You can listen to today’s podcast on a number of platforms, but you can also tune in by clicking the player below:
(SPOILERS) I begin by going over how today’s podcast came to be. Then Cecily joins me (8:30) and we review the movie “Pretty in Pink,” a movie where both my theme songs for my podcasts come from. A lot of fun, inside info of one of the mid-80’s classics directed by John Hughes.
(SPOILERS) Today’s Daily Roundup covers Charity’s hometown date today, Chris Harrison calls out Mike Fleiss, Andy Cohen & Howie Mandel beefing, Survivor, The Challenge, and a new dating show this winter that just dropped their trailer yesterday.
You can listen to that podcast on a number of platforms, but you can also tune in here:
When Rory Millikin first met Jeremy Renner a few years ago, he had no idea who the “Avengers” star was. Millikin was raving about Denis Villeneuve’s “Arrival,” and when Renner explained he one of the main actors, Millikin insisted, “Nope, that wasn’t you.”
Millikin told TheWrap that Renner was amused instead of offended and said, “Either we’re never going to see each other again or we’re going to be best friends.” The two did end up becoming best friends and now co-star and co-produce “Rennervations” on Disney+.
In the heartwarming docuseries, the two men team up with a crew of builders and various charitable organizations to transform decommissioned vehicles like buses and fire engines into mobile music studios, a water filtration unit and more, aided by international stars including Vanessa Hudgens, Anthony Mackie and Indian actor Anil Kapoor.
TheWrap recently caught up with Millikin in an interview about the show’s origins, its production and the context of its airing after Renner’s snowplow accident in January.
TheWrap:How did he first pitch the show to you?
Rory Millikin: He always had an idea of making the vehicles into cool business ideas geared towards either community or children. And then the idea came around to helping kids and doing this on a bigger scale. We started talking about a show and how it would work, how we could leverage organizations that help kids. The biggest concern was he did not want the spotlight on him. He’s a really private guy. [When execs suggested the series be more focused on Jeremy], he put his foot down and said, ‘Don’t even try to go that route. I’m out, forget it.’ He just put that fire out immediately.
He wanted to reach out with his network of charities and organizations he works with like Big Brothers and Sisters and motivate people to get off the couch and contribute to their community. It was really about inspiring and motivating people to get involved and not about him.
How hard was it to pull this off on such a tight turnaround?
He has huge shooting schedules with ‘Mayor Kingstown’ and things like that. So there was a really small window if he was going to do this to get it done. So the team they put together — AK and Roxy and Merri — they got pulled in immediately, and they were thrown into this cauldron.
There were always cameras rolling. We were always miked. So there was never, ‘Here’s the scene, here’s what you do.’ They just filmed in real-time. Everything had to be fluid and real. These timelines were under so much pressure, that there was genuine fear that we weren’t going to get it done before Jeremy had to go to his other job. So these guys are going 18 hours, 20 hour days around the clock. Some of them were sleeping on couches that were set up in this huge warehouse with these vehicles are side by side. There’s sparks going 24 hours a day. I genuinely don’t know how they pulled this off.
Watching the first episode when Merri talks about surviving her own horrific car accident, it’s chillingly similar to what happened to Jeremy.
Another cool thing with the builders, which we did not learn until the end, was that they had experiences eerily parallel to the organizations that we were working with. Bender, our head builder, was in the foster care system. He would be tearing up as he’s building the bus for the orphanage and we learned he’d been bounced through the whole system and that’s why this was so important to him.
I mean, the parallels with Jeremy’s accident when you look back with Merri’s – horrific accidents, they were both in comas, rebuilt body parts, and she has titanium through her body. So each builder who didn’t know each other had similar stories. No one knew the person next to them had an incredible story that related to theirs as it related to this vehicle. [The producers] don’t want to show a bunch of people crying. So they didn’t show it, but there were a lot of tears, genuine tears and stories being exchanged.
And I thought, ‘Wow, the universe has a weird way of bringing people into important projects, things that actually are here to do something good for humanity.’
How hard was it to find a home for this series, since it’s kind of a hybrid?
It was difficult to pitch. It’s not a build show. It’s not a charitable show. It’s a personal journey show, sort of, but it’s more about inspiring, informing, and educating people on how they can find other organizations that are right in their backyard to help their community or help kids.
And as dads, Jeremy and I have problems trying to find content for our kids so we can all sit down as a family and watch. Now you’ve got this really cool, new [series]. So this is the place it should be. It had to be Disney, right? That’s who they are.
Do you envision a second season
Oh, God, yeah. I can’t wait. Jeremy said to me, ‘How cool would this be that we got to go help people?’ We get to travel together. We hang out together all the time. It’s just like our kitchen talks in the evening about life philosophy, kids and what we want to do the world itself, but we got to do it. And this is part of our job. Because how cool is that?’
I became great friends with Anil Kapoor and text every week. Anil wants me to come stay with him over the India and spend the summer there and I can’t wait to go. It’s that magical of a place.
What kind of impact has the show had on you?
When you get off that road trip, and the whole whirlwind of it, you don’t see the big picture. When I got back from India, I sat there by myself in my room and just started weeping at how fortunate I was. I realized that this is probably the most important thing I’ve ever done to help kids other than my own, and probably will ever get a chance to do.
I was blessed to come along and be a co-pilot on it. You shake your head and think to yourself, if there’s ever gonna be a pearly gates moment, and they’re gonna go through the pretty sure this might be the one that gets me in.
The first three episodes of “Rennervations” are now streaming on Disney+
Man has long been obsessed with the stars. What secrets do they hold? Can we find meaning in our existence by seeking out new life and new civilizations? Art has a way of examining these questions in many different ways. The romantic comedy form usually tells us that the meaning of it all is love. And right now, what could humanity need more in the real world now than love? Writer Rebecca Banner and director Kyra Sedgwick bring some love back with their film Space Oddity.
The film is a reference to the beautiful, melancholic David Bowie hit song about an astronaut leaving Earth behind only to be lost in space. The story revolves around Alex McAllister (Kyle Allen), a young man on a flower farm in a modern small Rhode Island town. He’s over the moon (pun intended) about training for a one-way ticket to Mars, but will meeting the beautiful and alluring insurance agent Daisy Taylor (Alexandra Shipp), who is new to town, change his mind? It’s also about how Alex’s family deals with his decision to leave Earth behind after already being traumatized by a former loss.
Sedgwick brought her real-life husband, actor extraordinaire Kevin Bacon, on board to play Alex’s father, Jeff. He’s part of a stellar supporting cast, including Simon Helberg as Dimitri. He’s a happy immigrant, reminiscent of Balki from Perfect Strangers, who is a farmhand/friend of the family. He’s always mistaking lines from things such as Jurassic Park as wise, old Russian advice. Madeline Brewer plays Alex’s sister Liz, who is quite protective of her brother’s well-being, while his mom Jane (Carrie Preston), seems excited, and his dad throws his hands up in the air about it.
“…training for a one-way ticket to Mars…”
The heart of Space Oddity is the awkward but electric chemistry between the aloof Alex and the vibrant Daisy. The audience has to believe that the fireworks between Shipp and Allen are enough for Alex to potentially give up his dream of leaving this dying planet behind (as he puts it). Luckily, Shipp and Allen are magnetic together. She radiates off the screen with her warm laugh and smile, which helps to get you invested in his ultimate decision.
Rom-coms, by their nature, are formulaic, and despite the added intrigue of the premise, this one is no different. That’s not a bad thing in my book, though, because it hits the expected beats well, with a great cast that makes the film hum along for the brisk 92-minute runtime. There are subplots involving whether the private space mission is real or not and who in the family will take over Jeff’s precious flower farm, but the true heart of it all is the romance. Alex and Daisy let the cold ocean water hit them with their eyes closed while lying on the beach. In another moment, Alex tries to do CPR on Daisy for a class, but she has to show him how it’s really done. These scenes are nice little touches that add to the fun fantasy nature of the genre.
If we’re going to save this planet, we need more love. Space Oddity shows us the blueprint for the mission.
The Daytona Beach Police reported Thursday morning that Bell hadn’t been seen in 24 hours, and that he was considered “missing and endangered.” The authorities confirmed that the post came from the police.
“He should be traveling in a 2022 grey BMW and his last known location is potentially the area of Mainland High School on 4/12/2023,” according to the post. “He is considered missing and endangered.”
Later Thursday, they came out with the update that “At this time we can confirm law enforcement officials are in contact and Mr. Bell is safe.”
The “Drake and Josh” star, whose legal name is Jared Drake Bell, pled guilty to felony attempted child endangerment as well as disseminating matter harmful to juveniles, a misdemeanor, receiving a sentence to two years of probation and 200 hours of community service. He was also required to register as a sex offender.
Bell took to Instagram a few months later to address the situation.
“I know that this has moved very quickly for you, but for me, it’s been a three-year, thorough investigation into every false claim that has been made,” Bell said at the time. “And, it’s not me telling you that the claims are false, but the state of Ohio has proven the claims to be false. If these claims were remotely true, my situation would be very different. I would not be here at home with my wife and with my son. But that being said, I am not perfect, and I make mistakes.”
“When I was presented with a plea deal because of the messages, I felt that it was the best way to get this over quickly and for everybody involved to be able to move on and for me to get back to doing what I love.”
Peacock has released the official trailer for Pete Davidson’s Bupkis, in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself.
The SNL alum co-wrote, executive produced and stars in the comedy series inspired by his life. Per the logline, the eight-episode series “combines grounded storytelling with absurd elements from the unfiltered and original worldview for which Davidson is known.”
The trailer opens with Davidson on a roller coaster (screaming) and on a wild joyride with Bobby Cannavale (more screaming). We also see Davidson with Joe Pesci, who plays his grandfather. “You run around like a kid and you’re not a kid anymore, you’re a man,” Pesci warns Davidson. We also see a flurry of quick images of guest stars including Edie Falco, who plays Pete’s mom, John Mulaney, Steve Buscemi, Ray Romano, Jon Stewart, Sebastian Stan, Kenan Thompson, Machine Gun Kelly and Chase Sui Wonders.
Davidson co-wrote the series with his longtime friend and collaborator Dave Sirus as well as showrunner Judah Miller. Bupkis is executive produced by Davidson, Sirus and Miller, as well as Lorne Michaels, Andrew Singer and Erin David of Broadway Video, which is producing with Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, where the company is under a deal. Jason Orley will direct and co-executive produce.
As previously announced, Davidson returns to NBC’s Studio 8H on May 6 to guest host Saturday Night Live. The comedian and actor was a regular on the late-night comedy sketch show from 2014 to 2022. He left at the end of last season.
Bupkis premieres May 4 on Peacock. Check out the trailer above.
Even at 92, Clint Eastwood isn’t ready to slow down as he has set the thriller Juror #2as his next film, with Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette in negotiations to star. While it isn’t official, sources also add that with schedules and budget figured, Warner Bros. — Eastwood’s longtime studio home — is close to officially greenlighting the film. Jonathan Abrams penned the script. Adam Goodman, Tim Moore and Jessica Meier will produce.
The pic is set during a murder trial where one of the jurors slowly realizes he killed the victim in a reckless-driving accident and tries to save the defendant without incriminating himself. Ellen Goldsmith-Vein and Jeremy Bell will exec produce.
In typical Eastwood fashion, the Oscar winner had been weighing several scripts and in recent months zeroed in on Juror #2. He began having talks with A-list talent to star, finally landing on Hoult as the ideal actor for titular role and Collette for the district attorney. Hoult and Collette are as busy as any actors in town, and Hoult needed some scheduling out before he could commit, but insiders now say that’s been sorted out and all things are headed in the direction of a closed deal.
As for Hoult, the Emmy-nominated actor is set to have a big 2023, starting with his horror-action-comedy Renfield bowing today. In the film, he plays Dracula’s infamous henchman, which gives him an opportunity to show off his range in both action and comedy departments. He also has the third season of Hulu’s The Greatcoming out next month following his acclaimed second season, which earned him an Emmy nom. He most recently was seen in Searchlight’s The Menu, in the scene-stealing role as the boyfriend of Anya Taylor-Joy. He also has the Justin Kurzel pic The Order and is currently filming Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu movie.
Collette also has been quite busy as her Mafia Mamma hits theaters today, and she also recently was seen in The Estate.
Hoult is repped by UTA and 42, and Collette is with CAA and United Management. Abrams is repped by Mosaic and McKuin Frankel Whitehead.
According to former cast members, other incidents weren’t as straightforward as they seemed in the show. Dancers sometimes forgot their solos, which would often lead to explosive dressing room fights and a spot at the bottom of Abby’s pyramid. But Fallon Chapman, who appeared on the show in 2014 as a guest dancer, explained in a January TikTok that in an incident where she had “forgotten” her solo, she had actually injured her knee during her dance, so she began improvising the rest. She also said that she ran off the stage so that the camera operators wouldn’t “see her crying and try to make some story out of it.”
Chapman stated that prior to her appearance on the show, she had only done a couple of solos and that she had only done musical theater and lyrical numbers. “This was already a red flag at this point when they told me I was going to be doing, like, a dark and creepy contemporary number, because I never even done that before,” Chapman explained.
While the dancers experienced a whirlwind of emotions and experiences, many seem to be thriving. TikToker Caroline Tsambalieros posts updates on the show’s dancers and explained to me in a Zoom interview that the show was such an important part of so many people’s lives growing up that there was bound to be an audience hungry for life after Dance Moms.
“They were role models for so many other girls that were the same age,” she said. “It’s exciting that it has this longevity even though the show has been over for so long and that original cast has been gone even longer. There was just something about them. They connected with people.”
Lukasiak agrees: “Lots of people grow up and have big careers, but it’s odd that like a group that literally has known each other since they were two, three, four, they all have successful careers. And no one’s a serial killer, which is amazing. They easily could have been, given everything they’ve been through.”●
Legendary actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood is closing in on his next project, with plans to direct “Juror No. 2.”
The legal drama is set up at Warner Bros., with Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette circling the lead roles. Eastwood will direct and produce the project alongside Adam Goodman, Tim Moore and Jessica Meier. Jonathan Abrams penned the script.
“Juror No. 2” will take place during a murder trial and follows a juror (Hoult), who realizes that he may have caused the victim’s death. He must decide whether to manipulate the jury to save himself, or reveal the truth and turn himself in. Collette would play the prosecutor.
Warner Bros. is nearing a green light on the project, with a production start eyed for June, following Eastwood’s 93rd birthday on May 31.
An Oscar winner for “Unforgiven” and “Million Dollar Baby,” Eastwood’s last movie was 2021’s “Cry Macho,” a modern-day Western. Eastwood’s storied filmography, both in front of and behind the camera, also includes “Dirty Harry,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” “Mystic River,” “Letters from Iwo Jima”and “American Sniper.”
Hoult stars in “Renfield,” Universal’s horror comedy which debuts in theaters this weekend, and a third season of Hulu’s “The Great” debuting next month. (Hoult was nominated for an Emmy for Season 2.) He’s next set to star in Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” opposite Willem Dafoe, Emma Corin and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Hoult is repped by UTA.
Collette will next be seen in “The Power,” a fantasy series for Amazon’s Prime Video and stars in Catherine Hardwicke’s “Mafia Mamma,” which is in theaters now. Next up, Collette will star opposite Robert Pattinson, Steven Yeun, Naomi Ackie and Mark Ruffalo in Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17,” which will be released by Warner Bros in 2024. She is repped by CAA.
The upcoming Disney+ series will feature the return of Hahn’s Agatha Harkness alongside exciting MCU newcomers and returning WandaVision characters, such as Debra Jo Rupp’s Mrs. Hart and Emma Caulfield Ford’s Dottie.
Aubrey Plaza, Joe Locke, Ali Ahn, and Maria Dizza are among the new actors who will join Agatha in her thrilling journey, but it is unknown which of them will serve as allies or enemies to the titular witch.
Kathryn Hahn Teases Agatha’s Impressive Cast
Speaking as a guest in The Drew Barrymore Show, Agatha Harkness actress Kathryn Hahn talked about the upcoming WandaVision spin-off, Agatha: Coven of Chaos.
When Drew Barrymore reiterated to Hahn that she’s the MCU’s Agatha, the Marvel actress noted that she loves the character so much, admitting that “this is exactly the part [she] should be playing at this stage in [her] life:”
Barrymore: “I mean, you’re doing ‘Agatha’ right now. You’re Agatha!”
Hahn: “I know. I love her so much. I love a witch. I feel like that this is exactly the part I should be playing at this stage in my life.”
Hahn hyped up the spin-off show’s cast, describing them as the “hottest coven on the planet” (a coven refers to a group of witches):
“And I gotta tell you, we got the hottest coven on the planet in this show. I’m very excited for you all to see this coven.”
When Barrymore told Hahn that she feels like the actress will not say any spoilers about Coven of Chaos, the WandaVision star responded with yes before teasing that “it continues to unfold in ways that are surprising to [her:]”
Barrymore: “I was grilling you about it the last time, I was like, ‘Are there any secrets, any spoilers?’ Obviously that Marvel Universe, I feel like warns you that you cannot say a word.”
Hahn: “Yes. And in fact, I know less than I did last time. It continues to unfold in ways that are surprising to me. I can tell you it’s in outer space this time and–
Barrymore: “It is?”
Hahn: “–No!”
Hahn fooled around with Barrymore to avoid spoiling anything about the series, ultimately mentioning that the show is a “silent film” at one point:
Barrymore: “’Cause that looked like suburbia.”
Hahn: “Yeah, right, exactly. We keep saying we’re just gonna make up different locales for it every time we talk about it. So this time it’s actually, it’s just gonna be completely, it’s gonna be a silent film this time. There’s gonna be no talking at all in Agatha this time around.”
In a separate interview with SiriusXM, Kathryn Hahn continued to dodge Marvel snipers as she was pressed for answers about the WandaVision spin-off.
When asked if she is done shooting her scenes for Coven of Chaos, Hahn hilariously repeated SiriusXM’s question while also reiterating that the show has a “very, very hot coven:”
SiriusXM: “We’re living for Agatha: Coven of Chaos, which is going to be the spin-off and we just want to know, are you done shooting it? Are you in the middle of shooting it? What’s happening? Where are we?”
Hahn: “Where are we? Where are we? Where am I, is the question? I don’t know what’s going on. We are in the middle and I have a very, very hot coven. I could not be more excited to share this group with the planet.”
Is Hahn afraid of Marvel snipers? The actress doesn’t seem to be fazed by them:
SiriusXM: “I saw you look over as if like a Marvel sniper was right there.”
Hahn: “No. No Marvel snipers. Only in my own mind.”
SiriusXM shared that it saw a rumor that The Orphan star Isabelle Fuhrman is reportedly part of Agatha: Coven of Chaos. When asked if this is true, Hahn admitted that it was the first time that she heard of that claim:
“That is the first I’ve heard of that… Anything could happen. I don’t know. Listen, we could be in outer space. The entire thing could be underground. I don’t know.”
Who Will Win Between Agatha & the Coven?
Kathryn Hahn’s excitement in introducing the “hot” coven of the upcoming WandaVision spin-off is a promising development.
Given that the show will be filled with MCU newcomers, Hahn’s boost for the cast is important since it could lead to curiosity among fans.
Moreover, the actress’ consistent mention of the coven may hint at the group’s importance in Agatha. In Marvel Comics and in WandaVision, the coven had a score to settle against Agatha after she betrayed them by practicing dark magic.
Early rumors suggested that Agatha will be freed from Wanda’s spell, indicating that she will either try to find out what happened to the Scarlet Witch or get sidetracked by a mission involving the returning coven who could be seeking revenge against her.
This could mean that an eventual clash between Agatha and the coven will happen, leading to interesting ramifications for the MCU’s mystical side.
David Harbour’s new DC role in the animated series Creature Commandos is an improvement on his original Suicide Squad part. Harbour first joined DC with a role in director David Ayer’s Suicide Squad. While the actor has skyrocketed in popularity due to his star turn as Jim Hopper in the Netflix flagship series Stranger Things, Harbour only had a small role in Suicide Squad, shooting the movie before the popular series premiered. Harbour played Dexter Tolliver in Suicide Squad, a National Security Advisor of the US government who had very little screen time.
While Harbour’s Tolliver did help the movie by being supportive of Amanda Waller’s idea to implement the Suicide Squad, the character ultimately appeared for a brief time and has likely been forgotten by many. Harbour joining the new DC Universe as part of Creature Commandos‘ cast allows the actor to play a more significant part in the DC Universe in comparison to the old DCEU. Interestingly, Harbour will be part of both DC and Marvel at the same time, as the actor is set to return as his Red Guardian character in Marvel’s Thunderbolts movie next year. Harbour’s new DC role is an improvement on his last.
David Harbour’s Creature Commandos Role Is Better Than His Suicide Squad Part
A role in the new DC Universe is already better than one in the old DCEU. While there have been some great castings in DC’s recent past, the DCEU was a very uneven universe overall due greatly to how poorly managed it was by DC’s past regime. Now, DC Studios has ushered in a new era with James Gunn and Peter Safran ready to chart a new universe that is closer to the comic books. There has already been a surge of interest in DC with the announcement of a new slate of projects, and Harbour’s role in Creature Commandos is a bigger deal than his Suicide Squad part.
Harbour plays Eric Frankenstein in the series, one of the show’s main characters and a clear improvement on his small Suicide Squad role. While Creature Commandos is an animation, the series had all of its episodes written by Gunn himself, which is a testament to the quality that should be expected from the series, as well as the overall importance of the new team. Gunn’s DC Universe has also been confirmed to have the same actors play their characters in animation and live-action, which would allow Harbour to have a big role at DC going forward.
Who Else Is In DC’s Creature Commandos Cast
The full main cast list for Creature Commandoshas now been revealed. Besides Harbour as Eric Frankenstein, the animated series’ cast includes Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr., Maria Bakalova as Princess Ilana Rostovic, Indira Varma as The Bride, Zoe Chao as Nina Mazursky, Alan Tudyk as Dr. Phosphorus, Sean Gunn as both his The Suicide Squad character Weasel and newcomer G.I. Robot, and Peacemaker actor Steve Agee reprising his role of John Economos. Harbour’s bigger DC role in Creature Commandoscan be seen when the show premieres on HBO Max in 2024.
A US TV commercial for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom has leaked online.
The advert, which is described as “a slightly unfinished version” of a live-action TV spot called ‘You Can Do What’, includes some brand-new game footage.
In the ad, which is viewable below, we see Link being pursued by a three-headed Flame Gleeok, and later firing an arrow into a tree to illuminate what appears to be a cave.
Coinciding with the trailer’s release, the game’s official website was updated with some new information about the title.
“Link begins his journey on one of the many mysterious floating islands that have suddenly appeared in the skies high above Hyrule,” it reads. “It’s there our hero will have to gain new abilities before returning to the surface world to begin his epic adventure.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Official Trailer #3
“The sky isn’t the only thing that’s changed in Hyrule. Familiar locations have been dramatically transformed, with new towns, dank caves, and mysterious gaping chasms springing up across the world—all waiting to be explored.”
Imagine a gig as a worker or handyman. Imagine that he has long hair, a long beard, and tattoos all over his arms, and he drives through Los Angeles with the windows down, blasting heavy metal music. That’s Henry.
You would think his intensity alludes to a story of an aggressive nature, but Henry is only serious about one thing: the laidback lifestyle he has come to love. A metal Lebowski, of sorts. His problem, however, is that other peoples’ drama is a constant threat to his chill life, and every time he goes on a job, he gets entangled in the lives of his unruly customers.
‘Metal Man’Credit: Courtesy of Tomas Pais
The idea presented itself in a conversation with a new friend over lunch in Highland Park. I had been describing how I’d been working on building a Tiki bar in the carport of another friend’s house and how I found myself being a calming presence during a chaotic roommate situation.
As the story unfolded, it became clear that there was something immediately engaging about a reluctant but decidedly engaging character who just wants to keep the world around him in a state of “chill vibes.” It takes work to be someone who desires that type of life, and it can take even more work to hold space for others to do the same.
From there, the endless possibilities for setting up bizarre and endearing Los Angeles archetypes, each with their handiwork to complete, sparked the desire to create an outline for a series of episodes, a script for a proof of concept, and, subsequently, a pilot.
It was important to shoot something because so much of what the show feels like is a vibe, and sometimes it’s easier to show people what your show is than having them try to imagine it on the page.
It was early in the process that a dear friend of mine, John Patton Ford, took an interest in the project and offered to help write an episode or two with me. After settling on a script to shoot as a pilot, we secured some financing and were set to shoot in the spring of 2020. For obvious reasons, we had to shelve the project and despite the personal difficulties most everyone had to deal with, it turned out to be a blessing forMetal Man.
It gave me a lot of time to ruminate over and refine what I wanted it to be. Since I was playing the central character, I was able to grow my hair out to a more appropriate “heavy metal” length. It’s safe to say that my determination to not give up on this project was one of the few life rafts that kept me afloat during a complicated time in the world.
Once things started to ease up, I brought on my neighbor and friend, Kaelan Housewright, to help produce and a wonderful director and friend, Laurel Parmet, to tie it all together creatively. I was also extremely lucky that they both had talented friends of their own who jumped at the chance to work on Metal Man. Todd Bell was our director of photography and Nick Weidner was our editor.
One of the funniest moments in the process of getting the pilot made was watching David Massil’s audition. I must have watched it 63 times the night that it came in and laughed so much at the fun and levity he brought. The best part of this was when, after casting David in the pilot, I learned that he is a practicing MD who lives in the Bay Area and just acts on the side as a “fun and relaxing hobby.” He was such a joy to be around and so committed to doing his best on set that he made people smile without even trying.
Something I’m going to share with you about myself is that, in some ways, I am a lot like Henry. I have had a rich and storied life as an actor and writer, filled with a lot of failures and few successes. Now, I am most concerned with building community, helping and being available to my friends, and besides being handy around the house and enjoying the company of well-behaved dogs, every day I’m motivated by the possibility of connecting with people.
Getting to share with others, this incredible voyage called the human experience and laughing about it. Discussing how life’s challenges, whether self-inflicted or not, can be resolved with humanity and empathy, even when they hurt the most. Finding that stillness in the presence of chaos is ultimately what Metal Man is about.
So yes, this show is personal to me, and I can’t wait to make a first season so I can share it with the world.
EXCLUSIVE: Elaine McMillion Sheldon, the filmmaker known thus far for her Academy Award-nominated and Emmy-winning work in the documentary space, is making her first move into narrative as the director of a film on Marry Harris Jones — the hallowed labor figure known to history as Mother Jones.
An Irish-born American working at various points as a dressmaker and schoolteacher, Jones pivoted her focus to union and community organizing and activism after experiencing two major, personal tragedies: the death of her husband and four children from yellow fever in 1867 Memphis, and the destruction of her dress shop in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The impassioned figure would come to be known as “the most dangerous woman in America” while working to secure rights for mine workers and ban child labor.
Sheldon’s film on Jones will follow the fierce warrior for the working class during one of her final fights in the American coalfields. CAA Media Finance will arrange financing for the film and rep worldwide distribution rights.
“Even though she passed away in 1930, Mother Jones’ story still resonates today,” Sheldon told Deadline. “It’s a historical story of resilience, gender, and influence; and a contemporary story about how public personalities are formed and maintained, as well as the role of performance and spectacle in politics.”
“Mother Jones was relentless in her commitment to improve the lives of working people and was committed to and a fierce fighter for social justice. She was compelled to create a society that was more equitable and just,” added Saltzman. “Her legacy has a profound impact on activists and organizations around the world. An advocate well into her 80s, Jones was a courageous and fierce warrior whose story continues to be deeply relevant today.”
Sheldon is an Appalachian-based filmmaker best known for directing and producing Netflix’s documentary short Heroin(e), exploring America’s opioid crisis, which landed an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short, as well as a News & Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Short Documentary in 2018. She further mined the subject with the feature-length Netflix doc Recovery Boys and most recently directed and produced King Coal. That acclaimed documentary, exploring America’s coal regions as they find their new identity beyond the industry that has dominated life for more than 100 years, world premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.
Saltzman is currently developing a biopic of fitness guru Jack Lalanne, based on Steven Kaminsky’s biography Anything Is Possible: The Jack LaLanne Story, with Gunnar Peterson aboard as an executive producer. She’s also developing films based on two notable artist biographies: Debby Campbell and Mark Bego’s Burning Bridges: Life with My Father Glen Campbell and Matthew Hild’s Arrow Through the Heart: The Biography of Andy Gibb. The former charts highs and lows in the life of country music star Glen Campbell, while the latter looks at singer-songwriter and Bee Gees brother Andy Gibb’s struggle with fame, cocaine addiction and death at just 30 years old.
Plus, John Mulaney jokes about his divorce and child in the trailer for the show, out May 4.
Pete Davidson is just as famous for his personal life as his acting career, so it’s only fitting that his first leading television role sees him playing himself. The upcoming Peacock comedy “Bupkis” stars Davidson as Davidson, parodying the surreal levels of fame he has achieved in recent years with the help of some A-list friends.
The show is similar to Davidson’s 2020 film “The King of Staten Island,” which was directed by Judd Apatow and saw the former “Saturday Night Live” cast member in a role heavily inspired by his own background. Unlike that film though, “Bupkis” sees Davidson explicitly play a fictionalized version of himself, juggling acting roles, antics in the celebrity world, tabloid rumors, and his relationships with his working class family from Staten Island.
The trailer features many nods to real life tabloid stories and rumors involving Davidson, including his sister complaining about speculation about the star’s penis size. Another scene, featuring Davidson’s friend and former “SNL” writer John Mulaney, pokes fun at the latter’s divorce and subsequent child with actress Olivia Munn.
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“You gotta be able to walk away from anything in your life in 30 seconds flat,” Mulaney says as himself in the trailer. “That’s why I got nothing tying me down.”
“You have a kid,” Davidson replies.
Davidson recruited a massive ensemble of big name talent to appear alongside him. Oscar winner Joe Pesci, who semi-retired from acting in 1999, plays Davidson’s grandfather. The role marks the legend’s first on screen credit since 2019’s “The Irishman” and his first time on TV since guesting on “SNL” back in 1997. “The Sopranos” Emmy winner Edie Falco also stars, as Davidson’s mother. In addition to Mulaney, guest stars include Davidson’s “Bodies Bodies Bodies” co-star Chase Sui Wonders, his former “SNL” co-star Kenan Thompson, Steve Buscemi, Jon Stewart, Machine Gun Kelly, Ray Romano, Method Man, Charlie Day, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Walter Hauser, Charlamagne Tha God, Simon Rex, Brad Garrett, La La Anthony, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Sunita Mani, Philip Ettinger, Oona Roche, and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
Davidson co-created the show with showrunner Judah Miller and Dave Sirus. All three executive produce, along with Davidson’s old “Saturday Night Live” boss Lorne Michaels, Andrew Singer, and Erin David. The series is produced by Michaels’ Broadway Video production banner, which produces “Saturday Night Live” and has produced the show’s of many former “SNL” stars, such as Tina Fey’s “30 Rock,” Fred Armisen’s “Portlandia,” Aidy Bryant’s “Shrill,” and Cecily Strong’s “Schmigadoon!” Universal Television serves as the studio behind the series.
All eight episodes of “Bupkis” will premiere on Peacock May 4. Watch the full trailer for the series below.
In the latest TV show ratings, there was a four-way tie for the Thursday demo win, while CBS’ Young Sheldon delivered the night’s biggest audience.
ABC |Station 19 (with 3.8 million total viewers and a 0.4 demo rating) was steady. Grey’s Anatomy (3.3 mil/0.3) was steady with its first hour, but the second (3 mil/0.3) slipped to series lows; read recap and Kelly McCreary exit Q&A.
CBS |Young Sheldon (6.6 mil/0.4, read recap) and Ghosts (6.1 mil/0.4) were both down in audience and respectively hit and tied demo lows. So Help Me Todd (4.5 mil/0.3) and CSI: Vegas (3.3 mil/0.3) each added eyeballs and were steady in the demo.
FOX |Next Level Chef (1.6 mil/0.3) slipped to at least season lows, while Animal Control (1 mil/0.2) hit and matched its lowest numbers to date.
The Live+Same Day numbers reported in our ratings column do not reflect a show’s overall performance, given the increased use of delayed playback via DVR and streaming platforms, plus out-of-home viewing. These numbers (Nielsen fast nationals, unless denoted as finals) instead aim to simply illustrate trends or superlatives. This is only an exhibition, this is not a competition. Please, no wagering.
HARDY is the top contender with seven nominations, while Wilson is up for seven awards. Their collaboration, “wait in the trunk,” will compete for song of the year, visual media of the year and music event of the year.
The ACM Awards, to be hosted by Dolly Parton and Garth Brooks, will air live on Amazon’s Prime Video on May 11 from the Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
HARDY is also nominated for artist-songwriter of the year and is a triple nominee for song of the year: He’s nominated as a performer and co-writer of “wait in the truck” and as a co-writer of Morgan Wallen’s double platinum hit, “Sand In My Boots.” HARDY is a double nominee for musical event of the year since he co-produced “wait in the truck,” a Top 5 country hit.
Wilson’s other nominations include female artist of the year, album of the year for Bell Bottom Country and single of the year for “Heart Like a Truck.”
Artists vying for the show’s top prize — entertainer of the year — include Jason Aldean, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood, Morgan Wallen, Kane Brown and last year’s winner, Miranda Lambert. This year the award has extended its nominees from five to seven and marks Wallen and Brown’s first time competing for the big prize.
Lambert, the most decorated artist in ACM history, scored five nominations including album of the year with Palomino and female artist of the year. In the latter category she and Wilson will compete with Kelsea Ballerini, Ashley McBryde and Carly Pearce.
For album of the year, Lambert and Wilson’s projects will battle McBryde’s Ashley McBryde Presents: Lindeville, Combs’ Growin’ Up and Jon Pardi’s Mr. Saturday Night.
Combs, Brown and Cole Swindell also earned five nominations each. Male artist of the year nominees include Combs, Brown, Stapleton, Wallen and Jordan Davis.
Brown and his wife, Katelyn Brown, won the top prize at this month’s CMT Music Awards with their sweet duet “Thank God,” and the song is nominated for three ACMs: single of the year, music event of the year and visual media of the year.
Other standout nominees include The War And Treaty, who make history as the first Black duo to receive a nomination for duo of the year, while Little Big Town’s 17th nomination for group of the year edges them close to Alabama’s all-time record of 18 nominations.
LBD season is upon us—and there are a million ways to spice it up. Kylie Jenner recently went grunge in a shredded minidress while Reese Witherspoon killed her first post-divorce public appearance in a more classic silhouette. Now, let me draw your attention to Hailey Bieber, who utilized the wardrobe staple to make herself appear about eight feet tall.
On April 11, the 26-year-old model was photographed in New York City wearing a form-fitting black tube dress with an oversized bedazzled buckle. She drew even more attention to her impossibly long legs with sheer stockings and pointed-toe stilettos, topping off the Y2K-inspired look with a black shoulder bag and skinny sunglasses. The Rhode founder wore her hair in a slicked-back bun and kept her makeup look minimal with her signature glowy skin, a slight contour, and a glossy lip.
Hailey Bieber is seen in Chelsea on April 11, 2023, in New York City.
Gotham/Getty
As Glamour’s deputy editor Anna Moeslein recently wrote in an ode to the LBD, “The little black dress—or LBD, as we more commonly say—has endured through the decades because it’s a blank canvas that we can reinvent over and over again.” Hailey Bieber would know a thing or two about that.
On April 13, the former ballerina announced that she was launching a six-episode cooking show as a follow-up to her YouTube series, Who’s in My Bathroom? “What’s in My Kitchen? was a natural spin-off to Who’s in My Bathroom? because our audience was ready for us to stop eating in the bathroom!” Bieber said in a statement, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I’ve loved cooking and sharing meals with friends on my social channels for years, and I can’t wait to bring this experience to the fans of our network with OBB and HexClad.”
According to THR, Bieber’s recipes will include chicken wings, pizza toast, and, of course, a DIY version of her $17 Erewhon Strawberry Glaze smoothie. While many Selena Gomez fans are side-eyeing the project as another supposed example of the model copying their fave, I personally can’t wait to save even more recipes I’ll never actually make.
NOW IN THEATERS! Chris McKay’s Renfieldis not a perfect movie by any means. Yet, there’s a war waging within the film between the good elements of the film and the bad. Ultimately, you will decide who wins…which is a weird way to watch a movie.
Nicholas Hoult stars as the titular Renfield, the longsuffering man-servant to centuries-old Dracula (Nicolas Cage). While Dracula is recuperating in an abandoned insane asylum after an attack by a gang of Vampire Hunters, Renfield is at a co-dependents support group looking for victims for Dracula to feast on. The victims are not the attendees of the support group, but Renfield is more interested in their abusers. One of whom turns out to be a drug runner employed by the Lobo family led by Tedward (Ben Schwartz) and his mother, Bellafrancesca (Shohreh Aghdashloo).
Meanwhile, Awkwafina plays Rebecca, a traffic cop hellbent on finding her father’s killer, a high-ranking officer in her department. The problem is that corruption flows throughout the police department and its alliance with Bellafrancesca. Rebecca soon finds herself face-to-face with Tedward after investigating the massacre of his henchmen at the hands of Renfield. Ah…full circle.
“…Renfield is at a co-dependents support group looking for victims for Dracula to feast on.”
Renfield is obviously at the heart of this film. While attending the co-dependent support group, it would be a matter of time when Renfield realizes that he is in an abusive relationship with Dracula. Renfield is constantly being told that he would be nothing without Dracula…lost and alone, and that Dracula is the only one who truly loves and cares for Renfield. Wanting no more of this relationship, Renfield secretly tries to build a life of his own by getting an apartment, a new wardrobe, and finding friends…like Rebecca. Unfortunately, you can only hide your secret life from your abuser for so long.
As I mentioned from the start, there is a lot to love and hate about Renfield. I’ll start with the big one. Awkwafina is horribly miscast as Rebecca. There’s just no sugarcoating this. When she’s on the street in her police regalia, she looks like someone dressed as a cop for Halloween. The uniform looks too big on her, and the body armor looks too bulky. She never appears to have the presences or gravitas that a police officer needs in how she walks, enters a room gun in tow, or has the presence of a police officer. This is not a minor criticism. Her inability to embody the weight and magnitude of being an officer of the peace is noticeable. It’s not that she couldn’t ever play a cop in the movies, but it looks like she did zero training or research for this role.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration and a drug manufacturer asked the Supreme Court on Friday to preserve access to an abortion drug free from restrictions imposed by lower court rulings, while a legal fight continues.
The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories filed their emergency requests with the high court less than two days after an appeals court ruling in a case from Texas that had the effect of tightening the rules under which the drug, mifepristone, can be prescribed and dispensed.
The new limits would take effect Saturday unless the court acts before then.
The fight over mifepristone lands at the Supreme Court less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
The justices are being asked for a temporary order to keep in place Food and Drug Administration regulations governing mifepristone. Such an order would give them time to more fully consider each side’s arguments without the pressure of a deadline.
A ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals late Wednesday would prevent the pill, used in the most common abortion method, from being mailed or prescribed without an in-person visit to a doctor. It also would withdraw the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone for use beyond the seventh week of pregnancy. The FDA says it’s safe through 10 weeks.
Still, the appeals court did not entirely withdraw FDA approval of mifepristone while the fight over it continues. The 5th circuit narrowed an April 7 ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, whose far-reaching and virtually unprecedented order would have blocked FDA approval of the pill. He gave the administration a week to appeal.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that the 5th circuit did not go far enough to “protect Americans’ access to safe and effective reproductive care.”
Mifepristone was approved by the FDA more than two decades ago and is used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol.
Adding to the uncertainty, a separate federal judge in Washington on Thursday clarified his own order from last week to make clear that the FDA is not to do anything that might block mifepristone’s availability in 17 Democrat-led states suing to keep it on the market.
It’s unclear how the FDA can comply with court orders in both cases.
The Texas lawsuit was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that also argued to overturn Roe v. Wade, and is representing anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations.
ADF attorneys said Thursday they did not plan to seek an appeal that might restore the Texas court’s full ruling at this point, signaling they were content with appellate outcome.
“The 5th Circuit’s decision is a significant victory for the doctors we represent, women’s health, and every American who deserves an accountable federal government acting within the bounds of the law,” said Erin Hawley, an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom.
The two judges who voted to tighten restrictions, Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, are both appointees of former President Donald Trump. The third judge, Catharina Haynes, is an appointee of former President George W. Bush. She said she would have put the lower court ruling on hold entirely for now to allow oral arguments in the case..
The appeals court judges in the majority in Wednesday’s decision noted that the Biden administration and mifepristone’s manufacturer “warn us of significant public consequences” that would result if mifepristone were withdrawn entirely from the market under the lower court ruling.
But the judges suggested FDA changes making mifepristone easier to obtain since 2016 were less consequential than its initial approval of the drug in 2000. It would be “difficult” to argue the changes were “so critical to the public given that the nation operated—and mifepristone was administered to millions of women—without them for sixteen years,” the judges wrote.
Use of medication abortion jumped significantly after the 2016 rule expansion, according to data gathered by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. In 2017, medication abortion accounted for 39% percent of abortions but by 2020 had increased to become the most common method, accounting for 53% of all abortions.
Experts have said the use of medication abortion has increased since the court overturned Roe.
When the drug was initially approved, the FDA limited its use to up to seven weeks of pregnancy. It also required three in-person office visits: the first to administer mifepristone, the next to administer the second drug, misoprostol, and the third to address any complications. It also required a doctor’s supervision and a reporting system for any serious consequences of the drug.
If the appeals court’s action stands, those would again be the terms under which mifepristone could be dispensed for now. At the core of the Texas lawsuit is the allegation that the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone was flawed because the agency did not adequately review safety risks.
Mifepristone has been used by millions of women over the past 23 years. While less drastic than completely overturning the drug’s approval, the latest ruling still represents a stark challenge to the FDA’s authority overseeing how prescription drugs are used in the U.S. The panel overturned multiple decisions made by FDA regulators after years of scientific review.
Common side effects with mifepristone include cramping, bleeding, nausea, headache and diarrhea. In rare cases, women can experience excess bleeding that requires surgery to stop.
Still, in loosening restrictions on mifepristone, FDA regulators cited “exceedingly low rates of serious adverse events.” More than 5.6 million women in the U.S. had used the drug as of June 2022, according to the FDA. In that period, the agency received 4,200 reports of complications in women, or less than one tenth of 1% of women who took the drug.
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Associated Press writers Paul Weber in Austin, Texas, and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this report.
MrBeast, who runs the most-subscribed individual channel on YouTube, has hit back against a suggestion that his friend and collaborator, Chris Tyson, is a becoming “nightmare” for the popular video creator because of Tyson’s hormone replacement therapy.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, on Thursday responded on Twitter to someone who posted about a recent video from YouTuber SunnyV2 titled “Why Chris Will Soon Be a Nightmare for MrBeast” speculating that Tyson’s feminine appearance will hurt MrBeast’s popularity. The caption for the video suggested Tyson could be MrBeast’s “biggest controversy to date.”
“Yeah, this is getting absurd,” Donaldson wrote in response. “Chris isn’t my ‘nightmare’ he’s my fucken friend and things are fine. All this transphobia is starting to piss me off.”
Yeah, this is getting absurd. Chris isn’t my “nightmare” he’s my fucken friend and things are fine. All this transphobia is starting to piss me off
Tyson, who regularly appears in MrBeast’s videos, earlier this month said that informed-consent hormone replacement therapy (HRT) had “saved my life and many others’ lives.”
“The hurdles gnc [gender-nonconforming] people have to jump through to get life-saving gender-affirming healthcare in a 1st world country is wild to me,” Tyson tweeted on April 5. “Just let people make informed decisions about their own bodies.”
Contrary to rumors that started spreading like wildfire on Friday morning, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” has not been delayed and is still set to release in theaters this summer. A source close to the film tells TheWrap that the biographical thriller is slated for release on July 21, 2023, with no plans to shift.
Hubbub surrounding a potential release date delay to the fall began with comments from Cannes Film Festival director Thierry Femaux, who said in an interview that he “would have loved” to have had “Oppenheimer” as part of the lineup but, mistakenly, said the film was “being released at the end of the year.”
“Oppenheimer” is currently slated to be released exclusively in theaters on the same day as Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” movie from Greta Gerwig, resulting in a pretty significant showdown. Many have wondered if either film would blink from the release date, but Universal doesn’t intend to shift Nolan’s feature.
Written and directed by Nolan, “Oppenheimer” is based on the book “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin and is told through the eyes of J. Robert Oppenheimer (as played by Cillian Murphy) as he contributes to the creation of the atomic bomb.
Described as an “epic thriller,” the film charts Oppenheimer’s life and Nolan previously said the film is “one of the most challenging projects” he’s ever taken on as it aims to encompass one man’s life story.
“We’re trying to tell the story of somebody’s life, and their journey through personal history and larger-scale history,” Nolan told Total Film. “And so the subjectivity of the story is everything to me. We want to view these events through Oppenheimer’s eyes. And that was the challenge for Cillian that I set him, to take us on this journey; that was the challenge for Hoyte van Hoytema, my designer, my whole team: how do we view this extraordinary story through the eyes of the person who was at the heart of it? All of our decisions on how to make this film were based on that real premise.”
Shot with Imax cameras, production took place in New Mexico, California and New Jersey and the ensemble cast also includes Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Rami Malek, Josh Hartnett and Kenneth Branagh.
Elijah Wood is “fascinated” and “surprised” over Warner Bros. developing multiple new “Lord of the Rings” movies. The studio announced the plan in February. Wood, of course, played the hobbit Frodo in Peter Jackson’s original “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which grossed $2.9 billion worldwide and remains one of cinema’s greatest fantasy achievements.
“I’m fascinated and I’m excited. I hope it’s good,” Wood recently told GQ magazine about the new films. “I’m surprised—I don’t know why I’m surprised because, of course there would be more movies.”
“Obviously at the core of that, is a desire to make a lot of money,” Wood continued. “It’s not that a bunch of executives are like, ‘Let’s make really awesome art.’ And, again, not begrudging anybody because, of course, it is commerce. But great art can come from commerce. So those two things are not mutually exclusive.”
Wood stressed that Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy “didn’t come out of that place,” referring to commerce.
“It came out of a passion for these books and wanting to see them realized,” Wood said. “And I hope that that is ultimately what will drive everything forward with whatever these subsequent movies are. I just hope that it’s the same motivating factor at its core, whenever they hire a screenwriter and a filmmaker—that it is with reverence for Tolkien’s material and enthusiasm to explore it.”
All that’s confirmed about Warner Bros. new “Lord of the Rings” movies is that there will be “multiple” films made based on J. R. R. Tolkien’s books. No additional information was given by the studio, meaning it’s anyone’s guess whether the story will pick up before, after or during Peter Jackson’s original trilogy.
In a statement to Variety, Jackson and his main “Lord of the Rings” collaborators Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens said Warner Bros. “kept us in the loop every step of the way” regarding the new “Lord of the Rings” movies. Jackson was behind all three “Rings” movies and all three “The Hobbit” movies, winning the Oscar for best director with “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.”
“We look forward to speaking with [the studio] further to hear their vision for the franchise moving forward,” Jackson, Walsh and Boyens added in their statement.
Wood’s “Lord of the Rings” co-star Andy Serkis recently said he’d be interested in coming back to the world of Middle-Earth on the big screen.
“Peter Jackson, Fran and Philippa are sort of a second family that I have become part of and have gone on to make so many films with,” Serkis told BroBible’s Post-Credit Podcast. “And — let me tell you — they are the best and most incredible people to work with. I think that there are so many other potential Middle-earth projects which could come about, and if they’re doing them, I would, of course, jump at the chance to have that relationship rekindled.”
Serkis added, “Middle-earth has never left me.”
Wood briefly reprised Frodo in Jackson’s “The Hobbit” trilogy. “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” is currently back in theaters in celebration of its 20th anniversary.
On being asked about Aryan Khan, Palak Tiwari said that Shah Rukh Khan’s eldest son is a genuinely sweet person.
On being asked about Aryan Khan, Palak Tiwari said that Shah Rukh Khan’s eldest son is a genuinely sweet person.
Shweta Tiwari’s daughter, Palak Tiwari, is all set to make her acting debut in the upcoming movie Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan, starring Salman Khan, Pooja Hegde, and others. While she’s been making headlines for her statements about her co-stars, the actress opened up about Shah Rukh Khan’s son Aryan Khan.
Palak, who appeared in the song Bijlee Bijlee, is often spotted hanging out with star kids, including Aryan Khan. Shah Rukh Khan’s son has never interacted with the media before and tends to stay clear from the attention of the cameras. However, he is seen bonding with friends at parties. Owing to his distance from the media, there is curiosity about how Aryan Khan is in person.
In a recent interview, Palak shed a little light and said that SRK’s son is exactly like he appears. Speaking with Siddharth Kannan, Palak said that Aryan is a genuinely sweet person who warmly greets everyone at a party, but he’s also incredibly reserved. In fact, she said he’s a lot like her in that regard – after exchanging pleasantries, he tends to retreat to a quiet corner. Palak suggested that Aryan’s enigmatic personality is part of his charm and makes him all the more charming. Off-screen, he’s just as mysterious, which only adds to the intrigue surrounding Shah Rukh Khan’s son.
“He’s exactly how he seems. He’ll say a few words and he’ll make an impactful statement, leave and go back into the crowd. He’s very like that,” she said, adding, “He’s a very sweet guy, very nice and quiet… good guy.”
During the same interview, Palak also shared a tidbit about working with Salman from the sets of Antim. She revealed that Salman had a specific rule for women’s attire on his set. Palak said, “Salman Sir had a rule ‘Ki koi bhi ladki mere set pe, neckline should be here (for every girl on my set, the neckline should be here), all the girls should be covered, like good proper girls’.”
Ryan Reynolds is getting the gang back together for Deadpool 3.
Following news that Karan Soni and Leslie Uggams would return as Dopinder and Blind Al, Marvel has announced that Morena Baccarin and Stefan Kapicic will also reprise their roles of Vanessa and Colossus, respectively.
Photo: JoBlo
Joining The MCU
Deadpool 3 will mark he first time that Marvel Studios will be involved in the franchise.
The film will see Deadpool and his crew integrated into the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, which may be a big jump for the film.
Despite fear that the R-rated character would be out of place in the largely PG-13 MCU, Feige and his team at Marvel will actually launch the MCU’s Phase Six slate with Deadpool 3.
In addition to Ryan Reynolds and director Shawn Levy, Marvel head Kevin Feige will join the film as a producer.
Photo: Marvel
A Star-Studded Cast
Deadpool 3 is turning into quite the star-studded affair. In addition to returning stars Reynolds, Baccarin, Kapicic, Soni and Uggams, the film will feature Emma Corrin and Matthew Macfadyen.
Photo: Marvel
Of course, the big news surrounding the film, is the return of Hugh Jackman and Wolverine, and the possible inclusion of Patrick Stewart’s Professor Xavier. Jackman and Reynolds previously worked together in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
When Will Deadpool 3 Hit Theaters?
While the latest news is obviously exciting for Deadpool fans, movie goers will have to be patient. Deadpool 3 will not hit theaters until November 8, 2024.
Photo: Marvel
As always, continue to check back in with MickeyBlog. We will continue to bring you updates on all the news surrounding Deadpool!
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The latest poster for the upcoming DC sequel, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, finds Zachary Levitaking center stage as the superhero wields the wizard’s magic staff. The poster comes courtesy of Dolby, who also reveal that tickets for Shazam! Fury of the Gods are now on sale. Check out the new poster, which depicts a particularly heroic looking Shazam, below.
From New Line Cinema comes Shazam! Fury of the Gods, which continues the story of teenager Billy Batson who, upon reciting the magic word “SHAZAM!,” is transformed into his adult superhero alter ego, Shazam. The sequel finds Billy Batson and his foster siblings, who can also now transform into superheroes, forced to get back into action and fight the Daughters of Atlas. They must stop them from using a weapon that could destroy the world.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods sees both Zachary Levi and Asher Angel return as Shazam and Billy Batson respectively. The rest of the cast includes Jack Dylan Grazer (It Chapter Two) as Freddy Freeman; Adam Brody (Promising Young Woman) as Super Hero Freddy; Ross Butler (Raya and the Last Dragon) as Super Hero Eugene; Meagan Good (Day Shift) as Super Hero Darla; D.J. Cotrona (G.I. Joe: Retaliation) as Super Hero Pedro; Grace Caroline Currey (Annabelle: Creation) as Mary Bromfield and Super Hero Mary; Faithe Herman (This Is Us) as Darla Dudley; Ian Chen (A Dog’s Journey) as Eugene Choi; Jovan Armand (Second Chances) as Pedro Pena; Marta Milans (White Lines) as Rosa Vasquez; Cooper Andrews (The Walking Dead) as Victor Vasquez; with Djimon Hounsou (A Quiet Place Part II) as the Wizard.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods Adds Helen Mirren & Lucy Liu as the Villains
Warner Bros. Pictures
As well as adding all manner of dragons and other mythical beasts to the fray,Shazam! Fury of the Gods will also bring Academy Award winner Helen Mirren and Kill Bill star Lucy Liu into the world of DC. The pair will play the villains of the piece, the Daughters of Atlas, with Mirren starring as Hespera and Liu starring as Kalypso. West Side Story star Rachel Zegler will also star in Shazam! Fury of the Gods as the third daugher of Atlas, Anthea, who fights to help Shazam and his family in stopping her siblings from whatever world-ending dealings they have planned.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods is directed once again by David F. Sandberg, produced by Peter Safran (Aquaman, The Suicide Squad), and written by Henry Gayden (Shazam!) and Chris Morgan (Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, The Fate of the Furious). Shazam! Fury of the Gods is set to open in theaters internationally beginning 15 March 2023 and in North America on March 17, 2023.
Return of the Jedi wasn’t just the end of a trilogy, it was the beginning of a new way of filmmaking.
During a panel at Star Wars Celebration in London, Star Wars creatives discussed the influence of this 40-year-old film on the most recent Star Wars projects.
“For all of our new films now, I always try to add that new component of something new,” said Lucasfilm executive creative director, Doug Chiang. “Star Wars design is very defined in terms of that box that George [Lucas] created but within that box, there’s a lot of freedom, and I love to push the envelope in terms of what that box is.”
When it comes to the look and feel of recent Star Wars projects, it’s obvious where much of their inspiration has come from. You only have to look at The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett to see how influential Return of the Jedi has been on modern creative processes.
The reason? It’s all about building on what came before. “The thing I took away from it was just how many creatures, how many practical elements, how many of those moments George gave to me,” said ILM SVP creative innovation, Rob Bredow. “The other films have them, but Return has so much more – it was just an absolute treat to see all this work people have done.”
On a practical level, modern Star Wars projects have built upon the technologies used by those early innovators… and we were shown a pre-vis of the iconic Endor speeder bike chase, which was created by Dennis Muren, using Kenner action figures to plan out the sequence in its entirety.
“The technologies have advanced at hyperspeed since then,” said Bredow. “But the teams that did that work – we pulled some of the early creatives they did. They were using the latest technology.”
Of course, pre-vis techniques have come a long way. Today, The Mandalorian uses partial CG renders to plan out the action sequences. But in many ways, it’s the same, utilizing models to create a plan of how those scenes should look.
According to panel host Ming-Na Wen, who plays Fennec Shand on The Mandalorian, it helps actors get to grips with their scenes before they shoot.
“It’s the same techniques,” she said. “You’re trying to work out the story and then you’re trying to work out the techniques. It really helps us as actors to see how it’ll look on screen.”
The look is ultimately what it’s all about. One of the things The Mandalorian has long been praised for is how really feels like an old-school Star Wars project. That’s all down to Lucasfilm’s approach of building on the past.
“Norman Reynolds established the look,” said Chiang. “We’re building upon these legends. We’re trying to create images that live up to their legacy.”
Although film-making techniques have developed a lot since 1983, it’s Lucasfilm’s use of practical effects that really sings.
“They haven’t got a clue what they were doing. Every day was a new day for them. It was a time of invention and learning from your mistakes. A really innovative and creative time.”
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“Even to this day, we have our Grogu and that’s practical,” said Wen. “It lends itself to the realism of having someone or something there to react to. It just gives it content.”
Going back to when the likes of Phil Tippett were inventing the techniques used to bring Jabba and other creatures to life in Return of the Jedi, it was clearly an innovative time. “They haven’t got a clue what they were doing,” said Lucasfilm’s creature supervisor, Neal Scanlan. “Every day was a new day for them. It was a time of invention and learning from your mistakes. A really innovative and creative time. I find such huge inspiration from how brave they were. It is a really fascinating and wonderful period.”
Ultimately, modern Star Wars projects are looking to build out the galaxy far, far away, paying homage to the original trilogy as well as creating something new and unique. That couldn’t be more obvious than in The Book of Boba Fett.
“A lot of the fun we had was that we could build upon Return of the Jedi,” said Chiang. “It established such a lot of iconic places like Jabba’s palace… we had the opportunity to visit the kitchen, Boba’s bedroom, the hangar… We were basically building upon what we had seen and loved so much. I hope we get more opportunity to do more of that.”
The Coterie crew continues to lean on each other as their lives change. Has the Good Trouble TV show been cancelled or renewed for a sixth season on Freeform? The television vulture is watching all the latest cancellation and renewal news, so this page is the place to track the status of Good Trouble, season six. Bookmark it, or 
