“I ugly-cry when I watch Deadpool. I have been in that meeting about options for something terminal before. It especially gets me when he talks about how it affects everyone around you.
Then in the second one, when he is trying to get back to Vanessa and blows himself up, Colossus takes him to the mansion, or when AL is talking to him about the pain… I ugly-cry badly at that.”
"I ugly-cry when I watch
As Parker Posey was to Sundance in the ‘90s and Greta Gerwig to SXSW in the mid-aughts, no one embodies the current sensibility of the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival quite like Rachel Sennott. With a persona that is ditzy but knowing, somehow earnestly cynical, tuned in but offbeat, she is at the festival this year with two new films.
“Bottoms,” described as the story of two queer high school girls who start a fight club to pull in cheerleaders, was co-written by Sennott and her “Shiva Baby” collaborator Emma Seligman. Its Saturday night premiere is among the most anticipated events of the festival. “I Used to Be Funny,” written and directed by Ally Pankiw and playing the narrative feature competition, is the story of a young woman dealing with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder and shows a previously unseen dramatic side to Sennott’s talents.
Having been to the 2018 festival with the short film version of the anxiety-inducing comedy “Shiva Baby” — the feature version played the 2020 festival, which had its in-person edition canceled in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — Sennott was also there last year with her scene-stealing performance in “Bodies Bodies Bodies.”
For a phone interview ahead of the festival, Sennott was on the line from, as she put it, “Tennessee, randomly,” where she is shooting the upcoming “Holland, Michigan,” directed by Mimi Cave and co-starring the formidable trio of Nicole Kidman, Gael García Bernal and Matthew Macfadyen
She was very excited to be returning to SXSW.
“It honestly means so much,” said Sennott. “When I first went there, I think I just opened up my eyes so much to indie filmmaking and also realizing that movie makers were just people who wanted to make something with their friends. It was really inspiring for Emma and I and very motivational for writing ‘Bottoms.’
“And I felt it last year for ‘Bodies’ where I was like, ‘Oh my God. I only want to watch any movie ever with this room of people,’” Sennott said. “It completely changed the experience where everyone sowanted to watch a movie and laugh and cheer. The energy, it’s something that I’ve really missed in the past couple of years. I love watching films that way and I feel like both ‘Bottoms’ and ‘I Used to Be Funny’ are meant to be experienced that way with other people.”
Despite missing out on an in-person festival premiere, the feature version of “Shiva Baby” went on to become a pandemic-era art house hit, earning Sennott a Gotham Award nomination for breakthrough performer and winning the Spirit Awards’ John Cassavetes prize, which recognizes low-budget films.
Rachel Sennott stars as PJ and Ayo Edebiri as Josie in “Bottoms.”
(Orion Pictures Inc.)
While “Shiva Baby” and “Bodies Bodies Bodies” firmly established her comedic persona, Sennott is energized, if a bit anxious, about showing off other aspects of her talent at this year’s festival, starting with the fact that she shares writing credit on “Bottoms.”
“This is the first movie that I’ve written that has been made,” said Sennott. “There’s an added pressure because all of a sudden not only are you worried about what people think of your performance, every line you’re like, ‘Did they like that? Did they like this?’
“For ‘I Used to Be Funny,’ there are really funny moments in that script, but there’s also more dramatic moments and I think it deals with serious subject matter and, not that I haven’t done that, but I think on this specific level or this subject matter, I haven’t.”
In “I Used to Be Funny,” which premieres Monday, Sennott plays Sam, an aspiring stand-up comedian who has shut down in the aftermath of a traumatic incident and the young girl Brooke (Olga Petsa) she used to nanny for going missing. Told with a bold, cut-up storytelling sensibility, the film draws from Sennott’s comedic persona while finding her exploring new emotional depths.
Rachel Sennott in “I Used to Be Funny.”
(South by Southwest Film & TV Festival)
“I wanted to show what’s taken away from women. Their sense of humor, their connection to the world, their joy, it’s stripped away and no one starts out that way,” Pankiw said. “The world just kind of makes them that way.
“Often when you meet people with PTSD or who have been traumatized, that’s the version you meet first, like the earliest iteration of Rachel in the film,” Pankiw said. “And it’s such a shame that most people don’t get to know the person that people were before their trauma. Rachel does such a good job of bringing so much vibrancy to the character and such a charm and such an inherent sweetness and you see all of that and that she was all these things and that she was pure potential. It’s like a reverse sort of likability.”
Pankiw, who makes her feature debut with the film, has directed episodes on series such as “Shrill” and “The Great” as well as many music videos, including “Silk Chiffon” by Muna featuring Phoebe Bridgers. She first saw Sennott do stand-up and recalls thinking, “This girl is so funny and brilliant and charming. I just sort of filed her away in my head for future reference.”
Rachel Sennott in “I Used to Be Funny.”
(South by Southwest Film & TV Festival)
After seeing “Shiva Baby” at Outfest while she was trying to get the project that became “I Used to Be Funny” off the ground, Pankiw discovered both she and Sennott were represented by the same agency, WME.
“I think I had written the character a little bit harsher, and Rachel just has this sweetness to her, she just can melt your heart,” said Pankiw. “It was such a miracle that we got her and she also brought a lot of that element of the character to the forefront that I think it really needed. I often joke that she did this film for me and I would now get hit by a bus for her.”
Sennott’s character in “I Used to Be Funny” is an aspiring stand-up comedian who has found it difficult to perform since her traumatic event. Sennott and Pankiw collaborated on the stand-up routines in the film. Pankiw recalled Sennott rehearsing in the kitchen of the apartment she was staying at in Toronto for the production, using a spatula as a microphone as she worked on the material.
For Sennott it was a new challenge to do stand-up in character.
“Honestly, it was so wild,” she said. “I’m writing jokes that are about my nannying job and living in Toronto or being from Canada or whatever. And I did it in front of real people. There were these two girls who knew who I was and they were kind of like, ‘You’re Canadian?’ after the show. And I was like, ‘No, I’m a liar. I’m just a liar.’ ”
Actor Ayo Edebiri, left, writer-director Emma Seligman and actor-writer Rachel Sennott on the set of “Bottoms.”
(Patti Perret / Orion Pictures)
“Bottoms” found Sennott working with not only her “Shiva Baby” collaborator in Seligman, but also co-star Ayo Edebiri, with whom she had a short-lived Comedy Central series, “Ayo and Rachel Are Single.” Seligman and Sennott wrote the part in “Bottoms” with Edebiri in mind and pitched her on it before they had even completed a draft of the script.
“To finally get to the place where we were all making it together was like, ‘Whoa,’” Sennott said. “Ayo and I did so many little sketches together in school and we made this little Comedy Central series for no money and we did stand-up in basements and so to get to perform together again, but actually on a movie with a budget where we’re fighting each other and there’s stunts was really cool.
“Not to sound corny, but I was like, ‘We did it! We’re here!’ ” said Sennott. “We were in New Orleans with the stunt coordinator kicking each other in the face. We did it.”
For Pankiw, Sennott’s truest gift is how she makes it seem like she isn’t doing anything at all, the naturalistic hanging-out vibes she brings to a role.
“What she’s doing is she’s tricking people into thinking that what she does is effortless, but she is an incredibly gifted technician as an actress,” said Pankiw. “And I think because people have seen her mainly in comedic roles, unfortunately sometimes the misconception is that’s very easy if someone is like their character. But I think she’s more of a chameleon than people know.”
Originally from Connecticut, Sennott went to college in New York City, began her career there and finds she is still very much identified as a New Yorker, even though she has been living in Los Angeles.
“I feel like I give off New York,” Sennott said. “I do really like L.A. It’s growing on me and I gotta tell you the experience of grocery shopping in L.A., unbeatable. Sorry, New York, but grocery shopping in L.A. is incredible.”
Sennott is trying to take in how much has happened to her and her career over the last few years, from the success of “Shiva Baby” to shooting her first scene with Nicole Kidman — “A f— legend,” she enthused — to anticipating the response to both “I Used to Be Funny” and “Bottoms.”
“I honestly feel like COVID in the last couple of years, my emotions are like in a delay,” said Sennott. “Because so much of it happened in a way where you don’t realize it on a day-to-day basis. And then it happens in these random little bursts where I feel it in those moments.
“I feel grateful [“Shiva Baby”] got to have this online groundswell of this community of mostly young women who were supporting the movie,” Sennott said. “If I ever see a 25-year-old girl with a Twitter account who’s like, ‘I loved your movie,’ I’m like, ‘You are the reason that anyone saw it, so thank you.’ ”
As Parker Posey was to Sundance in
Where could Chris Evans potentially make a return as Steve Rogers/Captain America during the MCU‘s upcoming slate of movies from the Multiverse Saga?
Evans hasn’t been seen in the MCU since his highly-emotional exit from the franchise in 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, where he went back in time to live a life with Peggy Carter before passing the mantle and shield to Anthony Mackie‘s Sam Wilson. But with the actor being one of the pillars that built the MCU from the ground up, questions are always coming up about whether he could return to the role.
In a recent interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Mackie indicated that Evans’ former Captain America is still alive in the MCU, even though he’s well past his 100th birthday canonically:
Kimmel: “Old Cap is ok, then? Old Cap is alive?”
Mackie: “Yeah! I think so! I didn’t see him die! I don’t know, I saw Chris two weeks ago, and he looked pretty good.”
There’s also the simple fact that the MCU is in the Multiverse Saga, with potential Steve Rogers Variants realistically laying in wait for the right opportunity in the story to show up and help the Avengers again.
With all that being said, here are the five movies that have at least a slight chance of including Chris Evans’ Steve Rogers/Captain America, with the films ordered from most to least likely to feature Evans.
Disclaimer: This article is not meant to insinuate that Chris Evans will take back Anthony Mackie’s role as Captain America, but rather speculate which films Evans’ Steve Rogers could logically make an appearance in.
Anthony Mackie will officially get his first MCU solo movie with Captain America: New World Order after taking over the Captain America mantle in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. With this being his first big movie as the Star-Spangled Avenger, as well as his first movie since Avengers: Endgame, a Chris Evans cameo could be quite a natural fit for this sequel.
Captain America 4 would most likely include Evans in a short cameo moment to have Steve Rogers reunite with Sam Wilson for either guidance or reassurance, especially with old villains like the Leader and Thunderbolt Ross in his path. Additionally, rumors teased that Sebastian Stan could be in line for a return as Bucky Barnes, which could facilitate a reunion between the three heroes.
Of all the options for movies that Evans may come back for, Captain America 4 would be the easiest avenue for a comeback with old Steve Rogers imparting his wisdom on the new Avengers leader.
Marvel Studios is looking to make Avengers: Secret Wars the biggest comic book movie event in history, with rumors pointing to the sequel bringing in heroes and villains from every corner of the Multiverse. But while the main focus for fans will be on non-MCU heroes joining the Marvel Studios story, seeing Chris Evans come back as Captain America here could have just as big of an impact.
The sixth Avengers movie will almost certainly adapt from the Secret Wars storyline from Marvel Comics, in which two different universes collide with one another before being destroyed entirely. There’s also the introduction of Battleworld, which features multiple Variants of countless characters from across the Multiverse, introducing a perfect avenue for Evans to make a comeback.
This movie would most likely include an alternate-universe Variant of Evans’ Captain America rather than the older one from Earth-616, which would give him a chance to get back into the action for one last go. And that doesn’t even take into account that he may reprise his role as the Human Torch from his Fantastic Four movies as well, although nothing says he can’t do both.
Jonathan Majors‘ Kang the Conqueror is set to unleash hell on the Avengers in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, utilizing a number of his Variants across the Multiverse in order to rule over all of time and space. This will unquestionably bring back Sam Wilson’s Captain America, as has been teased in rumors, although there could be a small window for Steve Rogers to appear as well.
This would most likely be a smaller role for Evans in a similar vein to what was mentioned for Captain America 4, with Steve Rogers offering guidance and leadership to Sam Wilson and the Avengers for a moment. There’s also a small chance that a Multiversal Steve Rogers could come into play from another dimension, but that idea would be more plausible for Avengers 6 than Avengers 5.
This would also give Evans credits in all five Avengers movies to date, which would make him one of less than a handful of MCU stars to boast that status depending on stars like Mark Ruffalo (Hulk) and Chris Hemsworth (Thor). And while this movie will certainly focus more on the new crop of Avengers, an appearance by Steve Rogers would make for quite an impactful moment in the story.
Deadpool 3 will change the game for the MCU in 2024, becoming the first Marvel Studios movie in which the Multiverse will truly “crack open” and make its impact felt across the entire franchise. And while Chris Evans may not be the first choice fans think of when imagining who could cameo in this threequel, there’s one key report that may eventually bring the MCU veteran into the adventure for a moment alongside Wade Wilson and Wolverine.
Deadpool 3 is rumored to visit other Marvel franchises formerly under the 20th Century Fox umbrella, specifically mentioning Evans’ Fantastic Four team as one of the franchises that will be explored. Evans would reunite with Ioan Gruffudd (Mr. Fantastic), Jessica Alba (Sue Storm), and Michael Chiklis (The Thing) should this rumor come true, getting the opportunity to utilize his own comedic nature alongside Deadpool who will surely be one of the MCU’s funniest characters.
There are also the real possibilities that Evans could appear as a Multiversal Cap Variant from another universe or the Earth-616 Cap as well, should Wade decide to seek out somebody who’s known as one of this universe’s greatest heroes. And with Marvel looking to make a splash for Deadpool’s introduction into the MCU, a Captain America cameo could be an unforgettable moment for the Merc with a Mouth, especially after Evans already pulled a similar stunt in Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy in 2021.
Thunderbolts will bring together a unique team of heroes and former villains in a movie that will serve as Phase 5’s big team-up outing, potentially acting as the last movie of the phase as well. And while this movie is arguably the least likely one in which Chris Evans might return, one character could open a path for his inclusion – James Buchanan Barnes.
Bucky is set to serve as the “de facto leader” for the Thunderbolts, according to Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, putting him in a position that’s usually been occupied by Steve Rogers with the Avengers. And considering that Bucky and Steve are still as close as ever, even though Bucky may not know where his old friend is for now, the Winter Soldier may look to the former Captain America for guidance in his new leadership position.
This role would most likely be only a cameo of some sort, almost certainly utilizing old Cap with the Multiverse almost definitely not playing a factor in the Thunderbolts plot. And with it being one of Phase 5’s last movies, if not its last one as a whole, a Steve Rogers inclusion may make the film feel even that much more like something big to close out a new slate of exciting adventures.
Where do you think Chris Evans’ Captain America will return? Do you think he’ll find the right movie to use for that comeback? Let us know on Twitter at @MCU_Direct.
259
Soon fans will be able to experience Superman’s original animated shorts as Max Fleischer’s Superman from 1941-1943 is being remastered for release. You don’t want to miss out on this!
Check out the full press release below.
THE LANDMARK ANIMATED MAN OF STEEL SHORTS ARE
NEWLY REMASTERED FROM ORIGINAL 35MM NEGATIVES
AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE DIGITALLY AND ON BLU-RAYTM ON MAY 16, 2023
BURBANK, CA (March 8, 2023) – Warner Bros. Discovery has meticulously remastered Max Fleischer’s treasured set of 17 animated Superman shorts from the original 35mm source elements. Max Fleischer’s Superman 1941-1943 will be available to purchase Digitally on HD and on Blu-ray May 16, 2023.
Superman made his comic book debut in 1938, appearing in Action Comics #1 (dated June 1938, but officially published on April 18, 1938), and the Man of Steel’s popularity grew with his subsequent radio program. Max Fleischer gave the world’s first Super Hero his initial animated spotlight, producing 17 theatrical animated shorts from September 1941 to July 1943 that further elevated the character’s profile, and added many significant aspects to his canon – including coining many of Superman’s patented catchphrases and attributes.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s advanced remastering process began with a 4K, 16-bit scan of Fleischer’s original 35mm successive exposure negative. Staying true to the original theatrical aspect ratio of 1.37-to-1, the highest quality raw image was then scanned and then entered into the recombine process – utilizing special proprietary software to merge the successive exposure Technicolor negatives into a single RGB color image. The end result are pristine animated shorts that have been restored to the animators’ originally intended production quality.
Well known radio actors Clayton “Bud” Collyer and Joan Alexander reprised their famed The Adventures of Superman radio show roles for the Fleischer/Famous Studios animated shorts as Superman/ Clark Kent and Lois Lane, respectively. Jackson Beck provided the voice of Perry White and the show’s primary narrator. Additional voices, many of whom had participated in the Superman radio program, were provided by Jack Mercer, Grant Richards, Julian Noa, Lee Royce, Max Smith, Sam Parker and Carl Meyer.
Max Fleischer’s Superman 1941-1943 will be available on May 16, 2023 to purchase Digitally in HD from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu and more, and on Blu-ray at major retailers both online and in-store.
EPISODES (AND PREMIERE DATE):
SPECIAL FEATURES INCLUDE:
New Featurette – Superman: Speeding Toward Tomorrow – Superman’s exploits in the Fleischer series modernized the monomyth of the Greek godlike hero and expanded and romanticized the prevalent themes of sci-fi and fantasy. It was this combination of heartfelt storytelling, relatable heroes and amazing visuals that has endeared the Fleischer series to fans as one of the greatest superhero stories of all time. This featurette explores the visual storytelling as the lavish animation, with special attention paid to all the atomic age technology, pushes science fiction closer to becoming a powerful social and pop culture force.
Featurette – First Flight: The Fleischer Superman Series – The Origins and Influence of This Groundbreaking Cartoon Series – A gathering of contemporary animators, comic book & animation historians, and legendary Fleischer artists examine these beloved shorts, focusing on the animation and the breakthrough techniques that created it, as well as studying the title character’s place in history.
Featurette – The Man, the Myth, Superman: Exploring the Tradition of Superman Heroes on the Page and Screen – A fascinating study of Superman-esque characters throughout history – in ancient myth, literature and film – that bring forth imaginative, super-human qualities, captivating audiences and enduring the test of time.
Pricing and film information:
PRODUCT SRP
Digital HD Purchase $14.99 USA and CANADA
Blu-ray $33.99 USA, 39.99 CANADA
Languages: English
Subtitles: English, French
Running Time: 145 minutes
About Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment
Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment (WBDHE) distributes the award-winning movies, television, animation, and digital content produced by Warner Bros. Discovery to the homes and screens of millions through physical Blu-ray Disc™ and DVD retail sales and digital transactions on major streaming, video-on-demand cable, satellite, digital, and mobile channels. WBDHE is part of Warner Bros. Discovery Content Sales, one of the world’s largest distributors of entertainment programming.
© Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. SUPERMAN and all related characters and elements are © & TM DC.
About DC
DC, part of Warner Bros. Discovery, creates iconic characters and enduring stories and is one of the world’s largest publishers of comics and graphic novels. DC’s creative work entertains audiences of every generation around the world with DC’s stories and characters integrated across Warner Bros. Discovery’s film, television, animation, consumer products, home entertainment, games, and themed experiences divisions, and on the DC Universe Infinite digital comic subscription service. Learn more at DC.com
259 Soon fans will be able to experience
There are three different promotional sales currently live on PlayStation Store, and as a result of this, some dirt cheap PS4 and PS5 games are currently on sale. And if you like horror, you’re in luck, because there are two $1.99 deals that stick out, in particular, because of not only the price point but due to the quality of the game you get for just $1.99. That said, both games, which are Outlast and Stories Untold, are only on sale until March 16, so if you’re reading this after March 16, sorry, but you missed the boat.
Outlast is a survival horror game from 2013 from developer Red Barrel, who also published the game. Upon release, the game garnered an 80 on Metacritic, and as you may remember, at the time, rejuvenized the survival horror genre. The game spawned a series of the same name, sold millions of copies, and was an important release for the industry at the time. And for what it’s worth, its sequel, Outlast II, is also on sale for only $3.
Outlast: “In the remote mountains of Colorado, horrors wait inside Mount Massive Asylum. A long-abandoned home for the mentally ill, recently re-opened by the “research and charity” branch of the transnational Murkoff Corporation, the asylum has been operating in strict secrecy… until now. Acting on a tip from an anonymous source, independent journalist Miles Upshur breaks into the facility, and what he discovers walks a terrifying line between science and religion, nature and something else entirely. Once inside, his only hope of escape lies with the terrible truth at the heart of Mount Massive. Outlast is a true survival horror experience that aims to show that the most terrifying monsters of all come from the human mind.”
Stories Untold is an episodic horror adventure-puzzle game developed by No Code and published by Devolver Digital. It was released in 2017 and released to an 81 on Metacritic. How many copies it sold, we don’t know, but the number of positive Steam user reviews suggest it did appreciably.
Stories Untold: “Stories Untold is a narrative-driven experimental adventure game, that bends the genre into something completely unique. Combining a mix of classic text-adventure, point-and-click, and more, 4 short stories are packaged together into a single mysterious anthology that has been described as “a fantastic, fascinating example of interactive visual storytelling” (Telegraph 5/5) and earning widespread critical acclaim since release.”
It’s striking how often the word “removal” comes up in various governments’ official policies regarding refugees and asylum seekers — a pointedly chosen term that conjures images of inanimate refuse or clutter awaiting collection, rather than human lives in desperate limbo. Fail to make your case to officials and you’ll be “removed,” a near-literally humanizing threat that hangs over Milad Alami’s tense, bristling social thriller “Opponent” like a pounding migraine. Following an Iranian wrestler and father whose urgent reasons for fleeing his homeland emerge aren’t entirely what he claims them to be, this is a tightly wound affair that unravels an obscured past and an uncertain future neatly in tandem. Alami maintains suspense at both ends of his narrative without making a blank cypher of his protagonist, played with seething specificity by an electrifying Payman Maadi.
That galvanizing lead performance — by an actor who hasn’t attained quite the crossover stardom he deserves following prominent turns in Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation” and the Kristen Stewart vehicle “Camp X-Ray” — is the chief selling point of “Opponent,” a low-key but sharply assembled Berlinale premiere that makes good on the cool promise of Alami’s 2018 debut “The Charmer.” That film, another slow-burning tension exercise built around immigrant anxiety in Scandinavia — home turf for the Iranian-born, Swedish-raised, Danish-based helmer — was a festival hit that managed a fair spread of global arthouse distribution, including a Stateside release; taking all its predecessor’s restrained virtues up a notch, “Opponent” should build on that success.
It begins in a frenzied, scuffling state of panic, seizing viewers’ attention with a blank screen over the sound of bodies in slamming conflict. Iman (Maadi), dressed in a singlet, is shown running frantically from the gym where he and fellow Iranian wrestling team members have been training, with police in tow. Obstructed by another wrestler, he beats the other man vengefully to a pulp. It’s a stark, grabby prologue that will gradually be set in context; Alami’s choice of introductory onscreen quote by the queer Black writer Audre Lorde (“My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you”) offers a clue at multiple textual levels.
First, however, we drift to the snowbound, wolf-patrolled landscape of northern Sweden, closing to the Finnish border. There, some time later, we find Iman, his wife Maryam (Marall Nasiri) and their two daughters living in no-frills refugee accommodation. Iman ekes out a living delivering pizzas by snowmobile, bringing any leftover orders home to his family for dinner — “Pizza again?” the girls sigh, in a rare complaint for their age group — while awaiting a verdict from the Swedish authorities on the family’s asylum application. In the meantime, they don’t get too comfortable, shepherded as they are from one cramped apartment to another as other refugees come and go. Alami vividly evokes the exhaustion of perennially temporary living, where even the family’s most helpful aides treat them less like people than problems to be solved.
Having been turned down for asylum before, Iman and the newly pregnant Maryam have launched an appeal, hoping her condition will help their cause. Their official line is that Iman was outed by a teammate as a critic of the Iranian regime, placing his life in danger on home soil, though that’s not entirely the truth. An alternative tale begins to emerge when our man is encouraged, against the wishes of Maryam, to join Sweden’s national wrestling team to solidify his case to remain in the country. Thus embedded, he strikes up a connection with strapping local teammate Thomas (Björn Elgerd), which soon reveals itself to be more than fraternal in nature.
As our view of Iman as a dedicated family man tilts into something more compromised, his air of unsettled aggression and volatile insecurity comes crisply into focus: Maadi’s extraordinary hair-trigger performance patiently outlines a man who was displaced within himself long before he was thrust into the confusion of refugee identity. He’s fiercely matched by Nasiri, quieter but no less suffused with rage as a knowing, watchful woman weary of her own silence, resentful of the wifely role she must play for her husband and the authorities alike.
Alami’s smart screenplay keeps simmering toward a roaring confrontation between these two mutual pretenders, but never quite boils over; indeed, much of “Opponent” plays out like a wrestling match, with principals grappling for an advantage, often blocking and locking each other’s movements. The filmmaking, accordingly, opts for suggestive subtlety over explosive flash: Sebastian Winterø’s brisk, frosty lensing heats up several degrees when bodies are in taut proximity to one another, while Olivia Neergaard-Holm’s editing tracks quickening internal urges against the oppressive slowness of days in refugee purgatory. Catharsis is elusive as the film works toward a conclusion that has impact but no finality, with Iman still mired in cautious, unprotective silence, his toughest opponent still inside him.
It’s striking how often the word “removal”
Americans can’t get enough of processed corn. They eat it for breakfast, in cereal form, and all throughout the day, snacking on cookies and crackers and chips, often washing it down with soda (sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, naturally).
Premiering at the SXSW Film Festival, “Flamin’ Hot” tells the backstory of Frito-Lay’s insanely popular, ultra-spicy line of snack chips — the ones that singe your taste buds and stain your fingers a radioactive red — as marketing guru Richard Montañez lays it out in his memoir, “A Boy, a Burrito, and a Cookie: From Janitor to Executive.” After a rough start selling drugs and hustling on the streets of East Los Angeles, Montañez got a job cleaning the machines at Frito-Lay’s Rancho Cucamonga plant and worked his way up to head of Multicultural marketing. Along the way, he may or may not have invented the recipe for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Doritos, et al.
Montañez claims the spicy slurry was his idea, although a recent Los Angeles Times investigation suggests he had nothing to do with it — which doesn’t make the movie any less enjoyable. As we’ve established: Americans love corn, and “Desperate Housewives” star-turned-director Eva Longoria serves it up rich and tasty in her feature debut, scripted by Linda Yvette Chávez and Lewis Colick. Longoria has been directing shorts and episodic TV for more than a dozen years, bringing all that experience (and just the right amount of sizzle) to a stirring motivational exercise — one that treats Montañez’s charisma-to-burn mythology not as gospel truth so much as a compelling Horatio Alger story.
Personally, I want to believe Montañez, and while it wouldn’t exactly shock me to learn that a man who got rich selling sugar water to the masses might have “added a little flavor to it” (as former Frito-Lay honcho Al Carey told the Times), ”Flamin’ Hot” embraces Montañez’s self-aggrandizing claims for what they are: an inspirational tale of success in a country where Latinos make up a significant segment of the market, but hold relatively few leadership positions.
Longoria covers a lot of ground in 99 minutes, as she and editors Kayla Emter and Liza D. Espinas devise inventive ways to compress time and keep things moving — as in a sequence that spans eight years while panning around the Frito-Lay factory floor. It’s key to the movie’s personality that the story is told in Richard’s voice, earning instant familiarity and the license to embellish. For the role, she cast Jesse Garcia, the relatable co-star of 2006 indie darling “Quinceañera,” rather than some distractingly handsome heartthrob. That decision makes all the difference, as audiences need to believe that Richard has something to prove.
By his own account, Richard grew up on a winery in Guasti, Calif., and was bullied by the white kids for bringing homemade Mexican food to school. But he got wise quick, packing extra burritos and selling them for a quarter apiece in the cafeteria, turning his tormentors into customers. Before he could spend the money, however, he was arrested by a suspicious white police officer. “When the world treats you like a criminal, you become one,” he explains, sounding like the narrator of “Raising Arizona” or “My Name Is Earl,” as Longoria cuts forward more than a decade to Richard and future wife Judy (Annie Gonzalez) running from the cops.
A few years later, expecting his first child, Richard puts his family first, and Judy remains his biggest believer and champion. When he brings home the English-language employment application for Frito-Lay, she’s the one who fills it out. And when Richard hatches the idea to develop a picante variety that Latinos would like, she and the kids are right there in the kitchen, taste-testing a hundred mouth-scorching recipes. Richard’s other big ally is undervalued and initially stand-offish plant engineer Clarence C. Baker (Dennis Haysbert), who eventually warms to Richard’s interest in his machines, and who encourages him to think big.
From snack foods to studio movies, American businesses have long targeted white consumers. Richard’s innovation came in recognizing that leaders had to be convinced not to overlook Latinos as either customers or colleagues, an obvious-in-hindsight strategy that Hollywood and others have been slow to adopt. Squirming nervously in his necktie and suit, Richard tells slick-haired CEO Roger Enrico (Tony Shaloub) as much when he gets the chance to pitch his idea. The big boss responds to Richard’s initiative, even if the ranks of white flunkies — from the floor manager (Matt Walsh) to a handful of cartoonish boardroom stooges — insist that in the corporate world, new products “do not get created by blue-collared hoodlums.”
Technically, the Flamin’ Hot flavor may have been hatched in a more traditional way: by scientists and marketing execs in a lab. Or maybe not. While the movie commits to Richard’s version of events, Longoria also acknowledges that a development team was already working on something like it.
When Frito-Lay puts the neon-red powder into production at the Rancho Cucamonga facility, Richard samples a chip and says, “It’s not Judy’s, but it’ll do,” so maybe Montañez wasn’t the inventor so much as the guy who got it off the ground.
But who cares if the movie had to fudge a few details? Hollywood does that all the time, and ”Flamin’ Hot” is effective either way, whether this is an urban myth or a real-world case of a Mexican American underdog tapping into his heritage and sharing it with the masses. Longoria aims to set a positive example, and she’s made a “Rocky”-like crowd-pleaser that leaves audiences feeling more confident about themselves — all without overlooking the unsavory bits, such as Richard’s drug dealing and other distractions. Inspiration and entertainment can make corny bedfellows, but Longoria pulls it off, to the extent that a moment of faith when Richard and Judy pray doesn’t feel preachy, but a reflection of their priorities. “Flamin’ Hot” may commemorate a junk-food revolution, but the film has real substance — heck, you could even call it nutritional value, which is more than can be said for the Cheeto.
Americans can’t get enough of processed corn.
Your weekly horoscope is here. A sea change is foregrounding themes our logic-dominant culture prefers to the background.
It’s about time the creative flow state got the respect it deserves! If you have an artistic, empathetic, or mystic side (or just like to tune out to tune in and escape the mundane side of life), it’s time to take it seriously. Dial up the discipline to bring structure, form, and function to your game, go pro, or monetize your side hustle. The time is now because who will if you don’t do it yourself?
Read on to discover your weekly horoscope and what’s in store for your sign during the week of March 12 through March 18, 2023.
The path to mastery may be through your sleep. Or at least a regular bedtime. Saturn, the planet of self-discipline and commitment, is in your Zen zone until May 2025. It hands back whatever you put in, so develop a routine around the mystic arts like meditation, channeling, and dream journaling. Keep tabs on any swirling, hard-to-define fears. Take your rest and me-time seriously. A little self-imposed isolation will do you good. You may do your best creative work this way, and that creative work could define you from the inside out. Again, meditation and building a solid bridge to your inner self, inner dialogue, or unconscious is key. Find a way to give service to humanity to keep that well-sprung ego in a healthy place.
Since magnificent Venus (your ruling planet) tangoes through the entire zodiac circuit each year, her costume changes monthly. Her annual debut in your sign commences on Thursday. Make the most of the Goddess at home in Taurus until April 10. The best way to tap into the divine emanation of love, beauty, relationship, and material wealth is via your favorite things. Love your body, embrace sensuality, and note how people respond to you since you’re radiating extra right now. This is the best time for headshots, adding beauty to your life, or casting a positive self-image. It’s all about your personal brand, so dial it up. Look for beauty, value, and resources in the world, and you will spot them. At the same time, formalize or commit to a group or creative endeavor you’ve had on the burner. It’s time.
Your weekly horoscope is here. A sea
Daredevil: Born Again is adding another familiar face to its cast. Jon Bernthal, who played Punisher (aka Frank Castle) on Marvel’s Daredevil and in his own Marvel series on Netflix, is joining the Disney+ series.
A reboot of Netflix’s Daredevil series, Born Again will see Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio reprising their roles as Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Wilson Fisk/Kingpin, respectively. However, viewers will not see Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson reprising their roles for the new series. Disney+ has ordered 18 episodes for the reboot.
THR revealed the following about the series:
Born Again takes its title from a landmark Daredevil storyline published in 1986, written by Frank Miller and drawn by David Mazzuchelli. The show is deviating from that plot, although by how much is unclear. The Punisher, for example, made no appearance in the comic story. Daredevil versus Wilson Fisk, aka the Kingpin, remains the focal point.
A premiere date for Daredevil: Born Again will be announced later.
What do you think? Are you excited to see Bernthal back as Punisher for the Daredevil reboot?
by Regina Avalos, March 11, 2023 Daredevil: Born
The guest on this episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, which is posting the day before the 95th Oscars takes place in Hollywood and airs on ABC, is Janet Yang, the first-term president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Yang, the Queens-born daughter of Chinese immigrants, is only the 36th person — and just the fourth female, second person of color and first person of Asian descent — to lead Hollywood’s most powerful organization, following in the footsteps of luminaries like Douglas Fairbanks, Frank Capra, Bette Davis, George Stevens, Gregory Peck, Robert Wise and Karl Malden.
Over the course of a conversation at the Loews Hollywood Hotel, where Yang has been staying this week in order to oversee preparations for the Oscars at the adjacent Dolby Theatre, the 66-year-old reflected on a life and career that has defied the odds at every turn.
Yang speaks about the evolution of her relationship with China, where her parents were born but to which she felt little connection prior to a trip that she took with her family at the age of 16 in 1972, shortly after President Richard Nixon traveled there.
She discusses how she came to be involved in the film industry, generally, and to become the premier figure connecting the American and Chinese film industries in the 1980s — she was, for example, a liaison on Steven Spielberg’s Empire of the Sun — before transitioning into producing films such as 1993’s The Joy Luck Club, 1996’s The People vs. Larry Flynt and 2020’s Over the Moon.
And she speaks candidly about how racist jokes about Asians that were told during the Oscars ceremony in 2016 inspired her to become more active in the Academy (of which she had been a member since 2002), ultimately leading to her appointment to the organization’s board of governors in 2019 and to her election to the board’s top officer position in 2022.
She also engages on a host of hot-button topics, from accusations that this year’s Oscar nominations reflect racism on the part of Academy members to HBO’s decision to air the season finale of The Last of Us directly opposite the Oscars, the Academy’s decision to decline an offer to feature Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on this year’s telecast to whether or not the Academy should furnish Will Smith with the engraved nameplate that he failed to pick up a year ago after winning the best actor Oscar and throwing Hollywood’s biggest night into chaos.
It’s Academy Awards weekend, so cram in viewings of a few more of the nominees, fill out your Oscar pool entry and tune in to this conversation with the woman at the top of the organization behind it all.
The guest on this episode of The
Lewis Largent, the influential MTV VJ who hosted 120 Minutes and former music director of Los Angeles radio station KROQ, has died, report Variety and the Los Angeles Times. His family confirmed the news to Variety, stating that Largent died on February 20 after a “long illness.” He was 58.
Raised in Southern California, Largent took up golfing as a teen and landed a job working at a country club. It was there that he coincidentally met the the general manager of KROQ and impressed him with his vast knowledge of alt-rock, so much so that he granted Largent an internship there in 1985. After quickly ascending the ranks, Largent became the alt-rock station’s Music Director by 1989.
In 1992, Largent accepted an offer at MTV to become a Vice President of Music Programming. He soon began hosting 120 Minutes, the channel’s Sunday night show focused on alternative music, where he interviewed icons of the era such as David Bowie, Radiohead, Pavement, Björk, Trent Reznor, Dinosaur Jr., and PJ Harvey. When Largent passed his hosting duties over to Matt Pinfield in 1995, he shifted his focus to behind the scenes, becoming the Director of Music Programming at MTV. Later on, he was promoted to Vice President of Music and Artist Development.
Eventually, Largent wanted to turn his attention towards more label-focused work. He left MTV in 1999 for a senior A&R position at Island Def Jam Records. He stayed at the label for five years, signing artists such as Sum 41 and Andrew WK, among others.
Most recently, Largent went back to college to get a BA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and later earned his MFA in 2015.
Lewis Largent, the influential MTV VJ who
Leading documentary sales agent Philippa Kowarsky – who handled Oscar nominees “The Act of Killing,” “Collective” and “Flee” – gave a masterclass at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival this week.
Kowarsky recently returned to Cinephil, the documentary sales company she founded, as executive chair, after a brief stint at BBC’s doc strand Storyville. Cinephil’s current lineup includes Oscar nominee “A House Made of Splinters.”
Cinephil’s previous experience on “Flee” helped pave the way for “A House Made of Splinters,” but obstacles emerged she said. “The film had won best directing at Sundance and no one wanted it. We’ve been everywhere with this film – no one wanted it, or there were distributors that wanted it for deals that were so unattractive, we weren’t going to do it. But we had more and more festivals and we were winning more and more awards around the globe, and nothing in America. Then it was shortlisted for the Oscar, and still nothing in America,” she shared.
The film was nominated for an Oscar. Commenting on this year’s doc nominees, she said: “It’s an interesting batch of films and it just goes to show the documentary branch that’s voting is not voting only with money in mind. So, that is refreshing.”
Kowarsky lamented the lack of “middle class” films in today’s cinema ecosystem, due to the influence of the streamers, who have been splashing out on in-house content in recent years, resulting in the proliferation of big budget films and a manifest shortage of mid-tier productions. “You get the big films – [with production budgets of] $2 million, $3 million, $4 million, $5 million – and then they’re sold for $8 million, $10 million, even $25 million in America. And then there are the small films that are finding it hard to find $150,000. What happens to the middle class? And, this middle class is what I’m trying to protect, because I believe that this middle class is the industry; it’s us. And, people want to watch [these films],” she said.
Kowarsky said she has tremendous respect for the Scandinavians and loves working with them because of the support they offer their filmmakers and producers, providing them with an infrastructure that enables them to get ahead in the industry. She said to the Scandinavian representatives in the room: “You’re always on it, and you know what you’re looking for. You’ve got your finger on the pulse and you’re very well connected to all your filmmakers. So, it’s a win-win. And, this is what works in Europe. And, it’s true – in Europe, it’s not about money yet – hopefully never.”
She added: “The good news is no algorithm is telling a Danish filmmaker who’s working on their own how to make a film.”
Kowarsky said she holds producers in high regard. “I think producers are so important for our ecosystem. The producers with more experience, those that have run a lot of mileage, have so much to give to first-time directors and sometimes first-time producers as well.” She praised the work and methods of Oscar-nominated doc producer Jocelyn Barnes. “If anyone in this room is ever lucky enough to work with [her], you will be richer and more enlightened. She’s generous, and she deeply understands films, filmmaking and production, and she’s super connected. Anything that Jocelyn Barnes wants to produce, Cinephil is there because she’s just so amazing.”
Motto Pictures’ Julie Goldman and Chris Clements were also lauded. “These people have so much to give. It’s wonderful. And, it’s a pleasure to walk the path with them.”
Leading documentary sales agent Philippa Kowarsky –
MOTORIST Cinzia Lee was in for a shock when she received a traffic violation for using her phone while driving.
Disturbingly, the photo attached to her citation revealed more than just Cinzia checking a text.
2
Once she realised the surveillance photo showed a full up skirt shot, she reached out to traffic authorities, dismayed.
But the New South Wales traffic citations service did nothing to rectify the situation.
Cinzia said: “I got a written letter back that basically ignored everything that I’d said, except to say someone in the office does look at the photos.”
The motorist was floored at the lack of response for the inappropriate photo.
She continued: “You could see up my skirt, between my legs. You could see my underwear.
“You could see the phone, and right next to the phone there was my underwear.”
After public outcry, the transport services in NSW said they will review protocol for their handling of “sensitive images”, Minister for Roads Natalie Ward said.
Lucky for Cinzia, she didn’t have to pay the fine due to her impeccable driving record.
But she said something needs to change, since she has no control over the revealing photo of her, and who may see it.
She said: “It feels a bit like David versus Goliath because you have no control over who sees those photos.”
Cinzia isn’t alone in her fight to stop invasive photos taken from traffic cameras.
Another Aussie was shocked when he received a £500 fine after his wife reached for a sun visor.
Richard Arnold was fuming after receiving the photo of the incident: which had an upshot of his wife Anh Nyugen’s underwear.
Anh is only five feet tall, and had placed her leg on the vehicle’s dashboard when the inappropriate photo was taken by traffic cameras.
“It’s actually illegal I think to photograph up a skirt. Covert photographic surveillance should not be used in such an insensitive and disrespectful manner.”
Queensland’s Department of Transport and Main Roads said photographs taken by traffic cameras are encrypted and used only for “enforcement purposes”.
They also said the images aren’t altered in any way before being sent out with the infringement notice.
MOTORIST Cinzia Lee was in for a
Tessa Thompson attended the Variety Makeup Artistry Dinner with Armani Beauty at Ardor in West Hollywood.
Tessa Thompson attended the Variety Makeup Artistry
Load up Netflix on a TV screen today and you should see that a change has been applied: in the subtitle section you can now pick from several different colors and sizes to suit your preference and the display you’re watching on.
The update (via TechCrunch (opens in new tab)) gives you a choice between small, medium and large text, and four different styles: white with no background, white with a black background, yellow with a black background, and black with a white background.
To access these options, select the cog icon to the right of the current subtitle settings that appear when playback is paused. It’s a step up from the previous situation, where subtitles were only shown in one size, and in white without a background.
These options haven’t yet been switched on in every country where Netflix is available – if you’re not seeing them yet, then that might be why – but from what we can tell it appears that the roll out has already been quite extensive and swift.
Users could previously customize subtitles through the web and mobile interfaces, but these options didn’t apply to Netflix streaming through TV apps. There remain more customization options on the web and mobile, including a selection of different fonts.
Stats quoted by TechCrunch suggest that around three quarters of all streaming happens on a big screen rather than a phone or laptop, so these extra subtitle options are sure to be welcomed (and may even help Netflix increase its subscriber count).
It seems strange that Netflix has taken so long to add subtitle customizations to its TV interface, considering these options are already well established if you head to the Netflix settings on the web or through the mobile apps.
For those with hearing impairments, subtitles are absolutely essential. They’re also very helpful when watching movies and shows in a foreign language of course, and for those times when everyone else at home is in bed and you need to keep the volume down.
We’d like to see the TV subtitle options reach parity with those available for Netflix on the web – specifically a wider choice of background colors and font styles. Admittedly though, simplicity is usually best when you’re operating everything with a remote control.
Overdue it may be, but this is still a good step forward for Netflix. It’s clearly a win-win: accessibility initiatives like this one and those announced last year make the service more appealing to a broader range of people.
Load up Netflix on a TV screen
WHO I AM NOT
Section: Documentary Spotlight
Director: Tünde Skovrán
Producer: Andrei Zinca
Screenwriter: Tünde Skovrán
Logline: There is male, there is female, and then, there is I. Who I Am Not gives voice to the long ignored and mostly silent two percent of the world’s population: the intersex community. And it is an intimate look at the struggle of living in a male-female world, when you are born in-between. A personal exploration of truth, faith, and belonging.
Panelists: Tünde Skovrán (director); Andrei Zinca (producer); Sharon-Rose Khumalo (subject)
Sales Agent: Catherine Le Clef and Aleksandra Derewienko of CAT&Docs
Premieres: (Tonight) Saturday, March 11 8:30 p.m. Alamo Lamar C
Key Quotes: Skovrán: “All those intersex experiences can differ. So, Who I Am Not portrays two intersect stories, two intersect experiences. One is Sharon’s and the other one is Dimakatso Sebidi’s.”
Zinca: “The film is, I think, an invitation to a conversation about who we are as human beings from the point of view of biological sex. We are living in a very divided society, and among all of the divisions is the sex one. [There are] males and females and there is a little bit in between that is in the case of intersex people. So, almost 2 percent of the world population, secret, 2 percent of the world population not talked about, ignored.”
Khumalo: “When I discovered that I’m intersex it was a very, very lonely time and especially coming from South Africa, the first thing you go and do a Google search and it’s all people from America and different areas where they aren’t faces and voices like your own. So, this for me is just an ode to my younger self, that 21-year-old, but then also the families because this is a very deep issue that affects not just the person involved but their family as well.”
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.
WHO I AM NOT Section: Documentary Spotlight Director: Tünde Skovrán Producer: Andrei Zinca Screenwriter: Tünde
We’re living in a true crime boom in both scripted and unscripted television — but “Love & Death” director and exec producer Lesli Linka Glatter said she hopes her new HBO Max series will be seen as much more than that.
Sure, the series involves the true story of accused (but acquitted) axe murderer Candy Montgomery, played by Elizabeth Olsen. “There is a horrible true crime at the core of this, but we didn’t want it to be just a true crime story,” Glatter said Saturday in a panel discussion after the premiere of “Love & Death” at the South by Southwest festival. And the show doesn’t shy away from Montgomery’s actions. But “it’s really, things are not what they appear to be. You have to go deeper to see what’s really going on. We really tried to look at the ‘how’ and ‘why’ rather than the ‘what.’ How could this happen?”
The “Love & Death” premiere, held at Austin’s Paramount Theatre, served as a bit of a homecoming and reunion for the limited series’ cast and crew. “Love & Death” was filmed in the area, and is a story set in Texas (and even partly inspired by stories in Texas Monthly magazine). With an audience filled by actors and artisans who played a part in the production, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.
“This is the perfect place to show our show for the very first time,” Glatter (who was born in Dallas) said before a screening of the premiere episode. “We made it here. It is a Texas story. I am a Texas human. To tell a story that is set here, shot here, I see so much of our Austin cast and crew here…. For me this is about a Texas town and the characters. I fell in love with all of them. But there is also a deep hole inside of those characters.”
After the screening, creator and executive producer David E. Kelley explained his inspiration: “It was a true story. If I had written this stuff and made it up, they would have revoked my writers license, which has taken away before but this time it would have been for good. All that stuff really happened. I really felt more like a stenographer than a writer in this one. The story was so juicy and the characters were complex and human. It’s not often you find a nostalgic, warm community series that ends with an axe murderer.”
Olsen similarly noted that although her character eventually commits murder, she was drawn to the early nuance of Candy. “I fell in love with the way David wrote the first few episodes,” she said. “[Candy] was just so optimistic and resilient and hopeful and striving for more and had a deep hole in her life. She didn’t have any resources trying to fill it. So she’s doing the best she can with what she’s got and I just loved that about her.”
Jesse Plemons, who plays Allan Gore — the man with whom Candy has an affair (and whose wife Candy eventually kills) — said he is “drawn to characters that don’t reveal themselves immediately.”
Lily Rabe, whose character Betty (Allan’s wife) is the one killed by Candy, notes that in Kelley’s script, “Everyone is is on a path and struggling.” She notes that she has worked on several Kelley projects and “With David, I’ve been so lucky to work with him a few times. And “there are no foils for other characters. It’s just not the experience that I’ve had ever playing any of the women that he writes,” she said. “I think for Betty, she is sort of sinking, but she’s she’s trying to stay afloat. And she’s she’s doing her best. I think this is not a show about failing marriages, I think it’s about so much more.”
The HBO Max show was an official selection at this year’s SXSW festival. The seven-episode limited series debuts with three episodes on Thursday, April 27, followed by one episode weekly through May 25.
David E. Kelley wrote the series and Lesli Linka Glatter directed the first four and the final episodes, while Lionsgate is the studio. According to the show’s logline, the drama “tells the true story of Candy and Pat Montgomery and Betty and Allan Gore – two churchgoing couples enjoying their smalltown Texas life… until an extramarital affair leads somebody to pick up an axe.” The series is inspired by the book “Evidence of Love: A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs” and a collection of articles from Texas Monthly (“Love & Death in Silicon Prairie,” Part I & II).
Olsen and Plemons lead the cast, which also includes Lily Rabe, Patrick Fugit, Krysten Ritter, Tom Pelphrey, Keir Gilchrist and Elizabeth Marvel.
Kelley exec produces through David E. Kelley Productions; Nicole Kidman and Per Saari are EPs through Blossom Films; other EPs include Lesli Linka Glatter, Scott Brown and Megan Creydt (through Texas Monthly), Matthew Tinker, Michael Klick and Helen Verno.
We’re living in a true crime boom
Last Updated: March 23, 2020, 13:55 IST
Asur Review
Cast: Arshad Warsi, Barun Sobti, Sharib Hashmi, Ridhui Dogra, Anupriya Goenka, Amey Wagh
Director: Oni Sen
Indian web shows have almost caught up with the good content worldwide, especially in the crime-thriller genre. The budget and hence the production value could still be a constraint but it’s turning out really well on the storytelling part. The latest such show on the block, Voot Select’s Asur does its job quite neatly.
There’s a bit of Hindu mythological references and a tinge of supercop extravaganza, Asur travels back and forth in time zones 18 years apart. There’s Delhi with high IQ yet struggling officers and there’s Banares with even higher IQ criminals.
CBI officer Dhananjay Rajput (Arshad Warsi) has been accused of his wife’s murder and his former colleague Nikhil Nair (Barun Sobti) is the only one with willingness and expertise to solve the mystery. But before the FBI-returned Nair could get a grip on the situation, he finds himself entangled in serial killings. What he and his fellow officers such as Lolark Dubey (Sharib Hashhmi) and Nushrat (Ridhi Dogra), could achieve in a limited period forms rest of the story.
Read: Sacred Games Season 2 Review
Read: Inside Edge Season 2 Review
However, director Oni Sen, in typical True Detective style, binds this murder mystery with a genius-gone-wild narrative of a psychopath killer. It actually serves the purpose, especially when he shoots in open space with characters in close ups. You remember those American crime stories where the green fields engulf corpses and hid double-edged daggers.
In fact, the essence of Asur is to give it a mystical touch and exploring the impact of religious beliefs on the making of a serial killer. There are loose ends but Sen has tried to attach authenticity to his characters. You see characters reciting verses from religious books and standard psychology books. We also witness people fighting due to their biases and some only sticking to facts. In short, there’s a segregation—objective and blinded by faith. And this has been done in the most obvious way. You may accuse Sen of spoonfeeding the audience but such ploy serves the purpose. You know which side to choose!
Barun Sobti’s simple-yet-cool charm and assuring presence takes over from here. Be it Tu Hai Mera Sunday or 22 Yards, he has gone beyond expectations. He is subtle, unassuming and nuanced. Wish we could see more of him and quite often. Though Arshad Warsi spearheads Asur but Sobti slowly makes it his own.
Warsi and Sharib Hashmi have also stuck to their briefs. With his experience, Warsi never crosses the threshold of theatrics and brings in other supporting characters without making it obvious.
The look and feel of Asur is also relatively new to the Indian audience. Though Sacred Games will also be the pioneer in this segment but Asur has got its game right.
It loses the sheen towards the last episodes though. It becomes obvious and plays as per the natural progression in the viewer’s head. On second glance, it might seem as an oversimplified version of the good versus evil plot, but it will definitely hold your attention till you reach there.
Asur, an eight-episode series, is a good pick during coronavirus lockdown.
Rating: 3/5
Interact with Rohit Vats at Twitter/@nawabjha
Last Updated: March 23, 2020, 13:55 ISTAsur
The “evil twin” school of psychological metaphor has been a frequent device in horror fiction, and its familiarity does not much benefit the very literal-minded “Appendage.” Writer-director Anna Zlokovic’s first feature centers on a young Manhattanite whose insecurities manifest themselves in the form of a mini-me who becomes a serious usurping threat. This SXSW-launched Hulu Original is sufficiently polished to pass muster as a night’s streaming entertainment for undiscriminating genre fans. But despite the grotesque premise, its attack is a little too blunt to make much impact, whether taken as thinly-veiled satire or straight fantasy thriller.
Introduced chafing under the critical control of her waspish mother (Deborah Rennard) during a visit home to the suburbs, Hannah (Hadley Robinson) is a nice, talented, attractive twentysomething nonetheless driven by the sense that she’s got everything to prove. An aspiring fashion designer, she certainly gets negative reinforcement on that front from her employer, a stereotypically vicious style maven named Cristean (Desmin Borges). On the plus side, there is very supportive boyfriend Kaelin (Brandon Mychal Smith), and workmate/best friend Esther (Kausar Mohammed), who introduced the couple to one other. But their reassurances tend to fall on deaf ears, as Hannah stays up late each night slaving over dresses her mean-spirited boss will likely dismiss with a sneer.
The cumulative stress begins presenting itself physically, with Hannah experiencing abdominal pain not unlike an unborn child’s kicks. That turns out to be an apt comparison, more or less: Soon she’s giving “birth” to a nasty creature who amplifies all her worst self-doubts, offering a torrent of highly personal, ego-deflating abuse. Initially infant-sized, it grows quickly, and warns “You can’t get rid of me, no matter how hard you try” when she ties it up in her apartment building’s disused basement.
Consulting a doctor without conveying the full extent of her predicament, she’s told she might be have “vanishing twin syndrome” (an actual medical condition) from absorbing a second fetus in the womb. But that isn’t much help. More useful is the support group she discovers for similarly-afflicted people who’ve learned to control the parasites they call their “appendages.”
It is there that she meets Claudia (Emily Hampshire), a fellow sufferer who quickly appoints herself Hannah’s new BFF. Yet the temporarily subdued monster only seems to increase its hold over her psyche, planting paranoid suggestions that Esther and Kaelin are having a secret affair — when in fact they’re increasingly concerned about her mental health. Needless to say, once the “appendage” reaches full size and gets loose, everybody has even worse things to worry about.
Billed as a “horror comedy,” Zlokovic’s film doesn’t embrace either side of that equation zestily enough. The caricatured portrayal of easy targets — a bitchy fashion milieu, a “Karen”-ish suburban mom — lacks any real wit or invention, while the creature menace feels derivative and formulaic despite decent FX work. (Closing credits reveal Hampshire also provides voice for various “appendages,” their rude utterings processed though an irksome electronic filter.)
There’s one good twist toward the end, but nothing here feels original or inspired — particularly the way Hannah’s predicament is a crude representation of low self-esteem, which ultimately gets tamed by professions of self-love to her wounded inner child. These ideas aren’t presented with enough irony or emotional depth to transcend their obviousness. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is often even more on-the-nose, sometimes descending to a childish level of insult, as when one villain abuses a protagonist with the playground oldie “Stop hitting yourself!!”
The actors do OK given the material’s limits, though no one can elevate baddies written in a tenor of one-dimensional superciliousness. Shot primarily in North Carolina (with NYC exteriors), “Appendage” is competently crafted in technical and design departments. But while it’s watchable enough, the material Zlokovic has given herself feels undernourished for a leap to features after a decade of shorts — indeed, her original six-minute 2021 version (which had the omnipresent Eric Roberts as Cristean) feels more satisfying in its brevity.
The “evil twin” school of psychological metaphor
The only constant in the realm of cyber security is change; hackers are continuously maturing and becoming more sophisticated, attack patterns are constantly evolving, and the threat landscape is growing more volatile every day; one cyber attack occurs every 39 seconds.
That’s why we’ve enhanced Feedly AI’s knowledge of cyber attacks, targets, and industries so you can keep pace with the threat landscape and do what you do best: maintain the integrity of your security posture. You can ask Feedly AI to flag critical cyber attacks in your feeds and focus on specific attacks targeting your industry or supply chain. You can also push attack insights to your internal platforms via the Feedly API.
Feedly AI flags important information to focus your efforts on targeted insights. Feedly AI understands cyber attacks because we taught him about malware, ransomware, data breaches, phishing, social engineering, and fraud.
You can train Feedly AI further and have him focus on the specific topics, threats, and threat actors you care about to gain a deeper understanding of the threat landscape as it applies to you.
From a proactive monitoring perspective, the power of using Feedly AI is to actually inform you of breaches before anyone else knows.”
You can start by training Feedly AI to recognize cyber attacks as a smart topic, a concept that Feedly AI has been trained to understand with our AI models. Simply navigate to the security category you want to add this insight to and enter “cyber attack” as a topic. Training Feedly AI to highlight cyber attacks in your security feed keeps you up-to-date with the most recent reports. Highlighting the attacks that are actually being conducted in the wild helps you effectively prioritize and ensures you never miss a thing.
We’ve taught Feedly AI to recognize 19 industry sectors to ensure you always have the most current industry-relevant threat intelligence at your fingertips. Don’t see your industry? No problem! Ask us and we’ll teach Feedly AI to recognize it.
We were able to turn the list of our top partners into an AI Feed and ask Feedly AI to flag cyberattacks targeting those partners. That’s how we identified that one of our vendors had been breached a week before that the actual company told us.”
Feedly AI also recognizes each company listed in the Forbes Fortune 500 list to help you optimize and maintain your vendor security initiatives.You can gain these deeper insights simply by adding the industry or company you want Feedly AI to flag for you.
You can use Feedly AI to detect new risks, reinforce your vendor risk programs, and potentially be the first to discover a breach.
Track up to 1,000 vendors in your supply chain to see the most relevant cyber attacks early.
Supply chain attacks have been in the limelight recently. Now, Feedly AI can help you cross-reference your known vulnerabilities with the latest threat intelligence. Proactive alerting informs you of critical vulnerabilities, cyber attacks, and emerging threats before anyone else. Need to know about zero-day exploits as soon as they are targeted? No problem. Need to create your own list of companies you want to track? Feedly AI has your back.
Feedly AI continuously gets smarter and more accurate. This process is optimized with your feedback! With the ‘Less Like This’ button, you can let Feedly AI know the article it prioritized is wrong or not relevant to you.
Every second counts in cybersecurity. You tell Feedly AI what you want and it populates the insights you need, when you need them.
Feedly AI does the work upfront so you can filter out the noise and save massive time, working smarter and faster. Up to 80% faster.
Before using Feedly AI to track cyber attacks, we would struggle with an overload of data and waste time sifting through information. Our feed is now 2-3 times shorter, we do not miss out on any important cyber attacks and we earned back so much time!“
The Cyber Attack AI Model is one of the advanced AI skills in the Feedly for Cybersecurity package.
The only constant in the realm of
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Welcome to another episode of I AM THE NIGHT, a podcast dedicated to breaking down every episode of Batman: The Animated Series. Each week, the wonderful Steve J Ray (reviewer at DC Comics News, as well as Editor-in-Chief of our sister site Dark Knight News) and a guest will sit down and dive cowl first into an episode of the greatest animated series of all time.
In this episode, Steve is joined by fellow DCN and DKN writer, and his son, Adam Ray, to talk about the season three episode of Batman: TAS (aka The New Batman Adventures), titled “Cold Comfort“. So sit back, put on your cape and cowl, and prepare yourself for a journey into the darkness!
Our “Cold Comfort” episode is also available on YouTube:
Steve J Ray: www.twitter.com/el_steevo
Adam Ray: www.twitter.com/IzzetTinkerer
“I Am The Night” Theme by David B. (www.twitter.com/DavidBMusic21)
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131 Welcome to another episode of I AM
Wayfinder’s monetization structure will follow a fair F2P model similar to Warframe’s with the help of Digital Extremes’ experience.
Wayfinder's monetization structure will follow a fair
As a screenwriter, coming up with a compelling and unique idea for a screenplay is only the first step in the process. To truly bring your story to life, it’s essential to conduct thorough research to ensure that your idea is grounded in reality and has the potential to resonate with audiences.
In this guide, we’ll explore some of the best ways to research a screenwriting idea, including reading and watching relevant material, conducting online and field research, and brainstorming to develop your ideas further.
By following these strategies, you’ll be able to create a well-crafted and authentic screenplay that captures the hearts and minds of your audience.
Let’s dive in.
Research is an essential part of the screenwriting process, and the more effort you put into it, the better your screenplay will be.
Sometimes, we use research to procrastinate. But I think this guide will help keep you on track while you put together your next project.
As a screenwriter, coming up
It’s the Saturday immediately before the Oscars, which can mean only one thing in the world of pop-culture news: It’s time to glance, as briefly as possible, at the Golden Raspberry Awards, a.k.a. The Razzies, before getting on with the rest of our days. Now in their 42nd year of offering low-level comedic commentary on the most obviously failed movies of the year, the Razzies have served up their latest bushel of low-hanging fruit this morning—including giving themselves an award after that whole “Maybe we shouldn’t be making highly public fun of children” controversy from earlier this year. (A follow-up, of sorts, to last year’s “Maybe we shouldn’t be making fun of beloved actors who’ve just been diagnosed with aphasia” controversy. The Razzies: Fun for the whole family!)
Anyway: Today’s “winners” include Tom Hanks, who won an award both for Worst Supporting Actor (for Elvis), and for worst on-screen pairing (for his relationship with his own “latex-laden face,” also from Elvis). Internet meme factory Morbius also got drubbed, with both Jared Leto and co-star Adria Arjona both getting hit. And Blonde got tapped twice, both for Worst Picture outright, as well as for Worst Screenplay.
The most interesting bit—besides the Razzies being forced to reckon with the increasingly obvious greatness of Colin Farrell, who received a backhanded “Redeemer” award for his recent career resurgence—was the aforementioned mea culpa, though. After getting widely mocked online for targeting 12-year-old actor Ryan Kiera Armstrong for her performance in Firestarter, the Razzies instead gave the Worst Actress award to themselves, successfully beating out Bryce Dallas Howard, Alicia Silverstone, Diane Keaton, and Kaya Scodelario for the honor. At long last: Accountability and self-reflection in the field of making fun of mediocre film.
[via THR]
Left: Tom Hanks in Elvis. Right: Jared
Millie Bobby Brown said she is “very ready to say goodbye” to Hawkins.
During an interview with Seventeen magazine, published online Tuesday, the Enola Holmes star opened up about the upcoming fifth and final season of Stranger Things.
“I’m definitely ready to wrap up,” she said. “I feel like there’s a lot of the story that’s been told now, and we know of it, it’s been in our lives for a very long time.”
Brown rose to fame following her breakout role as Eleven at the age of 12 in the hit Netflix series. Created by Matt and Ross Duffer, the sci-fi show, which premiered in 2016, also stars Finn Wolfhard, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Winona Ryder and David Harbour. Sadie Sink joined the gang in Hawkins in the second season.
The Godzilla vs. Kong actress explained that she’s ready for this chapter in her life to come to a close and for new ones to open up. “I’m able to create stories myself that are important to me and focus on the bigger picture,” she added. “But I’m really grateful [for the show].”
Brown isn’t the first Stranger Things star to get candid about the final season. Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper, told Discussing Film in February that after “almost nine years from filming the first season … [he thinks] it is time for it to end.”
“It is time for us to leave that nest and try other things and different projects,” he added. “And to let the Duffer brothers try different things as well. I mean, those guys are so talented. I want to see what they come up with next. So it is bittersweet, but it’s definitely time.”
Last year, Sink said on the Today show, “To think that we have to kind of say goodbye to that security and knowing that we won’t be seeing each other for another season, it’s scary and sad, but I think it’s exciting to move on to the next chapter.”
Millie Bobby Brown said she is “very
Another great visit this week from podcasters Stefanie Parker and Jackie Maroney from the “She’s All Bach” podcast as we discuss this weeks episode of the “Bachelor,” Zach overall as a Bachelor this season, some of the cringey conversations he’s had with the women, the seemingly strong bond between the women this season, and much, much more. Before that, I go over my appearance on Courtney Robertson’s podcast yesterday “Off Contract,” where some serious tea was spilled by both of us. Such a great conversation with Courtney on topics like Chris Harrison, Nick Viall, Arie Luyendyk Jr., her finale, our relationship over the years and, well, plenty more. It’s an hour and 40 min conversation so there’s plenty there. Check it out if you can. I also discuss at the beginning of today’s podcast an idea I have if I were a producer on this next season of the “Bachelorette.” Will they listen? Probably not. I’m going to offer a suggestion of what I would do if I were them. Thanks again to Stefanie and Jackie for coming on as they are always welcome on the podcast.
You can listen to today’s podcast on a number of platforms, but you can also tune in by clicking the player below:
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts,RSS, Stitcher, Spotify
Music written by Jimmer Podrasky
(B’Jingo Songs/Machia Music/Bug Music BMI)
(SPOILERS) I begin by briefly talking about the latest “Bachelorette” thoughts I have & my appearance on Courtney Robertson’s podcast. Then Stefanie & Jackie join me (12:52) to discuss Monday’s episode of the “Bachelor,” their thoughts on Zach this season, which of the women they’ve really liked this season, the awkwardness of some of the breakups, what they’ve been doing on their podcast, and much, much more.
Instagram – @shesallbach
Instagram – @jackiemaroney_
(SPOILERS) Today’s Daily Roundup covers my appearance on Courtney’s podcast, the Fan Appreciation Party almost sold out (Courtney’s coming!), more on Charity as “Bachelorette” & what I think producers should do on ATFR night, World Challenge, Survivor, and Farmer Wants a Wife.
You can listen to that podcast on a number of platforms, but you can also tune in here:
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts,RSS, Stitcher, Spotify
Music written by Jimmer Podrasky
(B’Jingo Songs/Machia Music/Bug Music BMI)
Send all links and emails to: steve@realitysteve.com. To follow me on Twitter, it’s: www.twitter.com/RealitySteve. Instagram name is RealitySteve, or join my Reality Steve Facebook Fan Page. Talk to you tomorrow.
Share Tweet Share Share Email Another great visit this week from podcasters
Everything Everywhere All at Once writer, director and coproducer Daniel Kwan (who, along with partner Daniel Scheinert, are simply “The Daniels”) posted a string of messages today on Twitter.
In the string, he reflected on the wild ride his film has enjoyed in the run-up to Sunday’s Academy Award. But he cautioned fans not to be disappointed if it doesn’t sweep every category in which it is nominated. He called for them to be “gracious and kind” tomorrow, “especially if we don’t pick up awards that you may have felt we deserved.”
Kwan also indicated he’ll be taking a social media break after the Oscars.
His string:
Everything Everywhere All at Once writer, director and
Shakira and Bizarrap brought their chart-topping collab to The Tonight Show.
The Colombian star and Argentine DJ paid a visit to Jimmy Fallon on Friday (March 10) to promote their global hit “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” which has officially broken 14 Guinness World Records.
Prior to giving a sensational live performance of the dis track, which peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100, Shakira sat down with Fallon and recalled hearing Bizarrap’s “Vol. 53” beat for the first time in Barcelona.
“It reminded me of Depeche Mode,” the 46-year-old songstress remembered. “The song, if you listen to it, it’s got a little bit of that sort of, like, cool, dark undertone. I love Depeche Mode. It’s my favorite.”
The superstar added that she immediately knew the song would be a hit.
“I started to feel it in my body, you know. I usually have this visceral sort of physical reaction to music,” Shak explained. “If you see me, you know, two-stepping, things are not right. You know? I know when a song works because then I suddenly start moving, like, getting these small contractions from my tailbone to my iliac bone, and then it just results into, you know, hip movements.”
In “Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53,” which also reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, Shakira is more unapologetic and empowered than ever, spitting diss verses to ex-boyfriend Gerard Piqué and even throwing a jab at his new love interest.
Watch Shakira and Bizarrap’s Tonight Show appearance in the videos below.
Shakira and Bizarrap brought their chart-topping collab
SXSW 2023 REVIEW! A struggling late-next talk-show host goes to drastic measures for ratings in Colin and Cameron Cairnes’ horror feature, Late Night with the Devil.
It’s October 31, 1977, and Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) is a syndicated talk show host whose show is on the verge of cancellation unless he can impress sponsors during Sweeps Week. Up to this point, Jack has not even come close to toppling the late-night king, Johnny Carson. As the years pass, Delroy resorts to cheap stunts, aggressive treatment of his staff, joining a woodland cult, and exploiting the death of his wife, Madeleine (Madeleine).
Late Night with the Devil presents the recently discovered final episode of Jack Delroy’s show, Night Owls. Joined by his long-suffering co-host Gus (Rhys Auteri), tonight’s special Halloween show features spirit medium Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), professional skeptic Carmichael Hunt (Ian Bliss), paranormal psychiatric June Ross-Mitchell as well as the subject of her book, Conversations with the Devil, former child cult survivor Lilly D’Abo (Ingrid Torelli).
To reveal much more of the plot lands us squarely into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, when the “formerly” demon-possessed Lily is encouraged to show her host on live television, things go horribly wrong…horribly.
Late Night with the Devil is simply a terrifying thrill ride with David Dastmalchian as its perfect host. The film is meant to give us the feel of The Tonight Show during the 70s with black and white footage of the backstage shenanigans during the break. The Cairnes brothers do an incredible job of making the television show feel as authentic as possible, from the feel of old videotape to the gaudy 70s Michael Douglas set design.
“…Delroy resorts to cheap stunts, aggressive treatment of his staff, joining a woodland cult, and exploiting the death of his wife…”
At first glance, I don’t know if you’d think David Dastmalchian could play a TV host with his unique personality, but for this horrific story, he’s absolutely perfect in the role. There’s so much dimension to Jack Delroy as the television personality desperate to stay in the public spotlight who makes one compromising and dangerous choice after the other for rating points.
Dastmalchian is also aided by an incredibly elaborate script that wastes nothing to tell this story. It’s more than just a demon-possessed girl unleashing her “potential.” The role of Ian Bliss as the “Amazing Randi”-like skeptic provides the perfect counter-balance to what Delroy’s audience is seeing, along with a personal twist in Delroy’s relationship with Dr. Ross. Though the story seems a bit predictable, it isn’t. Once the s**t hits the fan, we’re left on our own to figure out what’s happening next.
The Cairnes wisely choose present as authentic a television show as possible, which may dampen the intensity of the scares, but the film is still just plain fun to watch. The effects are wonderful, with the vast majority of them being practical. Let’s be honest. This film leans on fun over terror. The effects may not be exorcist levels but fun nonetheless.
I wish I could describe more of this story to you, but you must find a way to see Late Night with the Devil with as little knowledge as possible. There’s fun in experiencing this film for the first time.
Late Night with the Devil screened at the 2023 SXSW Film Festival.
SXSW 2023 REVIEW! A struggling late-next talk-show
A patient in Halifax whose family doctor is closing her practice is concerned about what this means for him and the thousands of other patients.
All four doctors at the Southend Family Practice, located in the Halifax Professional Centre on Spring Garden Road, are closing their practices as of Aug. 30, which will leave more than 4,000 patients without a primary care provider.
In a letter to patients last week, Dr. Maria Sampson said “lack of support” was a contributing factor.
“Despite working with the Nova Scotia physician recruitment team for over a year, they have not secured a replacement physician to take over any of our patients,” she said.
“I regret and understand the stress this will cause you. The current state of health care in Nova Scotia and the lack of support for primary care providers has accelerated this closure.”
The other physicians are Drs. Sarah Brydie, Johanna Graham and Lianne Yoshida.
Darrell Spurr, who had been a patient at the Southend Family Clinic for 20 years, said he heard about the closure first-hand from his provider, Dr. Yoshida.
“It was obvious that she was not happy about having to do this,” he said.
“It’s difficult … because you know sooner or later your doctor may give you news that they’re retiring, or they’re moving to a different practice.
“It’s happened to me before in the past, but I’ve never had a problem with getting a doctor before.”
Spurr said he had a good experience with his doctor, who, despite being busy, ensured he was well-taken-care-of. One time, he said he had surgery and she showed up at the hospital to make sure he was OK.
“There’s not many doctors that do that in this day and age,” he said. “She always had time for me, but it was obvious she was under a lot of pressure.”
Now, he and the thousands of other patients from that clinic are staring down the barrel of the province’s Need a Family Practice Registry, the waitlist for a primary care provider that continues to grow with each passing month.
The waitlist hit an all-time high of 137,587 people this month, making up almost 14 per cent of the province’s total population.
The figures are up by nearly 4,000 people since last month, which Spurr called “disheartening.”
The province’s health department couldn’t be reached for comment Saturday, but Health Minister Michelle Thompson told reporters last week that the doctors at the clinic had requested “additional resources” — another doctor to share their workload.
Thompson said they were “not able to reach an agreement” and it was determined that the additional resources “would not, in fact, result in an increased level of access.”
“I appreciate that it’s unfortunate, it’s very difficult for those patients,” she said, “but again, we will continue to work with Nova Scotia primary care providers to not only look at how we support them in their current practice, but how we improve attachment and access.”
Thompson said the doctors will stay in the province and work in other areas of the health-care system.
Spurr, however, questions the logic behind denying the clinic an extra doctor, resulting in the loss of four family physicians.
“What is one doctor compared to losing four doctors?” he said.
Zach Churchill, leader of the opposition Liberals, told Global News that the province has never before seen such a large increase in the number of people looking for a family doctor.
“This government was elected to fix health care, and we’ve only seen the major parts of our health-care system get worse,” he said, noting the growing family doctor wait list, as well as emergency room and surgery wait times.
“What the current government is doing is not working … this is not an acceptable situation.”
Churchill said it was a mistake for the province to do away with an incentive to attract doctors to the Halifax region – one of the fastest-growing regions in the country – and also decried what he called “political involvement in the management of our health-care system.”
“This government got rid of a board of experts, they fired medical professionals who were managing the health-care system and put in place their political friends and allies,” he said.
“We have heard that people are worried that the decisions are being made through a political lens and not a health-care lens.”
Susan LeBlanc, NDP spokesperson for Health and Wellness, said she worries about the people on the waitlist for the doctor getting “lost in the system.”
She said those who don’t have access to primary care need to rely on virtual care, or walk-in clinics that can be “very hard to get into.”
“It’s really tricky, and ultimately what it means is people won’t get care when they need it, and end up getting sicker,” she said.
“And so that means people will be going to emergency departments, and on and on. It’s just a domino effect into the rest of the health-care system.”
Both Churchill and LeBlanc said they would like to see the province work with doctors and other health-care professionals to ensure they have the resources they need to continue working in the province.
LeBlanc also said she would like to see “substantial investment” in collaborative family health teams and physician assistants in this year’s provincial budget.
Meanwhile, Spurr said improvements to the struggling health-care system are urgently needed.
“Show us what you’re planning on doing about health care, not tell us about what you’re going to do four years from now,” he said.
— with files from Vanessa Wright
A patient in Halifax whose family doctor
As Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 barrels the Marvel Studios’ franchise toward its conclusion, Karen Gillan, stopping in Deadline’s SXSW studio provided a glimpse as to how life is shaping up for Thanos’ adopted daughter and Gamora’s adopted sister, Nebula, in the threequel.
“Now we’re seeing Nebula post the death of the source of her trauma, Thanos. He’s been eliminated from the story, and now we’re seeing her character become a little bit of the person that she should have been had that not happened to her,” Gillan told Deadline.
Cranky and combative Nebula’s idea of bliss now is “her new family with the new Guardians and letting love in for the first time, rather than the defense mechanism always triggering. Allowing her to be loved and to love,” said the actress who was at SXSW for the world premiere of her movie Late Bloomers from director Lisa Steen and screenwriter Anna Greenfield.
In the third movie from filmmaker James Gunn, Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill is still reeling from the loss of Zoe Saldana’s Gamora. He must rally his team around him to defend the universe along with protecting one of their own. A mission that, if not completed successfully, could quite possibly lead to the end of the Guardians as we know them. Gunn has also expressed in interviews how important it was for him to wrap Rocket Raccoon’s story. An enemy in part 3 is the High Evolutionary played by Chukwudi Iwuji. At San Diego Comic-Con, the actor, appearing in full costume, exclaimed to Hall H, “Thank you for inspiring me for how vomitous you all are…I can’t wait to dissect all of you and see what I can learn.”
(L-R) Margaret Sophie Stein and Karen Gillan in ‘Late Bloomers’
We’re Doin’ Great / Park Pictures
In Late Bloomers, Gillan plays 28-year-old-Louise, a depressed musician, recently single, who breaks her hip and winds up in physical therapy with people twice her age. There she meets cranky Polish lady Antonia (Malgorzata Zajaczkowska), who speaks no English. Louise winds up caring for her. Neither loves the arrangement. The character is some ways is a soul sister to the alcoholic that Gillan played in her feature directorial debut, The Party’s Just Beginning. Deadline film reviewer Damon Wise beamed about Late Bloomers that it’s “a defiantly female-fronted indie, showcasing an engaging and refreshingly vanity-free performance from Karen Gillan.”
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 blasts off the summer on May 5.
As Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Though she doesn’t play an instrument in the band, Camilla Alvarez now Dunne (Camila Morrone) crucially shapes the evolution of The Dunne Brothers to The Six in Prime Video’s new show “Daisy Jones & the Six,” adapted from the best-selling novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
Morrone portrays the band’s eventual photographer, who starts dating Billy Dunne just as his band — then The Dunne Brothers — finds its feet. When the band decides to move to California, she doesn’t originally plan to go with them, but she ends up tagging along.
“She is central to this band,” said creator Scott Neustadter, who adapted the show. “She feels like they are her family, and she is the mom in a way. That’s her superpower. We leaned into that.”
Camila sets the tone for women in the band when Karen Sirko (Suki Waterhouse) asks her if it’s worth leaving The Winters to join the group of four guys.
“She’s really the propeller. She welcomes these beautiful, incredibly talented women into her life with such grace and never really looks at them as a threat,” Morrone said.
One night before they get a deal to cut an album, Karen suggests a name change for the band due to the fact that there are now women involved, and she suggests “The Six” include Camila.
“When Karen at the diner says that Camilla is the sixth member of the band, that was like a really sweet and emotional scene because Camilla really feels seen. Karen makes sure to make Camilla feel how important she [is],” she added. ”She [isn’t] just the wife of a rock star, She [isn’t] labeled as one thing. That kind of represents these female dynamics in the show of uplifting women.”
Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) comes in on the band’s next album to feature on the song “Look At Us Now (Honeycomb),” but she and Billy clash immediately. Camila makes it possible for Daisy (Riley Keough) to join The Six when she invites her to their housewarming party even though she and Billy are at odds over recording.
“She’s the heart and soul of the book. She keeps everyone together,” executive producer Brad Mendelsohn told TheWrap. “She supports Daisy despite knowing what’s going on or what she thinks might be going on between her and Billy. She’s just the through line.”
Camila senses that Daisy makes The Six better even if Keough’s character might make things more complicated for Billy.
”Despite all the stuff that happens between Daisy and Camilla, Camilla doesn’t ever act like a threatened woman,” Morrone continued. “Camila knows what’s best for the band and in a lot of ways, she puts herself aside and her needs and her emotions and insecurities aside in order to best benefit the band. That’s one of her most incredible attributes — her ability to be selfless and put other people first and do what’s best for others.”
Though she doesn’t play an instrument in
Who says superheroes can’t be Oscar winners? Marvel has pulled quite a few Academy Award-winning actors, actresses and directors into its cinematic universe. Angela Bassett herself has been nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Queen Romanda in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Michelle Yeoh, who has appeared in both “Guardians of the Galaxy” as Aleta Ogord and “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rigns” as Ying Nan, has been nominated for Best Actress for her other multiversal role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” Brian Tyree Henry, who plays Phastos in “Eternals” has been nominated for the Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting role for his work in “Causeway” opposite Jennifer Lawrence. Another Eternal, Barry Keoghan who plays Druig, is also competing in that category.
Michael Douglas, who most recently appeared in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” as Dr. Hank Pym, won not one, but two Oscars. Cate Blanchett has also won two Oscars, and she’s up for Best Actress for her role in “Tár.” Another two time Oscar-winner set to make a big appearance in the MCU is Mahershala Ali.
“Thor: Ragnarök” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” director and actor Taika Waititi won an Oscar for adapting the screenplay for “Jojo Rabbit.” “Belfast” director and Oscar-winner Kenneth Branagh directed “Thor.”
Below, we run down every Oscar winner who has appeard in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far — and it’s a growing list!
Who says superheroes can't be Oscar winners?
View gallery
Matthew Lawrence, 43, and Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas, 52, looked smitten with each other during their latest public appearance on Thursday. The actor and TLC singer wore matching black outfits, which included a black blazer over a black top and black pants for him, and a long black leather coat over a black leather top and pants for her, as they were photographed outside a Lifetime event in Los Angeles, CA. At one point, the doting boyfriend helped the beauty out of a car and they held hands and stayed close while walking by cameras.
Chilli was all smiles as she strutted her stuff into the event location. Her hair was down and she showed off epic makeup. Matthew looked handsome in sunglasses that went perfectly with his overall look.
The lovebirds’ latest outing comes after they were spotted passionately kissing at Los Angeles International Airport a week ago. The doting beau also helped Chilli with her luggage and they embraced outside of and inside of a car. They didn’t seem to pay attention to onlookers and just gazed into each other’s eyes at one point, proving their bond is a close one.
Matthew and Chilli have been Hollywood’s hot new couple ever since his rep confirmed they were in an “exclusive relationship” following his divorce from Cheryl Burke. The two first sparked romance rumors when they were seen hanging out in Hawaii back in Aug. Despite the summer sighting, they confirmed that their romance didn’t start until around Thanksgiving and Matthew’s family has reportedly already welcomed Chilli with open arms.
Before their relationship, Matthew was married to Cheryl from 2019 until 2022 and Chill was previously involved in a romance with Usher from 2001 until 2004. She was also romantically involved with music producer Dallas Austin, with whom she shares son Tron Austin, 25. Matthew described his new girlfriend as “really special.” during a recent interview. “My life is in complete bloom right now,” he told ET on March 3. “I get to spend time with an amazing woman like Chilli. I’ve never gotten to be able to experience that kind of relationship before. She’s really, really special.”
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View gallery Image Credit: The Daily Stardust /
Last Updated: March 11, 2023, 21:55 IST
Karan Kundrra and late actor Satish Kaushik ruled headlines on Satrday. (Photos: Instagram)
Karan Kundrra seems to have ended the speculation regarding his breakup with ladylove Tejasswi Prakash. On Saturday evening, the Tere Ishq Mein Ghayal actor took to his Twitter handle and shared a witty response to all the allegations and trolls. Even though he did not address breakup rumours directly, the actor wrote, “Thank you for all the wishes love and prayers.. its because of you that we grow tenfold.. #March #StrongerEachPassingMoment”.
Read More: Karan Kundrra Finally Breaks Silence On His and Tejasswi’s Breakup Rumours, Says ‘It Is Because…’
Days after Satish Kaushik’s sudden demise, it has now been reported that Delhi police have found packets of ‘objectionable medicine’ from the farmhouse where the actor-director was staying. Reportedly, the farmhouse belongs to Satish Kaushik’s friend Vikas Malu. As reported by the news agency ANI, cops are now trying to find who the medicines were meant for and have sent the same for examination too.
Read More: Satish Kaushik’s Death: ‘Objectionable Medicine’ Found, Cops To Examine CCTV Footage
Days after surviving a ‘very big’ heart attack, Sushmita Sen walked the ramp for fashion designer Anushree Reddy. In the pictures that surfaced on social media, the Bollywood diva was posing in a lime green embellished lehenga. She accessorised her look with a green necklace and a finger ring. Earlier this month, Sushmita Sen left her fans shocked and worried after she revealed suffering a heart attack recently. She later revealed that there was 95 percent blockage in her main artery.
Read More: Sushmita Sen Walks Ramp In First Public Appearance After Surviving ‘Very Big’ Heart Attack; Pics
Priyanka Chopra Jonas has been a huge advocate of body positivity. The actress recently revealed how she was body shamed ahead of an event in Los Angeles. She was talking to Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke during the Southwest Film Festival when the global icon opened up about being told many things about her body ‘that are difficult to hear’. She also admitted how she broke down after the incident in front of her singer-husband Nick Jonas because she was ‘hurt’.
Read More: Priyanka Chopra Reveals Breaking Down To Nick Jonas After Being Body Shamed, Says ‘I Was Hurt’
In bittersweet news for RRR fans, Ram Charan and Jr NTR will not be performing their hit track Naatu Naatu at the Oscars 2023. However, they will be treated to a performance of the song by American actress Lauren Gottlieb who has predominantly worked in the Indian film industry. Taking to her Instagram, the ABCD: Any Body Can Dance star confirmed that she will be representing India at the 95th Academy Awards and performing on the Golden Globe Award-winning song.
Read More: Not Ram Charan, Jr NTR But ‘This’ American Actress Will Perform on RRR Song Naatu Naatu At Oscars
Read all the Latest Movies News here
Last Updated: March 11, 2023, 21:55 ISTKaran
Nomcebo Zikode receives top entertainment honours at Forbes Woman Africa 2023
Nomcebo Zikode receives top entertainment honours at
There’s a fine balance between reducing noise and never missing out on important information. Leo Web Alerts let you cast a wide net: Just tell Leo to track your chosen concept (like companies, trends, technologies, malware families…) across the web, and you’ll get the results in Feedly. Then, refine your Web Alerts based on your specific requirements. In this tutorial, we’ll show you a few advanced tips and tricks that can help you optimize the signal-to-noise ratio based on your area of interest.
When you’re setting up a Web Alert, Leo can track your topic across “Everything” — this means he will read article titles and the full text, searching for the concepts you’re interested in.
This is a great way to make sure you’re never missing out, but can sometimes result in noise in your feed. For example, if your topic is mentioned in a long article, but is not the subject of the entire piece.
To avoid this noise, you can switch to “Title” matching mode, and Leo will surface articles that mention your topic or concept in the title only.
When tracking a concept with keywords, you have to manually list out possible keywords. We’ve pre-trained Leo to recognize hundreds of concepts, so you can replace a long list of keywords with a single concept. Leo Concepts are machine learning models that replace large sets of keywords, remove blind spots, and reduce noise.
For example, if you want to track product launches with keywords, many articles might mention the phrase “product launch” rather than actually provide news about a launch. You can leverage Leo Concepts, as Leo has been trained to recognize and flag launches — even if they don’t contain the phrase “product launch” at all — in articles like this one, for example.
Then, combine concepts (like adding your industry or a specific company you want to keep an eye on) to improve the signal-to-noise ratio even more.
You can specify how many articles per week you want to see related to this topic. Think of this like telling Leo how picky you would like him to be when he chooses which articles to show you.
In the first step in the slider, Leo reads manually curated top-notch industry publications, blogs, business and strategy magazines, and research journals. As you move the slider to the right, Leo will browse through sources that are less and less popular. Adjusting the velocity slider can drastically reduce noise in your feed.
Leo knows the difference between a research journal or a news article, and between a news article and a blog post, etc. This is incredibly helpful when you want to keep up with everything related to your topic of interest, but you only want to hear from experts.
Under the “Sources” tab, you can select from a variety of bundles of sources.
To exclude a noisy source or topic in your preview results, you can click the Less Like This button.
You can also exclude topics when you’re creating a Web Alert with the ‘NOT’ section.
For the best results, we recommend starting with a wide net (Leo recommends the best settings for you by default), and using the preview screen to refine more. Web Alerts become a “source” for your specified Feed, and you can always go back and refine them further.
To recap, here are the basic steps to translating your intelligence needs into Leo Web Alerts:
To refine an existing Web Alert, click on the Web Alert inside your Feed, and you’ll see a “Refine” button — this returns you to the screen where you originally set up this alert and allows you to update it as and when necessary.
Leo gets smarter as you give him more feedback. You can give Leo feedback by selecting “Less like this” on articles that aren’t quite right. Leo will adapt based on your feedback and become even more helpful over time.
Start a free 30-day trial of Feedly Enterprise and get access to advanced Leo Concepts for Cybersecurity, Biopharma, and Market Intelligence.
There’s a fine balance between reducing noise
After the announcements of the new management of the DCU by James Gunn and Peter Safran, one of the creators of the Arrowverse, Marc Guggenheim, expressed himself with annoyance regarding the lack of interest of the new franchise board for the work done in the universe built for The CW.
In his statements, Guggenheim declared that he expected at least one call, a pat on the back for having been part of one of the greatest successes for DC Comics on the small screen, some recognition for having achieved what in the cinema seemed so difficult to do: a truly unified universe.
Now, after his comments went viral, the producer came out to clarify his own words, mad at the media outlets that picked up the story:
“It’s taken as an axiom that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ but the problem is that with virtually no exceptions, the coverage focused on my statement that ‘I really wasted my time’ with the Arrowverse while conveniently leaving out the important modifier ‘at least on a career level.’ They also managed to leave out how I was explicit in being ‘deeply grateful’ for all the fan engagement over the years. Ah well. Never let the facts get in the way of a good story (or clickbait headlines), I guess. My only regret is that articles like these give aid and comfort to the Arrowverse’s small contingent of trolls. (As if Mr. Gunn cares a whit about their objections to character romances or deaths.) Then again, such folk have always insisted on making themselves the subject of the narrative and that’s not likely to change anytime soon.”
Created in 2012 by Guggenheim and Greg Berlanti with Arrow‘s debut on The CW, the Arrowverse quickly won over DC audiences, especially after the release of The Flash in 2014. The purchase of Supergirl from CBS and the creation of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow finished shaping the shared universe, which presented its first official crossover in 2016.
Invasion! was a resounding success, attracting audiences to the series that were not so watched, thanks to the fact that all the plot lines converged on a bigger one. This was followed by Crisis on Earth X and later Elseworlds, which would be the first step towards the most ambitious adaptation. Finally, in 2019, before the end of Arrow, Crisis on Infinite Earths was released, one of the most popular events in DC Comics.
Weeks later came the farewell to the show that started everything and began the road to the end. Supergirl, Black Lightning, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and Batwoman all said their goodbyes in the years that followed, with The Flash remaining the sole heir to the Arrowverse. This year, the Grant Gustin-starring series will also end, marking the definitive end of the Arrowverse.
Once the Scarlet Speedster says goodbye, only two DC shows will remain standing on The CW: Superman & Lois, which, although it started as part of the Arrowverse, has already moved away from that path, and Gotham Knights, the most recent production between the network and comic company.
After the announcements of the new management
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With spring around the corner, now is a good time as any to start thinking about improving your fitness. A smartwatch like the can make it easier to stick to your goals. Good thing the 41mm model is back on sale. After an 18 percent discount, the Midnight and Product Red colorways are down to $329 on Amazon.
That’s $70 less than the Series 8’s usual $399 starting price, and the best discount Engadget has seen on the smartwatch since it was on sale at the . Unfortunately, Amazon only has 41mm model stock, and the Silver and Starlight colorways aren’t included in the sale.
Despite being a modest upgrade from its predecessor, the Series 8 is you can buy at the moment. It’s fast and features a large always-on display. It also comes with robust app support and integration with Apple’s broader ecosystem. New to the Series 8 is a crash detection feature that can alert first responders in an emergency. It also features a temperature sensor that can assist with ovulation tracking.
That said, the Series 8 isn’t for everyone. You can’t use the wearable without an iPhone, making it a non-starter for Android users. It’s also worth noting the offers many of the same core features of the Series 8 for less money.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
19 – 21 October 2023, WSA Film Music Days
50th Film Fest Gent honours game music with concert ‘PRESS PLAY: Music in Games’ and new music prize
Film Fest Gent presents the PRESS PLAY: Music in Games concert on Thursday 19 October 2023, which will bring music composed for video games to life. The music by, among others, composer Austin Wintory – known for award-winning games such as Journey, Abzû and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate and who will also be hosting the concert- will be performed live by Brussels Philharmonic. Film Fest Gent is also launching a new international music award, one that celebrates the best original score for a video game and/or other interactive media: the WSA Game Music Award, a prize chosen by the public.
Game music anno 2023 has become a genre in its own right, playing a crucial role in immersing players in virtual worlds and accompanying the story. With fewer and fewer composers distinguishing between composing for movies and video games, Film Fest Gent wants to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of composers who create music for video games.
A new music award, the WSA Game Music Award, will be presented to the best original score for a video game and/or other interactive media starting from 2023. In addition, Film Fest Gent’s annual music concert will also focus on music in games this year.
Wim De Witte, programme director Film Fest Gent:“The video game genre has grown into a particularly influential and dynamic medium in recent decades, which has since also paved the way for new media and AI. Composing for video games is different from composing for cinema, but Film Fest Gent and the World Soundtrack Academy have always found it crucial to highlight composers who write music for all audiovisual media. We are therefore delighted to now be able to formally recognise music for video games through a special WSAward and to dedicate our symphonic music concert this year to the genre. This will show once again how composers ‘for screen’ are at home in all fields, and how many musical gems can also be found among these soundtracks.”
The host of the PRESS PLAY: Music in Games concert – and thus the first official guest – is Austin Wintory, whose music will be performed live. His best-known works for video game music are his scores for the games Journey, Assassin’s Creed Syndicate, Abzû and Flow. His soundtrack for Journey made history in 2013 as the first and only video game score to receive a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media. Back in 2021, he was a guest at Film Fest Gent during the WSA Film Music Days for a Composer’s Talk to reflect on his career as a composer and his experiences with remuneration in the industry. Austin Wintory’s work will be played, and as a composer who has also fought to give game music the necessary recognition as a genre, he will also present the concert.
Austin Wintory, composer: “Long have I admired what happens each year in Ghent at the World Soundtrack Awards, and it was a privilege to be their guest in 2021. Returning to host this concert, celebrating the wonderful art form and my many talented peers is nothing short of a dream!”
This year, Film Fest Gent’s annual composition competition – which aims to discover and give a platform to emerging film music talent worldwide – will also focus on game music.
Participants will be asked to create a new score for an excerpt from the game Abzû, developed by the studio ‘Giant Squid’ and published by 505 Games, and of which the original music was composed by Austin Wintory. Abzû is an epic descent into the depths of the sea, where players will explore beautifully rendered ocean environments with fluid swimming controls. The name references a concept from the oldest mythologies, combining the two ancient words ‘ab’, meaning ocean, and ‘zû’, meaning to know. Abzû is the ocean of wisdom.
Young international talents in film music are given an annual opportunity to enter the WSA Film Music Composition Contest and have a chance to win the Sabam Award for Best Original Composition by a Young Composer, worth €2,500. Participants are invited to show their skills as composers by writing a symphonic score for a selected excerpt from the game. A jury will select three finalists, whose compositions will be performed by Brussels Philharmonic at the annual World Soundtrack Awards Ceremony and Concert, which this year will take place on Saturday 21 October at Capitole Ghent.
19 - 21 October 2023, WSA
On February 20, in Berlin, about a hundred participants from Ukraine and Canada joined a discussion on film production and distribution during the war as part of a round table organized by the #ucancoproduce initiative, which aims to put into practice the Audiovisual Co-Production Agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Government of Canada. which was ratified in 2020.
During the event, Victoria Yarmoshchuk (FILM.UA Group, Ukrainian Film Association) presented the results of the work and achievements of the Ukrainian media business during the war, the services that Ukraine can provide at the moment, as well as the industry’s plans for the future. Summing up the results of the production and distribution of Ukrainian content in 2022, Polina Tolmacheva (Council for State Support of Cinematography) spoke about the unique cases of distribution during the war and why it is important.
From Canada, Julie Blondin (Telefilm Canada) presented new opportunities, ways and features of cooperation with both countries in 2023, and producer Tommy Lupinacci (VORTEX Media) shared his experience of working on a joint project between Ukraine and Canada – The Betrayers.
Also, within the Conference, Ukrainian producers presented three projects that are looking for partners. Anastasia Bukovska and Tonya Noyabrova presented the comedy film “Ukraine is the capital of everything”, Olesya Lukyanenko presented the full-length drama film “We Come From Here”, and Ivanna Khitsinska presented the documentary project “Queens of Joy”.
The event was moderated by Louise O’Brien-Moran (Manitoba Film and Music).
The results of the first two #ucancoproduce conferences can be found on the website.
The event was held on the initiative of the Ukrainian Film Association, the Telefilm Canada organization, the Canadian Media Producers Association, with the informational support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency, Organizer – Media Resources Management (MRM).
On February 20, in Berlin, about
America may be deeply divided, but politics and the culture wars will not be center stage at this year’s Oscars if the organizers have their way.
“We’re not interested in distractions or partisan debate, we’re interested in Tom Cruise,” a 95th Academy Awards ceremony insider says of this weekend’s superstar and blockbuster rich show.
“We want to embrace the diversity of talent and nominees this year, and we want to try to go back to the days of escapism,” an AMPAS source adds of the dual ethos of the 2023 Jimmy Kimmel hosted shindig. Escapism may be a hard sell with Netflix’s anti-war film All Quiet On The Western Front on the ballot for Best Picture and other categories, but the Ricky Kirshner and Glenn Weiss produced broadcast is aiming to stay primarily politically agnostic and controversary free, we hear.
Officially, the Academy had no comment on the role politics may or not may not play in this year’s Oscars.
However, despite a full-court press by some industry heavyweights, the fact is the ABC-broadcast show will once again be one of the few awards shows not to feature an appearance by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Russia’s invasion of his country. Oscar vet Joe Biden will not be dropping by either, even though he will be in Southern California early next week.
Coming off the fiasco of last year’s on-stage slapping of Chris Rock by Best Actor winner and now ex-AMPAS member Will Smith, the Academy and the producers intend to run a tight movie-centric ship this weekend. Or as one well positioned participant put it: “Things got f*cked up last year, didn’t they? This year we want to keep our eyes on the prize, literally.”
The shocking slap heard around the world aside, that’s a departure from most of the past few years when outrage and scorn over Donald Trump often got more airtime than the nominees and winners at the Oscars and almost every other award show. In terms of host Kimmel, with about 35 hours to go before the Oscars begin, the forthright late night front man is still fine tuning his opening monologue. However, unless events between now and then demand it, Kimmel’s opening bit is said to feature only fleeting political references.
From the dark depths of the Vietnam War era to Michael Moore’s victory speeches to the Trump days, the Oscars have for decades wrestled with the ceremony’s veering into polarizing topics. As Blue as Hollywood is publicly and as Red as Tinseltown can be behind closed doors, those unscripted strident on-stage remarks over the years have mainly come from presenters and winners taking advantage of the global platform the show still retains. Beyond the direct control of the network and the producers, with walk-off music often as the only stifling resort, constant political statements by stars have earned the Oscars and Hollywood ridicule and rejection from conservative America.
Over the past decade alone, there have been Oscars when the activism has been more of a feature than a bug.
Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Joe Biden presented at the Oscars when he was vice president, as his office seized on the 88th Academy Awards in 2016 as an opportunity to talk about campus sexual abuse prevention and introduce Lady Gaga. Three years earlier, First Lady Michelle Obama presented Best Picture, after she and her husband hosted several topical Oscar contenders for White House events.
During the years when Trump was in office, the then-president himself went out of his way to tar the ceremony as irrelevant amid declining ratings, digs certainly aimed at Hollywood’s leftward tilt. Leaning into his MAGA policies at a 2020 campaign rally, Trump directly blasted the Best Picture-winner, Parasite, in part because it came from South Korea.
This year, even though First Lady Jill Biden appeared at the Grammys last month, her husband will almost certainly not be making a return appearance at the Academy Awards, bi-coastal sources say, even though Biden will be close by. The day after Sunday’s Oscar ceremony, the president is scheduled to travel to San Diego to meet with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. On Tuesday, President Biden will travel to Monterey Park, the site of a mass shooting earlier this year, to talk about efforts to reduce gun violence. Leaving the City of Angels, POTUS will then travel go to Sin City itself, Las Vegas.
Even without a president or two in the Dolby Theatre, this year’s show is under no illusion that it can dispel that partisan perception in one night. With big hits Top Gun: Maverick, Elvis and Avatar: The Way of Water competing with All Quiet on the Western Front and Everything Everywhere All At Once in top categories, the practical hope is that Red State America and Hollywood itself will pick up on the changing timbre of the Oscars.
“Telling A-list talent not to do something is almost a guarantee they will do it, right?” the ceremony insider states, emphasizing there has been no directive on what presenters and winners can and can’t say. “But, (we) hope everyone recognizes and respects the tone we are trying to establish this year.”
America may be deeply divided, but politics
THE PERFORMER | Natasha Lyonne
THE SHOW | Peacock’s Poker Face
THE EPISODE | “The Hook” (March 9, 2023)
THE PERFORMANCE | Watching amateur sleuth Charlie Cale use her lie-detecting skills to solve murders has been a distinct pleasure all season long on Peacock’s throwback mystery, thanks to Lyonne’s hilariously raspy lead performance. But she topped herself in this week’s season finale as Charlie dropped her own poker face for a bit, letting us get a sense of what actually makes her tick.
The finale offered plenty of chances for Lyonne to make us laugh, from Charlie tagging along with a wild bachelorette party to having to endure Cliff’s dead-serious spoken-word recitation of Blues Traveler’s “Hook.” (He really is the worst.) But Lyonne also flashed a steely intensity as Charlie faced off with Cliff, her eyes welling up with emotion as she contemplated shooting the guy, and later stood toe-to-toe with intimidating casino boss Sterling Frost Sr., never giving an inch. The episode also gave our first good look at Charlie’s backstory, introducing us to her sister Emily, played by Clea DuVall, and Lyonne put Charlie’s emotional bruises on full display as the two sisters bickered and dredged up old family grudges. The stress of living on the lam for a year crept into Lyonne’s voice as Charlie asked her sister, “You think I like living like this?” (The Poker Face writers are still keeping their cards close to their chests regarding Charlie’s past, but Lyonne manages to fill in the blanks marvelously with just a few words and a glance.)
In the end, Charlie caught the bad guy, of course — using an, um, unusual ring to subdue Cliff — and went back on the run, this time with a different casino boss vowing to track her down. (And we can’t wait to see Lyonne tangle with Rhea Perlman in Season 2.) But for now, let’s enjoy what Lyonne has given us this season: an instantly memorable TV character with an endless supply of sassy one-liners and a few hidden depths still left to explore.
Scroll down to see who scored Honorable Mention shout-outs this week…
If you had told us… well, ever… that comedian Whitney Cummings would deliver one of any given week’s most dramatically compelling performances, we’d have arched an eyebrow. But in the latest installment of the Fox anthology Accused, Cummings had us rapt from start to finish. In “Brenda’s Story,” Cummings played a stand-up comic (with a style quite different from her own, mind you) who was raped by a successful peer/past hook-up. In the aftermath, a shellshocked Brenda struggled with what to do next, juggling advice from a skittish DA, a compromised comedy club owner (played by Rhea Perlman), a longtime friend (Grace and Frankie‘s Baron Vaughn) and a new acquaintance (24‘s Mary Lyn Rajskub). Adding layers to Cummings’ heartbreaking performance was the fact that Brenda is, frankly, a mess, an admitted drunk with a reputation for self-sabotage. All told, Cummings’ dramatic turn was no joke, but it nonetheless killed in unexpected ways.
History of the World, Part II, Hulu’s four-“night” follow-up to Mel Brooks’ 1981 film comedy, was scattershot in quality, to be sure. Many singles and doubles, few home runs. But in the series of sketches dubbed “Curb Your Judaism,” JB Smoove and Nick Kroll, as the apostles Luke and Judas, served up a meal of laughs that was far more satisfying than the Last Supper they had just attended. (As Judas scoffed, “More like a Last Snack, right?”) Winningly adopting the rhythms of Curb Your Enthusiasm (which Smoove knows all too well), the duo had great fun with observational humor about Jesus’ obsession with feet-washing, Saint Peter’s one-man show (no comp tickets, really?), the curiously non-kosher food that Jesus scoffed down afterwards (“As a Jew, I’m livid! I’m gonna plotz!”) and, relatedly, the cringey process involved in growing back one’s foreskin. As noted in TV Questions, someone order Curb Your Judaism to series now.
An art show for her ex-husband Nico brought out the worst in Shrinking‘s Gaby, but the very best in her portrayer Jessica Williams. The actress let Gaby’s unease poke through the therapist’s typically cool and collected exterior under the scrutinizing eye of Nico’s friends. After Gaby and her ex finally had a heart-to-heart, Williams’ expressions became tinged with nostalgia for the past, then anger at how well Nico was doing without her. Williams capped her performance with a comedic tour de force moment when Gaby exclaimed so loudly and determinedly that a naked painting of Nico’s current girlfriend was actually of her that she had to be dragged away by her friend. If Williams is this hilarious and entertaining during a meltdown, then Gaby should lose it more often.
Which performance(s) knocked your socks off this week? Tell us in Comments!
THE PERFORMER | Natasha Lyonne THE SHOW |
The end of every awards season often comes with, more than anything, a giant sigh of relief. After months of campaigning, talking endlessly about the same films and performances and crafts, hearing the same stories over and over, it’s all too easy to feel eager to move on from them. What that ignores (or, at least forgets) is the very reason why these are the films that have been singled out for fêting during this season: because they’re the best of 2022’s offerings.
So, step back from the nominations, wins, and other forms of seasonal adulation, and consider the quality of the films that have reached the upper echelons of cinema in recent months. No matter how you feel about the 10 films nominated in this year’s Best Picture race, this assortment of titles boasts some serious range: we’ve got festival favorites, two (!!) sequels, indie offerings, studio pictures, biopics, comedies, dramas, romances, remakes, and adaptations, and those are just the easiest terms to classify them by. Drill down, and there’s so much more to discover. And while the season is just days away from concluding, these are the films that will endure in the coming years (at least, we certainly hope so).
Among this year’s contenders, there are films directed by modern masters like Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, Todd Field, Baz Luhrmann, and Sarah Polley. There are major money-making, ass-saving blockbusters, like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and “Elvis.” There are awards season juggernauts like “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “TÁR.” There are even two international entries, thanks to “Triangle of Sadness” and “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the latter of which is also nominated in the Best International Feature Film category.
A number of these Best Picture hopefuls earned high critical marks from IndieWire when they first debuted, including “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Top Gun: Maverick,” and “TÁR,” all of which picked up Critic’s Pick designations upon their premieres. Others weren’t so lucky, but that didn’t stop them from enjoying wild awards run (looking at you, “Triangle of Sadness” and “Elvis”). Others, like the much-nominated “All Quiet on the Western Front,” snuck up on us. But, so many months on, how do these films stack up now? More importantly, how do they stack up against each other?
As of Tuesday evening, voting has closed for this year’s Academy Awards. The race is, for all intents and purposes, over. The winners are just hours from being announced. The statuettes? They’re ready! So, before these films and their creators are forever transformed by whatever unfolds on Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, we’ve decided to look at each of them head-on for one last time; not as winners or also-rans, but as a microcosm of the films that enthralled audiences, fans, cinephiles, critics, prognosticators, and more over the last few months.
From the spectacular to the bizarre (and everything, everywhere, in between), here are all of the Best Picture nominees of 2023, ranked from worst to best.
To call the decision to make Tom Hanks’ con man Colonel Tom Parker the narrator of an Elvis Presley biopic polarizing is putting it mildly. It is the single biggest element of all this year’s Best Picture nominees that simply does not work, even overshadowing how the Baz Luhrmann film looks back at the King of Rock n’ Roll’s relationship to the Black community through distinctnyl rose-colored glasses.
The musical biopic, which happened to be the most successful original film of last year, making over $150 million at the box office, falls right in line with the rest of the Australian director’s epic oeuvre — for better and worse. If one is a Luhrmann fan, they are likely to point to the film’s impeccable craftwork and real sense of showmanship as high points. But, iff his filmmaking style does not work for you, little things like the anachronistic music cues may be a bother.
All that said, like he has done before with Leonardo DiCaprio in “Romeo + Juliet,” or Nicole Kidman in “Moulin Rouge,” Luhrmann unlocked something within rising star Austin Butler that transformed him into one of Hollywood’s most exciting new leading men — accent and all. —MJ
As war movies go, “All Quiet on the Western Front” certainly doesn’t reinvent the rulebook, especially since it draws from a 95-year-old novel that has been adapted twice before. But director Edward Berger delivers the first German perspective on the material with an angry, devastating look at gullible soldiers and the nationalist propaganda that tricked them into dying in the trenches.
It’s bracing, intense filmmaking that does the genre proud, and as the only non-English language movie nominated for Best Picture, proof that this season has truly gone global for every level of international cinema.
Is it one of the great movies, or a version of those movies that you’ve seen before? More often than not, “All Quiet on the Western Front” falls into the latter camp, but it’s nevertheless attuned to the powers of the genre on every level. —EK
James Cameron’s “Avatar” was a technological achievement first and a sci-fi epic second; the second follows suit, but stands on the shoulders of the protracted world-building that preceded it. Diving straight into Pandora and the Na’vi family it spent over two hours establishing before.
“The Way of Water” is an immersive survival story in tandem with delivering breathtaking visual information in every second of its hefty running time. It’s the better “Avatar” because it gives us so much more of what makes this kind of billion-dollar experiment worthwhile — namely, the color blue. The aquatic world of “The Way of Water” steals the show from its busy ensemble more than once, as Cameron once again shows that he’s better at blockbuster scale than finding the credible human drama within.
Still, what scale: It’s the most expensive form of environmental activism since climate change became a thing. The saga of Jake Sully and Neytiri (along with whatever happens next with their remaining offspring) feels like it’s just getting started, and no other filmmaker has created such a vast, profitable mythology on their own terms in film history.
“The Way of Water” works just well enough to make it worth anticipating however many more entries Cameron feels like offering up. —EK
Ruben Östlund’s second Palme d’Or winner is perhaps the most clearly amusing of this year’s Best Picture nominees, a screamingly funny upbraiding of the upper upper class that delights in taking them down a peg (or more). The Swedish filmmaker has always relished in skewering the elite, from the icy charms of “Force Majeure” to the machinations of the art world in “The Square.” So while “Triangle of Sadness” screams “Ruben Östlund film!,” it also does it in the most obvious of manners, at least for the typically slyly entertaining auteur.
That’s not always a bad thing, though, as Östlund opens the picture with an absolutely brutal takedown of the not-so-glamorous world of modeling (piercing stuff that, quite frankly, should have pulled in more notice for the wonderfully calibrated Harris Dickinson) before catapulting us into the world of ultra-rich pleasure-cruisers.
So far, so hilarious, but once the film’s central superyacht hits a major squall, things take a big turn, and one that’s not always in line with Östlund’s strengths. There are few filmmakers who could turn a long-form sequence of seasickness hitting the masses (and we’re explaining it away in the most mundane of terms, it’s insanely gross stuff, and kudos for that) into a knotted exploration of class warfare, but Östlund almost nails it.
Almost. While the film’s final act gives breakout star Dolly de Leon plenty to play with, as her Abigail becomes ruler of the worst assortment of rich losers imaginable, it’s all a bit too obvious and plain-faced to stick. As funny and wild as it all is, this could all be meaner by half, than we’d really be cooking. —KE
Even if Joseph Kosinski’s long, long-gestating “Top Gun” sequel hadn’t proven to be such a box office juggernaut that it inspired Steven Spielberg to tell producer and star Tom Cruise that he “saved Hollywood’s ass” during the annual Oscar nominee luncheon, the film would have proven to be a bright light in the cinema landscape.
No, no, wait a second, we can back this up! In a world gone made for franchises, sequels, remakes, even requels, the idea of a “Top Gun sequel” may sound a bit silly, but the film delivered on what has always been the grand promise of the blockbuster (a promise too often forgotten by its box office brethren): a big, bombastic, fully immersive experience that doesn’t skimp on the good stuff. Mostly, this thing just looks great, a reminder that audiences still know the difference between a green screen and taking a bunch of cast and crew into actual fighter jets.
If you’re going to see “Top Gun: Maverick,” you should get what you pay for: massive stunts, huge set pieces, a Lady Gaga song, a bunch of rising stars with kicky call signs, Tom Cruise on a motorcycle, Tom Cruise on a sailboat, Tom Cruise in a jet, Tom Cruise crying, Tom Cruise laughing, Tom Cruise running, and the kind of audience bonding that can only be found when hundreds of strangers are aligned behind a need to see our heroes beat the bad guy (whoever the hell he might be) and jet this bad boy right out of the sky, over the sea, and into oddly tear-jerking territory. That’s cinema, baby! —KE
There’s magic in Sarah Polley’s latest, the kind of picture that becomes harder to describe the more you try to put words to it. Fortunately, Polley doesn’t suffer from the same affliction, weaving an artful and emotional film that only grows more richer the more her characters — yes, most of them women — talk to each other. Soon, you’ll feel like you’re in the hayloft with them, talking about nothing less than the very future of this community, a major ask that still feels staggeringly intimate.
It’s no surprise that Polley, an actor herself (and one born from casting director stock, no less), is aces at picking a dreamy ensemble to tell this nightmarish tale. Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw, Frances McDormand, these are just the top-line stars, because every single other cast member only adds to the rich texture of this wonderful film. (Name them! Judith Ivey, Kate Hallett, Sheila McCarthy, Emily Mitchell, Liv McNeil, Michelle McLeod, Shayla Brown, and August Winter.)
The subject matter is, of course, heavy, but the care with which Polley and her cast and crew bring it to the screen make it something else entirely: the kind of story you can’t wait to see play out, but one you never want to see end. It is in conversation with you, with me, with all of us, and will remain worth talking about long after this season ends. —KE
It is fascinating that, in a year where the blockbuster — a concept “Jaws” filmmaker Steven Spielberg himself is responsible for helping craft in the modern sense — took on so much importance, with other nominees like “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” being credited as the saviors of the theatrical experience, that the legendary director went against the grain and delivered a family drama that’s his most personal film yet.
This film, which garnered Spielberg his first Best Original Screenplay nomination alongside longtime collaborator Tony Kushner, is far from the first autobiographical film from the viewpoint of an auteur to come out in recent years, but its daring vulnerability makes it the standard bearer for the subgenre.
Though they are at very different points in life, stars Gabriel LaBelle, Michelle Williams, and Judd Hirsch all give career benchmark performances, and Paul Dano and Seth Rogen play the central conflict in ways that are impressively unexpected. Sure, there are things to nitpick, like the somewhat episodic structure of a film so enamored with the magic of cinema, but that’s life, messy and worthy of examining in all its forms. —MJ
What makes Lydia Tár tick? That question sits at the center of writer-director Todd Field’s masterwork from its first frame until the last, as the director fuses the elements of a gothic thriller and social satire with documentary-like precision as he barrels down on some of the weightiest questions of our times: Sure, Tár’s conundrum is a trenchant look at the contradictions of cancel culture, the insular nature of privileged arts community, and the pressures placed on a powerful woman in the public eye. But it’s also a unique showcase of what Cate Blanchett can do like no other performer today, as she lives inside Field’s distinctive creation, and an entire world evolves around her.
It’s a cinematic symphony of actor-director cohesion in rare form, and the movies are all the better for it. You can pick apart the cerebral nature of the filmmaking all you want — and sure, some of its arguments about the knee-jerk sensitivity of younger generations have a bit of an “Old Man Screams at Cloud” vibe — but it’s the only Best Picture nominee this year that maintains a singular tone throughout, and leaves you thinking through the connotations of every scene. In that regard, yes, it’s a better movie about the power of movies than “The Fabelmans.” —EK
The characters who populate writer/director Martin McDonagh’s movies and plays tend to be gloomy, passive-aggressive people driven to violent extremes. “The Banshees of Inisherin” takes that template and transcends it. The story of drinking buddies Pádraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) on an invented Irish isle in the midst of civil war takes a simple premise and imbues it with multitudes.
With two of the greatest Irish actors in its crosshairs, McDonagh merges a Malickian sense of wonder for the natural landscape with the chaos of human anxieties and existential malaise, tying it all together a string of feckin’ hilarious one-liners. Colm’s decision to start loping off his fingers to punish Pádraic for talking to him is the kind of wild violent twist that Tarantino used for shock effect decades ago, but McDonagh somehow makes it more palatable by rooting in genuine emotional stakes.
There are movies this Oscar season that juggle more moving parts and take more audacious swings, but none have the elegance and narrative specificity of McDonagh’s work. Among this year’s Best Picture nominees, it’s the only one that splits the difference between comedy and tragedy, the balancing act that McDonagh has perfected over the course of 30-odd years. There’s something about the fundamental smallness of its central conflict that also stands out in an era of overstatement. It’s a welcome reminder that movies don’t have to make grand gestures to be grand achievements. —EK
Upon first viewing, the Michelle Yeoh-starring vehicle is nothing like what one would expect of a Best Picture frontrunner. In recent years, it has been hard enough to get the Academy to consider even the highest brow comedies, so a movie with more than one sex toy-related sight gag seems Oscar voter-repellant.
But at the end of the day, the sophomore effort from writer-director Dan Kwan and Daniel Sheinert has enough heart to melt even the hardest of voters. Underneath its literal multiverse of layers is a much-needed story about a family reconnecting, accepting each other (flaws and all), and maintaining hope that they are on the road to a better understanding of one another.
Although it feels loose in its kinetic telling, viewers can tell the filmmakers went over every painstaking detail, creating a work of art that was built for repeat viewings, always providing something new to notice. And as the story gets rolling, it becomes so clear how much consideration the Daniels had for their remarkable cast, allowing Yeoh to show off her martial arts chops and let experimental theater pro Stephanie Hsu to proudly fly her freak flag.
Yes, those rocks were technically props, but two hours in, no one can convince us that the pair of actresses did not actually play them. The love that went into making the Best Picture frontrunner is palpable, and its awards journey has provided many gifts to cinema, including the return of Ke Huy Quan.
The only way something this frenetic works this well is if it has the ability to make one feel everything, everywhere, all at once, and judging by the response it has gotten this past year, the film has achieved exactly that. —MJ
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From the spectacular to the bizarre (and
When he began working on his latest documentary, “The Last Seagull,” acclaimed Bulgarian filmmaker Tonislav Hristov (“The Good Postman”) set himself a seemingly simple task: to follow the last of the dying breed of male escorts who, since the communist era, have spent their summers seducing foreign women in resort towns along the Black Sea.
That plan went astray, however, when real-world events intervened: first the coronavirus pandemic, which grounded flights and shuttered the very resorts where those escorts plied their trade; then the war in Ukraine, which impacted “The Last Seagull” in unexpected ways.
“This is what’s nice, but also scary, about documentaries,” Hristov told Variety after the film’s world premiere at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival. “You never know what’s going to happen next.”
“The Last Seagull” is the director’s eighth documentary feature, following films such as Sundance and Berlinale selection “The Magic Life of V” (2019) and “The Good Postman,” which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) in 2016, before playing at Sundance.
It was while making that film, which Variety’s Guy Lodge described as “a sad, searing and profoundly empathetic study of electoral process in a minute Bulgarian village split by opposing responses to the Syrian refugee crisis,” that Hristov met the protagonist of “The Last Seagull,” one of the 40 or so residents of the hamlet where “The Good Postman” is set.
Ivan is a former lifeguard who in the fresh bloom of youth used his beach bod and bedroom eyes to make ends meet as a boyfriend-for-hire — the sort of aimless, effortless, seasonal work that would tide him over through the lean winter months. Now using his shaggy hair and shaggier charms to bed women of a certain age and uncertain immigration prospects, he is reflecting on a life that didn’t go according to plan, and ready to take a last-gasp stab at finding happiness by falling in love and settling down.
Using footage from Hristo Kovachev’s short documentary “Seagulls” (1977), Hristov paints a portrait of a bygone time in Bulgarian history, when nimble, multi-lingual paramours like Ivan — who earned the nickname “seagulls” for both their scavenging ways and their persistence — were emblematic of an era in which foreign goods were scarce and a Black Sea resort town like the one featured in his film “was the only place where you could touch Western culture.”
Young men from the countryside flocked to resorts like Sunny Beach, lured by the prospect of meeting German or Scandinavian tourists who might pay them for sexual favors, shower them with illicit Western gifts like Toblerone chocolates and Nivea skin cream, or perhaps even whisk them away from a life of deprivation behind the Iron Curtain. “Some found love, some found something else they were looking for,” said Hristov. “It was the most exotic place you could go during the communist time.”
After some four decades of such fleeting, transactional relationships, Ivan finally seems ready to turn a new page, hoping to make amends with his estranged son from a disastrous failed marriage, and even going so far as to propose to the Ukrainian woman he’s been courting over the course of several summers. “He was a very tragic character, but at the same time, he still had passion for life and love,” said Hristov. But Ivan’s plans were interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic, which shuttered Bulgaria’s beach resorts and upended a time-tested way of life for the few seagulls left.
It also threw a monkey-wrench into the director’s plans. “When COVID hit, I was like, ‘Is this the end of the film? Is there going to be a next act?,’” said Hristov. Life and production eventually resumed, but “The Last Seagull” took another unexpected turn when Russia invaded Ukraine last year, and Ivan suddenly became distraught over the fate of his estranged son, who lives with his Ukrainian wife and their newborn son in Kyiv.
Hristov, who was in post-production on the film, received his producers’ blessing and support to add a war-time coda. “This is the thing about life and documentary filmmaking. You can never plan how the story is going to go,” he said. Even in the midst of tragedy, “you keep going and life continues.”
“The Last Seagull” will now take flight to Copenhagen for CPH:DOX, where Hristov will also be pitching his next feature, “Truth.com,” a documentary that follows a female journalist in the Balkans who takes on Russian trolls and the scourge of fake news. “The Last Seagull” is produced by Kaarle Aho and Kai Nordberg for Making Movies, and co-produced by Torstein Parelius, Ingrid Galadriel Aune Falch and Christian Aune Falch (UpNorth Film) and Andrea Stanoeva (Soul Food). CAT&Docs is handling world sales.
The Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival runs March 2 – 12.
When he began working on his latest
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![EXCLUSIVE: Stassi Schroeder surprises husband Beau Clark with her new wedding dress ahead of the second upcoming ceremony in Rome. 12 May 2022 Pictured: Stassi Schroeder; Beau Clark. Photo credit: ROMA/MEGA TheMegaAgency.com +1 888 505 6342 (Mega Agency TagID: MEGA856695_015.jpg) [Photo via Mega Agency]](https://hollywoodlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Stassi-Schroeder-Beau-Clark-rome-wedding-mega-03.jpg?w=330)
![EXCLUSIVE: Stassi Schroeder surprises husband Beau Clark with her new wedding dress ahead of the second upcoming ceremony in Rome. 12 May 2022 Pictured: Stassi Schroeder; Beau Clark. Photo credit: ROMA/MEGA TheMegaAgency.com +1 888 505 6342 (Mega Agency TagID: MEGA856695_022.jpg) [Photo via Mega Agency]](https://hollywoodlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Stassi-Schroeder-Beau-Clark-rome-wedding-mega-02.jpg?w=330)
Vanderpump Rules fans can rest easy, as the show’s alum, Stassi Schroeder, 34, dropped some good news amid the ongoing Tom Sandoval cheating drama on Mar. 10. During an episode of her exclusive podcast, The Good The Bad The Baby, the second-time mom-to-be revealed she and her husband, Beau Clark, will be welcoming a baby boy in the coming year! “I knew the whole entire time that we were having a boy,” she told her audience on Friday. “I kept saying it. I felt it. It was a vibe. … I don’t know how to f****** explain it.”
While she made the announcement, Stassi explained that with her daughter, Hartford, 2, she was not “in tune with her body,” to know the baby’s sex, however, this time she was. The blonde beauty gushed that was “so convinced” of the sex and later, even tried to “talk [her]self out of” the thought process, in the case she “need to prepare” for a girl. Later, a few of her fans took to her latest Instagram post to discuss the exciting news in the comments. “Congrats on the baby boy,” one follower quipped, while another added, “It’s a boy,” along with a series of blue heart emojis.
The former TV personality’s sex reveal comes less than two weeks after she and Beau revealed they were expecting their second child together. “Secrets stress me out. Baby #2, I love you so much already,” she captioned the post on Mar. 1. In the snapshot, Stassi cradled her growing baby bump, as her daughter leaned against her. One of the first to comment was Khloe Kardashian, 38, who left a series of red heart emojis, while RHOBH alum Teddi Mellencamp noted, “Yay mama! You are glowing.”
Later, fellow expecting momma, Raven Gates, chimed in and wrote, “Aaahh yes So happy for you.” Stassi’s former Vanderpump Rules co-star Lala Kent couldn’t help but also gush over the news and quipped, “Congrats!” Beau also took to his Instagram on Mar. 1, to announce they were expecting once more. “Yeahhhhhh, we were totally hiding the Bump,” he captioned the carousel of photos of the duo showing Hartford the ultrasound photos.
Beau and his leading lady secretly got married in Sept. 2020, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. “Today would’ve been our wedding day. We went and did it anyway. -Married sept 2020 -Hopefully Italian dream wedding oct 2021 I am so proud to be your wife @thegoodthebadthebogie,” she captioned their wedding video at the time. Later, the couple had a lavish ceremony in Italy on May 12, 2022. Stassi gave birth to Hartford on Jan. 7, 2021, just over a year prior to the proud parents’ second wedding.
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View gallery Image Credit: Shutterstock Vanderpump Rules fans can rest
About one-fourth of Roku’s cash and equivalents — nearly half a billion dollars — has been held in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which was shut down by financial regulators Friday after it collapsed. And the streaming platform company said it’s unsure how much of that cash it will recover.
SVB, after it faced a run on deposits and failed to raise capital to make up the shortfall, was closed by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which appointed the FDIC as receiver of its assets. SVB, which had $209 billion in assets at the end of 2022, had been attempting to find a buyer but was ultimately unsuccessful.
Roku disclosed in an SEC filing that about $487 million of its $1.9 billion in cash and equivalents is held at SVB, or about 26% of the company’s cash and cash equivalents balance as of March 10. The remaining $1.4 billion is “distributed across multiple large financial institutions,” Roku said in the filing.
“The company’s deposits with SVB are largely uninsured. At this time, the company does not know to what extent the company will be able to recover its cash on deposit at SVB,” Roku said.
The FDIC will pay uninsured depositors an “advance dividend within the next week,” according to the filing. Uninsured depositors will receive a receivership certificate for the remaining amount of their uninsured funds. As the FDIC sells the assets of SVB, future dividend payments may be made to uninsured depositors.
Roku said it “continues to believe” that its current cash and equivalents balance — as well as cash flow from operations — “will be sufficient to meet its working capital, capital expenditures and material cash requirements from known contractual obligations” for the next 12 months “and beyond.”
Roku’s revenue growth slowed dramatically in the back half of last year — and the company expects overall revenue to decline about 5% in the first quarter of 2023. Amid macroeconomic headwinds, Roku’s operating expenses have soared — jumping 71% in the fourth quarter. In November, Roku said it was laying off 200 employees in the U.S., cutting about 5% of its overall workforce.
Roku makes and sells its own streaming devices, and has launched its own branded line of connected TVs — available exclusively through Best Buy later this month. The company also licenses its operating system to TV manufacturers with brands including TCL, Hisense, Sanyo, JVC, Philips and Sharp.
Most of Roku’s revenue, however, comes from ad sales and content partnerships. For the full-year 2022, 87% of the company’s revenue, or $2.7 billion, came from its Platforms segment, which posted gross income of $1.5 billion (56% gross margin). Roku’s devices business, by contrast, ran a negative gross margin last year of -22%.
About one-fourth of Roku’s cash and equivalents
EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-shortlisted director Ondi Timoner was among the first documentary filmmakers to seriously examine the significance of the internet age, in her 2009 film We Live in Public.
In her latest film, The New Americans: Gaming a Revolution, premiering in the Documentary Spotlight section at the SXSW Film Festival, Timoner takes a new look at the impact of the internet and social media on not only our economy and markets but our democratic form of government itself. We have your first look at the film in the clip above, ahead of the world premiere on Monday night at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.
The GameStop fiasco of 2021, in which day traders sent the stock market reeling by short-selling shares in the video game retailer, plays an integral role in the documentary.
“The New Americans takes us on a wild meme-driven ride to meet the founders of Reddit and WallStreetBets, crypto fanatics, bored housewives, and TikTok-ers turned millionaire traders, in order to investigate the never-before-made connection between the GameStop squeeze and the Jan 6th Insurrection,” according to a description of the film. “Disruptive tropes can help a disenfranchised generation to rise up against corrupt power structures. But will algorithms amplify our worst impulses, threatening the very pillars of our democracy? The New Americans is a mem-ified punk rock manifesto that takes us inside the ‘revolution game’ to look at where we came from and where we’re headed on the precipice of this new era.”
Following the world premiere, The New Americans is set to screen twice more at SXSW, on March 14 and March 18. Timoner wrote and directed the film; she produced it along with David Turner. The executive producers are Joe Berlinger, Bahman Naraghi, Kasia Neiman, and James Packer. The editors are Timoner and Jesse Gordon. Morgan Doctor composed the score.
Timoner has twice won the top prize for documentary at the Sundance Film Festival. Her 2022 film Last Flight Home, about her father Eli Timoner’s last days, made the Oscar shortlist.
Among the experts and insiders who appear in The New Americans are Jaime Rogozinski, Jordan Belfort, Anthony Scaramucci (the former Trump administration communications director), Raoul Pal, Joby Weeks, Joel Perez, Blayne Macauley, Mitchell Hennessy, Taylor Price, and ProTheDoge.
Belfort, of course, is known for being the subject of Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. He makes an appearance in the exclusive clip above.
EXCLUSIVE: Oscar-shortlisted director Ondi Timoner was among
Jenna Ortega recently reprised her role of Tara Carpenter in the Slasher franchise for Scream VI. Starring alongside actors like Courteney Cox, Melissa Barrera, Hayden Panettiere, Mason Gooding, and Jasmin Savoy Brown, she is taking fans to New York City this time. Lately, the young actress has remained quite busy promoting her film as the horror saga finally hit the theatres on March 10. Meanwhile, she does have bigger plans for the future of the franchise and wants some legendary faces to appear in it.
The star cast of Scream VI recently sat down with MTV UK to share some survival tips and talk about who they would love to see in the next film. When Jenna Ortega was asked about her dream cast, she instantly took Jennifer Coolidge’s name.
Barrera added another iconic name to the list, saying Brendan Fraser and the Mascots star would be the perfect duo. Well, all the fans might totally agree with the American actress here since we have seen how talented Coolidge is.
In the past decades, The White Lotus star has established her name in the entertainment industry as an incredible comedian. So we can say that her presence in the movie will make it even better.
Scream VI starring Jenna Ortega is hitting the bars high
According to Deadline, Scream VI will be setting a remarkable record for the opening week. As the film is set to garner about $42 Million this week, that might break the debut record of Scream 3. Moreover, IGN has given a highly favorable review for the film stating that it’s even better than the last one.
“Some of the set pieces in this chapter will take your breath away, whether it’s the immaculate representation of an unbearably claustrophobic subway car,” said the IGN reviewer.
Moreover, The Guardian is also impressed by the interpretation of new horrors in the most enchanting city in the world. They find the movie the goofiest and genuinely surprising that will make viewers scream. The very reason this whole franchise is known for.
“It’s the goriest movie of the series so far but without veering into grimness, again that tonal balance perfectly modulated,” said the website review. Meanwhile, the reviewer website Rotten Tomatoes has given this horror drama 76% on Tomatometer while the audience score is 94% which clearly makes it a winner.
Do you want to see Jennifer Coolidge in the Scream franchise? Let us know in the comments below.
The post Jenna Ortega Already Cherry Picking Cast for ‘Scream 7’, and She Wants Jennifer Coolidge in It appeared first on Netflix Junkie.
Jenna Ortega recently reprised her
