Frank Fritz’s trials are growing more apparent as the weeks roll on. Following his widely-publicized stroke in 2022, in recent months, we’ve known the American Pickers star has been struggling, as a guardianship was put in place to help with his financial and health decisions. Now, new details are coming out of Iowa indicating multiple 911 calls have been placed to his home in recent months.
Four times over the last several months, emergency calls have been placed on the TV personality’s behalf. The first of these came on November 17th of last year, and happened because the American Pickers star was having “a seizure.” More calls were obtained by The Sun, and detail a swathe of different issues he has reportedly been facing..
A second call on December 7th was made due to high blood pressure. A third call was placed by a caregiver over “possible pneumonia” on December 21, with another call placed for the same issue one day later, just before the holidays. It’s unclear if any 911 calls have been placed since the start of 2023.
The details also reveal other previously unreleased information, including the fact Frank Fritz is seemingly wheelchair bound since his July 14th stroke. During the fourth 911 call, the former reality star’s guardian called him “handicapped” and noted he’s in a wheelchair. Audio from one call indicated:
I’m going to need an ambulance to take someone to the hospital because I think they have pneumonia. I’m the guardian. He’s handicapped. He’s wheel-chair bound.
Fritz’s Guardianship Had Been Put Into Place Previously
The aforementioned guardianship was in place before any of these phone calls occurred, which is why a caretaker was on hand to place the calls. Fritz’s friends started the legal process of the guardianship back in late last year after the TV personality had spent time in a rehab facility following his stroke. The last update we had confirmed the former History star had returned home following this stint, and the details of the myriad 911 calls do support this information.
SPOILER ALERT: This story features major plot points from Season 2 of Slow Horses.
Gary Oldman, star of Apple TV+’s espionage drama series Slow Horses, is enjoying the freedom of playing “knowingly obnoxious” spy Jackson Lamb, although he’s gone off kung pao chicken for the time being.
Oldman’s Lamb is the boss of Slough House, a division of MI5 where spies go after they screw up at The Park. He is surrounded by the likes of Saskia Reeves’ Catherine Standish, Jack Lowden’s River Cartwright, Rosalind Eleazar’s Louisa Guy, Dustin Demri-Burns’ Min Harper and Christopher Chung’s Roddy Ho.
The group, which launched its Season 2 on the streamer in December, also now features Kadiff Kirwan’s Marcus Longridge and Aimee-Ffion Edwards’ Shirley Dander. In Season 3, which has been shot, Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù’s Sean Donovan also joins.
During a Deadline-moderated FYC panel, the cast teased a little bit of Season 3, which is based on Mick Herron’s Real Tigers and sees the group work together to foil a rogue agent when one of their own is kidnapped.
It involves conspiracy theories and new characters, and the Slough House team must break into MI5 HQ while also dealing with the Secret Service.
Oldman said that Diana Taverner, otherwise known as Lady Di, the Deputy Director-General of MI5 and head of operations played by Kristin Scott Thomas, “really comes into play” in Season 3.
Reeves added that there’s more action. “There is a lot of bang, bang, chase, chase,” she said.
Chung’s Ho, an obnoxious computer hacker, has died his hair blond, as has Eleazar’s Guy, who is dealing with the loss of her boyfriend Min, played by Demri-Burns, who dies in Season 2. Chung says it’s “peacocking” in a bid to win her affections.
“Ho fancies Louisa in Season 3, and Louisa goes a bit mental trying to rid herself of her old identity, so she dyed her hair blonde and then you try and copy me but your is a bit orange,” added Eleazar.
However, Oldman cautions that viewers shouldn’t expect any character growth from Jackson Lamb. “Mick Herron said that the plot is secondary, it’s about the characters and how we connect with them. Yeah, there’s a story and there’s a plot, but with each season we get a lens that looks at a character and we learn a little more about [them],” he added.
Lamb is a fascinating character; a much better spy than you’d expect and despite his constant put-downs towards his employees, he’s a loyal man.
“It’s wonderful to have this sort of freedom to be so nauseous. When I get the script, and I’ve got a line that’s a put down or an insult I just can’t wait to see their faces. He’s knowingly obnoxious, he’s sort of constantly winding people up. He gives the impression that he doesn’t care and I think probably may care the most. He is very, very loyal. Even though he thinks they’re a bunch of losers,” Oldman said.
Slow Horses highlights some of the mundanity and unusual eating habits of spies, in a way that other spy books and series don’t.
For instance, Lamb is a big fan of a bowl of noodles. “We shot that in the morning. Because we had angles coming in and then overs where you could see me eating, then from the other side of the room, I think I ended up eating 17 bowls of noodles and then we broke for lunch,” he joked. “I didn’t go near a noodle for a long time.”
“I think that’s why the books were successful. I think hopefully it’s why the show works. You don’t see James Bond go to the loo and Miss Moneypenny doesn’t pick her laundry up and go to the launderette,” he added.
Standish is the office administrator, and has been around MI5 for a long time, and Reeves said that Standish is grateful to have a job, particularly as a recovering alcoholic. “She has to put up with a lot but she can give as good as she gets and she’s probably the best spy out of all of them. But she’s just a secretary,” she added.
Longridge joins Slough House in Season 2, ostensibly for his gambling addiction. Kirwan said, “It’s like starting school halfway through the term and everyone’s already started and made friends but to be honest with you, it was very easy. I was welcomed with open arms.”
Min’s death at the hands of the Russians is a major plot point in Season 2 and Demri-Burns says despite being killed off, it’s nice to play a role with so much impact. “He’s smart and he can get by, but he’s just not quite got the goods,” he added. “I think he’s a bit useless.”
His death influences Louisa, who returns to work to foil the Russian plot.
“It all happens so quickly over the course of two days so she doesn’t have any time to grieve. She goes straight back into a job. I’m sure we’ve all lost someone in our lives and grief kind of works in really weird ways. She just doesn’t have any time to process it, so her energy is kind of displaced into fighting and finding out why the Russians killed him. That follows through … we can’t say too much about the next season but sometimes when a life event like that happens to you it can really change the fabric of your being,” Eleazar added.
Apple handed the series a double renewal – Season 3 has been shot and filming on Season 4 is set to start next week.
“We’re just about to head off to shoot Season 4 and if you think [Jackson Lamb] is flatulent now…,” jokes Oldman.
The series is produced for Apple TV+ by See-Saw Films and adapted for television by Will Smith (Veep). Jamie Laurenson, Hakan Kousetta, Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Douglas Urbanski, Gail Mutrux, Will Smith, Jane Robertson and Graham Yost serve as executive producers.
We can’t escape our past, no matter where we go. Even if we cross an ocean to get away from someone or something, the best we can do is put it temporarily out of our minds. It’s a lesson we’ve heard before, but it always bears repeating and is at the heart of director Joshua Benson’s The Pilgrim. The film, written by Benson and George Kellock, doesn’t necessarily break any barriers in terms of formal invention or its overall narrative. However, it’s still one that hits when it matters.
Will (Jeff Worden) is a remarkably successful architect from Wyoming, now living in London with his beautiful girlfriend Claire (Lou Llobell). He lives in a high-rise apartment that most of us can only dream about and regularly enjoys all that the nightlife the city has to offer. However, a call from his sister in Wyoming suddenly shatters Will’s idyllic overseas existence: his estranged mother has passed away.
Initially reluctant to leave life in London, this phone call becomes the impetus for Will to head back home to pick up the pieces in the aftermath of his mom’s death. Will meets his sister only to find that the funeral has already happened and that he has instead been enlisted to help scatter his mother’s ashes back at her family home. Will travels from place to place while trying to make sense of the relationship (or lack thereof) that he had with his mother.
“…been enlisted to help scatter his mother’s ashes back at her family home.”
From this point on, The Pilgrim adopts the mode of the most American of genres — the road movie. Benson and his director of photography, Alex Grigoras, make ample use of the natural beauty of the American landscape. The visual makes the viewer yearn for more American films that aren’t set in New York or Los Angeles. The film is riddled with breathtaking cinematography, and the wide-open spaces that Will encounters represent the challenges in his search for purpose and reconciliation well. The influence of Terrence Malick is all over the cinematography, and at times it’s a little too derivative, but the overall effect is successful.
It’s impossible to escape the allusions to faith throughout the film. It may not be everyone’s bag, but Benson uses it in a relatively unobtrusive way that doesn’t seem like an exercise in proselytizing. There are tropes like country bars and dalliances with loose women that we could have done without, but the film never strays too far from Will’s journey of self-reflection. Worden’s performance is highly memorable, and he really translates his character’s sense of aimlessness and regret.
All told, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy The Pilgrim as much as I did. It’s a visually arresting film about self-discovery that, due to its density, manages to keep one on his or her toes throughout. Through Will, we live through our own pasts and reimagine what we could have done differently. It serves as a poignant reminder that running from our problems will only take us so far and that we eventually must come back home one way or another.
One person is dead following a garage fire that broke out Saturday evening near the University of Alberta.
Fire crews responded to a call at 109 Street and University Avenue around 5 p.m. and had the fire under control within half an hour. Six trucks were at the scene.
The fire was contained to the detached garage, said district fire chief Troy Brady. The house was boarded up and appeared to be abandoned, however, it could not be confirmed. Crews found a body in the garage, he said.
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Edmonton police investigators were at the scene and took over the investigation of the fire and fatality, said Brady.
Jenelle Evans was awarded custody of her son Jace, 13, after giving her parental rights over to her mom, Barbara Evans, over a decade ago. The Teen Mom 2alum, 28, and her then-boyfriend Andrew Lewis made Barbara the legal guardian of Jace shortly after welcoming him back in 2009. On Saturday, March 18, Janelle took to her Instagram to share an emotional video of her signing the paperwork to become Jace’s official caretaker again.
“#MyHappyEnding, ITS OFFICIAL! Thanks everyone for the support!” she wrote alongside the heartwarming clip. “Words can’t descibe how happy i truly am. Our family is complete now! Thank you mom. ❤️?” Janelle also added text to the video, giving an update on how Barbara is handling the life-changing decision. “She’s completely fine, she’s like ‘I’m ready to have my freedom.’
And to prove she and Barbara were truly on their way to a reconciliation after a bitter, years-long battle over Jace, Janelle added that the family has a little vacation in the works! “I’m ready to go on a cruise and her and her friend have a cruise already planned,” she added of her mom.
At the end of the video, Janelle was seen sitting in her car as the emotions swept over her with tears running down her face. She held up the signed documents to the camera and captioned it, “It’s done, it’ done.”
In a statement, Janelle offered more details about how she and Barbara finally came to the agreement. “My mom and I decided together to grant full custody back to me because we want to build our relationship back as mother and daughter,” she said, per US Weekly.
“Also, my mother agrees it’s time for Jace to be back with his siblings and living with a mother and father,” Jenelle continued, referring to Jace moving in with her, her husband David Eason and their daughter Ensley, 6, as well as Jenelle’s son Kaiser, 8, whom she shares with ex Nathan Griffith.
“[Barbara] also thinks it’s important for Jace to be around a father figure to learn ‘boy things’ and have ‘men talk’,” Janelle said, adding that Barbara has “seen the way” David “parents” and “knows we’re able to handle it.”
It certainly had been a long, emotional custody battle for the reality star. Just last October, Jenelle fired back at a troll who said Jace was “meant to be with Barbara” in a message online. “Comments like this is exactly why I don’t want to share my life anymore,” explained Janelle, who was fired from Teen Mom 2 in 2019 after David shot and killed the family dog after it bit their daughter in the face. Around the time of the animal-killing incident, Jenelle had temporarily lost custody of Kaiser and Ensley. In July 2019, she announced she had regained custody of them.
Shortly after online troll attack, Jenelle told fans that there was still an ongoing “court battle” between her and her family. “There’s a lot of personal stuff that’s been going on with my family lately, where actually Jace should be living with me,” Jenelle divulged through tears in an Instagram Story.
She went on to say that she still had a hard time watching scenes from the show featuring Barbara. “Someone took my baby, didn’t let me get a chance to raise my baby, and then kicks me out, takes my baby, because she was jealous of the guy I was dating at the time,” Jenelle added of Barbara. “Let’s look at the real reason why I was even kicked out and came home, and all my stuff was outside in the middle of the yard.” She concluded, “Me as a parent, I would never do that to my kids.”
A few months have definitely made a lasting change in Jenelle and Barbara’s relationship! Congratulations to the mother/daughter duo for working it out!
SAN FRANCISCO — Long before he became “Chief Twit” of Twitter, Elon Musk had a different obsession: making Teslas drive themselves. The technology was expensive and, two years ago when the supply chain was falling apart, Musk became determined to bring down the cost.
He zeroed in on a target: the car radar sensors, which are designed to detect hazards at long ranges and prevent the vehicles from barreling into other cars in traffic. The sleek bodies of the cars already bristled with eight cameras designed to view the road and spot hazards in each direction. That, Musk argued, should be enough.
Some Tesla engineers were aghast, said former employees with knowledge of his reaction, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. They contacted a trusted former executive for advice on how to talk Musk out of it, in previously unreported pushback. Without radar, Teslas would be susceptible to basic perception errors if the cameras were obscured by raindrops or even bright sunlight, problems that could lead to crashes.
Six years after Tesla promoted a self-driving car’s flawless drive, a car using recent ‘Full Self-Driving’ beta software couldn’t drive the route without error. (Video: Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
Musk was unconvinced and overruled his engineers. In May 2021 Tesla announced it was eliminating radar on new cars. Soon after, the company began disabling radar in cars already on the road. The result, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former employees and test drivers, safety officials and other experts, was an uptick in crashes, near misses and other embarrassing mistakes by Tesla vehicles suddenly deprived of a critical sensor.
Musk has described the Tesla “Full Self-Driving” technology as “the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero,” but his dream of autonomous cars is hitting roadblocks.
In recent weeks, Tesla has recalled and suspended the rollout of the technology to eligible vehicles amid concerns that its cars could disobey the speed limit and blow through stop signs, according to federal officials. Customer complaints have been piling up, including a lawsuit filed in federal court last month claiming that Musk has overstated the technology’s capabilities. And regulators and government officials are scrutinizing Tesla’s system and its past claims as evidence of safety problems mounts, according to company filings.
In interviews, former Tesla employees who worked on Tesla’s driver-assistance software attributed the company’s troubles to the rapid pace of development, cost-cutting measures like Musk’s decision to eliminate radar — which strayed from industry practice — and other problems unique to Tesla.
They said Musk’s erratic leadership style also played a role, forcing them to work at a breakneck pace to develop the technology and to push it out to the public before it was ready. Some said they are worried that, even today, the software is not safe to be used on public roads. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
“The system was only progressing very slowly internally” but “the public wanted a product in their hands,” said John Bernal, a former Tesla test operator who worked in its Autopilot department. He was fired in February 2022 when the company alleged improper use of the technology after he had posted videos of Full Self-Driving in action.
“Elon keeps tweeting, ‘Oh we’re almost there, we’re almost there,’” Bernal said. But “internally, we’re nowhere close, so now we have to work harder and harder and harder.” The team has also bled members in recent months, including senior executives.
Meanwhile, Musk pulled dozens of Tesla engineers to work with code at Twitter, the struggling social media platform Musk purchased with fanfare last fall, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, and documents reviewed by The Washington Post. Earlier this month, after Tesla failed to announce a big new product on investor day, the company’s stock sank 6 percent.
Musk has defended the company’s actions as long-term bets, with the prospect of unlocking tremendous value, and Tesla has said vehicles in Full Self-Driving crash at a rate at least five times less than vehicles driving normally. Musk and Tesla did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
But the story of Full Self-Driving offers a vivid example of how the world’s richest person has complicated one of his biggest bets through rash decision-making, a stubborn insistence on doing things differently, and unyielding confidence in a vision that has yet to be proven.
“No one believed me that working for Elon was the way it was until they saw how he operated Twitter,” Bernal said, calling Twitter “just the tip of the iceberg on how he operates Tesla.”
The rise of ‘Full Self-Driving’
In April 2019, at a showcase dubbed “Autonomy Investor Day,” Musk made perhaps his boldest prediction as Tesla’s chief executive. “By the middle of next year, we’ll have over a million Tesla cars on the road with full self-driving hardware,” Musk told a roomful of investors. The software updates automatically over the air, and Full Self-Driving would be so reliable, he said, the driver “could go to sleep.”
Investors were sold. The following year, Tesla’s stock price soared, making it the most valuable automaker and helping Musk become the world’s richest person. Full Self-Driving followed Autopilot, which was launched in 2014 and went on to allow cars to navigate highways, from steering and changing lanes to adjusting speed. Full Self-Driving aimed to bring those capabilities to city and residential streets, a far more difficult task.
The cars rely on a combination of hardware and software to do so. Eight cameras capture real-time footage of activity surrounding the car, allowing the car to asses hazards like pedestrians or bicyclists and maneuver accordingly.
To deliver on his promise, Musk assembled a star team of engineers willing to work long hours and problem solve deep into the night. Musk would test the latest software on his own car, then he and other executives would compile “fix-it” requests for their engineers.
Those patchwork fixes gave the illusion of relentless progress but masked the lack of a coherent development strategy, former employees said. While competitors such as Alphabet-owned Waymo adopted strict testing protocols that limited where self-driving software could operate, Tesla eventually pushed Full Self-Driving out to 360,000 owners — who paid up to $15,000 to be eligible for the features — and let them activate it at their own discretion.
Tesla’s philosophy is simple: The more data (in this case driving) the artificial intelligence guiding the car is exposed to, the faster it learns. But that crude model also means there is a lighter safety net. Tesla has chosen to effectively allow the software to learn on its own, developing sensibilities akin to a brain via technology dubbed “neural nets” with fewer rules, the former employees said. While this has the potential to speed the process, it boils down to essentially a trial and error method of training.
Rivals at Waymo and Apple take a different approach to autonomy, by setting rules and addressing any breaches if those constraints are violated, according to Silicon Valley insiders with knowledge of company practices, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Companies developing self-driving also typically use sophisticated lidar and radar systems which help the software map out their surroundings in detail.
Waymo spokesperson Julia Ilina said there are evident differences between the companies’ approaches, pointing to Waymo’s goal of full autonomy and emphasis on machine learning. Apple declined to comment for this story.
Tesla’s method has at times proven problematic. Around two years ago, a popular YouTuber captured footage of the software struggling to navigate San Francisco’s famously winding Lombard Street in a video that garnered tens of thousands of views. So Tesla engineers built invisible barriers into the software — akin to bumpers in a bowling alley — to help the cars stay on the road, Bernal said. Subsequent YouTube videos showed them operating smoothly.
That gave Bernal pause. As an internal tester who drove that stretch of road as part of his job, it was clear that it was far from the typical experience on public streets elsewhere.
Radar originally played a major role in the design of the Tesla vehicles and software, supplementing the cameras by offering a reality check of what was around, particularly if vision might be obscured. Tesla also used ultrasonic sensors, shorter-range devices that detect obstructions within inches of the car. (The company announced last year it was eliminating those as well.)
Even with radar, Teslas were less sophisticated than the lidar and radar-equipped cars of competitors.
“One of the key advantages of lidar is that it will never fail to see a train or truck, even if it doesn’t know what it is,” said Brad Templeton, a longtime self-driving car developer and consultant who worked on Google’s self-driving car. “It knows there is an object in front and the vehicle can stop without knowing more than that.”
Cameras need to understand what they see to be effective, relying on Tesla workers who label images the vehicles record, including things like stop signs and trains, to help the software understand how to react.
Toward the end of 2020, Autopilot employees turned on their computers to find in-house workplace monitoring software installed, former employees said. It monitored keystrokes and mouse clicks, and kept track of their image labeling. If the mouse did not move for a period of time, a timer started — and employees could be reprimanded, up to being fired, for periods of inactivity, the former employees said.
After a group pushing to unionize Tesla’s Buffalo factory raised concerns about its workplace monitoring last month, Tesla responded in a blog post. “The reason there is time monitoring for image labeling is to improve the ease of use of our labeling software,” it said, adding “its purpose is to calculate how long it takes to label an image.”
Musk had championed the “vision-only” approach as simpler, cheaper and more intuitive. “The road system is designed for cameras (eyes) & neural nets (brains),” he tweeted in February 2022.
Some of the people who spoke with The Post said that approach has introduced risks. “I just knew that putting that software out in the streets would not be safe,” said a former Tesla Autopilot engineer who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “You can’t predict what the car’s going to do.”
A rise in vehicle crashes
After Tesla announced it was removing radar in May 2021, the problems were almost immediately noticeable, the former employees said. That period coincided with the expansion of the Full Self-Driving testing program from thousands to tens of thousands of drivers. Suddenly, cars were allegedly stopping for imaginary hazards, misinterpreting street signs, and failing to detect obstacles such as emergency vehicles, according to complaints filed with regulators.
Some of the people who spoke with The Post attributed Tesla’s sudden uptick in “phantom braking” reports — where the cars aggressively slow down from high speeds — to the lack of radar. The Post analyzed data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to show incidences surged last year, prompting a federal regulatory investigation.
The data showed reports of “phantom braking” rose to 107 complaints over three months, compared to only 34 in the preceding 22 months. After The Post highlighted the problem in a news report, NHTSA received about 250 complaints of the issue in a two-week period. The agency opened an investigation after, it said, it received 354 complaints of the problem spanning a period of nine months.
Months earlier, NHTSA had opened an investigation into Autopilot over roughly a dozen reports of Teslas crashing into parked emergency vehicles. The latest example came to light this month as the agency confirmed it was investigating a February fatal crash involving a Tesla and a firetruck. Experts say radar has served as a way to double check what the cameras, which are susceptible to being washed out by bright light, are seeing.
“It’s not the sole reason they’re having [trouble] but it’s big a part of it,” said Missy Cummings, a former senior safety adviser for NHTSA, who has criticized the company’s approach and recused herself on matters related to Tesla. “The radar helped detect objects in the forward field. [For] computer vision which is rife with errors, it serves as a sensor fusion way to check if there is a problem.”
Musk, as the chief tester, also asked for frequent bug fixes to the software, requiring engineers to go in and adjust code. “Nobody comes up with a good idea while being chased by a tiger,” a former senior executive recalled an engineer on the project telling him.
Musk’s resistance to suggestions led to a culture of deference, former employees said. Tesla fired employees who pushed back on his approach. The company was also pushing out so many updates to its software that in late 2021, NHTSA publicly admonished Tesla for issuing fixes without a formal recall notice.
Last year, Musk decided to buy Twitter, something that became a distraction for the Tesla chief executive, former employees of both companies said. After taking the helm in October, he diverted dozens of engineers — including on Autopilot and Full Self-Driving — to work there with him, further setting back Tesla, according to former employees and documents reviewed by The Post. Software updates that were otherwise issued every two weeks were suddenly spaced out over periods of months, as Tesla worked through bugs and chased more ambitious targets.
Some lament Musk’s involvement at Twitter, saying he needs to refocus on Tesla to finish what he started. Ross Gerber, a Tesla investor who is running for a seat on the company’s board over concerns about its perceived inaction on Musk’s dueling role as head of Twitter, said Full Self-Driving heralds a bright future for Tesla.
“We love Elon. He’s the innovator of our time,” he said. “All we want to see is him working full time back at Tesla again.”
Tesla engineers have been burning out, quitting and looking for opportunities elsewhere. Andrej Karpathy, Tesla’s director of artificial intelligence, took a months-long sabbatical last year before leaving Tesla and taking a position this year at OpenAI, the company behind language-modeling software ChatGPT.
“Since Andrej was writing all the code by himself, naturally, things have come to a grinding halt,” Musk said on an earnings call last year, noting he was speaking in jest.
Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s director of Autopilot, has taken on work at Musk’s other company, Twitter, according to employees and documents reviewed by The Post.
One of the former employees said that he left for Waymo. “They weren’t really wondering if their car’s going to run the stop sign,” the engineer said. “They’re just focusing on making the whole thing achievable in the long term, as opposed to hurrying it up.”
The Justice Department has requested documents related to Full Self-Driving as part of an ongoing probe, and the Securities and Exchange Commission is looking into Musk’s role in pushing Tesla’s self-driving claims, part of a larger investigation, according to Bloomberg News.
The lawsuit filed in February alleges that Tesla made “false and misleading” statements, arguing Tesla “significantly overstated” the safety and performance of Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.
That is in addition to NHTSA’s two probes into Autopilot, one of which is the look at emergency vehicles. That investigation has been upgraded to a more advanced stage: an engineering analysis. The other, into “phantom braking” reports, is ongoing.
At an investor showcase this month, Musk appeared alongside more than a dozen Tesla employees onstage, touting the company’s broad array of expertise. But the company failed to offer any major developments on Full Self-Driving, despite a segment on the technology.
And some of Musk’s most loyal customers have given up hope that his initial promise will come true. Charles Cook, a commercial pilot and engineer from Jacksonville, Fla., owns a Tesla Model Y that he frequently drives in Full Self-Driving mode.
While he is amazed at what the technology can do, he is surprised by both the slow pace of progress and the status of Musk’s promises. “Someone might have purchased Full Self-Driving thinking they were going to have a robotaxi by now and spent their hard earned money on that,” he said.
“Now his engineers may have laughed at that” but “a customer may have spent $15,000 thinking they’re going to have it next year.” Those customers, he said, lost out.
“I do not believe you can remove the driver on this hardware suite, ever,” he said.
EXCLUSIVE: On a corner of a street in the burgeoning city of Chengdu, in China’s Sichuan province, a club called Funky Town became a “sanctuary for underground partying,” attracting a diverse crowd of young DJs, drag performers, “lovers, ravers, and skaters,” and others.
Funky Town and a vibrant, sometimes troubled group of its 20-something patrons occupy the frame in The Last Year of Darkness, directed by Ben Mullinkosson (Don’t Be A Dick About It). Emmy-winning film studio Wavelength and Kindred Spirit announced today they are coming on board the documentary, which holds its world premiere on Tuesday at the prestigious CPH:DOX festival in Copenhagen. We have your first look at the film in the exclusive clip above.
Wavelength/Kindred Spirit
Wavelength and Kindred Spirit bring funding to the project alongside Florence, Robina Ricitiello, and Jennifer Pritzker. Anita Gou and Sam Intili of Kindred Spirit are producing along with Sol Ye (I Have No Legs, and I Must Run). Executive producing the film are Jenifer Westphal and Joe Plummer of Wavelength, Jerad Anderson and Natasha Seubert of Florence, Robina Ricitiello, and Jennifer Pritzker. CAA Media Finance will be handling U.S. sales.
The Last Year of Darkness offers an immersive and perhaps unprecedented view of contemporary China and its typically hidden alternative subculture.
“With an agile and playful, but always caring camera, we are picked up across the street late at night and taken on an intimate journey full of loud music, glowing neon lights and heavy make-up,” CPH:DOX writes of the film. “A journey that takes us deep into Chengdu’s alternative youth and its struggles, doubts, working life, self-destruction and redemption. A Bass-heavy journey that ends only when the sun rises over modern China.”
Westphal, Wavelength’s founder, CEO and executive producer, commented, “At Wavelength, we are committed to telling culturally impactful stories of lesser-known or under-recognized communities. It’s an honor to be able to showcase The Last Year of Darkness at this year’s festival.”
Director Ben Mullinkosson is confirmed to be on hand for the film’s premiere and an additional screening on March 24 (a third screening will be held on March 26). Some of his characters are expected to attend as well. The Chicago native studied observational documentary filmmaking at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and spent several years working on The Last Year of Darkness.
“This film came about by drinking plum wine on the dance floor of Funky Town in Chengdu, China,” Mullinkosson tells Deadline. “Everyone on camera is a good friend of mine from years of partying in the underground community in Chengdu. We all love techno music and that’s what brought us all together.”
He adds, “I remember when Yihao found out I am a documentary filmmaker he asked me, ‘When are you going to film me?’ And I said, ‘How about Saturday night?’ That’s how the film started. We started following our friends getting ready for the night at 9 p.m. and then would follow them observationally until they go to bed at 9 a.m. We kept this going for 120 nights over the course of three years, and as we filmed more and more we were invited deeper into the lives and vulnerabilities of everyone’s experience outside of partying. The film ended when this magical underground partying era ended and everyone was forced to move forward with their lives.”
In addition to the drag performer Yihao, Mullinkosson’s characters include Kimberly, 647, Darkle and Gena. Kimberly displays extremes of emotion, alternately fighting with her boyfriend and pleading with him for reassurance. Despite her great physical beauty and talent as a musician, she seems plagued by a negative opinion of herself.
“I think Western audiences are going to be pleasantly surprised how relatable everyone on camera is,” Mullinkosson says. “My friends on camera are going through many of the same problems I went through in my early twenties. I heavily relate to their experiences and hope other people can too. As Yihao puts it, ‘We’re all people.’ This film to me really is a love letter to the underground party scene in Chengdu… All those emotions that come with living in this lifestyle, such as being lost or self-destructive, are products of living in [a] society that can’t understand or support us for who we are. We need places like Funky Town to catch our breath, and escape even if it’s just for one moment. This film is really a celebration of life, a life that sometimes can only be celebrated in darkness.”
Mullinkosson’s previous film, Don’t Be a Dick About It, premiered at IDFA in Amsterdam, where it won the Audience Award. He calls unveiling his latest film at CPH:DOX in Copenhagen “a dream come true. For the protagonists of the film it’s the first time they get to come to a Western country, and to be able to show off the underground party community in Chengdu to such a large audience, that may not have ever expected that underground partying even exists in China, is truly an honor.”
In the exclusive clip above, Yihao attempts to catch a cab in Chengdu after a night of performing at Funky Town.
Americans spend tens of billions of dollars on basketball sneakers every year. Sure, everybody needs shoes, but it shouldn’t matter if your choice bears the Nike swoosh, Adidas’ three stripes or the Converse star. In most cases, consumers aren’t simply buying footwear; they’re investing in the fantasy of walking in someone else’s shoes — a sports star or personal idol — of believing that switching one’s kicks has a direct impact on your potential for greatness.
As the Nike marketing gurus in Ben Affleck’s “Air” put it, “A shoe is just a shoe until someone steps into.” If you’ve been alive on earth in the last 40 years, then you already know what happened when a rookie named Michael Jordan let Nike put his name and likeness on their shoes. But “Air” isn’t about convincing the greatest basketball player in the history of the game to sign with Nike, although a “Jerry Maguire”-desperate Matt Damon — as paunchy, flop-sweating Sonny Vaccaro — might trick you into thinking this is just the (admittedly very entertaining) anatomy of a landmark business deal.
Instead, “Air” ought to be taken as the ultimate example of the American Dream, a Cinderella story of sorts about how the third-place sneaker brand wished upon a star, and how that man — and his mother — were smart enough to know their value. “Air” reveals how an exceptional Black athlete leveraged his talent and the power of being pursued by a bunch of white men in suits, to change the game. Not just basketball, but the whole field of celebrity endorsements. It’s remarkable and fitting that Affleck focuses these negotiations not on Michael Jordan but the woman he trusted most, his mom, Deloris (Viola Davis).
The year is 1984, as an opening pop-culture montage reminds/educates audiences about the early days of the ultra-sophisticated advertising world we now live in: Apple hired Ridley Scott to direct a Super Bowl commercial; Wendy’s turned “Where’s the beef?” into a national catchphrase, and sports stars were everywhere from Wheaties boxes to TV commercials. Nike had branded itself as a running shoe company, and no serious basketball player wanted to sign with them. Sales were down, and company founder Phil Knight was ready to pull the plug on the entire division.
In a sly move, Affleck casts himself as Knight, playing the OG “shoe dog” as a comic figure with an ill-fitting wig and an aloof sense of timing. Most corporate CEOs step on other people’s sentences, butting in before their underlings have finished speaking, but not this guy. He waits a beat before responding, as if his attention might be divided between the conversation at hand and a dozen other thoughts. On the wall of Knight’s office hangs a giant sign listing the 10 rules by which Nike operates. Rule No. 2 reads, “Break the rules.” But in 1984, Nike was a publicly traded company, and boards expect rules to be observed.
Enter Vaccaro, Nike’s in-house basketball guru, whom “Air” introduces as a betting man: He stops by Vegas after a scouting trip, and loses it all on craps. But it’s more than a hunch that tells him Nike should invest its entire quarter-million-dollar basketball marketing budget on one player, as oppose to spreading it among several lower-ranked draft picks. Never mind that Jordan is an Adidas guy; forget that the German company (at which “Air” takes a few sharp digs) can outspend anything they offer.
Jordan’s genius on the court practically goes without saying, and yet screenwriter Alex Convery shrewdly decodes the 21-year-old’s potential, spelled out after Vaccaro studies tape of Jordan’s first year on the University of North Carolina’s team. This and other key moments play like classic Aaron Sorkin scenes, blending the inside-baseball insights of “Moneyball” with “The Social Network”-style power games. His characters aren’t quite as compelling as Sorkin’s, but they express themselves beautifully. Between nostalgia-baiting ’80s radio hits, they walk and talk strategy (around production designer François Audouy’s great sets) or else cut one another down in private (as old friends Damon and Affleck do at several points).
In the film’s most galvanizing monologue, Vaccaro finally gives Jordan (whose face appears only in archival footage) and his parents (Davis and Julius Tennon) the pitch. Who knows what Vaccaro really said in that room, but this speech — intercut with the triumphs and pitfalls of Jordan’s career — summarizes everything Michael Jordan means to us, his fans and the legions of Americans he inspired. To get to this moment, Vaccaro must first convince Knight to endorse his plan; he has to deal with Jordan’s agent, David Falk (Chris Messina, hilariously hostile); and he has to drive out and face Deloris in person.
Casting Davis was the smartest thing Affleck could have done, as the EGOT winner is to acting what Jordan is to sports: Her strength inspires, and she can move us to tears while making it look easy. We all know what happened with the Air Jordan deal — the shoe launched the collectible sneaker culture that surrounds us today — and yet, Davis forces Damon to work for the family’s approval.
Meanwhile, as Vaccaro, Damon channels the same nervous energy that defined his underrated, but career-best performance in Steven Soderbergh’s “The Informant!”: At times, the entire scheme seems to be cratering around him, and in that moment, Damon brings the same competitive spirit we associate with sports movies into the boardroom. It’s too bad the character doesn’t have a personal life to speak of. At least Nike marketing exec Rob Strasser does (played here by Jason Bateman), spelling out the stakes in a touching birthday scene.
Memorable parts by Chris Tucker as Howard White, who traded his basketball uniform for a corporate suit, and Marlon Wayans as 1984 Olympics coach George Raveling notwithstanding, “Air” often seems to be focused on the whitest guys in the room. But Affleck is hardly blind to the racial dynamics underlying this whole saga, revealing how Deloris ensured that corporate America couldn’t exploit her son.
Then and now, Nike’s shoes weren’t necessarily any more stylish or advanced than their competitors’ — although the original Air Jordans are a thing of beauty. The company’s sneakers owed nearly all of their mystique to the athletes who wore them. In 1984, Michael Jordan was still a rookie rather than a myth, and yet the movie works because everybody knows what he went on to become. The last of Knight’s 10 rules reads, “If we do the right things we’ll make money damn near automatic.” The Jordan deal saved the company. The rest is his story.
Last year, on Valentine’s Day, Netflix got every other girl drooling over Noah Centineo wishing to have a boyfriend like him. For Valentine’s Day 2020, Netflix served the sequel, To All The Boys: PS I Still Love You, bringing back the mushy romance of Lara Jean (Lana Condor) and Peter Kavinsky.
But haven’t been able to recreate the magic of the previous film. In the last one, Lara Jean’s younger sister, Kitty, sends out five love letters she had written to her crushes since childhood. While four of them turned up and confronted her, viewers were yet to see John Ambrose, who finds his way back in the second part by replying to her letter.
In the sequel, Lara and Peter are having their ‘happily ever after’ and everything seems pretty perfect when insecurities, misunderstandings and doubts creep in. And amid their mess enters John, who further complicates it by joining Lara in volunteering at the Belleview retirement home. While Lara loves Peter, she starts having second thoughts. Honestly, you cannot blame her, because Jordan Fisher as John is one fascinating guy.
Apart from the love triangle, there’s Kitty, who is as adorable as before. This time she’s trying to fix her dad with their neighbour Stormy played by Holland Taylor. Also, there’s a sneak peek into some Korean traditions. That is the part you’d want to see more but you don’t. LJ and PK are the sole focus of this follow-up.
The sequel has nothing that you haven’t seen before. It’s a typical high school romance that we have been watching since ages. The first part was no different, but the characters’ innocence seemed to have hit a chord with the audience. However, regardless of Centineo and Condor’s appealing chemistry, To All the Boys 2 falls flat.
The story is too predictable. Even if you skip it for some minutes you exactly know what would have happened because you have watched similar things in High School Musical series, 17 Again, Fault in Our Stars and many other Hollywood rom-coms.
What holds you for one hour forty two minutes is its soundtrack and screenplay. The story moves from one scene to the other so quickly, that you won’t realise you are halfway through the film. Same goes for the soundtrack. Complementing the fast paced sequences, the songs blend so effortlessly that they seem to be a part of the script.
It’s still a good-looking film with charming actors dressed up in their best. But that will only want you to go and raid some shopping complex, nothing more than that.
To All the Boys I Have Loved Before was a guilty pleasure you’d turn to every time you wanted to take a break from the regular sci-fi films and mafia thrillers. But To All The Boys 2 PS: I Still Love You doesn’t fit here. It’s a feel-good, one-time-watch and a happy film but the predecessor was much better.
In a log-cabin sauna nestled in pretty woods by a lake, a setting straight off the top of a chocolate box, a group of women gather on and off through the changing seasons to sweat out their secrets and heal each other with heat, talk and arcane sauna-based rituals. It is a practise so specific to the Voro community of Estonia that it joins Cuba’s rum makers, Turkey’s coffee culture and suchlike on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List, a fact revealed at the end of Anna Hint’s lovely feature doc debut “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood.” And it feels exactly right, given that the small, smoky, steamy miracle of this film is how it creates something so intangible, so lyrical, from the absolutely elemental: fire, wood, water and lots of naked female flesh.
Part of the film’s transcendent appeal is the result of specific formal choices made by Hints, the deserving winner of the directing award in the World Cinema Documentary category at the Sundance Film Festival. The soundscape is precise and evocative: Shivery samples of Edvard Egilsson’s otherworldly choral score intermingle with the quiet, almost eerie airiness of the woodland setting, water splashed and hissing on the coals and murmured conversations made conspiratorial by the strange, secretive reverb in this small enclosed space.
Ants Tammik’s camerawork is similarly inspired, especially in the framing of the women’s bodies which are displayed without prudery but also without prurience, and usually only partially — backs, breasts, bellies, chins propped on knees. Often, we do not see the face of the woman who is speaking, and instead watch her words received by someone else. But sometimes, as with one late monologue, we are watching the speaker, and her head and shoulders are lit so that the effect is almost surreal. Hovering against the enveloping darkness, she might be floating in space.
But the main conduit for this sense of the film as something intangibly greater than the sum of its parts is the feeling of community it establishes, for which the women themselves are responsible. We don’t necessarily get to know them as individuals, despite how intimately personal and sometimes harrowing their shared stories are. Instead, Hints lets their soft chatter narrate a kind of choral experience of modern womanhood.
Some of it is absurd: They laugh about dick pics and awkward sexual encounters. Some of it is universal, as they return again and again to the subject of motherhood and all the ways our mothers love us and hurt us and screw us up. And some of it is desperately moving. One woman weeps as she recounts her rape as a teenager; another describes, in painful, extraordinary detail, the process of having to give birth to a baby who had already died. She was glad that she did it this way, rather than have a c-section, she muses, because the anguish of labor meant that “part of the pain [of grief] was already burnt away.”
Too much of this intense, naked truth-telling could become overwhelming, but “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” for all the trauma and stress it touches on, remains light on its feet, interspersing the talkier sections with quiet interludes where we observe the hut from afar, or watch with forensic interest as the fire is lit and blown carefully to life in the morning, or follow the women in winter, dunking themselves, shivering and laughing, into a hole cut in the deep surface ice of the lake to cool off. The sauna also doubles as a smokehouse, and is used to cure meat. On days when no one is visiting, in lieu of human flesh, large, heavy hunks of fatty pork trussed up with string hang from the rafters.
But mostly we are inside the tiny wooden room with the women, almost as though we’re sitting right there alongside them, dipping our hands into the cup of warm water that’s passed around, and feeling the heated, scented air draw all the toxins from our bodies. There is also a mystical aspect to this tradition, with chants and incantations, while sometimes one of the women will perform a kind of ritual over another, brushing away bad spirits with a bushel of leaves or a handful of rubbing salt. During one particularly ghostly story, the light spills through the hut’s wooden slats in such a way it briefly creates the image of a woman’s face in the smoke.
But the real magic of “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” is nothing supernatural. It is simply the way that Hints’ film invites us to be part of this supportive, witty, sweaty collective, which feels like it operates on the most practical yet optimistic of assumptions: that with the application of enough heat and fellowship, everything painful can be soothed and everything dirty can be made clean.
150,000 cybersecurity professionals use Feedly to keep up with the latest security news and research insights about critical threats (vulnerabilities, malware, data breaches, threat actor groups, etc.)
Cybersecurity is a game of foresight. It is a chessboard where hackers and defenders are looking to checkmate each other.
Learning more about the tactics, techniques, and procedures used by hackers can help you better prepare against them, saving you the cost and headaches that come with a breach or attack. The cost of ransomware attacks in the U.S. surpassed $7.5 billion in 2019.
But information gathering is tedious: hundreds of new articles and tweets need to be reviewed and triaged every day. Finding critical threats in that sea of information is time-consuming and overwhelming.
Today, we’re excited to launch Feedly for Cybersecurity: a collection of integrations and AI Models that help you cut through the noise, break barriers between team silos, and streamline your threat intelligence.
Ask Feedly AI to read your security feeds and prioritize what matters to you:
We finally have a look at Michael Cudlitz as Lex Luthor in Superman and Lois! The new season has just premiered and it looks like we are getting a different type of Lex! Of course the first thing that jumps out about this look is the facial hair. I ahve never seen a bearded Lex. It does make for an imposing character! If you are familiar with Michael Cudlitz’s work, you probably remember him as the noble Abraham in The Walking Dead. It’s a shame Abraham met the business end of Negan’s bat.
We aren’t sure what to expect from Lex this season, but it’s safe to say Michael Cudlitz will bring his A game. And that means a take on the character that will be complex.
“Personally, I’ve always felt Lex was just misunderstood,” the actor said of the iconic DC villain. “This whole experience so far has been amazing.” Adding, “From the collaboration with our showrunners Todd [Helbing] and Brent [Fletcher] to the incredibly warm welcome I received from Tyler [Hoechlin] and Elizabeth [Tulloch] and the entire cast and crew. I cannot wait to share with the fans how much fun we’ve been having.”
As most of the CW shows have ended, there’s a lot riding on the next season. At this point it is doubtful that Superman and Lois will factor in to James Gunn’s new vision for the DC universe on film amd TV, but if fans are receptive to these versions of the characters and the actors who play them, maybe there’s an Elseworlds place for them. I know I am looking forward to where we go this season. Cudlitz’s take on Lex may be a jewel in the crown of a show already full of surprises!
Check out the intimidating photo below! Welcome to the show Lex!
Lance Reddick, the actor known for roles in The Wire, John Wick, and Horizon Zero Dawn, has died at age 60. Reddick’s representatives shared a statement with IGN following the actor’s passing:
“Acclaimed actor Lance Reddick passed away suddenly this morning from natural causes.
Lance was best known for his roles in “The Wire,” “Bosch,” Netflix’s “Resident Evil” and the John Wick films.
He is survived by his wife Stephanie Reddick and children Yvonne Nicole Reddick and Christopher Reddick.
Donations in his memory can be made to momcares.org in Baltimore, his hometown.
Lance will be greatly missed.
Please respect his family’s privacy at this time.”
Reddick was best known for his role as Cedric Daniels in The Wire, which he starred in from 2002 to 2008. Recently, Reddick starred in the John Wick franchise as Charon. Reddick was in the middle of a press tour for John Wick: Chapter 4, where he will appear as the Continental Hotel’s concierge once more. The actor also appeared as Chef Irvin in Amazon Prime’s Bosch, along with recurring roles in Lost, Oz, and more.
The actor also had prominent roles in a number of high-profile video games. He played Sylens in Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West, Commander Zavala in the Destiny franchise, and Martin Hatch in Quantum Break. Reddick also appeared as Albert Wesker in last year’s live-action Resident Evil series.
Reddick had multiple projects in the work, including a role as Zeus in Disney+’s upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, as well as a part in Amazon Prime’s The Legend of Vox Machina.
Reddick studied music at the University of Rochester before earning a Master of Fine Arts defree from the Yale School of Drama in 1994.
Image Credit: Rich Polk / Stringer
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include the statement from Reddick’s representatives.
Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.
SYS’s Six-Figure Film Festival offers filmmakers risk-free submissions by refunding 100% of the entry fee to all the filmmakers who’s films are not screened at the festival.
With film festival entry fees on the rise and many festivals opting to screen films online, SellingYourScreenplay (SYS) is championing new initiatives to give filmmakers more value at festivals. SYS’s Six-Figure Film Festival and Screenplay Contest is an annual in-person event held in Los Angeles, CA in October that showcases do-it-yourself filmmakers who have successfully completed a film for less than six-figures. In an effort to support indie filmmakers, SYS is offering a risk-free submission policy to all filmmakers: filmmakers whose films are not accepted into the festival will receive a 100% refund of their entry fee. As Covid-19 spiked in 2020 many festivals opted to go online and do virtual screenings. Many exhibitors and distributors have warned filmmakers against allowing their films to be screened online at festivals because it could potentially cannibalize earnings in the future. While these online festivals make logistics easier for the people running them, they offer little to no value to filmmakers. SYS saw a big opportunity in keeping their festival a live, in-person event so filmmakers could gather together, celebrate indie film, and network with other filmmakers and industry professionals.
“As a filmmaker myself I’ve been incredibly disappointed with the film festival circuit lately. Most of the time filmmakers send money for submissions, get back a half-baked rejection letter or worse, get accepted to the festival but still do not get to screen their film in an actual theater at an in-person event. With SYS’s festival we aim to remove all financial risk from the filmmakers by only charging the films we accept and screen in a high quality theater here in Los Angeles,” says filmmaker and festival founder Ashley Scott Meyers.
Filmmakers can learn more about the festival here: https://www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival About SellingYourScreenplay.com Founded by filmmaker and podcaster Ashley Scott Meyers, SYS is dedicated to helping screenwriters get their films produced. SYS offers a variety of free and paid resources including a weekly podcast where independent screenwriters and directors are interviewed, a screenplay contest, and a treasure trove of blog posts helping screenwriters with specific elements of the screenwriting process. http://www.sellingyoursc
Ben Affleck’s Air operates in a respectful and deeply reverential register when it comes to its subject, his family and the sport in which he made his legacy. The film, which premiered at SXSW, chronicles the tense Nike campaign to sign Michael Jordan, then an NBA rookie, to his first sneaker deal in 1984. That contract, closed a year before the first Air Jordans were sold to the public, changed Nike’s reputation and altered the way players negotiated brand deals.
Movies about corporate legalities and closed-door meetings are rarely anyone’s idea of a good time, but there are ways to inject them with energy. Tetris, for example, which also premiered at SXSW this year, took the genre route, turning the history of a video game licensing battle into a Cold War thriller. In Air, Affleck attaches himself to the sentimental, reaching for a narrative that recasts the deal between Jordan and Nike as the story of legendary Nike executive Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) trying to win over the player’s mother, Deloris (Viola Davis). That direction allows Affleck, who plays Nike CEO Phil Knight in the film, to organize Air around the broad, feel-good themes of a standard sports drama despite no on-the-court action.
Air
The Bottom Line
Not a slam dunk, but scores enough points.
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Headliners) Release date: Wednesday, April 5 Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Viola Davis, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Marlon Wayans Director: Ben Affleck Screenwriter: Alex Convery
Rated R,
1 hour 52 minutes
For most audiences, Air will be worth seeing just for the starry cast — particularly the reunion between Damon and Affleck. Their scenes possess a kinetic and intimate dynamism that the rest of the film approaches but doesn’t always match. The old friends are magnetic as Sonny — who’s in charge of the company’s flailing basketball division — and Phil try to take Nike to the next level. (Before signing Jordan, the shoe company held a meager 17 percent of the market compared to competitors Adidas and Converse.) Their conversations take place in Phil’s appropriately retro office (the production design is by François Audouy) and offer insights into how both executives tried to balance the imagination of Nike’s scrappy roots alongside its corporate ambitions.
The film opens four years after Nike went public, a move that puts Phil at the behest of an omniscient board. In an early conversation, Phil reminds Sonny that he hired him to grow their basketball division, not tank it. Sonny responds by suggesting that going public was a mistake for the company’s ethos. The brash executive from Philadelphia functions on a different plane from his zen-aspiring boss, who believes in focus groups and methodology. Affleck plays Phil’s contradictions — the man’s simultaneous slavish devotion to the bottom line and obsession with Buddhism — as one of the film’s running jokes.
Phil and Sonny’s divergent ideologies come to a head when Sonny proposes putting all of the fledgling division’s money on Michael Jordan. The boss disagrees, and he’s not the only skeptic. His colleagues Howard White (Chris Tucker), Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) and George Raveling (Marlon Wayans), one of Jordan’s coaches at the 1984 Olympics, all try to dissuade him. The dynamics within this group of coworkers and friends offer most of the film’s comedic relief while also helping us deepen our understanding of Nike’s philosophy. When they are later joined by Peter Moore (Matthew Maher), Nike’s creative director, the film applies — wonderfully — the poetic reverence usually reserved for portraying the sport in these types of dramas to the process of designing a shoe.
Sonny isn’t one to take no for an answer or ignore his instincts. After a crucial call with Jordan’s agent, David Falk (a hilarious Chris Messina), Sonny flies from Oregon to North Carolina to court Jordan’s parents. Deloris (Davis) and James (Julius Tennon) turn out to be a tougher crowd than Sonny anticipated. They are immune to his salesman charm and unfazed by his dramatic entrance onto their property. Deloris, especially, demands a quiet respect, which Sonny, in awe, gives her.
Their conversations — it’s a talky movie — mark a turn in Air. His questions appeal to the value Deloris places on family, fairness and the unquestionable greatness of her son. Affleck films these scenes in close-ups meant to invoke the developing mutual appreciation between the two parties, but the screenplay (by Alex Convery) makes it hard to buy. Although Deloris gets a considerable amount of screen time, her character doesn’t feel developed enough to carry the full weight of Air’s dramatic aspirations. Davis gives us a sense of this woman’s interiority through raised eyebrows, questioning stares and the rare smile of approval, but it feels like she’s working with a skeletal figure. An argument could be made that this minimalism is a way of communicating the quiet power of Deloris, a woman whom Jordan credits for who he is. But there’s not enough there to keep her from feeling more like a composite of characters we’ve seen before than a person with specific experiences.
And those experiences matter. Sonny and Deloris are bound by a profound and unwavering belief in Jordan, but, as she suggests during one conversation, his strong sense of self is a product of the lessons she has taught him. It’s Deloris’ and her son’s understanding of their worth that leads them to negotiate a contract giving Jordan a percentage of the revenue from Air Jordan sales.
Beneath the sentimentalism of Air are hints of an even more compelling thread: How do you compensate people in a society organized around corporate greed? The film’s third act highlights and circles the notion of equity. Jordan’s contract changed the way players made money from brand deals. A note right before the closing credits informs us that Sonny would play a critical role in taking on the N.C.A.A. and helping college athletes get paid for commercial use of their likeness. All of this feels prescient considering Affleck’s recent venture: Last year, he and Damon started Artists Equity, a production company that operates on a profit-sharing model in hopes of creating better deals for everyone employed to make movies. It makes Air feel like a letter of admiration — to Jordan, his family, the tenacious execs at Nike — and a statement of Affleck’s future intentions.
Full credits
Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Headliners) Distributor: Warner Bros. Production companies: Amazon, Artists Equity, Mandalay Pictures, Skydance Media Cast: Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman, Chris Messina, Matthew Maher, Marlon Wayans, Chris Tucker, Viola Davis, Gustaf Skarsgård, Julius Tennon Director: Ben Affleck Screenwriter: Alex Convery Producers: David Ellison, Jesse Sisgold, Jon Weinbach, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Madison Ainley, Jeff Robinov, Peter Guber, and Jason Michael Berman Executive producers: Dana Goldberg, John Graham, Don Granger, Kevin Halloran, Michael Joe, Jordan Moldo, Jesse Sisgold, Peter E. Strauss, Drew Vinton Cinematographer: Robert Richardson Production designer: François Audouy Costume designer: Charlese Antoinette Jones Editor: William Goldenberg Music: Andrea von Foerster Casting directors: Lindsay Graham, Mary Vernieu
Rated R,
1 hour 52 minutes
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“Glamour is 85 years old next year. We were one of the first magazines in the United States to really empower the working woman—our tagline in the 40s was ‘for the girl with a job’. Looking into the archives, these issues of Glamour equipped women to take on jobs when the world went to war, they had feminist writers who argued why women should go to college, long before it became the norm. And there were so many inches and issues dedicated to the fight for reproductive rights and the passing of Roe v Wade. And I wonder, as I say these words out loud, what those writers in the 50s, 60s and 70s would feel that we are still fighting that fight in 2023.
“We tackled topics like divorce, sexual liberation, motherhood and more in groundbreaking ways. And the history of Glamour is really woven into the history of women in America.”
She also took time to celebrate all the women in the audience, and acknowledge many former Glamour Women of the Year honorees who were in attendance, including the Vice President, Megan Thee Stallion, the women of Heart of Dinner, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Sherrilyn Ifill, and Ambassador Susan Rice. And encouraged the audience to join Glamour in plotting for the future—spotlighting our recent By Women initiative, and our paid leave advocacy.
Karina Garcia speaks, as Tiffany Mrotek, Abi Akintolayo, and Shukura Wells support her.
LAUREN COWART
Then she welcomed Karina Garcia, who was joined by Abi Akintolayo,Tiffany Mroktek and Shukura Wells from our paid leave project, who shared her own story about her experiences postpartum, and why coming together to mark Women’s History Month is so important, before introducing the Vice President.
She told the audience: “Last year, on May 12, I gave birth to my first daughter Yohualli. Six days later, I was working. Four nights a week I worked from midnight until 8am, up when even my baby was sleeping. I had no paid leave. I had no choice. I shouldn’t have had to choose between my child, and my livelihood.
“Change is why we are here today. We are here together today to celebrate the progress we have made, but also recognize how far there is to go.
Rapper Megan Thee Stallion at the Vice President’s residence.
LAUREN COWART
“We also are here to celebrate women who have changed—and are changing—history. There are so many women here today that I am humbled to stand alongside. None more so than our very own Vice President of the United States. Because of our Vice President, I get to tell my daughter that she too can aim for the highest office of the land.”
The event was hosted by the pool at the Vice President’s residence, and the women in attendance were encouraged by the Vice President to network with the “phenomenal group of women who are here.” She told the crowd: “This is a powerful group of people, who are national leaders, and global leaders, and I am honored to be able to welcome you all to this home.”
A Disney+ spin-off series of the hit Marvel Studios franchise Black Panther has been rumored for some time, but according to recent reports, a different show could be in the works.
During the latest episode of The Hot Mic podcast, Above the Line’s Jeff Sneider shared a rumor that Ryan Coogler and Disney had met about developing a series, but one that would actually be animated, and not a live-action project like so many fans thought.
Sneider said the series could be titled The Golden City, a reference to the fictional city of Birnin Zana, which is the capital city of the Kingdom of Wakanda.
Sneider didn’t mention much else about the show, nor did he say whether or not this would be replacing the previously rumored series that would focus on the Dora Milaje. Prior to the news of an animated series, rumors suggested that a series starring Danai Gurira was in the works, with the actress playing coy during a January appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
“Stephen,” Gurira said. “I have been told that I can gently allude to this possibility. So, I am gently alluding. Just gently.”
A24, the scrappy indie studio that has built a brand for itself as a home for hip and cutting-edge movies, triumphed over its deeper-pocketed rivals at the Oscars on Sunday. It scored a leading nine wins, topping that of its closest competitor, Netflix, which had to settle for six trophies. Plus, A24 not only captured best picture for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” but also pulled off the incredibly rare feat of winning every major acting category, with three statuettes coming for the cast of the head-spinning adventure film and the other one recognizing Brendan Fraser’s work in “The Whale.”
But don’t expect the studio to do a victory lap. Co-founders David Fenkel and Daniel Katz (who named their shop after the highway that connects Rome to Teramo) shun the spotlight and have done almost no interviews or profiles, though they have certainly been asked. Rather, the indie moguls say they prefer to let their films speak for themselves — an anomaly in Hollywood, where executives usually push one another aside to claim credit for successes.
On Sunday, the highest-stakes night in A24’s history, head of film Noah Sacco and communications and distribution head Nicolette Aizenberg refused to be photographed on the carpet. When Sacco was approached by Variety to mark the occasion with a photo, as executives like Bob Iger of Disney and David Zaslav of Warner Bros. Discovery had already done, he deferred to Aizenberg. She politely declined.
“Whatever my work wife says,” Sacco said before heading into the auditorium.
With “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” A24 propelled an offbeat metaverse-spanning adventure film into a box office sensation, taking in more than $100 million worldwide — a stunning result given the financial difficulties facing the art-house movie business. Then, it turned a movie dramatically removed from typical awards bait — a martial arts-infused yarn that featured characters sporting hot dog hands and brandishing weaponized dildos — into an Oscar juggernaut. Its seven victories are the most for any best picture winner since 2008’s “Slumdog Millionaire” (which won eight).
To be sure, A24 has suffered setbacks on the way to its golden night. Rivals gripe that the studio overspends to market its movies and that its buzzy successes, like “Everything Everywhere,” “Moonlight” and “Hereditary,” paper over a long list of money losers. (Ever hear of “Under the Silver Lake” or “When You Finish Saving the World”? A24 produced those films too.) But it has taken a part of the movie business that had seemed geared to grandparents and older tastemakers and injected a youthful swagger by betting on emerging talent.
In 2020, facing a difficult landscape for theatrical distribution, A24 began exploring a buyout, valuing itself at $2.5 billion to $3 billion. Whether the offers weren’t to its liking or it opted to chart a different course, the company ultimately decided to end sales talks. Instead, it announced an equity investment of $225 million from a fundraising round led by equity firm Stripes. A24 also poached its first-ever chief financial officer — J.B. Lockhart, the NBA’s CFO — to help figure out a way for the company to grow organically.
TV is a prime target, especially after the studio delivered HBO the provocative teen drama “Euphoria,” a ratings hit. On the horizon is the pricey “The Idol,” also at HBO, starring Lily-Rose Depp and the Weeknd. Following that is “The Curse” at Showtime, from the Safdie brothers and Nathan Fielder and starring Emma Stone. On the film front, there’s Ari Aster’s mainstream drama “Beau Is Afraid” with Joaquin Phoenix. A24 also is looking at the live event space with the recent acquisition of the historic Off Broadway theater Cherry Lane, and is dipping into music with an investment in Larry Jackson’s startup Gamma.
On Sunday, even A24’s competitors seemed to recognize its Oscars accomplishment. Tom Quinn, co-founder of Neon, an indie studio that also has made a name for itself by distributing more challenging and avant-garde fare, likened what A24 pulled off to his company’s success in willing 2019’s “Parasite” to a best picture victory.
“I kind of want to go to their party to celebrate if they win,” Quinn confessed on the carpet.
He argued that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” demonstrated that there still is an audience for art-house theatrical releases — something that has been questioned in the wake of box office failures such as “Tár,” “The Son” and “Armageddon Time.” Part of the reason A24 may be flourishing where others fail is that its films attract younger crowds who aren’t as concerned about COVID as older moviegoers are; that helped lift ticket sales for “Everything Everywhere.”
“It’s fantastic,” Quinn said. “It’s a real theatrical success. It is a real piece of cinema. It’s working on so many different levels. I’m all in.”
And A24’s triumph on Sunday was achieved despite competition from streamers like Netflix. The tech giant has done a great deal to upend the way movies are made and seen. It also has spent lavishly as it tries, so far unsuccessfully, to score best picture statuettes for the likes of “Roma,” “The Irishman” and this year’s “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
“What it means is that once again the streamers don’t win,” says Tom Bernard, co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics, an indie studio that, like A24, still releases movies theatrically.
Taylor Swift is one of the most undeniable forces in the music world. Things have been made even clearer when it comes to her re-recordings.
After the debacle with Scooter Braun being a snake, Swift has been re-recording all of her albums that she doesn’t own. Under the moniker of “(Taylor’s Version,”) she’s already re-recorded a few of her previous albums.
While we’ve also gotten Midnights as an original project, the two re-releases we’ve enjoyed so far are Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version.) Each of these has given us some classic songs we all love and adore along with some previously unreleased songs.
Right before the kickoff of her Eras Tour, Taylor decided to release four “new” songs which include 3 re-recordings and one new previously unreleased song. Of all the songs being released, “If This Was A Movie” is finally getting the credit it so rightfully deserves.
“If This Was A Movie” by Taylor Swift is getting the attention it deserves.
If there’s one song I’ve missed listening to that isn’t “Taylor’s Version” is “If This Was a Movie.” If you’re a Taylor fan, you’ll remember this as part of the Speak Now era as it was one of the bonus songs in the “Deluxe Edition.” While there are some absolute gems featured in the “Deluxe Edition,” it’s so amazing to see her singling out “If This Was A Movie.”
Maybe it’s just because of the repeated nature of the lyrics, but this song really resonates with that angsty-teenage part of my heart. This album was released in 2010 and I’m sure a lot of us remember that feeling. You really want to be with someone and things didn’t work out but if it was a movie, they’d be back by now. Even if you weren’t a teen in 2010, I feel like “If This Was A Movie” captures that longing you feel as a teenager.
While the purpose of the re-recordings is to allow Taylor to own her songs again, it does feel like she has a chance to revamp the songs, too. As much as I adore the song, I do feel like “If This Was A Movie” could be slowed down a bit and maybe sung in a much softer tone if she’s trying not to showcase so much teen angst as an adult.
Regardless of what she decides to do, I’m just so excited for “If This Was a Movie.” As far as Taylor Swift’s songs go, it seems like it’s a bit underrated. Then again, the Speak Now era has some of the best bonus tracks in my opinion. Who knows? This might even kickstart us getting Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) in 2023.
Which Speak Now bonus track is your favorite? Which new Taylor Swift release is on repeat for you? Share in the comments!
Autlook Filmsales has sold “Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,” which won the directing award for Anna Hints in the World Cinema Documentary section at Sundance, to more than 20 territories in North America, Europe and Australia. The film has its European premiere at CPH:DOX on March 20.
Deals are confirmed with Neue Visionen in Germany, Trigon in Switzerland, Against Gravity in Poland, Fidalgo in Norway, Ost For Paradise in Denmark, Vedette in Benelux, Filmtrade in Greece and Cyprus, FilmIn in Spain, Alambique in Portugal, Filmladen in Austria, Pasaka Films in Lithuania, Artcam in Czech Rep. and Slovak Rep., Best Film in Latvia, Mozinet in Hungary, and Madman in Australia and New Zealand. The rights in U.S. have been picked up by Greenwich Entertainment and in Canada by Sherry Media Group. The theatrical release in Estonia is by ACME Film.
Autlook Films CEO Salma Abdalla said: “It’s exciting to see this high level of engagement and marketing ideas for theatrical releases around the globe.” The film’s European theatrical roll out is planned for fall 2023.
First offers from U.K., Taiwan, France, Latvia and Korea are being reviewed.
“Smoke Sauna Sisterhood” is produced by Marianne Ostrat of Alexandra Film. The co-producers are France’s Juliette Cazanave, Iceland’s Hlín Jóhannesdóttir and Estonia’s Eero Talvistu.
“The film is about universal aspects of womanhood and the healing power of human connection,” Ostrat said. “Hence, we are incredibly happy that the film resonates with distributors from all these different territories and cultures. It’s the highest proof to what we have firmly believed in while making this movie: humanity.”
The film is an intimate and contemporary portrayal of the Southern Estonian smoke sauna tradition (“savvusanna kombõ”), listed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
“The history of the smoke saunas as a place of giving birth inspired Hints to focus on women who come together in the protective darkness to share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences. The engaging film captures them joining in a sense of communion to wash off the shame trapped in their bodies and regain their strength,” according to a statement.
The film is produced by Alexandra Film, Kepler22 Productions and Ursus Parvus, with participation from the Estonian Film Institute, the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, Tartu Film Fund, CNC, Sacem, Icelandic Film Centre and Sundance Institute Documentary Fund.
IT’S not only the victims who suffer at the hands of merciless serial killers – often the murderer’s innocent family is also left at a loss.
That was the case for Jenn Carson, 48, who at eight years old found out her dad Michael Bear Carson was a ruthless killer who murdered at least three people in California with her step-mum Suzan Barnes.
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Jenn Carson has spoken out about being the daughter of a cold-blooded serial killerCredit: AP
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Jenn’s father was serial killer Michael Bear Carson, who killed people he thought were witchesCredit: AP
The duo were infamously dubbed the San Francisco Witch Killers as they believed their victims had supernatural powers.
Jenn opened up about how their evil crimes had a devastating impact on her life in an interview with People.
“By nine, I viewed every adult as a potential killer. The whole world terrified me. I also feared that I would grow up and kill people,” she said.
“I want people to understand that this type of shame is so corrosive. And that’s why I tell my story.”
Many of the most world’s notorious murderers once led relatively normal lives with wives and children, who had no idea about their sickening crimes.
Here we take a look at other children of deadly monsters.
‘Secondary victims’
Melissa Moore‘s father Keith Jesperson is currently serving three life sentences for strangling at least eight women to death, although he once claimed his victims numbered as many as 185.
Jesperson was called the Happy Face Killer as he left smiley face drawings next to his victims’ bodies.
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Melissa Moore says she’s had to get counselling to try to overcome the trauma of her father’s crimesCredit: Facebook
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Keith Jesperson once confessed to having killed as many as 185 people
In 2010, Melissa revealed that as a child, she saw her dad, whom she labelled a sociopath, torture and kill kittens and got a feeling there was “another side to him”.
Speaking in a 2015 interview, she said: “We [children of serial killers] are secondary crime victims. We carry that shame and we want to remove that.”
She added: “I feel in a sense I am related to my father, but I didn’t cause the pain. But knowing that my father caused some pain causes me pain.”
Melissa has also spoken about how she’s had to seek counselling in an attempt to overcome the trauma of being related to a cold-blooded killer.
Last year she revealed Jesperson, now 67, has been sending her letters from prison – including one asking why he wasn’t invited to her wedding and telling her the marriage wasn’t going to last.
‘I turned in my murderous dad’
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Amy Balascio turned her father in after discovering he had murdered five peopleCredit: Getty
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Edward Wayne Edwards is believed to have killed over 15 people and was sentenced to deathCredit: AP:Associated Press
After decades of suspecting her father Edward Wayne Edwards was a killer, Amy Balascio finally built up the courage to launch her own investigation in 2009.
She remembers her father, who physically abused her mum, being obsessed with murders and police investigations – he often had clippings of local crime reports and would call cops about their probes.
Edwards would move his family around every six months in the middle of the night, leaving no traces behind.
After months of digging, Amy eventually discovered her dad had killed at least five people, and turned him into the police.
Kids aren’t stupid. There were dead bodies. Someone was always murdered wherever we lived
Amy Balascio
After Edwards’ arrest further investigation revealed he had killed more than 15 people.
He was sentenced to be killed by lethal injection in August 2011 but died of natural causes four months prior.
In 2018, Amy said: “Kids aren’t stupid. There were dead bodies. Someone was always murdered wherever we lived.
“During this whole process, you’re still holding out for hope that he’s not this monster that I think he is, that he’s just my dad and has a temper.”
‘Mum blamed me’
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Stephen West revealed the shocking details of his last conversation with his evil mother RoseCredit: PA
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The vile pair killed 10 young women and girls including members of their own familyCredit: Rex Features
Together Fred and Rose West committed rape, abuse, incest, and murdered 10 people, including some of their own kids, with most taking place at their home in Gloucester.
Investigating their dreadful crimes, detectives discovered they would kidnap girls from bus stops, keep them prisoner for several days and torture them before ending their lives.
Their atrocities involved Rose killing Charmaine West – Fred’s stepdaughter from a previous marriage – and their daughter Heather Ann.
Fred also raped his own daughter Ann Marie and forced her to work as a prostitute.
In 1999 she called me with hate and was blaming me for everything. She said I should have died when I was born
Stephen West
The couple had nine children between them, including Stephen, who in 2002 was jailed for having sex with a 14-year-old girl while he was in his early 30s.
In 2021 Stephen revealed the last conversation he had with his mother 20 years ago before he cut her off.
“In 1999 she called me with hate and was blaming me for everything. She said I should have died when I was born and all that sort of stuff. It was a disgrace,” he recalled.
“She was the callous, the evil, spiteful, vindictive, manipulative person out of them. He was just a minion in a way. He just did what she wanted him to do.
“I’m not saying he didn’t get any gratification from it. I’m sure he did. But basically, the torture was driven by her.”
Rose, 69, is now serving a whole life order at HMP New Hall but Fred died in 1995 after killing himself while on remand at HMP Birmingham.
‘Living with a psychopath’
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Kerri Rawson says she had no idea her father was a psychopathCredit: Courtesy of Kerri Rawson
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Kerri at the site where her childhood home stood – her father hid bodies underneath the floorboardsCredit: Getty
Dennis Rader, who went on a 30-year killing rampage, found pleasure in describing himself as the BTK killer – meaning bind, torture, and kill.
He killed 10 people in Wichita, Kansas, and sent taunting letters to the police and media, in which he would describe the details of his heinous crimes.
The letters were his downfall as they led to his arrest in 2005 – upon interrogation, he told cops the “motherload of evidence” was under the floorboards of the home he shared with his wife Paula and their two kids, including Kerri Rawson.
In 2014, Kerri emerged to say the family had no idea he was behind the brutal murders.
Five years later, she explained: “My mom and I have both said, early on, if we had known, we would’ve gone screaming out the door, running to the police.
“It’s not like you’re going to sit there and make dinner for the guy after finding out he’s murdered 10 people. [We] didn’t know we were living with a psychopath.
“They’re really good at hiding… I mean, my mom lived with him for 34 years, and 90, 95 per cent of the time, he was a good, loving father and husband.”
The 77-year-old monster is serving 10 consecutive life sentences at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.
‘Loving and supportive’
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Gary Ridgway often picked up women with his son Michael in the carCredit: AP
Throughout the 80s and 90s, Gary Ridgway killed as many as 80 women and was able to hide behind his reputation as a loving family man.
His son Matthew described his father as loving and supportive, who did normal activities with him like going on fishing trips and bike rides.
He would often pick up women with Matthew in the car to lure his victims and evade suspicion.
The vile monster would then kill them and have sex with their corpses – in a documentary, he claimed that his young son was with him for at least one of the murders.
Matthew was 26 years old when his father was first arrested in November 2001. The 74-year-old is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Now in his late 40s, Michael lives a reclusive life in the San Diego area.
Family of crime
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Francis Weaver was sentenced to life in prison for murdering a drug dealerCredit: Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office
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He carried on three generations of murderers following the convictions of his stepdad and step granddadCredit: Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office
For two months from January 2002, Ward Weaver III killed a 12-year-old girl, and her classmate, 13, in Fairfield, California.
Weaver had a tumultuous childhood as his own father, Ward Weaver, Jr, had been convicted of the double murder of a couple in 1984.
During the younger Weaver’s trial in 2002, his stepson Francis, who both believed they were biologically related, was applauded and called a hero for providing a witness statement that helped nail the killer.
The family’s history of violence continued in 1998 when Francis was suspended from school for choking another student and charged with aggravated assault after firing a rifle into a vehicle full of teenagers the following year.
Fast forward to 2016, he found himself in further trouble with the law and was sentenced to life in prison for shooting a drug dealer in the face in 2014.
A night out on the town or an evening at home? Whichever your preference, celebrate the weekend like an A-lister with these celeb must-haves.
If you’re looking to party like Bachelor Nation, head to The Grid at Great Jones Distilling Co., Dale Moss’ go-to hot spot in New York City — a buzzy restaurant that sits inside of the borough’s first and only legal whiskey distillery since the Prohibition Era. Need after-party ideas? Comedian Chanel Omari’s “Chanel in the City” podcast has you covered. When the stand-up star isn’t interviewing celebrities like Melissa Gorga, Morgan Fairchild, Kevin Bacon, and Cedric the Entertainer, she’s giving fans tips on all of the go-to places in Manhattan. Chanel gets to know each celebrity guest on a personal level during the podcast, which covers everything from mental health with her own comedic twist to the 411 on everything pop culture and the latest Hollywood headlines.
Need after-party ideas? Comedian podcast has you covered. she’s giving fans tips on all of the go-to places in Manhattan.
For a rockstar vibe even in your bathrobe, denim giant Wrangler and iconic guitar company Fender joined forces to come up with the ultimate musician gear, even if you can’t play a note. The iconic collab includes men’s and women’s clothing, guitar accessories and more. Light the Icon x Kellyn Acosta Candle — the deliciously-scented fan favorite features notes of espresso and white cedar — and you’re basically at a concert, no tickets (or talent!) required.
Keep scrolling for all of the products and places celebs are buzzing about this week:
Warner Bros. Discovery U.S. Hispanic has partnered with GroupM and Cocina Media on “El Toque de Aarón.” The all-new original seriesfollows celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez and his team as they help Latino restaurants in the Los Angeles area reach new heights.
Kimberly Clark’s VivaÒ Paper Towels Brand will be an integrated sponsor, with other GroupM clients featured throughout the series. Sánchez will also act as an executive producer.
The six-part series unfolds in Latino restaurants with great potential, ready to seize the opportunity to optimize their business – from devising a more exciting menu to improving the overall aesthetics to streamlining their execution and raising their public profile. Sánchez will help reimagine these restaurants to bring out their true soul, with a revamped menu and a refreshed space. In each 30-minute episode, the culinary wizard will put his personal touch on each menu item, while mentoring each restaurant’s chef and sharing tips and tricks of the trade along the way. Helping to round out the renewals with much-needed renovations are designer Cris Mercado (“HGTV Star; Remodelaciones con Celebridades“) and project manager Ángel Riveros (“Hogar Star”). Complicating matters is the fact that they have only four days to achieve this mission. The clock is ticking.
“Warner Bros. Discovery’s U.S. Hispanic networks continue to be regarded as leaders in the multicultural marketing space,” said David Tardio, vice president, integrated ad sales and marketing, Warner Bros. Discovery’s U.S. Hispanic. “When brands look to better target the Latino audience segment, they come to us because of our decades of experience and our trusted insights: we know our audience, their interests, and their passions. In turn, we look for the same authenticity in our partners, and are thrilled for another opportunity to link up with Cocina Media and GroupM on this exciting new series.”
“At GroupM, we are proud of our ability to integrate the brands we serve into culture-defining properties like ‘El Sabor de Aarón’ while accessing premium talent and partners. To create a more vibrant media marketplace, it is critical that we focus our attention on enhancing media owners and properties that drive positive cultural influence. We are thrilled to be part of the journey to elevate the passions and stories that will truly resonate with consumers.” Gonzalo Del Fa, president GroupM Multicultural.
“We are proud to have the recurring trust and support of some of the world’s most influential partners like GroupM and Warner Bros. Discovery, allowing us to create – and then continue to create – premium content for U.S. Hispanic audiences. This series is particularly close to our hearts, executive produced and starring our company’s co-founder Aarón Sánchez and dedicated to the goal of uplifting Latino businesses,” said Sarah North, chief creative officer, Cocina Media.
Sánchez co-founded Cocina to connect with U.S. Hispanic fans on digital platforms. Other titles include “El Sabor de Aarón” and “Qatar Latino, Rumbo al Mundial.” The new show will be available to mobile and streaming viewers via the Discovery Familia GO app. Discovery Familia and Hogar de HGTV’s social media platforms will also feature restaurant profiles and behind-the-scenes footage.
“John Wick” star Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski expressed their heartbreak over the recent death of actor Lance Reddick.
“We are deeply saddened and heartbroken at the loss of our beloved friend and colleague Lance Reddick,” they said in a joint statement to E! News. “He was the consummate professional and a joy to work with.”
They continued, “Our love and prayers are with his wife Stephanie, his children, family and friends. We dedicate the film to his loving memory. We will miss him dearly.”
Reddick — who reprised the role of Charon, the concierge at the Continental Hotel in New York, a neutral territory for the criminal underworld, in “John Wick: Chapter 4” — was found dead in his L.A. home on Friday morning. He was 60 years old. He leaves behind his wife, Stephanie Reddick, and children, Yvonne Nicole Reddick and Christopher Reddick.
Reeves and Stahelski join many of Reddick’s friends and colleagues who celebrated the actor best known for HBO’s “The Wire.” He also starred in Netflix’s short-lived “Resident Evil” series and the movies “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “White House Down,” “Won’t Back Down,” “Jonah Hex,” “The Domestics” and “Monster Party.”
In 2023, anti-drag laws are being debated in at least 14 states, including Tennessee, the first to officially ban “adult cabaret performances” — which includes male or female impersonations — in public spaces or in the presence of children. But in 1980, drag formed the centerpiece of a new ABC sitcom.
Bosom Buddies is notable for being the first big break for Tom Hanks, then 24, and paired him with relative newcomer Peter Scolari, then 25. They played Kip Wilson and Henry Desmond, respectively — two pals who assume female alter-egos named Buffy and Hildegard in order to live in an affordable women’s hotel in New York City. The show was conceived almost by accident by Thomas L. Miller and Robert L. Boyett, the duo behind a raft of 1970s hit sitcoms including Happy Days, Mork & Mindy and Laverne & Shirley.
Buddies was pitched to ABC as a male version of the latter, reminiscent of “a sophisticated Billy Wilder comedy.” Asked to elaborate, Miller and Boyett mentioned Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis’ rapport in 1959’s Some Like It Hot, leading ABC to order a pilot on the condition that the series also feature drag. With several key female parts already cast — including Holland Taylor as their ad agency boss — producers scoured New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for a couple of unknowns to play Kip and Henry.
“One of them was this kid they found out of New York who was understudying off-Broadway,” recalls Buddies director Joel Zwick of Hanks. “This was a guy with no real experience, but he knew exactly what he did well, and he just did it.”
The show, which filmed at Paramount’s Stage 25 (later home to Cheers and Frasier), launched to strong ratings but was hampered by the 1980 SAG strike and network schedule tinkering. Then it lost some magic at the start of the second season, when Kip reveals his ruse to love interest Sonny (Donna Dixon). The comedy was not renewed. Even so, it remains beloved to many, including Hanks, who stayed close to his co-star until Scolari’s death in October 2021 from leukemia.
Of the current wave of anti-drag legislation, Zwick, 81, says: “They claim children are going to be hurt by drag shows. Well, might I suggest the parents don’t take their children to that drag show? The kid probably has no idea it’s not a woman anyway.”
THR’s review of Bosom Buddies in 1981
This story first appeared in the March 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Allu Arjun unblocks his Varudu co-star Bhanushree Mehra
After tweeting that Allu Arjun has blocked her, Bhanushree Mehra said that she did not mean to blame him for her career setbacks and revealed that he has unblocked her.
Allu Arjun had blocked his Varudu co-star Bhanushree Mehra on Twitter but now it seems that the Pushpa star has finally unblocked her. The actress shared the screen with Allu Arjun in the 2010 film which ended dup being a flop. The actress did act in other films following that but her career did not take off well. Recently, she took to Twitter to talk about her struggles and share that Allu has blocked her.
Sharing a screenshot of the actor’s profile that shows he has blocked her, she wrote, “If you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, just remember that I acted in Varudu with Allu Arjun and STILL couldn’t get any work. But I’ve learned to find humor in my struggles – especially now that Allu Arjun has blocked me on Twitter♀️ Go subscribe ?”
If you ever feel like you’re stuck in a rut, just remember that I acted in Varudu with Allu Arjun and STILL couldn’t get any work. But I’ve learned to find humor in my struggles – especially now that Allu Arjun has blocked me on Twitter♀️ Go subscribe ?https://t.co/mqX2lVNjwxpic.twitter.com/ycSR5yGpfl— Bhanushree Mehra (@IAmBhanuShree) March 18, 2023
However, she later clarified that she did not mean to blame him for her career setbacks and also revealed that the south superstar has unblocked her. In a different tweet, she wrote, “Great news, Allu Arjun has unblocked me! To clarify, I NEVER blamed him for my career setbacks. Instead, I’ve learned to find humor in my struggles and keep moving forward. Stay tuned for more laughs and good vibes! Thanks, Allu Arjun, for being a good sport.”
Great news, Allu Arjun has unblocked me! To clarify, I NEVER blamed him for my career setbacks. Instead, I’ve learned to find humor in my struggles and keep moving forward. Stay tuned for more laughs and good vibes! Thanks, Allu Arjun, for being a good sport. @alluarjunpic.twitter.com/oLovQdnWAE— Bhanushree Mehra (@IAmBhanuShree) March 18, 2023
The actress added yet another tweet to say that she didn’t mean to hurt any Allu Arjun fans. Sharing a video where she can be seen sipping a drink, she wrote, “Well, that was a rollercoaster of a day !
Goodnight, folks! Just to clear the air – my tweet wasn’t intended to hurt any Allu Arjun fans. I’m a fan too! I was just poking fun at my own career struggles. Let’s spread love & laughter, not hate. Sweet dreams!
#PeaceAndLove”
Well, that was a rollercoaster of a day ! Goodnight, folks! Just to clear the air – my tweet wasn’t intended to hurt any Allu Arjun fans. I’m a fan too! I was just poking fun at my own career struggles. Let’s spread love & laughter, not hate. Sweet dreams! #PeaceAndLovepic.twitter.com/q7l6Gg7mgr— Bhanushree Mehra (@IAmBhanuShree) March 18, 2023
Meanwhile, Bhanushree Mehra was last seen in the 2022 Telugu film 10th Class Diaries which also starred Balika Vadhu fame, Avika Gor.
Srijita Sen is constantly curious about figuring out the meaning of films, music, life and everything in between. With a great love for 2000s Bollywoo…Read More
From the parks to Star Wars to streaming and more, Iger discussed the future of The Walt Disney Company during his two-year return to the role as CEO, and part of this conversation also addressed the future of Marvel.
The Future of Marvel
When it comes to Marvel, Disney is questioning the necessity of multiple sequels. Iger said, “There’s 7,000 characters, there are a lot more stories to tell.”
Photo: Marvel
While sequels typically do well for Marvel content, Iger said that the company is thinking about “the volume of Marvel storytelling” and “how many times we go back to the well on certain characters.”
Instead of developing third and fourth (or more) films starring the same characters, they’re considering whether it’s “time to turn to other characters.”
Photo: Marvel
The Marvel Cinematic Universe recently entered Phase Five with the film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and prior to that were multiple characters who received quite a few sequels and spin-offs.
Considering the eventual box office performance of Quantumania, it may be safe to say that some Marvel characters are reaching a level of saturation, and introducing new characters into the mix could rejuvenate the brand.
Photo: Marvel
Moving forward, we expect to see more new Marvel characters and fewer sequels, which also means you may not get to know the characters as well as before.
Next to be released is Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, the third film of the Guardians of the Galaxy series, followed by The Marvels, Captain America: New World Order, Thunderbolts, and Blade.
Photo: Marvel
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Margot Robbie has achieved what very few actors or actresses have in their entire career, becoming the absolute face of a character. While Kaley Cuoco’s Harley Quinn has been hugely successful in an adult and animated format, it didn’t make quite as big a splash as Robbie’s version on the big screen. But will we see her in the new DCU?
After her first appearance in 2016’s Suicide Squad, Harley became a DC icon on film, with Robbie fully exploiting the popularity of the character born in Batman: The Animated series. Such was her success that we saw her again in 2020 with her own film, Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn, and in 2021 with the reboot of The Suicide Squad, which brought her back together with Amanda Waller from Viola Davis and Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY
However, recent changes to the DCU at the hands of James Gunn and Peter Safran seem to bode poorly for the future of some of the characters we’ve already met. Fortunately, it looks like Robbie’s Harley might be safe. Or at least that’s what the fans interpreted after this interaction from Gunn on Twitter:
Of course, this does not confirm that what they are going to do together is in DC. In fact, even if it were, Margot could return to the franchise with another character, as Gunn has opened the door for longtime members of the DCU to return in revamped roles. Something that could happen, for example, with Jason Momoa and the possibility of him playing Lobo, leaving Aquaman behind.
While we wait to find out whether or not Margot Robbie will return, Cuoco will continue to lend her voice to the character on the hit animated series. But it won’t be the only Harley Quinn that fans will be able to enjoy in the near future.
Joker 2 will introduce the companion of the leading villain, with Lady Gaga behind the role. The actress is currently working alongside Joaquin Phoenix on the sequel, which has been revealed to feature musical elements, titled Folie à Deux, which refers to an induced delusional disorder, also known as shared psychotic disorder, a rare condition characterized by psychotic symptoms in two or more individuals who maintain a close relationship.
The characters will meet in an iconic Gotham City place, Arkham Asylum, as it happened in the origin story of Harley and in Suicide Squad, too, with Jared Leto playing the Joker in that version.
Diablo 4 lets you strike out on your own, a lone wolf taking out the demonic hordes. Still, given that this is an online game, you might spot other players from time to time. Naturally, it’s possible to have a more permanent group. Here’s our Diablo 4 guide to help you create or join Clans.
Making or joining a Clan in Diablo 4
The Diablo 4 Clan system can be accessed by opening the menu. If you wish to join a Clan, you’ll need to do the following:
Input a Clan name and tag, which can’t be changed once you create your group.
You may also add a Clan description so people know what your guild is all about, as well as the primary language.
Lastly, you can select from various labels such as Casual, Hardcore, PvE, PvP, Leveling, and Social.
If you plan to join a Diablo 4 Clan, then it might be better if you already have friends who are also playing. If that’s the case, you can input the name in the search box. However, if you’re just looking for a random guild, you can select from the language and labels. This will bring up a list of those with an extra slot (149 members and below), and you can send a request to join them.
Choose the types of Clans that will get listed based on language and labels.
Still, it goes without saying that those with 80 members or more might be tougher to join. This is because those Clans will appear at or near the top of the list, likely causing other players to click on them as they’re looking around. If a Clan has too many pending requests already, you won’t be able to send your own. As such, our suggestion would be to look for those that have fewer players.
Anyway, the Diablo 4 Clan system is just one of the key features that you’ll discover as you explore the world of Sanctuary. To learn more, you can check out our Kyovashad city/hub guide.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
Did you know that Michael Jordan makes $400 million a year and passive income due to the percentage he gets from selling Air Jordans? Understanding how this came to be we must travel back to the 1980s and famed sneaker label Nike, in Ben Affleck’s newest film Air. Written by Alex Convery, the movie stars Affleck, Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Chris Messina, Chris Tucker, Jason Bateman, and Julius Tennon.
Sonny Vaccaro (Damon) likes to gamble—which shows he likes to take risks. He works for Nike CEO Phil Knight (Affleck) in the company’s Basketball Division expert. He looks for up and coming b-ball plays and offers them shoe endorsement deals, and currently he has his eye on an 18-year-old Michael Jordan. Sonny thinks Jordan is worth the full price they’re offering ($250,000), and so does Vaccaro’s advisor Howard White (Tucker), but Knight, and VP of marketing Robert Strasser (Bateman), thinks it’s a liability to do so. He tries to get a meeting with Jordan by talking with his agent David Falk (Messina), but the athlete is more interested in signing with Adidas.
With no plans to give up, Vaccaro steps over the chain of command and flies to North Carolina to talk to Jordan’s parents Delores (Davis), and James (Tennon). With two shoe endorsement meetings coming up with Adidas, and Converse, Sonny asks his mother to reconsider talking to Nike, and warns her on what to expect when speaking to these companies. With the Nike CEO, Falk, and Strasser breathing down his neck to close the deal or lose his job, Vaccaro deploys clever maneuvering to secure the client, and stay employed.
In his fifth feature film, Affleck’s talents exceed expectations. He’s grown as an actor and director but is best when doing both. Not sure how he does it. The organization and patience needed to balance all of those elements must be stressful, but I couldn’t tell because he never breaks a sweat. In Air, Affleck makes great use of aerial shots showing just how large some of these company campuses are. A staple of his visual style is desaturated scenes that utilizes a mix of green and blue which fits the tone of his earlier work, but he changes it up here by upping the brightness and color which made the viewing experience a hopeful one.
Air has the best cast featuring some of the greatest in Hollywood. Every one of them gives an award worthy performance, it’s hard to choose which is a favorite, and such a rarity to good acting across the board. I’ve seen two Affleck performances at SXSW, and you can just tell when he’s enthusiastic about a project, and when he’s phoning it in. Convery’s script has all the elements to invoke the energy needed to pull this off.
Delores Jordan is responsible for the career her son has today. Despite resistance from Nike, she was able to negotiate a deal where Michael gets a global percentage from every Air Jordan shoe sold. Her stance was that she knows her son’s worth, and that “A shoe is just a shoe…until my son steps into it.” The goal was to create footwear that reflected his persona and give fans something that will make them feel closer to the Chicago Bulls player.
Seeing Air, and how the world’s most popular sneaker came into existence makes me think about the evolution of the shoe nearly 40 years later. People are stealing, killing, and dying for a pair. It’s crazy to think about this trajectory starting off innocently and turning customers into rabid consumers. Of course that’s not Jordan’s problem, but this story puts things in perspective. So many white men were in control of his career, I am glad to see some type of on screen advocacy for athletes like Mike and others like him as this deal with Nike has changed the sneaker, and basketball industry in monumental ways.
While the search goes on for the next 007, Liam Neeson has revealed that the role of James Bond was once his for the taking – except his partner had other ideas.
Following the success of Schindler’s List in which he played the title role, Neeson’s star was high in the early 1990s, and the James Bond people came calling.
Neeson told TheTimes of London that he had expressed his strong interest in the role, until his then girlfriend, actress Natasha Richardson, intervened, wary of what Neeson called the “gorgeous girls in various countries getting in and out of [Bond’s] bed.”
The actor revealed Richardson had told him she wouldn’t marry him if he took the role, and so he turned it down – leaving the licence to kill free for Pierce Brosnan to collect. Instead, Neeson and Richardson did get married in 1994 and had two sons before the actress’s death following a skiing accident in 2009.
Neeson’s career has contained more than his fair share of high-octane action thrills, however – his current role as Philip Marlowe in a new take on the LA-based private detective is his 100th movie, and he revealed he continues to be sent action scripts, despite now being 70.
The Taken star told The Times, “I’ll call up my agent and say, ‘Do they know what age I am?’
“People say I do my own stunts. I do not. But look, the dollar amount is very pleasing. And I’m not getting any younger.”
If you’ve ever been in a crowded parking lot, you’ll surely recognize the inciting incident in Netflix’s Beef: A truck nearly backs into an SUV, which honks extravagantly before speeding off. Maybe you’ll even relate to the impulse to do what the cars do next, even if you’ve never done it yourself: The truck chases the SUV down with the reckless abandon of a Fast & Furious racer, skidding into oncoming traffic and barreling over suburban lawns.
But Amy (Ali Wong) and Danny (Steven Yeun), the dueling leads of Beef, take things further still. The encounter precipitates an endless cycle of revenge, during which they deface each other’s property, sabotage each other’s careers, undermine each other’s families. It’s a hilarious premise on its face, and the half-hours fly by as wild twists twists pile up. What’s less expected, however — and what really lingers once the dust has settled — is the series’ emphasis on the characters’ flawed humanity, and its disarming sense of empathy for their existential despair.
Beef
The Bottom Line
A feast of sharp comedy, wild thrills and disarming empathy.
Airdate: Thursday, April 6 (Netflix) Cast:Ali Wong, Steven Yeun, Joseph Lee, Young Mazino, David Choe, Patti Yasutake Creator: Lee Sung Jin
At the heart of Beef lurks a fear so overwhelming, it threatens to swallow both the protagonists whole. Late in the 10-episode season, Amy tremulously puts it to words in a therapy session: “Do you think love can really be unconditional?” she asks. “You know, there must be some point where we all fall outside the reach of love. Like the mistake is so big and then the love has to stop.” By then, we’re already seen how much of her and Danny’s lives have been predicated on the possibility that love could run out — each terrified to slip up or let others see they have, lest they lose everything they’ve worked for.
For Amy, a self-made businesswoman with a handsome husband (Joseph Lee’s George), an adorable daughter (Remy Holt’s Junie) and a chic Calabasas home, it means smiling through gritted teeth as she coos about how lucky she feels. For Danny, owner of a failing contracting business, it looks like reassuring his roommate/brother Paul (Young Mazino) and their long-suffering parents in Korea that he’s got everything under control — when in reality, he’s been reduced to begging for loans from his fresh-out-of-prison cousin Isaac (David Choe).
Both are on the verge of breaking by the time of their encounter, as Yeun and Wong establish in a pair of spectacular performances. Yeun’s Danny carries himself like a clenched fist — perpetually in anticipation of a coming blow, and ready to strike back at any time. Wong, in perhaps her most dramatic role to date, has rarely been better than she is here — her enormous eyes and pursed lips showing us every seam and crack in Amy’s placid masks. Both spend most of the season fixating on each other from a distance. But in moments when the pair come together, their energy crackles with something more complicated, and more entertaining, than simple attraction or hatred.
In their obsessive mutual hatred, we come to realize, each has found the one person they don’t need to put on a front for — that they don’t need to worry about impressing or disappointing, that they direct their ugliest impulses toward. In that light, it seems almost no wonder that their vendetta seems to have given them a fresh lease on life. Danny’s face lights up with glee in the final moments of the premiere, directed by Hikari (37 Seconds), as he runs away after defiling her home. We also see what looks like a smile on her face as she runs screaming after him. They’ve both found “a reason to start over new,” as Hoobastank sings in one of many turn-of-the-millennium needle drops that play as both uproariously ironic and movingly sincere.
Such tonal shifts are par for the course in Beef, which executes them so deftly it almost looks easy. Creator Lee Sung Jin (FXX’s Dave) grounds each plot development and mood change in a world that has the texture of real life (sometimes literally, as in the cracks and smudges on the walls of the modest church Danny attends) and in characters who seem as complex as real people. Each crazy decision is rooted in motivations we can understand, even if the characters executing them don’t. Each joke grows from characters performed and written so vividly, they seem to leap off the screen. An idle exchange about the nutritional content of Sara Lee pound cake is funny in its frivolity, but it’s also an efficient way to ensure two minor characters introduced halfway through the season — low-level criminals Bobby (Rekstizzy) and Michael (Andrew Santino) — feel as lived-in as any of the others.
Those powers of observation follow the characters to deeper and sadder places, too. As the season wears on, we become gradually acquainted with the anxieties and hurts that plague so many of the people in Danny and Amy’s orbit. There’s the quiet loneliness radiating from Fumi (Patty Yasutake), Amy’s mother-in-law, as she eats lunch alone. Or the humiliation twisting Paul’s face when he asks a loved one to help finance his dreams, only to be shot down. Amy and Danny seem to believe themselves unique in their unhappiness, and not entirely without reason — the perpetually upbeat George, for example, can only think to talk his wife out her malaise by assuring her, “I know a lot of people who battle depression and won.”
Beef knows better, though. Over time, its generosity toward these scared or lost souls becomes its own answer to Amy’s anxieties about the limits of love. By season’s end, the anger infecting its leads seems to have touched nearly everyone in their circles. We’ve witnessed both at their worst, howled at their most outrageous moves, gasped at the magnitude of physical and emotional destruction they’ve left in their wake. We’ve seen them and others cross the sort of lines that might threaten the strongest bonds — that might lead a couple to divorce, a family to turn on itself, a believer to lose their faith. And we’re left realizing that none of it has made us feel any less for them as humans. Maybe Amy’s right, and love can never truly be unconditional. But its grace, it turns out, stretches pretty damn far.
As he gears up for his return to Stephen King’s world, Mike Flanagan details how his scrapped Doctor Sleepspinoff would’ve featured IT‘s Pennywise the Clown. The 2019 movie acted as both an adaptation of King’s Shining sequel novel and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of the prior novel, exploring an adult Danny Torrance as he faced off against a group of psychic vampires known as the True Knot, and his own childhood trauma. Despite scoring positive reviews, Doctor Sleep was considered a box office disappointment, grossing just over $72 million against its $55 million production budget.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
While appearing on a recent episode of the Script Apartpodcast, Mike Flanagan reflected on Doctor Sleep‘s underperformance at the box office and his scrapped spinoffs. The director reveals that one of them, centered on Carl Lumbly’s Dick Hallorann, would’ve featured IT‘s Pennywise in its opening, explaining how the canon of King’s novels made the connection possible, and detailing how the show would tie back to The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel. See what Flanagan shared below:
I had a great thing for the Dick Hallorann movie, which I was so excited about, which is him as a young man starting in Derry and had a little overlap with IT. Because in the canon, little Richie Halloran has an encounter with Pennywise as a young man. Then it was gonna be this whole other thing where he joins the army and ends up trying to work in law enforcement in New Orleans in a heavily segregated police department and is up against a kind of a cousin to the True Knot. A killer who is specifically targeting people who shine, and this big battle there.
He would win the battle but lose the war and lose the people that he cared about and ended up opting for a quieter life away from all of it and taking this job making meals at this hotel in Colorado. It was gonna be awesome. They’re gonna open with Carl Lumbly as Dick Halloran cleaning up the kitchen and getting ready for the winter because the winter caretaker and his family are due to arrive. They’re saying ‘You got to be ready to meet them and give them a tour.’
Then he goes up to Room 237 and has a weird thing with the bathtub and it flashes back to all the stuff in his life. Then at the end of the story we come back to him in the Overlook and they say the caretakers here. He’d come downstairs to meet them in the lobby and you think it’s the Torrance family, but it isn’t. It’s Delbert Grady and his twin daughters and his wife. And you realize you’re seeing the beginning of that story. On Monday they evaluated the box office performance and by Tuesday those (spinoffs) were dead. I understood why they they couldn’t proceed on those with with the box office that we did. It made sense. It was heartbreaking. It made sense. But yeah, that’s all kind of gone.
Could Flanagan Get Another Crack At His Doctor Sleep Spinoffs?
The Dick Hallorann-centered project wast one of two Doctor Sleep spinoffs Flanagan had discussed in the lead up to the film’s release. The other would’ve been a sequel to the 2019 film and further explore Abra Stone after her experiences with the True Knot and Danny and as she further got a handle on her Shining abilities. Unlike the other, which was developed under the working title Hallorann, the Abra-focused spinoff never got further than Flanagan confirming he had gotten King’s blessing for his idea.
While the film’s box office underperformance has seemingly killed the projects’ chances, there could still be a glimmer of hope for the Doctor Sleep spinoffs to come to fruition in the future. Flanagan is currently developing a new Dark Tower adaptation, a novel series which has ties to a variety of other King novels, including IT, as the type of being Pennywise the Clown is further explored in the fantasy epic. Considering Flanagan’s clear love of King’s materials, it seems likely he would include these Easter eggs to set up potential crossovers.
Flanagan even indicated such plans for his Dark Tower series recently, hinting there may be room for the likes of Ewan McGregor’s Danny Torrance from Doctor Sleep, among others. With no streaming home yet set for the show, it would be interesting to see if Warner Bros. Discovery reunite with Flanagan for his show, especially considering the IT prequel Welcome to Derryrecently received a series order at HBO Max, showing their continued interest in King’s works.
Eric Saindon, senior visual effects supervisor for “Avatar: The Way of Water,” left the ceremony for an operation on a ruptured small intestine.
[Update March 15, 3:40pm ET:According to the Weta FX rep, he is “recovering nicely and doing much better.” It was serious enough that it would’ve been a lot worse if he had waited any longer to rush back to the hospital. He’s out of intensive care and moving around. He will be in the hospital another three to five days.]
“Avatar: The Way of Water” won Best Visual Effects at the Oscars this Sunday, and the team that brought Pandora to vivid life in James Cameron’s blockbuster took the stage to celebrate. But for one team member, the evening took a turn shortly afterwards, as senior visual effects supervisor Eric Saindon was rushed to the hospital for surgery immediately after his win.
According to a rep from Weta FX, the visual effects production company behind “The Way of Water,” Saindon experienced intense pain throughout the day of the Oscars and checked into a Beverly Hills hospital around noon. After testing negative for appendicitis and kidney stones, Saindon decided to still attend the awards ceremony, and received painkillers from his doctors.
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After powering through to winning the Visual Effects award, Saindon experienced more pain, and left his press room interview at the ceremony to return to the hospital. Doctors determined that Saindon was suffering from a ruptured small intestine, and performed surgery on him. According to the Weta FX representative, he is currently in recovery.
Saindon works for Weta FX and received his first Oscar for “The Way of Water.” He first served as on-set VFX supervisor for the film, focusing on bringing the water scenes to life, and he was promoted to senior VFX supervisor during production. He was also VFX supervisor on the original 2009 “Avatar.” Prior credits include work as production VFX supervisor on acclaimed films like “The Green Knight,” “Alita: Battle Angel,” and “Pete’s Dragon,” as well as work as VFX supervisor on “Night at the Museum” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” among others. He received his first two Oscar nominations for his work on two films in “The Hobbit” trilogy, released in 2012 and 2013.
Along with Saindon, the Best Visual Effects Oscar was awarded to production senior visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, visual effects supervisor Richard Baneham, and senior animation supervisor Daniel Barrett. The visual effects trophy was the only win for “The Way of Water,” after the blockbuster scored four nominations at the ceremony. The team also took home the top prize for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreel Feature at the annual VES Awards last month.
A week after airing, the 95th Academy Awards are continuing to come under scrutiny from critics, specifically for their handling (and casting) of a much-anticipated performance of hit song “Naatu Naatu” from international film sensation RRR. As reported in pieces by Variety, The L.A. Times, IndieWire, and more, the performance of “Naatu Naatu” has come under fire for including exactly zero dancers of South Asian descent, despite coming from a film by Indian filmmakers, about Indian history, and informed heavily by the styles of Indian music.
It wasn’t initially supposed to be this way; Oscars producers actually approached the film’s stars, N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan, to reprise their high-energy dance battle from the 2022 film. But both men declined, apparently uncomfortable with the short window of time they’d have to master the Oscars version of the dance. So instead, choreographers Tabitha and Napoleon D’uomo (a.k.a. NappyTabs) reportedly hired dancers they were familiar with to perform the piece, including Lebanese Canadian dancer Billy Mustapha and American dancer Jason Glover to stand in for the RRR stars.
And while the Oscars version of the dance was technically more diverse than the one in the movie—which is mostly about NTR Jr. and Charan’s characters dancing the crap out of a bunch of stuffy British white guys—South Asian professionals in the dance community are still calling out the Oscars for ignoring the opportunity to feature more South Asian performers on such a massive stage. “Respectfully, where is the representation?” choreographer Joya Kazi asked in an Instagram post that preceded the performance (but not news about its casting). Meanwhile, dancer Achinta S. McDaniel didn’t mince words, telling Variety, “Some people say, ‘Just be happy with what we got,’ and that’s part of [the problem] — this idea of just accepting the scraps that are thrown to you. Just be happy an Indian song was nominated [and won]. Don’t be mad about the overwhelming racism that appeared in the performance.” Several critics also drew contrasts between the “Naatu Naatu” performance and the performance of “Jai Ho” from Slumdog Millionaire at the 2009 Oscars, which, per media studies professor Shilpa Davé featured “Indian singers and it was a multi-racial group of dancers and musicians.”
So far, the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences has yet to issue an official statement in response to the critiques.
NOW ON HBO! It’s amazing what you can get done with some empty opioid pill bottles and a pile of lifeless bodies in the awe-inspiring documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed by director Laura Poitras. It opens with famed art photographer Nan Goldin and her group preparing a demonstration in a wing of a museum bearing the name Sackler. The Sackler family donates money and collection pieces to museums worldwide, maintaining the philanthropic reputation of the family name. They also own Purdue Pharma, the company that patented Valium and, years later, Oxycontin.
Marketed as a non-addictive opioid treatment for moderate pain, Oxycontin started a legal heroin scrounge that murdered thousands and destroyed communities across the United States. Instead of the profits being divided amongst shadowy cartels, all the billions went to Purdue and the Sacklers. So Goldin and her group throw dozens of empty pill bottles into a fountain and lay down dead across the floors of the Sackler Wing. Goldin herself has been strung out on Oxy, having been prescribed it despite a previous dependency.
The film follows Goldin’s crusade to bring attention in the art world to the Sackler’s atrocities. We see her use her influence to pressure the galleries and museums she has pieces in to drop their patronage by staging more group death simulations. We also get to know this amazing artist as well as the halcyon downtown scene in New York that she rose from in the 1980s. Starting with her running away from home after her older sister’s suicide, we follow Goldin’s self-discovery among a marginalized society of artists, sex workers, and drug users. Her photo documentation of this shunned community has been recognized as groundbreaking, building her stature to stand up against Senator Jesse Helms then and the Sacklers now.
“…Goldin and her group preparing a demonstration in a wing of a museum bearing the name Sackler.”
In 1990 I came to New York to write. During my first few months attending Sarah Lawrence college, I was lent a copy of Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependency. This collection of photographs was the glowing doorway that opened up the world of artistic photography and, later, cinematography to me. Her work April crying at 7th and B. New York City 1985, with the blurred woman crying in a haze of red, showed me how emotions could be sculpted from form and light. I found images carried powers that met or exceeded that of words. So yes, I’ve been waiting for a documentary like All the Beauty and the Bloodshed for some time.
That Goldin’s story cumulates in her activist work against addiction profiteers is the icing on the counter-cultural cake. The irony is that the Sacklers took possibly the most fringe lifestyle in America, as a junkie, mainstream through an Oxycontin tsunami. The Sacklers created a nightmare where normal suburbanites were found OD’ed after shooting up in Red Robin restrooms. It is especially satisfying when the artist shows onscreen the Sackler family’s reactions while being forced to listen to statements from the families they had filled with corpses.
In a way, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed resembles one of those Godzilla movies guest starring many other giant monsters as we are treated to the behemoths of the 80s village scene. Besides Goldin, Poitras spotlights the great Cookie Mueller and David Wojnarowicz. Mueller, most recognizable as an actress from John Waters movies, has her writing career focused on here and justly so.
Yes, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed is almost like a class reunion for all that wild early 90s New York insanity. However, this is the portrait of Goldin that she so richly deserves. When Goldin was taking pictures of her street life, replete with strung out folks, it must have felt like she would fall off the earth’s edge. However, instead, the artist flew into the stars. The documentaryis the great American story of the outsiders coming in and rising up. You need to see it.
The University of Alberta Golden Bears will play for the University Cup championship on Sunday, and they’re unlikely to have much crowd support when they take on the University of New Brunswick in Charlottetown.
The Golden Bears refused to shake hands with the host Prince Edward Island Panthers after their 4-1 semi-final win Saturday night.
“That was the worst I’ve seen. That wasn’t hockey,” said Golden Bears head coach Ian Herbers of what he considered dirty play by the Panthers. “Not safe. Every time our guys went on the ice, I didn’t feel safe for our players.”
UPEI took 42 minutes in penalties in the game while the Bears took eight.
Early in the third, Zac Beauregard of the Panthers crashed into Alberta goalie Ethan Kruger, whose mask came off in the ensuing scrum. Beauregard then felled Kruger with a bare-fisted left to the face.
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“Somebody sucker-punched him,” said Herbers of Kruger. “Now he’s under concussion protocol. We’ll see if he’s healthy for tomorrow. Blatant, blatant ugly stuff.”
Beauregard was assessed minors for goalie interference, roughing, and unsportsmanlike conduct on the play. He was also assessed a misconduct.
The Golden Bears left the ice without shaking hands with the Panthers after the game.
“Safety of our players. Didn’t want something happening in the scrum,” explained Herbers. “I figure best for our team, U Sports, and the tournament, better to just get this done with.”
The Golden Bears play UNB at 4 p.m. mountain time on Sunday.
Analyst firm Trendforce has forecasted that the average selling price of NAND Flash, the basic building block of all SSD (Solid State Drives) and microSD cards will fall by up to 15% during the current quarter. It has already been down by almost 25% over the last quarter prompting the biggest manufacturers; Kioxia, Solidigm, Micron and WDC to slash production in order to reduce supply in the market.
Weak demand in the consumer and enterprise SSD customers combined with Samsung’s reluctance to keep producing as much NAND as possible means that the price drop we’ve seen over the past 12 months across SSD and microSD products will likely carry on unabated with smaller capacities gradually phased out.
Samsung is the largest NAND Flash vendor and has already committed to investing heavily in R&D in order to stay ahead of rivals. SK Hynix and Micron announced in 2022 that they would launch 238-layer and 232-layer products respectively which – on paper – will dramatically bring down the cost of Terabyte for solid state drives.
For obvious reasons, no vendor has yet released PLC (penta level cell) NAND, the next technological breakthrough which will enable even cheaper, high capacity SSD.
Data bloodbath by Christmas 2023?
The cheapest 1TB microSD cards are currently selling for around $75 at Amazon, a near 50% price drop compared to a year ago. While we don’t expect prices to half, another 30% drop by the end of the year appears to be reasonable, which would bring the price of a 1TB microSD card closer to $50.
This would have a knock on effect on smaller capacities (512GB, 256GB, 128GB) and we expect 64GB and 32GB microSD to be pushed out of the market altogether.
The same applies for USB flash drives where the cheapest genuine 256GB models are currently selling for around $10 with vendors resorting to multi-pack offers in order to entice customers with lower capacities. The fact that many recent laptops do not have a Type-A connector or a microSD card slot also dramatically reduces the size of the total addressable market.
The most exciting market remains that of SSD where customers are having an absolute field day as prices continue going down. The cheapest SSD per TB at the time of writing is the Leven JS600 ($74.99 for 1.92TB), a further drop of around 30% over the next nine months will see it reach parity with smaller capacity hard disk drives like the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM008.
These cheap models are 2.5-inch SATA storage devices and because they’re defacto equipped with a SATA connector, they should rapidly supplant external hard drives with a capacity of up to 2TB as well. Two trends though that’s worth bearing in mind: 2.5-inch drives are on the way out as well as they’re being replaced by M.2 PCIe drives.
Larger capacity hard drives are safe for now but it’s only a matter of time before the next tier (3TB, 4TB) are on the way out. A 4TB SSD from Leven retails for $180, still about twice the price of a 4TB WD Passport hard disk drive for example.
Logline:Flamin’ Hot is the story of Richard Montañez (Jesse Garcia), the Frito Lay janitor who channeled his Mexican American heritage and upbringing to turn Flamin’ Hot Cheetos into a snack that disrupted the food industry and became a global phenomenon.
Panelists: Eva Longoria and DeVon Franklin
Premiered: March 11, 2023
Key Quote: Longoria: “There was no doubt [Jesse Garcia and Annie Gonzalez]—when we tested them together—that they were our Richard and Judy. We felt this heavy weight to do a service to the real Richard and Judy because this movie is also a love story about a couple who have been together their entire lives and are still together.”
Franklin: “I met Richard and Judy back in 2017, I was like, ‘Wow, all that you went through and all that you endured.’ He had this vision for his family and also, for the company. Richard, even to this day, is seen with a Pepsi bottle in his hand. For him to feel that loyal to his company and to want to serve them, his family, and his community after all that he went through, I knew I wanted to help me tell his story.”
The Deadline Studio at SXSW runs March 10-13, where the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sit down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Austin, Texas.
DeVon Franklin and Eva Longoria at the Deadline Studio at SXSW Film and Television Festival held at the Thompson Hotel on March 11, 2023, in Austin, Texas.
Citing his religious beliefs, San Jose Sharks goalie James Reimer has declined to participate in pregame activities on Saturday night that would require him to wear a promotional “Pride” themed jersey.
Reimer issued a statement that said he “always strived to treat everyone with respect” and that members of the LGBTQ community should be welcome in hockey.
“In this specific instance, I am choosing not to endorse something that is counter to my personal convictions, which are based on the Bible, the highest authority in life,” Reimer said.
The goalie is the second NHL player to refuse wearing Pride gear. Philadelphia’s Ivan Provorov made a similar decline in January. The New York Rangers also opted not to wear Pride jerseys or use Pride stick tape as part of their night in January, despite previously advertising that plan.
The Sharks said in a statement that they are proud to host Pride Night, saying the event reinforces the team’s commitment to inclusiveness.
“As we promote these standards, we also acknowledge and accept the rights of individuals to express themselves, including how or whether they choose to express their beliefs, regardless of the cause or topic,” the team said in a statement. “As an organization, we will not waver in our support of the LGBTQIA+ community and continue to encourage others to engage in active allyship.”
Camila and Suki’s friendship isn’t just acting on the show.
Camila recalled a time when she and Suki got in trouble for chatting too much during takes.
She laughed as she reminded Suki of the moment in an interview for Town and Country Magazine, saying, “Do you remember the Timothy Olyphant scene, when he’s talking to Billy, to Sam Claflin, and they’re sitting in the front and they’re like ‘Quiet in the back!’ And it’s just like me and Suki having a beer in the background—and we forget that we’re supposed to mime. And we’re like, ‘so tell me everything.’ Like, ‘Quiet Suki and Cami, we can hear you!’
Suki followed up, saying, “Yeah, we definitely had that natural friendship. Our friendship evolved [quickly]—when you meet someone and start working with them and spend like 12 hours a day together for two years, you know everything about each other’s lives and start dissecting everything and that bleeds into the show.”
It seems somehow absurd that Lance Reddick, who died Friday at 60, is gone. An impressively solid presence wherever he turned up, Reddick appeared invincible, immortal. That one of his last roles was Zeus in the upcoming Disney+ adaptation of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” just seems like typecasting.
A marvelously centered performer, he could elevate any scene without breaking a sweat. Reddick, whose voice was well-trained, resonant and easy on the ear, didn’t have to get loud to put the fear of God into a character or viewer; you could sense well enough the roiling currents beneath a placid surface. He made an art of the low boil and the stern stare. When asked, he could deploy a toothy smile fit to charm birds from the trees.
Best known for crime dramas (“The Wire,” “Bosch”), genre exercises (“Lost,” last year’s “Resident Evil” series) or combinations of the two (“Fringe”), Reddick also had guest shots on sitcoms (“Young Sheldon,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) and alternative comedies (“Tim & Eric’s Bedtime Stories,” “Key & Peele,” “The Eric Andre Show” and “Comedy Bang! Bang!”). There wasvoice work in cartoons and video games. He appeared in Regina King’s historical drama “One Night in Miami …” and will be in an upcoming remake of “White Men Can’t Jump.” This is to say that any generalizations I make about his career are surely contradicted somewhere within it.
The face was familiar even if you couldn’t place the name; seeing him once, you were happy to see him again. Reddick was handsome, almost pretty, in an individual way. Tall, lean and subtly muscular with a body built for clothes, he made suits look good, and his parts tended to put him in them. Whatever he wore, he looked neat and dignified. (“Oz,” in which he played a police detective undercover in prison, was something of an exception. Then again, he was a character playing a character more disheveled than himself.)
Although we can dream of the series or movie that now will never be built around him, Reddick was at heart the definition of a supporting actor. As a figure who radiated authority, he was often cast as an authority figure. Often, as in “Fringe” or “The Wire” — not the only shows where he played a senior officer of the law — he’s called upon to act as a preserver of order, a guide to just what in the hell is going on. No one was better at making the unloading of expository detail sound like a poetry recital.
Even when he didn’t have a lot to do, Reddick made a big impression. He appeared in only four episodes of “Lost,” and yet his mysterious Matthew Abaddon is one the series’ most memorable characters; he is barely onscreen in the “John Wick” franchise, though he registers as among its stars. As the unflappable concierge of a hotel for assassins, Reddick’s Charon grounds the film’s violent nonsense with something like an air of morality.
Indeed, though he rarely played a capital-H Hero — most often he’s just a man devoted to a job, and doing it as well as possible — his characters will read as heroic. And even when they’re flawed — and who in “The Wire” is not? — they will strive to do the right thing.
To some unavoidable extent, his stature steered his career. Physiognomy is destiny, in show business even more than in normal life, and Reddick wasn’t built to play weakness. Perhaps the best reason to spend time with Netflix’s “Resident Evil” is that Reddick gets to play extreme variations on his multiply cloned character, demonstrating his range within even a single scene.
And there was more to him than fans might have suspected. Before graduating from the Yale School of Drama, Reddick earned a bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y. His 2007 album, “Contemplations & Remembrances,” available on multiple streaming platforms, is not the wannabe pop/folk/soul pastiche common to moonlighting actors. It’s an original, personal and quite lovely work, with art-song melodies laid over jazz harmonies and Latin rhythms, sung in a higher, sweeter key than one might have expected.
It suggests that in another world, Reddick might have had a career performing or writing musical theater. But in the one we shared, he left us a lot.
Mojo and Spiral jump from the pages of the ‘Longshot’ limited series and into the lives of Marvel’s mutants, impacting both the New Mutants and the X-Men. THE WILDWAYS also marks the addition of Captain Britain, Psylocke and Longshot himself to the X-Men’s corner of the Marvel Universe in a suitably deranged caper which set the tone for all future X-Men/Mojo stories!
Related Events: The two stories can be read individually, but make a little more sense when read together with Mojo & Spiral as the protagonists in both.
New Mutants Annual #2
X-Men Annual #10
New Mutants Annual #2
Mojo & Spiral kidnap the blinded Betsy Braddock and make her the star of the most popular animated series on TV – Wildways. Mojo grants Betsy cybernetic eyes that can steal souls, and kidnaps Sunspot & Wolfsbane of the New Mutants, Leon & Nga Coy Man – siblings of Karma – and Butch, Darla & Alfie of the Fatboys, transforming them into his adult Bratpack. The team manipulate the remaining New Mutants into joining them, but Cypher and Warlock escape and allies with Captain Britain – Betsy’s brother – who’s also been de-aged by Mojo. Cypher finds Betsy – who now resembles Mojo – and fully merges with Warlock in order to gain the means to free her and the others from Spiral and the real Wildways.
Uncanny X-Men Annual #10
The X-Men’s training session with Magneto is interrupted when Longshot is teleported in. Betsy Braddock rushes to his aid as the slime that came with him begins to de-age those present. Magneto leads the X-Men, Longshot and Betsy out of the school, driving them all to Central Park as they gradually get too young to display their powers. The New Mutants graduate themselves to become the X-Men – donning new costumes – to retrieve the ‘X-Babies’. Mojo & Spiral trap both teams in a performance at a Manhattan theatre. The X-Men gradually become adults again, gaining a more murderous edge as they age and Mojo’s hold grows stronger. Shadowcat phases through Mojo to push Magik off him, disrupting his tech and his magic and freeing the X-Men. Mojo teleports away, leaving Spiral to the mutants. Betsy demands her death, but Storm (dubbing Betsy ‘Psylocke’) barters her life in exchange for putting things back as they were. The New Mutants give up their X-Men uniforms and Longshot remains at the Xavier School.
Uncanny X-Men #212 (1986)
Betsy Braddock officially goes by the codename Psylocke and joins the X-Men during MUTANT MASSACRE.
Mephisto Vs #3 (1987)
Longshot is revealed to have joined the X-Men during THIS HALLOWED ARMOR.
X-Men Annual #11 (1987)
Captain Britain visits his sister and her fellow X-Men, joining them on a mission to the Citadel of Light and Shadow.
New Mutants #53 (1987)
Cypher begins to show detrimental effects from merging with Warlock.
Still believing himself to be the team’s weak link, Cypher takes a bullet for Wolfsbane and dies during THE FALL OF THE MUTANTS.
Uncanny X-Men #227 (1988)
The death of Psylocke and the X-Men is televised (though they allow the world to believe they’re dead while they begin operating under the radar) during THE FALL OF THE MUTANTS.
Uncanny X-Men #229 (1988)
The X-Men relocate to the Australian Outback to remain off the radar; Roma‘s magic prevents them from being detected by technological means.
Excalibur Special Edition: The Sword is Drawn (1988)
Captain Britain learns of Psylocke’s apparent death.
X-Men Annual #12 (1988)
Roma’s magic blocks the transmission from Psylocke’s eyes to Mojoworld, making Mojo believe the X-Men are truly dead; Mojo creates a new set of X-Babies from neoplasm to replace them for entertainment purposes; Ricochet Rita and the X-Babies escape Mojo.
Uncanny X-Men #244 (1989)
Darla’s Jubilee persona is not to be confused with the mutantJubilee who first emerges exhibiting similar powers during JUBILATION DAY.
Uncanny X-Men #256 (1989)
When an amnesiac Psylocke falls into Matsu’o Tsurayaba‘s hands, he grants her a new body – one without Mojo’s cybernetic eyes – ironically with help from the Body Shoppe during ACTS OF VENGEANCE.
X-Factor #62 (1991) After Cameron Hodge‘s failed attempt to absorb Warlock’s Technarch abilities, Warlock’s ashes are scattered over Cypher’s grave during X-TINCTION AGENDA.
X-Force #99-100 (1991)
Shatterstar appears in the Danger Room in much the same way Longshot did, implying a connection between them during A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.
Wolverine #52-53 (1992) Mojo next encounters Wolverine.
X-Men Annual #1 (1992)
Mojo clashes with the X-Men, reigniting his feud with them during SHATTERSHOT.
X-Factor Annual #7 (1992)
Spiral is revealed to be Ricochet Rita, sent back in time by Mojo to set Rita on the path to becoming Spiral, during SHATTERSHOT.
Excalibur #55-56 (1992)
Psylocke is reunited with Captain Britain for the first time since she gaining a different body.
X-Men #20-22 (1993)
It’s revealed that an Betsy Braddock’s original body is inhabited by an assassin named Kwannon.
X-Men #31-32 (1994)
Kwannon removes the cybernetic eyes Mojo implanted in Betsy Braddock’s body; Psylocke destroys the eyes.
Excalibur #77-81 (1994) A techno-organic being calling itself Douglock emerges, with some believing this to be the resurrected Doug Ramsey/Cypher merged with Warlock.
X-Men ’99 Annual (1999) Douglock is revealed to be a reanimated Warlock and he reclaims this identity during RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE.
X-Necrosha #1 (2009) Cypher is one of many mutants resurrected by Selene & Eli Bard using the Transmode Virus (though Cypher remains alive while the majority of other ‘undead’ mutants return to the grave) during NECROSHA.
New Mutants #9 (2010) The resurrected Cypher rejoins the New Mutants alongside Warlock.
The two characters have been intertwined in the world of DC Comics for decades; however, with Johnson’s recent departure from the franchise, it is looking less and less likely that these iterations of the two characters will ever come face-to-face on-screen.
Zachary Levi’s Black Adam Thoughts
DC
At the world premiere for Shazam! Fury of the Gods, franchise star Zachary Levi spoke on what may have been planned when it comes to Shazam crossing over with Dwayne Johnson’s Black Adam.
Levi told Deadline that somewhere “down the road,” maybe the two heroes would have clashed, but “nobody ever told [him]:”
Deadline: “And Black Adam too, was there plans for Shazam and Black Adam to meet up on the big screen…”
Levi: “I mean, I think there was always some very, very, very 100,000 foot view of, down the road, maybe we would. But nobody ever told me that, so I don’t know.”
This is in line with previous comments from the DC actor where he has continuously said that he would be “totally open to” coming to blows with Black Adam on-screen, but “that’s [ultimately] so far above [his] pay grade:”
“That’s all so far above my pay grade. I have no idea. I know that in the comics, and even in some animation, there’s been some really cool, epic battles between Shazam and Black Adam… Shazam, Superman and Black Adam. I know a lot of fans wanted that. I know I was totally open to that, but that’s all I know.”
“There hasn’t really been a conversation about that. I know, at the moment, Black Adam is sort of its thing and Shazam is its thing. Then we’ll see where it all goes in the future, but I haven’t really been a part of any conversations like that.”
Why Did Shazam & Black Adam Never Cross Over?
As the DCU moves into this next era, with the potential of new actors taking on both Shazam and Black Adam (although not confirmed), fans will be left wondering why Zachary Levi and Dwayne Johnson never got their DC characters together for some big-screen fun.
Well, as it turns out, it may have had a lot to do with the Black Adam actor himself. According to one insider Johnson holds some “thinly veiled disdain” for the Shazam films.
If everything worked out, it seems like Warner Bros. would have been more than happy to bring Black Adam and Shazam together. It is one of the most ready-made crossovers in DC Comics lore.
With so many days and weeks and months to go, we got to keep ourselves busy until Master Detective Archives: CODE RAIN is officially out. One of the best things about Danganronpa was its incredible voice actors that brought the characters to life and its successor isn’t going to play second fiddle to that. But with such a wide cast and Nintendo knowing it’s got a few months off, we only have part of the cast officially released in its trailer. Here’s the stream of characters we know thus far!
Best known for his role in animation, Lucien is no stranger to the video game franchise, having also voiced roles in Danganronpa before, such as in Trigger Happy Havoc as Hifumi Yamada and in Killing Harmony as K1-B0.
Anjali Kunapaneni as Shinigami
Taking the stage next to Lucien is Anjali Kunapaneni who played a variety of voices and is now in the limelight! I personally recognize them from Genshin Impact as Dori’s English VA where they do a wonderful job of singing ‘I love Mora and mora loves me~!’ They are more popularly known for their choice in anime such as in Record of Ragnarok as Parvarti and Karin in Feng: Pirate Princess. It looks like they will also be voicing for the upcoming game Honkai: Star Rail as Sushang!
Y. Chang as Zilch Alexander
Already a step into the video game world, Y. Chang has seen his fair share of roles in sister games like AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative as Lien Twining. Popular roles you may have seen him in include Haruhi Nakayama in Given, Hacker in Akudama Drive, and Colress in Pokemon Masters.
Khoi Dao as Desuhiko Thunderbolt
It’s the boy, the meme, the legend! Having worked a long line of roles in games and animations alike, Khoi Dao is known for his roles in games such as Herb Cookie in Cookie Run and Albedo in Genshin Impact. He’s also done great work as Murata in Demon Slayer, Kagetsu in Fire Emblem: Engage, and Tetsuya Kuroko in Kuroko’s Basketball.
Lauren Landa as Melami Goldmine
Protected by Neptune, the outer planet of the seas, Lauren Landa comes diving in as another veteran voice actor who has seen a number of roles in both childhood and popular animes today! Some of her most popular roles include Michiru Kaioh in Sailor Moon: Sailor Stars and Sailor Moon Eternal, Annie Leonheart in Attack on Titan, and Juno in Beastars.
Xanthe Huynh as Fubuki Clockford
With a great tenor voice, Xanthe has many roles in video games that you may be familiar with as of the last few years! Having played Haru Okumura in Persona 5, Marianne in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and Altina Orion in the Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III, she’ll also be seeing a new role in Honkai: Star Rail as Pela. Not the only ‘Pela’, she’s also played Pallapalla in Sailor Moon Eternal, Satsuki Mario in Kuroko’s Basketball, and Platelet in Cells at Work!
Last not certainly not least is Kurt Bicknell whose last voice according to Behind the Voice Actors was James Bond in 007: Agent Under Fire! Very befitting of one of the special detectives on the case in Master Detectives Agency: CODE RAIN.
Keep up to date with us as we keep an eye out for the rest of the cast when they are revealed!
The Barcelona-set feature “La nit no fa vigília” and Argentine film “Hidden City” (“Ciudad Oculta”) won the Malaga Festival Work in Progress awards for Spanish and Latin American projects on Friday.
“La nit no fa vigília” (which roughly translates to “The Night Does Not Keep Watch”) centers on a young man who lives with and cares for his aging, frail grandmother, but still finds time for a nocturnal social life. It was among the frontrunners to win at the awards ceremony.
A joint project from a student collective comprising Laura Corominas Espelt, Laura Serra Solé, Clara Serrano Llorens, Gerard Simó Gimeno, Ariadna Ulldemolins Abad and Pau Vall Capdet, “La nit no fa vigília” also won the industry magazine Cine y Tele prize.
Francisco Bouza’s “Hidden City” follows a young soccer player in Buenos Aires who must undertake a journey across the city of the dead in order deal with the loss of a friend.
The projects were among a large number award winners that took part in this year’s Malaga WIP program and Malaga Festival Fund & Co-Production Event (MAFF).
Víctor Iriarte’s “Sobre Todo de Noche,” which revolves around two women who meet for the first time, one who was forced to give up her child for adoption when she was young, the other the parent who adopted and raised the boy, won the Aracne Digital Cinema award for post production services as well as the Latido Films distribution prize.
Two films received the Yagán Films award for sound production: Juan Pablo Polanco and César Jaimes’ hybrid feature “Carropasajero,” which follows indigenous Wayuú people on the border between Colombia and Venezuela and a woman who returns to her native land to meet her family after years of exile; and Agustín Toscano’s Argentine documentary “I Trust You” (“En Vos Confio”), about two women who met in a convent, abandoned their habits to live their love secretly and adopted a daughter only to later face criminal charges.
“I Trust You” also picked up the LatAmcinema.com award for Latin American projects.
Juan Agustín Carbonere’s Argentine feature “The Saint” (“El Santo”), about a healer of humble origins who builds a cult following through his use of outlandish and disturbing techniques, won the Damita Joe distribution prize.
“The Saint” also won the Music Library award along with Jenifer de la Rosa’s autobiographical documentary “Hija del Volcán” (“The Daughter of the Volcano”), a Spanish-Mexican co-production.
MAFF Awards
Prizes at Malaga’s MAFF co-production and financing forum were spread across the board. Produced by Sergy Moreno, Spaniard Ana Ortiz’s feature debut “Firefly Glades” (“El claro de las luciérnagas”), a thriller with horror overtones, won the Cántico Producciones Awards’ first prize, while Jô Serfaty and Clarissa Guarilha’s Brazilian work “Borda do Mundo” took the second prize.
Aeden O´Connor Agurcia and Ana Isabel Martins Palacios’ “Cae el Sol,” a Honduran-Mexican-Guatemalan-Norwegian project, received the Bolivia Lab Industria Prize, an invitation to the filmmakers to participate in a production laboratory in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in July.
The ECAM Prize for participation in an incubator program at the Madrid Film School this fall went to “Borda do Mundo.”
“4Eber,” a Peruvian-Mexican project by Ximena Valdivia Salas and Illari Orccottoma Mendoza, received the Santiago Film Festival’s Sanfic Award, consisting in an invitation to participate in a production lab set for August in the Chilean capital.
The Films to Festivals distribution award, meanwhile, went to Ariel Gutiérrez and Víctor Léycegui’s Mexican work “Toda una vida” and Francesca Canepa Sarmiento and Enid Marie Campos León’s Peruvian project “La Otra Orilla.”
The winners of the three Acorde/Music Library were: Arima León and Daute Campos’ Spanish project “Tal Vez,” which received the Women Screen Industry award; Cristian Lagos Soto and Maximiliano Bolados’ Chilean project “Madres de Octubre,” which took the Ibero-American prize; and Marilina Calós and Soledad San Julián’s Argentine work “Moxos,” which won the Latin American award.
The Elamedia-Sideral international distribution prize went to Rakesh Narwani’s Spanish project “El Gran Bazar de Mis Padres,” also part of 2023’s Netflix-Dama diversity program, Cambio de Plano.
Ben Affleck says he never would have made “Air” without Michael Jordan’s blessing, but that blessing came with one major request. Her name? Viola Davis.
Directed by Affleck, the movie stars Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike employee who convinced Jordan (Damian Young) to sign the deal that allowed for the creation of the Air Jordan shoe line. Affleck also stars as Nike co-founder Phil Knight.
Introducing “Air” at its South by Southwest world premiere, Affleck said, “I had a chance to sit down with Michael Jordan, because I just wasn’t going to make this movie without asking him, ‘What matters to you?’ Interestingly, and tellingly, he had a few things that mattered.”
“One of them was that Howard White needed to be in the movie,” Affleck said, referring to the vice president of the Jordan brand. Hearing about White made Affleck realize he had an opportunity to cast Chris Tucker, with whom he’d wanted to work for a long time.
“I got the script and then had the chance again to talk to Michael. Michael Jordan, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the most intimidating, impressive men you’ll ever see in your life,” Affleck said. “He told me about is father. And then he talked about his mother. It was the first time I saw this look cross his face. It was a look of reverence, of awe, of love, and gratitude, and innocence. He said, ‘None of this would have ever happened without my mother.’ I said, ‘Who would you like to play your mom?’ He said, ‘Well, it has to be Viola Davis.”
“That’s like saying, ‘Can I play basketball on your court?’ ‘Yeah, if you get Michael Jordan.’ “Viola Davis is the best actor I’ve ever seen,” Affleck continued. “This is a hard business. It’s hard to know if you’re successful. It’s hard to know if you’ve accomplished something. But honest to God, I always felt that if i was a director one day, and I had Viola Davis in a movie, that would really be something. That would mean the world to me. And it does.”
“This is the best night of my professional life, and I want to welcome the best actor in the world,” he concluded, bringing Davis onstage for a brief moment in the spotlight before audiences got their first look at “Air.”
