Dheeraj and the producers of Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin have yet to respond to the ongoing rumours.
Rumour had it that Dheeraj Dhoopar, who starred in Kundali Bhagya, will play the new guy in Sai’s life in the much-acclaimed TV show.
With its intense drama running high, Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin’s plot always finds a way to make viewers glued to their TV screens. The ongoing story revolves around Sai staying at the Chavan house in order to win Vinayak’s heart, while Pakhi is concerned about Virat’s growing closeness to Sai. The producers, however, are apparently working on an intriguing twist for the upcoming episodes, which could include introducing Sai’s potential new love interest. Rumour had it that Dheeraj Dhoopar, who starred in Kundali Bhagya, will play the new guy in Sai’s life in the much-acclaimed TV show.
However, according to a report on India Forums, Dheeraj Dhoopar will not be making an entry on the show. The show’s creators are looking to add a jealousy angle to the show, for which they will introduce a new character. The producers are reportedly planning to cast a well-known actor as Sai’s love interest in the show, but Dheeraj will not be involved. Dheeraj and the producers of Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin have yet to respond to the ongoing rumours.
A few months ago, there were rumours that Ishq Mein Marjawan 2 fame Rrahul Sudhir would appear on the show alongside Ayesha Singh. However, the actor later denied it. He revealed that he was never approached for the role.
The most recent episode depicts Virat inebriated during the Holi celebrations. He consumes bhaang and appears to not remember a thing because he has been acting as if Sai is his wife. He first put colour on her forehead, followed by a grah pravesh as he dragged her to the kitchen. He now requests that Sai prepare something for him. It also shows Pakhi getting furious about the entire incident. In the latest precap, Pakhi is seen lashing out at Sai and claims that since it is her kitchen and her husband, she will cook whatever he desires. Virat comes to Sai’s aid, calling her ‘biwi’. He lashes out at Pakhi and refers to Sai as his wife. He questions Sai on why she allows Pakhi to refer to him as her husband.
Star Plus’s Ghum Hai Kisikey Pyaar Meiin premiered on October 5, 2020. The serial stars Ayesha Singh, Neil Bhatt, and Aishwarya Sharma as the three main characters. The show is co-financed by Cockrow Entertainment and Shaika Films, and it can be watched online on Disney+ Hotstar.
Srijita Sen is constantly curious about figuring out the meaning of films, music, life and everything in between. With a great love for 2000s Bollywoo…Read More
There’s a leadership shakeup at Anonymous Content, the Oscar and Emmy-winning media company behind “Spotlight” and “True Detective.” Dawn Olmstead and Heather McCauley have resigned abruptly from their roles as CEO and COO, the company said.
“Thanks to Dawn’s contributions, the company is in a strong position, and we are confident that our team, values and talent will continue to thrive,” the board of Anonymous Content said in a statement. “Dawn has been a valued leader for the past two years and we wish her and Heather the best of luck in their future endeavors.”
No reason was given for the exits, but it comes as a surprise, particularly given Olmstead’s deep relationships within Hollywood. Her departure may have something to do with a disagreement over the company’s decision to settle with Keith Redmon, a long-time executive who was fired from Anonymous Content in 2021. He later sued his former employer for breach of contract, claiming that he was owed “millions” in unpaid compensation and from a stake in “Schitt’s Creek.”
Interim leadership will be named shortly by the board, according to a source close to Anonymous. Another source with knowledge of the situation says that Olmstead wasn’t pushed out, but made the decision to leave the company for her own reasons.
Upon hearing the news this morning, the board met with the division heads of the company and, according to the source close to Anonymous, “have shared their continued and unwavering commitment to Anonymous Content’s future.”
In a statement, Olmstead confirmed that her resignation was effective immediately.
“I am proud of all we accomplished during my two years at the company. I am especially grateful to my extraordinary team who worked alongside me to take Anonymous to exciting new levels,” she said. “I wish them all the best.”
Olmstead joined Anonymous in 2020 after serving as president of Universal Content Productions (UCP), where she oversaw a number of high-profile projects, including “The Umbrella Academy,” “The Act” and “Dirty John.” She stepped into the leadership void left by the 2019 death of Anonymous founder Steve Golin.
McCauley’s tenure is remarkably brief. She only joined Anonymous in January, after spending a decade at Netflix, where she most recently served as vice president, business and legal affairs.
Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective owns a majority stake in Anonymous Content. The company’s recent credits include the Matt Damon drama “Stillwater,” the Netflix show “The Watcher” and Apple TV+’s “Swan Song.”
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was definitely one of Marvel’s most strange films so far. Not only was Multiverse of Madness able to open up countless possibilities to future comeback MCU movies such as the Fantastic 4 and X-Men, but it was also able to show the complexity of the multiverse and emphasize the “horror” side of Marvel. How does this movie fit into the MCU? Let’s find out.
Loki:
The reason for the multiverse even being possible goes back to the Disney+ series Loki. In Loki, the Time Variance Authority’s (TVA) job is to “prune” dimensions that stray away from the “sacred timeline,” which keeps everything separate and in order. At the end of season one, when Loki and a variant of Loki named Sylvie reach the “end of time,” they confront a being known as He Who Remains. He Who Remains is killed by Sylvie, but not before warning that there will be no one preventing the timelines from running amok, leaving the multiverse unprotected. This is exactly what’s being explored further in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
At the red carpet premiere, President of Marvel Studios Kevin Fiege said: “For the Marvel.com fans that know that Loki and Sylvie did something at the end of that series sort of allowed all of this to be possible.” (Click this link to watch the full interview.)
Though we didn’t see many Loki references throughout the movie, we can definitely expect the consequences of the various timelines overlapping to be further explored in upcoming MCU movies and season two of Loki.
Spider-Man: No Way Home:
By casting the dangerous spell to make everyone forget that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, Doctor Strange caused various interdimensional beings to descend into the MCU’s main universe (known as Earth-616). Fortunately, Doctor Strange was able to resolve the problem by casting a more powerful spell, essentially preventing the multiverse from collapsing in exchange for a bigger sacrifice from Peter. Unfortunately, there seems to still be unknown consequences from Doctor Strange’s and Peter’s actions which might have caused some of the challenges faced by Doctor Strange and America Chavez in the Multiverse of Madness.
Kevin Feige says: “He Who Remains is gone, and that allowed a spell to go wrong in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which leads to the entire multiverse going quite mad in this [Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness].”
What If…?:
In episode 1 of What If…? Captain Carter – in a universe where Peggy Carter receives the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers – fights off a tentacled monster trying to invade Earth. A similar creature appeared in the Multiverse of Madness, but was fought off by Wong, Doctor Strange, and America Chavez. The audience soon realizes this monster was sent by Wanda Maximoff (The Scarlet Witch), whose goal was to take America Chavez’s power of being able to travel through the multiverse so that she could see her children again (in another universe). Then, as TV Guide explains, “while on the run from Wanda, Doctor Strange and America Chavez wind up on Earth-838, where the Illuminati, a secret organization of heroes, arrests Strange for his crimes against the multiverse. The Illuminati (acting as Earth-838’s Avengers) consists of several familiar faces from across Marvel’s history on the big and small screen.” These familiar faces included Monica Rambeau (as Captain Marvel), Baron Mordo (Sorcerer Supreme), Professor X, Captain Carter (Captain America), Black Bolt, and Reed Richards.
This Captain Carter is also the first Avenger in the 838 universe, but she probably isn’t the same version we saw in What If…? Similarly, although we do see a version of evil Doctor Strange in the movie, it’s probably not the same Sinister Strange that we saw in What If…?, either. After all, in the multiverse there are multiple universes in which numerous variations of each character can exist.
WandaVision:
In the last episode of WandaVision, the post-credit scene is Wanda in an isolated cabin with the text of forbidden spells known as the Darkhold. She hovers in full Scarlet Witch regalia, using the book to flip through the pages of the multiverse. In the movie, we find out that she was looking for a realm in which her children Billy and Tommy exist. Essentially this is what causes the shift in Wanda’s overall character arc, from being a hero to an anti-hero, to now a full on villain. Wanda Maximoff has been consumed by the Darkhold, giving her witch-alter ego full control, and will do anything to be with her children again, resulting in her wanting to take America Chavez’s power to travel through the multiverse.
What Next?
Though Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness this didn’t further the overall plot of the MCU in an obvious way like some other films do, it introduced the ways in which the multiverse works and sets a strong base for the MCU’s upcoming movies. The next Marvel films that are scheduled for this year are Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which seem likely to take place primarily in just the 616 universe. However, as Time magazine notes, “it won’t be too long until heroes are popping between dimensions again, as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania will almost certainly explore the multiverse, and there’s a second season of Loki and another Doctor Strange adventure in the cards as well.”
Given all of this, it’s hard to tell exactly what will happen next from a storytelling perspective. The multiverse in this movie was “more of a fun storytelling tool rather than a worldbuilding mechanism”, states Time, opening up the possibility that future trips to the multiverse can be both horrific and comedic, rather than always heavy and serious.
Hi! My name is Siya Patel and I’m a 16 year old writer for FANgirl Blog! I love the MCU, watching sitcoms, and music!”
Hi! My name is Siya Patel and I’m a 16 year old writer for FANgirl Blog! I love the MCU, watching sitcoms, and music!
Chapter 1 of the new DCU could already pose a problem that the MCU managed to avoid in its early days. James Gunn revealed the new slate of DCU projects on January 31, 2023, proving that he and Peter Safran plan to completely revitalize DC Studios’ shared superhero universe after years of criticism surrounding previous projects in the DCEU. The new DCU will see many things change under Gunn and Safran’s watch. Actors in leading roles will be replaced, and there will be major tonal shifts in the storytelling and comics that are adapted to the screen. While there is excitement about the new direction for the DCU, it also poses some significant problems.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
In his announcement, Gunn revealed ten new projects in development at DC Studios, with a new era set to kick off in 2025 after the DC Universe is reset in 2023’s The Flash. Superman: Legacy and The Brave and the Bold will provide new takes on Superman and Batman for the DCU, while other projects including The Authority, Creature Commandos, and Booster Gold will experiment with very different tones and genres to what DC audiences might be used to. While the DCU and the MCU have often been seen to be in competition, Gunn’s work in both franchises enables him to learn valuable lessons when developing the new DCU.
Marvel Studios’ 2008 release of Iron Man kick-started the profitable Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in the years since, Marvel Studios has been met with some scrutiny for following its tried-and-tested formula with its projects. Until quite recently, projects in the MCU all shared a similar, comedic tone, and didn’t really divert from what was known to be successful. It’s only been with projects such as the comedic Thor: Ragnarok, the old horror-inspired Werewolf by Night, and the more character-driven Black Panther that the MCU has branched out into different genres. Gunn’s new slate for the DCU’s Chapter 1 seems to have avoided this problem already.
The DCU’s Chapter 1, titled “Gods and Monsters,” includes a much more diverse slate of projects from the get-go, with Gunn seemingly unfazed by the challenges that lie in developing several projects with wildly different tones. Projects such as Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and Swamp Thing are set to take on much darker tones than the likes of Booster Gold, which is billed as an “outright comedy.”Paradise Lost is taking inspiration from HBO’s Game of Thrones, and Lanterns will see Hal Jordan and John Stewart in a True Detective-style mystery. This extreme level of diversity in the DCU could be a brilliant plan, but might also be incredibly risky.
Why The DCU’s Tonal Variety Could Pose A Problem
The fact that no two projects in the new DCU seem to share the same genre could pose a serious problem for the DCU going forward. It took Marvel Studios a number of years to develop a formula that was solid enough for them to feel able to branch out into new genres. While this recent experimentation has been driven by the new stories it has been telling, the MCU has still come under scrutiny in recent years as some believe that the MCU’s Phase 4 projects have lacked interconnectivity.
The DCU is running the risk of being met with the same criticism by including so many apparently disconnected projects. This is particularly true as Gunn did not provide a clear endgame for even the first era of the new DCU. This means that viewers won’t know where the stories are eventually leading, which has been a major criticism of recent MCU projects, even though this is part of the fun of experiencing an intricate shared universe such as the MCU or the DCU. The wildly different tones of the DCU’s upcoming projects might mean that viewers won’t have a clear idea of the overall story for potentially years to come.
The DCU’s Genre-Hopping Could Be Its Secret Weapon
While the genre-hopping nature of the DCU’s Chapter 1 could be a risk, there are also some huge positives, especially considering the darker tone of previous DC projects, and the poor reception that most of those projects received. Mixing up genres and tones of upcoming projects, and branching out into new stories that haven’t yet been told in live-action, could be the perfect choice moving forward, not least because that’s what Marvel Studios is experimenting with in the MCU. That’s not to say that the two franchises are competing, but the DCU will need to stay fresh in order to become successful in an ocean of MCU content.
James Gunn and Peter Safran are hitting the ground running with their new plan for the DCU, and although it will be a while until viewers actually see these plans come to fruition, the upcoming DC projects in 2023 will inform the storyline going forward. Even though the DCU’s Chapter 1 is pulling from many different genres, Elseworlds projects will continue to be developed outside the main continuity, which will also experiment with genre and form even further. Only time will tell whether this direction for the DCU will actually work to its benefit, starting with the release of Superman: Legacy in 2025.
Throughout the past month, Hogwarts Legacy has undergone various changes to fix achievement data, trophies, UI changes, and other miscellaneous updates to improve quality of life. Simply put, this latest update, released today, on March 8, 2023, is massive. While it focuses primarily on quality-of-life and bug fixes, it targets many points for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. If you’d like to learn more, continue reading to find a full list of the bug fixes and changes introduced in Hogwarts Legacy’s March 8 patch notes.
Hogwarts Legacy March 8 Patch Notes – Full List of Bug Fixes and Changes
The patch notes released today cover a wide range of fixes, ranging from general performance and stability to online connection improvements and mission bug fixes. There’s a lot to discuss here, and the length of the notes reflects this.
Without further ado, let’s get into it, shall we?
PC Bug Fixes and Changes
Bug Fixes:
PC
Online
Improve player account network registration and tracking.
Fixed DLC related issues during pause menu, gear menu.
Fixed DLC flying mount inventory issue potentially disappearing during a mission.
Gameplay
Missions
Fixed blocker issue when unlocking the bandit camp cage before starting the mission. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-437.
Fixed not being able to complete a quest during a specific conversation with Madam Kogawa missing from her desk. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-1173.
Fixed avatar getting stuck between barrel and furnace by jumping or opening tool wheel.
Fixed a duplication collision next to one of the store entrances.
Fixed issue with waypoints being in the air instead of the ground within Hogsmeade.
Fixed objective maker being over Fig properly after waiting period.
Fixed missing exit prompt on some doors within Hogwarts.
Fixed opening butterfly chests other than the intended ones for a quest doesn’t count toward mission progression. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-5620.
Fixed butterflies to not appearing at the specified area to progress the mission again. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-4807.
Fixed incorrect merge mission progression.
Fixed stability issue in the Spoons in the Potion’s classroom.
Fixed stars being present when focusing telescope during Astronomy class on low settings. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-3032.
Fixed stars brightness and pop issues with Astronomy mini-games.
Fixed shields not displaying correctly during Crossing Wands missions.
Broom flight
Fixed player getting trapped while mounting a broom or while rotating a statue.
Fixed not landing on Viaduct bridge.
Fixed mesh breaking when avatar mounts broom after teleporting in open area.
Fixed flash and shuttering when mounting any broom.
World Events
Fixed wagon carts clipping into one another while avatar is blocking them.
Fixed occasional respawning duplication of One Man Band in Hogsmeade.
Characters
Fixed issue with characters that do not have hair.
VFX
Fixed broom speed parameters.
Fixed enemy shields not displaying correctly during Cross Wands missions.
Fixed enemy shields disappearing after being hit several times.
Fixed visibility of constellations at the astronomy table.
Fixed Dark Wizard Extortionist AOE lightning VFX attack remaining on screen.
Audio
Fixed audio of waterfall in the cliffside based on avatars proximity.
Update latest audio soundbanks.
Resolved localization and VO selection properly playing correctly.
UI
Updated localization strings.
Fixed female avatar face appearing different from the creation preview during gameplay. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-543.
Fixed transition between UI purchase window and forced conversation with vendors.
Fixed map showing wrong path to the map chamber.
Fixed damaged being represented when enemy is hit with transformation and oppugno. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-4810.
Improve tracking for Room of Requirement.
Fixed Ansel issue when FOV is set too high.
Fixed UI controller icons displaying correctly based on controller platform type.
Cinematics
Updated facial animations.
Fixed NPC treadmilling during the House Cup.
Fixed blurred texture and LOD pop.
Fixed Avatar robes appearing before Fig makes them appear before the sorting ceremony.
Raytracing
Improve stability and performance after long play throughs.
Improve VFX performance during while raytracing.
Improve performance by batching and caching raytracing buffers.
Removed fog volumes for better BVH performance.
Fixed RTAO making decals black.
Fixed directional light shadows.
Fixed shadows on trees.
Fixed performance of the culling of lights in the frontend.
Save Game
Fixed not being able to talk to Vendors during sequential saves after issue being patched. Resolves the following reported issues: HL-412, HL-494, HL-590, HL-5260.
Fixed streaming in and out after getting the ‘Dung Bomb’ field guide and loading a manual save.
Fixed an issue when turning off the title and loading an auto-save during final credits causing an infinite loading screen.
Fixed voice pitch setting save issue with avatar.
Performance and Stability
Fixed streaming issues throughout Hogwarts.
Fixed crash when common room is being shown to the player.
Fixed crash with skeletal mesh.
Fixed crash with deflection impacts.
Fixed crash when reading dictionary files.
Fixed performance when using ancient magic squash finisher on elevated Thornback Ambusher in Rune Door arena.
Improve rendering performance of translucent objects.
Fixed crash during a story graph.
Fixed streaming of plants in the Slytherin Common Room.
Fixed several memory leaks.
Fixed crash with map icon state.
Fixed crash with invalid UI.
Fixed streaming out of the Great Hall while navigating Hogwarts. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-71.
Fixed crash during audio occlusion checks around player.
Fixed crash when using explosive barrels.
Fixed crash when using Incendio spell.
Fixed crash when using Accio, Confringo, or Stupefy spells.
Fixed crash when updating gear items.
Fixed crash recursive crash with Solomons shields.
Fixed crash with mount zones.
Fixed crash during combat cursed lifetime.
Fixed crash during and spawning race on broom
Fixed occlusion culling with doors opening and closing.
Fixed occlusion culling issue.
Fixed a crash when travelling to Professor Fig’s classroom.
Fixed crashes related with Niagara and destructible related VFX.
Fixed a crash with damage over time not registering correctly.
Fixed crash spawning actor not being stored correctly.
Fixed crash with spawning actors correctly.
Fixed crash during character creation. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-232.
Fixed optimization animation instancing.
Fixed crash with moving stairs.
Fixed crash with VFX after prolonged play throughs.
Fixed crash related transformations in Overland.
Fixed crash dealing with object state.
Fixed crash with parry in combat.
Fixed crash with VFX AOE.
Fixed crash with hints.
Fixed crash with achievements with an invalid online userid.
Fixed crash while speaking to Rackham.
Fixed crash when using Wingardium.
Fixed performance drops experienced during longevity of the game.
Fixed performance drop in Divination classroom.
Improve VRAM usage specially for video cards with reduced memory.
Fixed raytracing lighting performance in the frontend.
Fixed using Ansel while a spell is being cast.
Fixed using Ansel while the avatar is riding a broom.
Updated shader compilation with latest PSO cache.
Fixed lighting optimization with Nvidia drivers.
Display
Resolved 32:9 aspect ratio issue when using an Ultrawide monitor. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-260.
Fixed Ansel issue when FOV is set too high.
Miscellaneous
Updated “Special Thanks” credits and legal lines.
Updated minimum Nvidia and AMD video driver recommendations.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S Bug Fixes and Changes
Bug Fixes:
General
Online
Improve player account network registration and tracking.
Fixed DLC related issues during pause menu, gear menu.
Fixed DLC flying mount inventory issue potentially disappearing during a mission.
Gameplay
Missions
Fixed blocker issue when unlocking the bandit camp cage before starting the mission. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-437.
Fixed not being able to complete a quest during a specific conversation with Madam Kogawa missing from her desk. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-1173.
Fixed avatar getting stuck between barrel and furnace by jumping or opening tool wheel.
Fixed a duplication collision next to one of the store entrances.
Fixed issue with waypoints being in the air instead of the ground within Hogsmeade.
Fixed objective maker being over Fig properly after waiting period.
Fixed missing exit prompt on some doors within Hogwarts.
Fixed opening butterfly chests other than the intended ones for a quest doesn’t count toward mission progression. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-5620.
Fixed butterflies to not appearing at the specified area to progress the mission again. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-4807.
Fixed incorrect merge mission progression.
Fixed stability issue in the Spoons in the Potion’s classroom.
Fixed stars being present when focusing telescope during Astronomy class on low settings. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-3032.
Fixed stars brightness and pop issues with Astronomy mini-games.
Fixed shields not displaying correctly during Crossing Wands missions.
Broom flight
Fixed player getting trapped while mounting a broom or while or rotating a statue.
Fixed not landing on Viaduct bridge.
Fixed mesh breaking when avatar mounts broom after teleporting in open area.
Fixed flash and shuttering when mounting any broom.
World Events
Fixed wagon carts clipping into one another while avatar is blocking them.
Fixed occasional respawning duplication of One-Man Band in Hogsmeade.
Characters
Fixed issue with characters that do not have hair.
VFX
Fixed broom speed parameters.
Fixed enemy shields not displaying correctly during Cross Wands missions.
Fixed enemy shields disappearing after being hit several times.
Fixed visibility of constellations at the astronomy table.
Fixed Dark Wizard Extortionist AOE lightning VFX attack remaining on screen.
Audio
Fixed audio of waterfall in the cliffside based on avatars proximity.
Update latest audio sound banks.
UI
Updated localization strings
Fixed female avatar face appearing different from the creation preview during gameplay. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-543.
Fixed transition between UI purchase window and forced conversation with vendors.
Fixed map showing wrong path to the map chamber.
Fixed damaged being represented when enemy is hit with transformation and Ancient Magic Throw. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-4810.
Improve tracking for Room of Requirement.
Cinematics
Updated facial animations.
Fixed NPC treadmilling during the House Cup.
Fixed blurred texture and LOD pop.
Fixed Avatar robes appearing before Fig makes them appear before the sorting ceremony.
Raytracing
Improve stability and performance after long play throughs.
Improve VFX performance during while raytracing.
Improve performance by batching and caching raytracing buffers.
Removed fog volumes for better BVH performance.
Save Game
Fixed not being able to talk to Vendors during sequential saves after issue being patched. Resolves the following reported issues: HL-412, HL-494, HL-590, HL-5260.
Fixed streaming in and out after getting the ‘Dung Bomb’ field guide and loading a manual save.
Fixed an issue when turning off the title and loading an auto-save during final credits causing an infinite loading screen.
Fixed voice pitch setting save issue with avatar.
Performance and Stability
Fixed streaming issues throughout Hogwarts.
Fixed crash when common room is being shown to the player.
Fixed crash with skeletal mesh.
Fixed crash with deflection impacts.
Fixed crash when reading dictionary files.
Fixed performance when using ancient magic squash finisher on elevated Thornback Ambusher in Rune Door arena.
Improve rendering performance of translucent objects.
Fixed crash during a story graph.
Fixed streaming of plants in the Slytherin Common Room.
Fixed several memory leaks.
Fixed crash with map icon state.
Fixed crash with invalid UI.
Fixed streaming out of the Great Hall while navigating Hogwarts. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-71.
Fixed crash during audio occlusion checks around player.
Fixed crash when using explosive barrels.
Fixed crash when using Incendio spell.
Fixed crash when using Accio, Congringo, or Stupefy spells.
Fixed crash when updating gear items.
Fixed crash recursive crash with Solomons shields.
Fixed crash with mount zones.
Fixed crash during combat cursed lifetime.
Fixed crash during and spawning race on broom.
Fixed occlusion culling with doors opening and closing.
Fixed occlusion culling issue.
Fixed a crash when travelling to Professor Fig’s classroom.
Fixed crashes related with Niagara and destructible related VFX.
Fixed a crash with damage over time not registering correctly.
Fixed crash spawning actor not being stored correctly.
Fixed crash with spawning actors correctly.
Fixed crash during character creation. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-232.
Fixed optimization animation instancing.
Fixed crash with moving stairs.
Fixed crash with VFX after prolonged play throughs.
Fixed crash related transformations in Overland.
Fixed crash dealing with object state.
Fixed crash with parry in combat.
Fixed crash with VFX AOE.
Fixed crash with hints.
Fixed crash with achievements with an invalid online user id.
Fixed crash while speaking to Rackham.
Fixed crash when using Wingardium.
Fixed performance drops experienced during longevity of the game.
Fixed performance drop in Divination classroom.
Miscellaneous
Updated “Special Thanks” credits and legal lines.
PS5
Gameplay
Characters
Fixed character lip-sync animation when “Original Audio” is set.
Cinematics
Fixed localized VO not playing correctly when set to “Original Audio” is set.
Controllers
Activities and Game Help
Improve Activities performance update and memory usage.
Update to Game Help hints and videos.
XSX
Cinematics
Fixed black flickering on character’s face.
Fixed graphical glitches with Fig’s head when he first opens the door. Resolves the following reported issue: HL-29.
Fixed shadow flicker in tea cup.
Performance and Stability
Improved frame rate performance issue when dismissing the contextual menu.
Improve fidelity mode performance for smooth 30 FPS experience.
With that, that’s the entire list of Hogwarts Legacy patch notes for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S released on March 8, 2023! If you’re interested in reading more about this, check out the official Hogwarts Legacy Patch Notes page. You’ll find today’s update as well as previous ones from last month.
In this business, you’re putting it all out there for audiences. When you win, it’s the best feeling in the world; you’ve successfully transported people into a world you’ve created and taken them on an emotional journey.
But, unfortunately, that doesn’t happen all the time.
Sometimes, audiences and critics don’t respond. That’s maybe the hardest thing about this existence. You want so badly to entertain and connect but when it doesn’t come through or is not successful, it’s a bummer.
Compounding this is reading critics tear your work apart.
But criticism is a necessary part of filmmaking. It’s how your work is assessed as art and for the masses.
Still, Seth Rogen wants critics to know that words can hurt. He was recently discussing mental health and criticism on the Diary of a CEO podcast, where he talked about what it’s like to read negative reviews of your work.
Rogen said, “I think if most critics knew how much it hurts the people that made the things that they are writing about, they would second guess the way they write these things.”
He continued, saying, “It’s devastating. I know people who have never recovered from it honestly – a year, decades of being hurt by [film reviews]. It’s very personal… It is devastating when you are being institutionally told that your personal expression was bad, and that’s something that people carry with them, literally, their entire lives and I get why. It fucking sucks.”
This is a brutally honest admission. Rogen went on to talk about what reviews were like for different movies. for him, Green Hornet didn’t hurt as much as when negative words were said about The Interview.
“Green Hornet felt like I had fallen victim to a big fancy thing. That was not so such much a creative failure on our parts but a conceptual failure. The Interview, people treated us like we creatively failed and that sucked.”
But Rogen maintains a healthy viewpoint when it comes to the biz and how this all works, and it’s, ultimately, what makes an article like this worth writing. Because critics aren’t going anywhere. Because the only reason to make this stuff is to put your soul on the line and tell the stories that make you happy.
Jay Chou as Kato and Seth Rogen as Britt Reid in ‘Green Hornet’Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing
Rogen says, “That’s another funny thing about making movies… life goes on… You can be making another movie as your [current] movie is bombing, which is a funny thing. It’s bittersweet. You know things will be OK. You’re already working. If the fear is the movie bombs and you won’t get hired again, well you don’t have to worry about it. But it’s an emotional conundrum at times.”
The trick is to keep working and grinding. The pain sucks, but it’s worth it to try to connect. And when you have your wins, it feels better than anything in the world. It can feel hard and pointless, but I do think the more you make the better you get.
You have to tune it out as much as you can and keep making things you believe in.
Let me know how you deal with this stuff in the comments.
The fallout of starring in Basic Instinctstretched beyond star Sharon Stone’s career and into her personal life, the actress says.
In a new interview for iHeartRadio’s Table for Two podcast released on Monday, the Oscar-nominated and Golden Globe-winning performer says that her brief nude scene in Paul Verhoeven’s 1992 film, which also starred Michael Douglas, was used against her in court by the judge determining custody of her adopted son, Roan.
“When the judge asked my child — my tiny little boy, ‘Do you know your mother makes sex movies?’ Like, this kind of abuse by the system — that I was considered what kind of parent I was because I made that movie,” Stone recalled.
As a result, she “lost custody of my child” for a shot, which she wrote in her memoir The Beauty of Living Twice, had been added to the film by Verhoeven without her full knowledge or consent. Stone says that after the ruling, which ultimately granted primary custody to Phil Bronstein and her visitation rights, she experienced mental and physical health challenges.
She would be hospitalized that same year at the Mayo Clinic due to cardiac problems related to “extra heartbeats in the upper and lower chambers.” It was a situation that, the actress added, “literally broke my heart.” Looking back, the judgment she faced at the hands of the judge is even more egregious in today’s entertainment landscape.
“People are walking around with no clothes on at all on regular TV now and you saw maybe like a sixteenth of a second of possible nudity of me — and I lost custody of my child,” she pointed out. “Are you kidding?”
Stone said that judgment extended all the way to the awards circuit, where she was laughed at by peers at the 1993 Golden Globes ceremony as her name was read out as a nominee.
“It was horrible. I was so humiliated,” Stone said, laughing before getting more emotional. “Does anyone have any idea how hard it was to play that part? How gut-wrenching? How frightening? To try and carry this complex movie that was breaking all boundaries and everyone was protesting against, and the pressure.”
It was a part that she had auditioned nine months for and had been offered to 13 other people. “And now you’re laughing at me,” Stone said. “I just wanted to crawl into a hole.”
“Odmazda” was produced by Makedonska Televizija, YC Alligator Film, Nieuwe Media Producties, Tchin Tchin Productions, Vardar Film and Canal+ and was originally released on June 6th 2001.
Pedro Pascal, who has become the iconic father figure in shows like “The Last of Us” and “The Mandalorian,” admitted that he fell asleep while filming the gruesome death of his chararcter in “Game of Thrones.”
“Hot Ones” host Sean Evans asked Pascal about the dynamics of shooting scenes in which characters get their eyes gouged out, which also happened for Pascal in “Equalizer 2.”
“And maybe in this interview as well,” Pascal joked as he reached the midway point of spicy sauces, taking two bites of the wing and humming. “I can beg you to gouge my eyes out and collapse my skull in case it gets really bad.”
“I got my head crushed in. It was the best part of the day. It was so hot when we were shooting that scene,” Pascal said about his character’s death by eye gouging. “He’s over me and he puts his thumbs into my eyes and they’ve got piping — or tubing — through his body into his forearms to his thumbs pumping this cool blood. So gentle, like the gentlest guy ever. I felt no pressure at all, he was so hyperaware of it.”
Pascal went on to describe the scene in which The Mountain, or Ser Gregor Clegane, (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson) brutally kills his character Oberyn Martell.
“There were all of these fleshy bits that they were placing all over my face and pumping blood so that it would pool and spread through the amphitheater for this good wide shot of us from above. And I was dead asleep,” he said. “It was so hot and this stuff was so cooling to the touch and you had to be really really still. That was the most relaxing and knowing also that we had gotten to the end of this four-day fight, it was very cathartic and I went into the deepest sleep I’ve been in.”
Pascal joked that he’s not a good sleeper and so this technique was helpful in teaching him what he needed to doze off — cool gelatinous pieces of flesh, face meat and pooling blood.
Pascal also discussed rumored Nic Cage pillows given to the cast on the set of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent” once the spicy mushroom torture sauce kicked in.
The multi-hyphenate actor and singer will be represented by the agency in all areas. Cameron exploded musically in 2022 with her chart-topping single “Boyfriend” and has simultaneously been building a film and acting resume.
The 27-year-old began releasing original music in 2019 via Colombia Records. Since then she has collected awards, including best new artist at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards and the American Music Awards, and was nominated for best new artist at the People’s Choice Awards. She’s currently nominated for best new artist at the 2023 iHeart Radio Awards and outstanding breakthrough music artist at the 34th annual GLAAD Media Awards.
“Boyfriend” went platinum last fall and peaked at No. 2 on U.S. Top 40 radio, in addition to banking over 1 billion global streams. Cameron’s other hit singles include “We Go Down Together,” featuring Khalid, and “Breakfast” (the music video for which made a statement following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, promoting advocacy groups like Supermajority, Emily’s List, Headcount and National Network of Abortion Funds).
As an actor, Cameron broke out on the Apple TV+ original series “Schmigadoon!,” the second season of which will premiere in April. She also appears on Hulu’s “History of the World: Part II.” On the big screen, Cameron recently appeared in the BJ Novak-directed feature “Vengeance,” which premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. She’s also done stage work, including a London production of “The Light in the Piazza.” That musical made its West End debut at the Royal Festival Hall, then continued its run in Los Angeles at the LA Opera with Dove returning in the role of Clara.
Cameron continues to be managed by LBI Entertainment, attorney Patti C. Felker at Felker Toczek Suddleson Abramson McGinnis Ryan, and Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis.
Busy documentarian Dawn Porter will debut her latest project, “The Lady Bird Diaries,” March 10 at SXSW. The all-archival doc, which will bow on Hulu later this year, relies on 123 hours of personal and revealing audio diaries that Lady Bird recorded during her the presidency of her husband, Lyndon Baines Johnson. The tapes, which were not publicly released until 2017, reveal the critical role the former First Lady played in LBJ’s White House as a close advisor and trusted political partner.
Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson began her recording diary shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963 and kept recording through her family’s departure from the White House in January 1969. Julia Sweig spent five years researching the diaries for her 2021 biography “Lady Bird Johnson: Hiding in Plain Sight,” which she turned into an eight-part podcast that formed the basis for Porter’s 90-minute docu, produced by Trilogy Films for ABC News Studios.
“I found a document that’s a strategy memo that Lady Bird wrote to LBJ in May of 1964,” Sweig, an executive producer on the project, told Variety. “He was worried that he might not be able to carry off actually being the President on his own. And Lady Bird says, ‘Yes you can, and you will win. And then in February or March of 1968, you can tell the country that you won’t be running for a second term.’ So, her influence was directly there.”
Variety spoke to Porter about the project and why she didn’t want to lionize the former First Lady.
How did this documentary come about?
Jackie Glover at ABC Studios came to me because she was familiar with my 2018 Netflix series “Bobby Kennedy for President.” So, she thought that I would be interested in Julia’s podcast, which I absolutely was. I think she also knew that I’m always interested in women, politics and civil rights. Because I had done some other films around this period in American history, it was just a delicious opportunity to review the same time period through Lady Bird’s eyes.
In “Bobby Kennedy for President” you explored RFK’s transformation from a law-and-order leader to progressive social justice and civil rights crusader. In this documentary we get to hear Lady Bird’s assessment of RFK, and it isn’t always complimentary. Were you surprised by that?
I was really surprised. She was very frustrated with Bobby’s coldness to Johnson. It was interesting to see her frustration with him and feeling like he was not appreciative at all of Johnson’s efforts to really finish what JFK started. But Johnson actually went much further, so it was interesting to see her take on that.
I also found it surprising that Lady Bird critiqued Johnson’s speeches and was so involved in his decision making during his time in the Oval Office. She even created the East Wing, correct?
It was Lady Bird who started the substantive policy arm of the East Wing, and she pressured Lyndon to actually allocate a budget for her staff — a staff that was doing policy work. So we would not have an East Wing necessarily if it weren’t for Lady Bird’s efforts.
The doc reveals that during her time in the East Wing Lady Bird had Black tenants who were living in squalor on her family farm in Texas. What did you make of that?
She’s such a fascinating character, and she’s certainly not above criticism or reproach. I mean, she is a Southern woman who grew up with Southern attitudes towards Black people. It’s unclear if she was unable to see the conditions that they were living in but it’s something that of course today we are all horrified by. I thought it was really important to include that in the film and point out that she was this 1950s white woman living in the 1960’s trying to navigate the background that she came from.
You realize that despite her intelligence she wasn’t perfect.
Yes. The point of the film isn’t to lionize her and say that she was revolutionary in all things. It’s really to take this perspective of this white woman at the time and show how she navigated this incredibly quickly changing society.
How did you decide what to use from the 120 hours of tapes Lady Bird recorded?
I wanted to focus on her public life and her contribution to politics that weren’t as visible as I thought they should have been. So, I focused on those parts of her tapes. You always have to pick a lens and not try and do everything because if you try and cover everything, you end up with a mosh. So, I chose to concentrate on what I’m really interested in, which is women’s power and how do they use it? How do they balance it?
The images have been said to speak to the heartache felt by many across the country today, with the dog’s owners among at least nine people killed in airstrikes by Vladimir Putin’s forces.
Photographs show the little dog, called Elsa, curled up and whimpering on dust-covered bedding in the ruins of her family’s home, which was completely destroyed in the pre-dawn ‘revenge’ strikes.
Three men and two women were killed in the Lviv region after a missile struck a residential area – the first deaths in the far-western city in many months as a result of Russia‘s ongoing invasion of the Ukraine.
It was there, in a village in the Zolochevsky district, that the devastated pooch was discovered by locals, appearing to mourn the loss of its people.
Photographs show the little dog, called Elsa, lying on dust-covered bedding in the ruins of the family’s home, which was completely destroyed in the pre-dawn ‘revenge’ strikes.
A poignant photograph from the scene shows a young girl leaning down to scoop up the frightened animal to take it so safety
Photos also showed Elsa, who appears to be a Jack Russell, curled up in a ball on what looks like the duvet and bed sheets of her owners.
The little dog was nestled on top of a large pile of rubble, with the building behind it totally blown apart by the Russian missile.
Debris, including bricks and rubble, surround the bedding it’s lying on. With its head and ears drooped and tail tucked underneath itself, the pup is clearly distraught.
A second poignant photograph from the scene shows a young girl leaning down to scoop up the frightened animal to take it so safety.
During the touching moment, she is seen carefully wrapping a cloth around the dog, which reports say had injured its paw.
A heart-wrenching video then shows Elsa limping around the demolished home, desperately sniffing the rubble, one presumes, for any sign of its owners.
Bystanders who discover the pooch try their best to comfort it, stroking it and allowing it to search the area.
The images demonstrate the utter devastation to the house, with hardly anything left of the deceased family’s home.
Pictured: Locals scour through the rubble of a destroyed house at the scene of the missile strike in Lviv on Thursday
Twisted metal and broken wooden beams show that the structure of the building gave way in the blast, causing much of it to collapse.
One of the walls of the building has totally caved, and looking through the building, it is clear that others are by no means stable. In fact, it no longer resembles a building at all – but rather an abandoned building site.
The fate of the small pooch was not immediately clear, although the clip showing a number of people gathered around her and the outpouring of sadness for her among Ukrainians suggest she will be taken care of.
Many took to Twitter to share the photograph of the dog curled up in the rubble, pointing to the death of its family as one of many examples of Russian atrocities carried out in Ukraine since Putin launched his invasion in February 2022.
As people slept last night, Russia launched 81 missiles against targets across Ukraine, striking 10 of the country’s 27 regions.
While the missiles mainly targeted energy infrastructure, civilian sites like the pet’s home were also hit.
Police and local residents carry an unidentified body following a Russian strike in the village of Velyka Vilshanytsia, some 30 miles from Lviv, on March 9
Three men and two women were killed in the Lviv region after a missile struck a residential area – the first death in the far-western city in many months as a result of Russia’s on-going invasion of the Ukraine
Moscow has said that the strikes were in response to a border incursion earlier this month, referring to claims that Ukrainian nationalists crossed into the southern Bryansk region and killed two civilians, which Kyiv dismissed as a provocation by the Kremlin.
Ukraine said it downed nearly half of the missiles launched by Russia over at least 10 regions, with fighting raging in eastern Bakhmut.
The dog’s owners were among the first civilians killed there in a long time. They were among five people killed after a missile struck a residential area, Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi said.
Three buildings were destroyed by fire after the strike and rescue workers were combing through rubble looking for more possible victims.
Footage from the area, some 440 miles from any military battlefield in the east of Ukraine, showed a flattened house and badly damaged buildings nearby.
‘At this moment, it is known about four dead. These are four adults. Two men and two women,’ Kozytski wrote on Telegram messenger, saying a missile had hit their home in the Zolochiv district west of the city of Lviv. A fifth death was later confirmed.
The strikes also killed three people in Kharkiv, and left Ukraine’s second largest city – found in the northeast – without power, water or heating.
A ninth man, who was 34, was killed in the eastern city of Dnipropetrovsk, local authorities said.
‘The enemy fired 81 missiles in an attempt to intimidate Ukrainians again, returning to their miserable tactics,’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Angela Bassett, Brooke Shields and Cate Blanchett caught up at the TIME Women of the Year event at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills.
Microsoft is starting to roll out its much anticipated built-in video upscaling feature for its Edge browser.
The company’s new Video Super Resolution (VSR) algorithm uses artificial intelligence to boost web videos with a lower than 720p resolution, while also removing blocky artifacts, with the feature set to be made widely available to users in the “coming weeks”.
So how do you use it? Revealing further details on the feature in a posting on its Edge blog (opens in new tab), Microsoft confirmed that VSR will be initially restricted to Windows machines with an Nvidia (RTX 20-series and above) or AMD (RX5700 and above) GPU.
To use the AI upscaling you’ll also need to be running the experimental Edge Canary version of Microsoft’s browser. If you’re on a laptop, you’ll need to be plugged into the mains, while those with hybrid GPUs will need to change Windows settings to force Edge to run using just their discrete GPU (automatic Hybrid GPU support is coming in a forthcoming update).
VSR is able to upscale video which are at least 192 pixels in width and height, but it sadly won’t work with DRM protected videos that use PlayReady or Widevine tech, such as Netflix streams.
Analysis: AI upscaling gives a welcome boost to AMD GPUs
(Image credit: Microsoft)
While some might dismiss the roll out of VSR as being little more than a gimmick for watching elderly YouTube clips like Charlie Bit My Finger (opens in new tab) in UltraHD, for some users this AI upscaling could be a game-changer.
While Microsoft admit that VSR is computationally intensive and may slow down less capable machines, the feature offers a potential big visual bonus for those hampered by low bandwidth internet, or those that are restricted by data caps.
It’s also a salvo in the GPU bragging wars, giving AMD video card owners parity at last with Nvidia users, who’ve been able to brag about video upscaling in Chrome or Edge for some time.
The series follows Hannah (played by Garner), a woman who must forge a relationship with her sixteen-year-old stepdaughter Bailey (Angourie Rice) in order to find the truth about why her husband has mysteriously disappeared.
The latest trailer for the series, which was released Thursday, begins with Garner’s Hannah asking her husband Owen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) what defines him. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my daughter,” he replies. Soon after, the doorbell rings and a young girl hands Hannah a note, supposedly from Owen, which reads “Protect her.”
She tries unsuccessfully to reach her husband and has little to say when Bailey asks where he’s gone. As Hannah begins to unravel the mystery, she realizes that Owen has been keeping secrets from both her and Bailey, and now they’re left to find him or potentially face the consequences alone.
Watch the full trailer above.
The series is produced for Apple by Hello Sunshine, who optioned the book from author Laura Dave and serves as the studio on the project with 20th Television. Olivia Newman directs the pilot episode, and the all-female director lineup for the series includes Deniz Gamze Erguven, Daisy Von Scherler Mayer, and Lila Neugebauer.
Created and adapted by Laura Dave and Josh Singer, The Last Thing He Told Me marks the first collaboration between the married couple, who both serve as executive producers alongside Garner and Hello Sunshine’s Reese Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter.
The Last Thing He Told Me premieres globally on Apple TV+ with the first two episodes on Friday, April 14 followed by new episodes every Friday through May 19.
It’s time to step into Oscar week face-forward with rejuvenating skin treatments favored by stars and non-celebrities alike seeking a youthful, dewy, radiant glow.
“Exfoliating and hydrating are the key to glowing skin,” says Alison Kirsten, director of spa operations at LA’s Fairmont Century City Plaza. “My suggestion would be to cleanse, exfoliate, apply a sheet mask, depuff with a sculpting tool, use a LED device, apply a serum, and end with a facial massage with an oil-based serum to lock in moisture for smooth and supple skin.”
The hotel’s 14,000-square foot spa offers a bevy of awards-season facials, including the Dr. Rita Rakus “Red Carpet Radiance” Facial ($450), an award-winning treatment that utilizes the 4-step protocols of the Dr. Rita Jetlift system to reduce fine lines and wrinkles, and the Avenue of the Stars “Super Power” Facial ($750), which uses a specialized anti-aging serum that boosts epidermal moisture and skin elasticity and is guaranteed to make you look refreshed and replenished in just 75 minutes.
“Her signature skincare range has been specifically developed to maintain good skin health on a daily basis,” says Kirsten of the Dr. Rita Rakus line. “Her products fight the first signs of aging by targeting each layer of the skin to thoroughly hydrate the whole face.”
In the heart of downtown LA, the “Red Carpet Ready” treatments at the Ritz-Carlton Spa, Los Angeles are de rigueur for any and all chasing a fresh-faced look. The 80-minute Red Carpet Radiance Facial ($360-$380) pampers the skin, restoring the skin’s vitality and revealing a bright, smooth and youthful looking visage.
Not keen on Botox? The non-invasive, 90-minute MBR Red Carpet Firming and Detox Facial ($500) at Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills stimulates skin cell functions, reduces wrinkles and creases and works as an effective alternative to injectable aesthetic procedures.
“This facial treatment stimulates all epidermal and dermal cell functions, leading to a remarkably renewed skin structure,” says Gilma Linares, assistant spa manager at the Four Seasons. “The neuromuscular serum compounds reduce facial micro contractions, resulting in a dramatic reduction of wrinkles and creases. Detoxing actives [products] rejuvenate the skin for a radiant and illuminated and youthful complexion.”
“MBR’s facials are fantastic for events as they work to deeply revitalize the skin and provide extremely long-lasting hydration,” adds Four Seasons esthetician Ana Ford. “MBR’s products are also all gentle enough that clients are ready to go out the same day, without any recovery or downtime after the facial.”
Overlooking Rodeo Drive, the Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, features another starry beauty treatment in its Augustinus Bader facial dubbed “The Method” ($595). The hotel spa’s “highly-sensorial” 90-minute treatment uses a plethora of Augustinus Bader products–infused with TFC8 scientific technology–on both face and body, to promote circulation and firm, tone and rejuvenate the skin. Also on the spa menu: the ultra-indulgent Signature Facial by Beverly Wilshire ($995).
“The Signature Facial by Beverly Wilshire is exclusive to our Spa and is customized to each guest, utilizing top performing modalities in Spa technology, helping achieve a ‘younger’ looking skin,” says Gillian Garcia, lead therapist at The Spa at Beverly Wilshire. “Cryotherapy helps reduce inflammation. HydraFacial is used to provide instant hydration, while microcurrents firm and lift the skin. The use of galvanic technology minimizes lines and wrinkles, and an oxygen infusion restores elasticity and repairs tissue.”
Adds Garcia, “This treatment allows for a natural glow, leaving the skin ready for your close-up moment.”
Challengers for Best Picture at the Oscars have often launched at the prestigious Toronto, Cannes, Venice and Telluride film festivals. There’s never before been one from the blue-collar SXSW Film and TV Festival in Austin, Texas.
Until now: “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the multiverse freakout by 35-year-old writers/directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known collectively as Daniels), is poised to storm Sunday’s 95th Academy Awards. It has a leading 11 nominations, Best Picture among them, after an implausible year that began last March 11 at South by Southwest, where it opened the fest.
Made for less than $25 million (U.S.), “EEAAO” has to date grossed more than $107 million internationally (it’s still in theatrical and streaming release), making it the most successful movie ever for independent studio A24, the hippest of boutique film labels.
This almost indescribable comic sci-fi adventure of Asian-American laundromat owners who “verse-jump” between multiple dimensions to fight bizarre existential threats, including mind-controlling raccoons and a soul-sucking giant bagel, has also shaken up notions of what constitutes a Best Picture winner.
Members of the tradition-bound and mostly boomer-aged Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences seem poised to shower gold upon a film many of them admit they don’t understand — and they’re not alone. Kwan told Vulture his own mom, a Chinese immigrant herself, seems baffled by his film’s success: “She was like, ‘I know people like the film, but can you explain why people love it?’”
Whether “Everything Everywhere” wins or loses on Sunday night — and it’s bound to win something — the Oscars will never be the same again.
The movie is already boosting the visibility and career prospects of Asian actors in Hollywood. Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan and Stephanie Hsu, three of the film’s four Oscar-nominated actors (Jamie Lee Curtis is the fourth) have all spoken of feeling overlooked and undervalued by the industry before this breakthrough. It’s particularly sweet for Quan, the likely Best Supporting Actor winner, a former child actor (“Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies”) who hasn’t been in a movie for 20 years.
Few people could have predicted this a year ago when Malaysian-born actor Yeoh, 60, best known for her martial arts skills in the action film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and the 007 adventure “Tomorrow Never Dies,” urged the SXSW premiere audience to “put on your safety belts and get ready for the ride of your life!”
When the lights came back up two and a half hours later inside Austin’s Paramount Theatre, the capacity crowd roared with approval and an eagerness to ask questions about what they’d just witnessed. (YouTube has the Q&A session.)
“We used to do a lot of music videos and we would get rejected a lot,” said Scheinert, who together with creative partner Kwan has explored weird tales and absurd characters for more than a decade.
“And we had all these leftover ideas, so we were like, ‘Let’s make a movie with everything in it, so we can use up all those things that Rihanna said no to.’” (Coincidentally, Rihanna will also be at the Oscars, singing the nominated song “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”)
Added a delighted Yeoh: “That script blew all of us away. I still don’t understand it.”
“Everything Everywhere” is even weirder than “Swiss Army Man,” the 2016 feature debut by Daniels — and that’s a bromantic love story starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.
You could call “EEAAO” an ecstatic enigma, one embraced not only by critics and audiences but also by a host of pre-Oscars awards (among them the guilds for directors, producers and actors) that indicate a likely awards bounty on Sunday night. Even rival director Steven Spielberg, whose family drama “The Fabelmans” has seven nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, has praised the “amazing genius work” of Daniels, prompting Kwan to tweet “thank you, dearest papa.”
The slow rise to prominence of “Everything Everywhere” has been a marvel to witness in a topsy-turvy Oscars campaign that has seen more traditional Best Picture contenders — among them “The Fabelmans,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “Top Gun: Maverick” — lose considerable heat for one reason or another.
Despite the film’s enthusiastic reception in Austin — where the civic motto is “Keep Austin Weird” — “EEAAO” seemed anything but a future Oscar front-runner when it opened commercially in 10 U.S. theatres last March 25 (Canada followed a week later). The opening weekend box office take was just $501,305 (U.S.), enough for an 13th-place ranking but outside the much publicized Top 10 box office list.
“Everything” proved to be the Little Weird Movie That Could, rising into the Top 10 through critical praise and word-of-mouth, and staying there until the middle of the summer. It even hit the No. 1 spot, for a single day, on May 4. (“EEAAO” did well in Canada, too, although it ranks 23rd for 2022 box-office success in this country.)
A big of part of the reason for the film’s unlikely success is the adorability and indefatigability of the directors, cast and crew. The “Everything Everywhere” teammates obviously all love each other, as displayed in their ecstatic group hugs at such events as the recent Screen Actors Guild and Independent Spirit awards, where the film dominated both shows.
Unlike many of their awards seasons rivals, who often seem bored or resentful about having to promote their films, the “EEAAO” team appears increasingly energized as Oscar night approaches. Just this week, Kwan and Scheinert did a riff on their gonzo goofballs reputation to help open “Late Night With Stephen Colbert,” a promo aimed squarely at the final days of Oscar voting.
These guys are crazy like verse-jumping foxes.
So how good is the movie? A mini review
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Starring Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jamie Lee Curtis, James Hong, Jenny Slate and Harry Shum Jr. Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. Screening on multiple online platforms. 149 minutes. PG
“No need to explain!” a character helpfully exclaims in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” much like the enigmatic rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland.”
That Lewis Carroll classic comes to mind, and so do more contemporary mind-benders like “The Matrix” and “Looper,” along with innumerable Hong Kong action films, in this exuberant second feature by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (“Swiss Army Man”).
“Verse-jumping” through a multitude of multiverses, it follows struggling Asian-American laundromat owner Evelyn Wang, played by Michelle Yeoh, as she struggles to keep her family together while also seeking to save a panoply of parallel realms — including worlds of talking rocks, mind-controlling raccoons, hot dog fingers and sinister giant bagels — from dissolving into nothingness.
The main story is actually quite linear and empathically acted: Evelyn seeks to reconnect with her divorce-seeking husband (Ke Huy Quan), her estranged gay daughter (Stephanie Hsu) and her demanding traditional dad (James Hong) while placating an officious tax collector (Jamie Lee Curtis). Then everything everywhere gets thrown down rabbit holes of multiverse insanity, which sometimes gets exhausting but never boring.
Raising an ecstatic hot dog middle finger to the negativity of modern times, “EEAAO” urges us to free our minds and accept that it’s OK to be strange. To quote one of the film’s talking rocks: “Every new discovery is just a reminder we’re all small and stupid.”
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We’ve got exciting news for fans of Disneyland Resort. Ant-Man’s Cassie Lang is now meeting Guests at Avengers Campus in Disney California Adventure Park!
Avengers Campus
To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect upon my first experience at Avengers Campus. I finally had the pleasure of visiting the area on a recent trip to Disneyland Resort.
Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG
Although I was A Bug’s Land fan, I also love the Avengers and was super excited about the new retheme! That being said, prior to my visit, there were a lot of negative reviews circling around in the Disney community.
As I turned to walk in, I was taken aback by the vastness of the area. A Bug’s Land always felt rather tight and congested, but Avengers Campus is bright and open!
Photo: Disney
First impression…I loved it! The vibe of the area is fantastic and the scenery offers an incredibly immersive experience for fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In addition, the character sightings are so much fun! Unpopular opinion – I’m not one to pay much attention to Disney characters.
Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG
I’d rather go on rides than spend time snapping photos, but this was different! In addition, although against the general consensus, I happened to love the new, WEB SLINGERS: A Spider-Man Adventure attraction!
I also enjoyed Pym Test Kitchen which makes you feel like you’re a part of the Ant-Man universe! Speaking of which, a brand new character from the movie just landed at Avengers Campus!
Ant-Man’s Cassie Lang
The fANTastic @kathrynnewton, AKA Cassie Lang, recently dropped into #AvengersCampus at Disney California Adventure park to make an exciting announcement and celebrate “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania,” now in theaters. Check it out! ? pic.twitter.com/wKN1gUCeAz
Disney Parks recently shared the news that Cassie Lang, Ant-Man’s daughter is now greeting Guests for a limited time. Actress Kathryn Newton made the announcement in a video from Disney California Adventure Park.
Photo: @socalirific on Tiktok
If you’re an Ant-Man fan, be sure to keep a lookout for the Marvel character. She’ll only be there until March 15, 2023!
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon!
News of a sequel to the 2005 DC outing Constantine has drifted in and out of the headlines for some time. But while it has recently seemed like the project is finally a go, Keanu Reeves has revealed that he is not sure whether Constantine 2is as much of a sure thing as we all thought. Speaking with Comicbook.com, Reeves assured fans that he is “trying” to get Constantine 2 the green light, but ultimately, he does not know if it will ever happen.
“I was hoping it would, but we don’t know. Yeah, we’re trying.”
Released back in 2005, and based on the DC comic Hellblazer, the first Constantine stars Keanu Reeves as an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift. Unknown to most people, the world is crowded with spirits both good and evil who walk among us in human guise. One of the few who can see these spirits is John Constantine, but the responsibility of his vision is more than he can stand, and, as a teenager, he attempts to take his own life. Saved from death, Constantine must now atone for his actions by acting as a guardian in the middle ground between Paradise and Hell and becoming a detective of the occult and the paranormal.
Directed by Francis Lawrence, Constantine did well at the box office but was met with a mixed response critically. Audiences though were much more enamored, with Keanu Reeves’ recent, well-deserved popularity leading many to call for him to reprise the role as the paranormal investigator.
A sequel to Constantine was officially announced by Warner Bros. Pictures last year, with both Reeves and Lawrence reportedly set to return. Constantine 2 will be written by Akiva Goldsman, who has revealed some details regarding the direction of the follow—up.
“The character is very much Keanu and the way he and Francis saw the world of good and evil, and the wonderful and authentic noir where there is a world behind the world of good and evil coexist with our world right up close. Beyond that, we are still discovering it as I am writing the script,” Goldsman revealed.
Of course, projects start and stop all the time, but Reeves’ concern likely stems from the fact that DC will undergo a total recalibration courtesy of James Gunn and Peter Safran. While the plan does include an Elseworlds strategy, in which stories not tied to the shared cinematic universe will be told, it’s possible that Constantine 2 runs contrary to what Gunn and Safran have in mind.
For now, Keanu Reeves will reprise another role. That of John Wick in this month’s John Wick: Chapter 4.The sequel finds the titular assassin uncovering a path to defeating the High Table, but before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into new foes.
John Wick: Chapter 4 is scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on March 24, 2023.
A PS1 classic is coming to Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Lite, and Nintendo Switch OLED this summer. The PS1 has a vast and impressive library and classics across many genres. That said, in particular, RPG fans ate very well on PS1. This era is considered by many the golden era for RPGs, especially tactical RPGs. As you may know, tactical RPGs aren’t very common anymore, partially because they don’t sell well. When a new tactical RPG releases in the modern era, it’s usually a smaller release from an independent developer. The days of tactical RPGs being the focus of major studios and publishers are largely over, which means fans of the genre are going to spend lots of time revisiting the classics. To this end, they will be able to do just that this in June.
Today, developer Storm Trident and publisher announced that Front Mission 2: Remake is coming to Nintendo Switch on June 12 priced at $34.99. As the name suggests, this is a remake of the 1997 PS1 game, Front Mission 2. And to accompany this news, a new trailer for the remake was also released.
“A classic tactical RPG returns! The second game in the main Front Mission storyline is finally available outside of Japan for the first time,” reads an official blurb about the game. “Front Mission 2: Remake preserves the mature story, strategic turn-based combat, and Wanzer customization options of the original. Enjoy the revitalized classic with updated visuals and new features and enhancements!”
The game’s official description continues, diving into the story synopsis: “12 years have passed since the second Huffman conflict. The impoverished People’s Republic of Alordesh has been suffering a severe economic decline ever since the war ended. In June 2102, soldiers of the Alordesh Army rise up and, led by Ven Mackarage, declare independence from the O.C.U. (Oceania Cooperative Union). Ash, an O.C.U. soldier, manages to survive the ensuing battle, but Alordesh is completely overrun by the Revolutionary Army. Ash and his surviving teammates infiltrate Alordesh’s chaotic underground in an attempt to escape the country. However, they soon discover that there is a huge conspiracy behind the coup.”
HONORARY GOLDEN CYCLO (offered by the Agglomeration Community and the city of Vesoul): to M. Lee Yong-kwan, president of BIFF, for its action in favour of the cinema (Korea) and Semih Kaplanoğlu, director, for the all of his work (Turkey).
CYCLO D’OR (offered by the Regional Council of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), International Jury: President: M. Lee Yong-kwan, president of BIFF (Korea), members: Mrs Emily J Hoe, president SGIFF (Singapore), Mr. Yerlan Nurmukhambetov, director (Kazakhstan), M. Mikhail Red, director (Philippines)
THE SALES GIRL by Sengedorj Janchivdorj (Mongolie) A unanimous decision from the International jury, The Sales Girl is warm, heartfelt and charming film showing a clear and confident hand of the director. The performances were strong, and the use of humour and music were particularly effective
GRAND JURY AWARD:
COLD AS MARBLE by Asif Rustamov(Azerbaïdjan) Expertly directed with haunting performances, this examination of our inescapable histories and realities is gripping until its inevitable culmination in cold blood
JURY PRIZE (offered by the Departmental Council of Haute-Saône): ex-AEQUO
NO END by Nader Saeivar (Iran)for knowing how to tell the tragic story of a little man with few means, in a minimalist way and to transmit the drama visually
A LETTER FROM KYOTO by Kim Min-ju (Korea) it is a very competent film especially from first time feature filmmaker Kim Mingju, A Letter from Kyoto was well acted and confidently addressed generational relationships and challenges, quite universal themes that the audience could relate to and sympathise with the family on their journey
NETPAC AWARD (NETWORK FOR THE PROMOTION OF ASIAN CINEMA), president: Mrs Bina Paul, co-president NETPAC (India), members: Mrs Diana Ashimova, artistic director (Kazakhstan), Mr. Andreas Ungerböck, journalist (Austria):
COLD AS MARBLE by Asif Rustamov(Azerbaïdjan) for its strong and chilling cinematic narrative of the relationship between father and a son. The jury appreciates the excellent performances of the ensemble cast
MARC HAAZ AWARD: President: Sheron Dayoc, director (Philippines) members: Vatche Boulghourjiandirector (Lebanon) and Marina Gulbahari, director (Afghanistan):
COLD AS MARBLE by Asif Rustamov(Azerbaïdjan) for its distinctive emotional experience of a father- son relationship, strengthened by the actors’ impressive performances
FILM CRITICS’ AWARD, president: M. Naman Ramachandran (Variety); members: Ms. Denitza Bantecheva (Positif), MRs Sophie Guo (RFI):
NO END by Nader saeivar (Iran)for its candid depiction of Iranian society, for the Kafkaesque dimension of the script, for the simplicity and the efficacity of the mise en scène and for the subtle interpretation of all the actors. And we also applaud it as a fine example of cinema of courage.
INALCO JURY PRIZE (offered by the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations), president: Mrs Alexandra de Mersan, members: M. Nicolas Barcikowsky, Mrs Sophie Pham et Mrs Diane Pierrat
BEHIND VEILSby Praveen Morchhale (India)for this critical satire of contemporary India, full of humour and subtlety. The director tackles serious themes with lightness, he stages the absurdity and dysfunction of family, administrative, political and social institutions
INALCO FAVORITE:
A LETTER FROM KYOTO by Kim Min-ju (Korea) The jury was enthusiastic about the way the director concerns with memory and the Japanese-Korean Identity story.
AUDIENCE AWARD FOR A FICTION FILM (offered by the city of Vesoul):
Michael Keaton’s Batman isn’t the only big comic book character return happening in Warner Bros.’ long-awaited “The Flash.” As the film’s official trailer confirmed last month, Michael Shannon is also coming back to the DC Universe as “Man of Steel” villain General Zod in the upcoming Ezra Miller-led comic book tentpole. Shannon admitted in a recent interview with Looper that he was quite baffled when the offer came in to reprise General Zod.
“I was a little confused,” Shannon said. “I said, ‘As memory serves me, I think I died in ‘Man of Steel.’ Are they sure they got the right guy?’ But then they explained to me the whole multiverse phenomenon, which I was a little behind the times on that. I can’t say that I’m a huge consumer of this genre of films — not that I have anything against them. If I’m going to watch a movie, the odds are it’s not going to be one of those, but I sure love making them.”
The multiverse storyline in “The Flash” means that Shannon will not be playing the same iteration of General Zod that he did in 2013’s “Man of Steel.” The actor said his role in the film is relatively small and he only shot for a couple of weeks.
“I tried to get back into his skin,” Shannon added. “He’s a little different in this film. He’s a little more…I don’t know how to put it. You don’t spend as much time with him, so you don’t really get to know as much about what he’s thinking. It’s not necessarily his movie. That’s the thing with these multiverse movies — you get a little bit of this and a little bit of that. But it’s really Ezra [Miller’s] movie.”
“The Flash,” directed by “It” helmer Andy Muschietti, stars Shannon opposite Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton, Sasha Calle, and Ron Livingston. The film has been called a “reset” for the DC Universe by new DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran. Gunn has also called “The Flash” one of the greatest superhero movies ever made.
“The Flash” opens in theaters nationwide June 16 from Warner Bros.
Jennifer Lawrence shows off her comedic chops in the new trailer for “No Hard Feelings,” the comedy from Columbia Pictures and “Good Boys” director Gene Stupnitsky.
The Oscar winner stars as Maddie, a woman on the brink of losing her childhood home if she doesn’t find a way to make money, fast. Out of desperation, she’s hired by a pair of helicopter parents to “date” their socially awkward 19-year-old son, Percy (Andrew Feldman), before sending him off to college.
The red band trailer begins with Maddie’s messy predicament: she wakes up one morning to find her car getting towed by a previous fling (“The Bear” and “Girls” star Ebon Moss-Bachrach) while another one-night stand is still inside. As an Uber driver without a car, she knows she’s in serious trouble.
Luckily, her friend (Natalie Morales) stumbles upon an online ad that reads, “Need a car? Date our son this summer and bring him out of his shell before college.” Noting that the word “date” is in quotes, she wonders if it’s a joke.
But Percy’s parents (played by Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti) are dead serious. He doesn’t drink or talk to girls – how is he supposed to survive at Princeton?
From their very first meeting, hilarity and disaster ensue when Percy thinks Maddie is trying to kidnap him. Despite all her charms and determination, Maddie finds herself with a greater challenge on her hands than she ever could have imagined.
“No Hard Feelings” is written by Stupnitsky and John Phillips and produced by Lawrence, Alex Saks, Naomi Odenkirk, Marc Provissiero and Justine Ciarrocchi. Executive producers are Phillips and Kerry Orent.
The comedy, which has not received a rating yet, premieres in theaters on June 23, 2023.
A new Thai thriller comparable to Searchlight Pictures The Menu is coming to Netflix in April 2023. We have everything you need to know about Hunger, including the plot, cast, trailer, and Netflix release date.
Hunger is an upcoming Thai Netflix Original thriller directed by Dom Sitisiri Mongkolsiri and written by screenwriter Lek Kongdej Jaturanrasamee.
When is the Hunger release date?
Thanks to the release of the trailer we can confirm that Hunger will be released on Netflix on Monday, April 10th, 2023.
What is the plot of Hunger?
The synopsis for Hunger has been sourced from IMDb:
Aoy, a woman in her twenties, runs her family’s local stir-fried noodles restaurant in the old quarter of Bangkok. One day, she receives an invitation to leave the family business and join team ‘Hunger’, Thailand’s number one luxury Chef’s table team led by the famously ingenious, and infamously nasty, Chef Paul.
Pictured. Aokbab Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying (left) and Peter Nopachai Chaiyanam (right)
Who are the cast members of Hunger?
Aokbab Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying plays the lead role of Aoy. Hunger will mark the Netflix debut for Aokbab. Outside of Netflix, she has starred in Thai movies such as Faces of Anne, Die Tomorrow, and Happy Old Year.
Peter Nopachai Chaiyanam plays the role of Chef Paul. Like his co-star, Peter has yet to star in a Netflix film and will be making his debut in Hunger.
Pictured. Aokbab Chutimon Chuengcharoensukying
Gunn Svasti Na Ayudhya has been cast in an unnamed lead role. Gunn will be making his Netflix debut in Hunger. He is most well-known for the Thai drama Yutthakan Salat No.
Aim Bhumibhat Thavornsiri has been cast in an unnamed supporting role. Aim is the only cast member to have starred in a Netflix Original after starring in the Thai thriller Deep.
When and where was Hunger filmed?
Details are extremely limited on the production of Hunger, however, we can confirm that filming must have taken place in late 2022 as the post-production wasn’t confirmed until January 14th, 2023.
Filmmakers Gina Prince-Bythewood and Reginald Hudlin were celebrated Wednesday evening at the eighth pre-Oscar dinner of Icon Mann, a media and consulting company run by Tamara Houston that is dedicated to honoring the achievements of artists of color and providing a meeting place for powerful Black men, in particular.
During an elegant ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills that was hosted by CBS News anchor Errol Barnett, many of the most distinguished members of Hollywood’s Black community gathered to fete the veteran filmmakers behind two of 2022’s most acclaimed films — Prince-Bythewood’s Sony historical drama The Woman King and Hudlin’s Apple TV+ documentary feature Sidney — both of which were glaringly passed over for recognition by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the first person to toast Prince-Bythewood — the recipient of the Maverick Award “for breaking boundaries in the cinematic and televised portrayal of African diasporic depictions” — was the Academy’s executive vp member relations and awards, Shawn Finnie. The latter noted that no award exists that can adequately acknowledge the cultural impact of Prince-Bythewood’s films, which also include 2000’s Love & Basketball, 2008’s The Secret Life of Bees, 2014’s Beyond the Lights and 2020’s The Old Guard.
Then Prince-Bythewood’s husband, filmmaker Reggie Rock Bythewood, spoke about his wife’s perseverance: “She gets an idea, she holds onto it, it doesn’t really matter what or who’s in the way, and she gets to the front of the line.”
He also recounted a dinner last week with their 22-year-old son in New York, during which they overheard a “white couple in their sixties” talking about movies, “and it was very clear that the guy is a voting member of the Academy.” When they began discussing the BAFTAs, Bythewood said, “I was like, ‘Hey, I heard you guys talking. I was just at the BAFTAs.’ And they were like, ‘Really? Were you there with a film?’ I said, ‘Nah, actually my wife’s film, The Woman King.’ It was like, blank. And I said, ‘You know, starring Viola Davis?’ They were like, ‘Oh, really? Where can we see it?’ I’m like, all right, well, ‘It’s on Netflix now.’ And check it out, like, they weren’t overtly racist; they were very personable, right? But there’s such a disconnect.”
He continued, “Maybe some of you have seen or heard of this article that Gina put out in The Hollywood Reporter? Thank you to all of you who have posted it and championed (it). There were some haters out there, and some people questioned ‘Why would somebody like Gina, who has had such an illustrious career, speak out?’ But here’s the deal: In the history of the Academy Awards, there’s never been a Black person who won the best director category…in the history of the Academy, there’s never been a Black woman nominated in that category…. So check this out: if you are not content with being at the back of the line, you call them out.”
Prince-Bythewood, in her acceptance speech, spoke about the mission that runs through her body of work: “From the beginning, I have fought to tell stories of Black women and girls and reframe the narrative of who we are and what we can be. I want us to look up on the screen and see ourselves reflected in a way that inspires us so that we can aspire to be. And I am proud of the Black men that I have centered in my work — they are layered, loving, strong, vulnerable, heroic and real. I’m able to write them well because I have such an incredible example of a strong Black man at home. Real strong Black men celebrate strong Black women and lift them up. Reggie has always been my biggest champion. There is no limit to how far he believes I can go. We both aspire to greatness, and it’s rooted in a love of our people and a shared belief that we can change the world with our work.”
She closed, “The success of Black Panther opened the door for The Woman King, and now the success of The Woman King will keep that door open for more incredible stories about our history and our culture.”
To present the Icon Award “for lifetime achievement in the creative industries” to Hudlin, who was seated beside Disney Entertainment co-chair and longtime friend Dana Walden, political activist and commentator Van Jones spoke about how much Hudlin’s 1990s comic books about the Black Panther meant to Jones when he was a bullied child, and to many others. Jones then surprised Hudlin with a video message from Vice President Kamala Harris, a longtime friend whom Hudlin and his wife, Chrisette Hudlin, set up on a blind date in 2013 with her future husband, Doug Emhoff. Harris described Hudlin as “an exceptional artist and one of my closest friends, my brother, Reggie…a member of my extended family,” and emphasized, “Reggie Hudlin has brought joy and inspiration to millions of people.”
Kamala Harris appears virtually at the 2023 Icon Mann Honors.
Kamala Harris appears virtually at 2023 Icon Mann Honors
Hudlin, in accepting his award, said of his career, “I’ve really focused on creating blueprints for living for Black men and Black families, because as Black men we have to be the men that Black women deserve. And I just think overall we need to dream bigger. You know, America’s collapsing around us, and that’s because there’s a bunch of people who can’t handle the truth about this country and can’t handle participating in a meritocracy. So we — the people who built this country — have to live up to the opportunity that our ancestors made for us. We have to stop fighting the power and be the power. A lot of people don’t want to hear a story about the old days — ‘Oh, that’s torture porn, I don’t want to go back there’ — but if you don’t control the past, you don’t control the present, which means you don’t control the future. So it’s not about telling ‘torture porn,’ it’s about telling stories of resilience and brilliance and winning and putting foot to ass, because who doesn’t want to see that?”
Also honored at Wednesday night’s gathering: Uzodinma Iweala, CEO of The Africa Center in New York, “for transforming the world’s understanding and engagement of contemporary Africa through the arts and culture.”
Yes, venture into the heart of Broadway, but also take a chance on Nashville’s smaller performance spaces, which are everywhere. This is Music City, after all.
In Lorena Padilla’s writing and directing debut, Martinez, an aging office worker leads a solitary, joyless life. The sixty-something Martinez (Francisco Reyes) is a grumpy Chilean who has lived in Mexico for decades. Martinez has no family or friends and spends his time away from work brooding on a park bench. He’s being forced to retire from his government job, and a man named Pablo (Humberto Busto) is brought in to replace him. Adding insult to injury, Martinez is told he must train Pablo.
As Martinez struggles with these involuntary changes, a woman he barely knows in his building suddenly dies. He watches Amalia’s body being taken away. Martinez later notes that her belongings have been dumped with the trash to be taken away. He claims a few of her items for himself but then seems strangely compelled to bring the rest of her things into his apartment. The assortment of household goods that are all that remain of this person’s life mesmerizes the titular character.
During the day, Martinez maintains his usual stoic misanthropy with Pablo and co-worker Conchita (Martha Claudia Moreno). By night, he begins to build the story of his deceased neighbor through her possessions. By learning of her life, he is drawn to Amalia and eventually feels he loves her, though they had only ever met in passing. The greatest treasure Martinez gleans is a book Amalia kept with plans for fun experiences she made for herself. Notes accompany these plans reminding herself to be grateful and find moments of joy. While neither Pablo nor Conchita are setting the world on fire with their work productivity, they do prove to be decent company once Martinez warms up to Pablo’s insistence that they spend social time together.
“…a book Amalia kept with plans for funexperiences…”
The thawing of the icy old man makes for wonderful comedy in a very similar vein as the Swedish film A Man Called Ove (recently remade starring Tom Hanks as A Man Called Otto). The topic of loneliness in old age is rich ground for introspection and dark humor. The delight of Martinez revolves around Reyes’ performance. It seems impossible that this stone-faced man could ever know joy or display compassion, but over time, he does. The aftermath of death brings him into the light and shows the character how much life is still available if only he’ll engage with the world.
There is masterful visual storytelling at play. Scenes are initially dark and claustrophobic. From small offices to cluttered apartments, everything is cramped and shot from odd angles. But as Martinez begins to see possibilities and adventures ahead, the cinematography also opens up to space and color.
In an interview with Variety, Padilla talks about the inspiration for her script. “When I sent the script to Francisco Reyes, who plays Martinez, I only knew him over Skype. After he read it, the first thing he asked was, ‘who is this character, really?’ When I told him it is my dad, he responded with, ‘Ah, O.K., now I understand completely.’” For a first-time feature filmmaker, Padilla shines. With a perfect blend of sweetness, sadness, and wry humor, Martinez is a win for the director and an audience that will enjoy the time well spent.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell was hospitalized after tripping at a local hotel, a spokesman for the senator said.
The Kentucky senator, who’s 81, was attending a private dinner in Washington on Wednesday when he tripped. He was admitted to a hospital for treatment, spokesman Doug Andres said.
McConnell’s office did not provide additional detail on his condition or how long he may be absent from the Senate.
In 2019, the GOP leader tripped and fell at his home in Kentucky, suffering a shoulder fracture. At the time, he underwent surgery to repair the fracture in his shoulder. The Senate had just started a summer recess, and he worked from home for some weeks as he recovered.
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First elected in 1984, McConnell in January became the longest-serving Senate leader when the new Congress convened, breaking the previous record of 16 years.
McConnell, GOP senators make surprise visit to Ukraine
The taciturn McConnell is often reluctant to discuss his private life. But at the start of the COVID-19 crisis he opened up about his early childhood experience fighting polio. He described how his mother insisted that he stay off his feet as a toddler and worked with him through a determined physical therapy regime. He has acknowledged some difficulty in adulthood climbing stairs.
The Senate, where the average age is 65, has been without several members recently due to illness.
Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., 53, who suffered a stroke during his campaign last year, was expected to remain out for some weeks as he received care for clinical depression. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., 89, said last week that she had been hospitalized to be treated for shingles.
The Democratic absences have proven a challenge for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who is already navigating a very narrow 51-49 majority.
The Republicans, as the minority party, have had an easier time with intermittent absences. It is unclear if McConnell will be out on Thursday and if that would have an effect on scheduled votes. South Dakota Sen. John Thune is the Senate’s No. 2 Republican.
Netflix and Verizon are renewing an offer giving customers of the telecom firm’s +Play platform a 12-month subscription at no extra charge if they pay for a year’s worth of a different streaming service.
The news comes roughly a year after the launch of +Play, an online platform enabling users to organize their streaming subscriptions and discover new viewing options. The aggregator is similar to initiatives by the likes of smart-TV maker Vizio and large-scale streaming gateways like Roku and Amazon Fire TV.
Customers of Verizon wireless, 5G Home and LTE Home will be eligible for the extended Netflix offer. In order to get the first year of Netflix’s Premium subscription tier at no extra charge, customers must buy an annual subscription to one of the other outlets offered via +Play, a roster including Paramount+, Starz and AMC+. Beyond entertainment, the service has also expanded into categories like fitness, lifestyle, wellness and education.
Along with announcing the Netflix re-up, Verizon said a roster of new partners coming to +Play. That new group includes Blue Apron, FlixLatino, KOCOWA+, Hallmark TV, Marquee TV, MasterClass, Paramount+, Quello Concerts by Stingray, UP Faith and Family and Wondrium.
Erin McPherson, Chief Content Officer of Verizon Consumer Group, said the Netflix relationship and the expansion of +Play give the platform “never-before-seen offers and bundles” that benefit consumers. “It’s a marketplace for our partners to leverage even broader direct-to-consumer reach and engagement, and it advances Verizon’s strategy of innovating and building new business models” on its network, she added.
The multi-billion-dollar launch of several streaming outlets during a span of months in 2019 and 2020 has given way to a period of regrouping for the industry. Both direct-to-consumer streamers and larger packagers of streaming continue grapple with how to make the viewing experience smoother. With nearly 300 subscription options still swirling around the marketplace and programming exclusives continuing apace, aggregators like Verizon +Play have sought to create one-stop shops for their customers. Centralized billing is another part of the appeal.
After the indie hit “Everything Everywhere All at Once” swept all the major guild awards, the first time that grand slam had happened in a decade and only the fifth time in history, the suspense seemed to drain out of the 95th Academy Awards. After all, how suspenseful can it be if everything goes to “Everything?”
But it’d be a mistake to think that Sunday’s show won’t be a nail-biter in many ways. Three of the four acting races, for example, are up in the air, with the fate of Angela Bassett, Cate Blanchett, Austin Butler, Jamie Lee Curtis, Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser, Michelle Yeoh and others still hanging in the balance.
And more than that, “Everything Everywhere” has the potential to be one of the weirdest Best Picture winners ever, a frenzied trip through the multiverse that looks and feels nothing at all like the kind of movie that usually wins the top Oscar. It could be the fourth Best Picture winner in a row that doesn’t really seem like a Best Picture winner, after “CODA,” “Nomadland” and “Parasite.” And that would reinforce just how dramatically the Academy has changed over the past seven years.
Plus, if today’s Academy is weird enough to name “Everything Everywhere” the year’s Best Picture, they’re probably weird enough to throw some surprises at us, too. Here are our best guesses as to what might happen on Sunday.
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
Best Picture
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “Avatar: The Way of Water” “The Banshees of Inisherin” “Elvis” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” “The Fabelmans” “Tár” “Top Gun: Maverick” “Triangle of Sadness” “Women Talking
With its wins at the Producers Guild, Directors Guild, Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild awards, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is a prohibitive favorite to win over “Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Banshees of Inisherin” and “The Fabelmans.” It’s one of only five films to win all four major guilds, and the first four to do it (“American Beauty,” “No Country for Old Men,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Argo”) all won Best Picture – so really, there’s no precedent for it not to win.
But precedent has meant less and less in recent years as the Academy membership has gotten larger and more international. Anecdotal evidence – the kind that is even less reliable than precedent – suggests that the hyperkinetic “Everything Everywhere” might be too crazy for some of the Academy, especially the older members that still make up much of the organization. If that’s true, the ranked-choice voting system used in this category could push the vote toward a more universally acceptable choice like “Top Gun.” But “Everything Everywhere” beat “Top Gun” at the Producers Guild, which also uses ranked-choice, so that scenario is a longshot as best.
If there is a shocker in this category, it will likely be the German-language war film “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which dominated at BAFTA and has support from lots of the Academy’s below-the-line branches. “All Quiet” wasn’t even nominated by any of the major guilds (which voted earlier than the Academy), but Oscar voters showed their appreciation with nine noms, which makes it the kind of stealth candidate that could actually pull off an upset if voters don’t mind awarding a movie that played mostly on Netflix and didn’t report theatrical grosses over one that made more than $100 million. “All Quiet” may also be one of the last nominated films that many voters saw, which definitely helped “CODA” last year.
Still, “Everything Everywhere” is on one hell of a roll, completing its major-guild sweep and also setting a record for wins at the Independent Spirit Awards while Oscar voting was going on. Even though the film stumbled at the Golden Globes and BAFTA, and even though I can’t help but think that an upset is possible, it seems foolhardy to pick anything else to win.
Predicted winner: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Director
Nominees: Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inisherin” Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Steven Spielberg, “The Fabelmans” Todd Field, “Tár” Ruben Östlund, “Triangle of Sadness”
A lot of this year’s awards shows, including the Directors Guild Awards, have been rife with presenters and winners paying homage to Steven Spielberg by talking about how profoundly his films influenced them. And at most of those ceremonies, it seems that all those tributes to Spielberg were followed by him losing to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka “the Daniels.” Spielberg may be the sentimental choice for his semi-autobiographical “The Fabelmans,” but the award is probably going to two guys who are younger than Spielberg even if you add their ages together, and whose filmography is 32 movies short of his. (But hey, they lead him in music videos, 11-1.)
Predicted winners: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, “The Fabelmans”
Best Actor
Nominees: Austin Butler, “Elvis” Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inisherin” Brendan Fraser, “The Whale” Paul Mescal, “Aftersun” Bill Nighy, “Living”
Colin Farrell was once thought to be in the thick of this race, but he just hasn’t won enough to hold that position – although there’s still a lot of affection out there for him and his performance. Mostly, though, this seems to be a two-man race between Austin Butler in “Elvis” and Brendan Fraser in “The Whale.” Butler is a flurry of activity as Elvis Presley while Fraser barely even gets off the couch in “The Whale,” but they’ve been divvying up the awards all season: Butler at the Golden Globes and BAFTA, Fraser at Critics Choice and SAG. The Oscars and SAG agree in this category more than 80% of the time, which is a powerful sign for Fraser, but in a razor-close race the lack of a Best Picture nomination for “The Whale” could hurt, and Butler seems to have a little more momentum.
Predicted winner: Austin Butler, “Elvis”
Cate Blanchett in “Tar” (Focus Features)
Best Actress
Nominees: Cate Blanchett, “Tár” Ana de Armas, “Blonde” Andrea Riseborough, “To Leslie” Michelle Williams, “The Fabelmans” Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
For most of the season, Cate Blanchett has been winning everything. But over the last week and a half, Michelle Yeoh beat Blanchett at the SAG Awards and then at the Indie Spirits. Considering that the first of those shows happened the week that Oscar voting began and the second happened in the middle of the voting period, it’s safe to say she got on a roll at exactly the right time – and she’s so central to the appeal of “Everything Everywhere” that a win for the movie really ought to spill over into a win for her. But is two-time winner Blanchett in a fearsome role just too formidable a foe, given that she’s also the only real chance for “Tár” to win an Oscar?
Predicted winner: Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Supporting Actor
Nominees: Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin” Brian Tyree Henry, “Causeway” Judd Hirsch, “The Fabelmans” Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inisherin” Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
This is the one acting category that seems locked. Barry Keoghan had a surprise win at BAFTA, but Ke Huy Quan has been winning everything everywhere this awards season. The Vietnamese-American actor, who hasn’t gotten much attention from Hollywood since he was a kid in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “The Goonies,” has a comeback story that might beat Brendan Fraser’s, and that story seems all but guaranteed to have a very happy ending at the Oscars.
Predicted winner: Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Best Supporting Actress
Nominees: Angela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Hong Chau, “The Whale” Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin” Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Who knows? Angela Bassett won at the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards, and seemed to be the Oscar frontrunner for much of the season. Then Kerry Condon won at BAFTA, part of a “Banshees” sweep of the supporting categories. Then Jamie Lee Curtis scored a hugely popular upset victory at the SAG Awards. The most wide-open Oscar acting race may hinge on whether voters feel comfortable giving an acting prize for a Marvel movie, or whether they want to give Jamie Lee Curtis an award for a long and underappreciated career of being Jamie Lee Freakin’ Curtis.
Predicted winner: Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Women Talking” (United Artists Releasing)
Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” “Living” “Top Gun: Maverick” “Women Talking”
In literary circles, the monumental presence in this category is author Kazuo Ishiguro, who adapted the 1952 Japanese film “Ikiru” into the exquisite “Living.” But his Nobel Prize in Literature doesn’t mean much at the Oscars, where the likeliest winners in the category are Sarah Polley for “Women Talking” and Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell for “All Quiet on the Western Front.” “All Quiet” is big and bold while ”Women Talking” is quiet and intimate – and a look at the writing categories in recent years suggests that a movie about talking might have the slightest edge over one about shooting.
Predicted winner: “Women Talking”
Best Original Screenplay
Nominees: “The Banshees of Inisherin” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” “The Fabelmans” “Tár” “Triangle of Sadness”
Unless Kerry Condon wins supporting actress, this category is probably the best chance for “The Banshees of Inisherin” to win an Oscar for one of its nine nominations. The problem, though, is that “Banshees” is up against “Everything Everywhere All at Once” in the category, and “Everything Everywhere” is weird and wordy, too.
Predicted winner: “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” (Netflix)
Best Animated Feature Film
Nominees: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” “The Sea Beast” “Turning Red”
Academy voters have shown an unparalleled fondness for Pixar and Disney in this category, which will help “Turning Red.” “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” has been the most active campaigner in the homestretch and is very well liked, and “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” is one of the year’s biggest indie darlings. But “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” has won one guild award after another, and del Toro has an outsized presence in the animation race.
Predicted winner: “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”
Best International Feature Film
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” – Germany “Argentina, 1985” – Argentina “Close” – Belgium “EO” – Poland “The Quiet Girl” – Ireland
The last time a film was nominated for international film and for Best Picture and didn’t win in this category was 1971, when the category was called Best Foreign Language Film and the nominee was “The Emigrants.” (And that was an odd case, because it wasn’t nominated for Best Picture until the following year.) In other words, Best Picture nominee “All Quiet on the Western Front” has a decided advantage here. Under the old rules that required voters to see all five films in a theater, some of the other nominees might have had a chance to score an upset – but that’s no longer a rule, and the nine total noms for “All Quiet” mean it’ll almost certainly be seen by more voters than any other nominee in the category. That’s an almost insurmountable obstacle for the other contenders.
Predicted winner: “All Quiet on the Western Front”
“All Quiet on the Western Front” (Netflix)
Best Cinematography
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths” “Elvis” “Empire of Light” “Tár”
While “Empire of Light” cinematographer Roger Deakins is a legend, the leaders in this category are probably James Friend (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), who could become the first winner for a film not in English since “Roma,” and Mandy Walker (“Elvis”), who could become the first woman ever to win in this category. “All Quiet” has the scale and drama that the Academy would ordinarily recognize, while the historic nature of a Walker win could give her a boost. But the Oscar ballot only lists the names of the nominated people in the acting categories; in the other 19 categories, including cinematography, voters are just looking at a list of film titles.
Predicted winner: James Friend, “All Quiet on the Western Front”
Best Film Editing
Nominees: “The Banshees of Inisherin” “Elvis” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” “Tár” “Top Gun: Maverick”
If “Everything Everywhere” is the Oscar magnet it seems to be, it’s logical to assume that it’ll be rewarded for its breakneck pace and multiverse-hopping freneticism. But the winner in this category hasn’t matched the Best Picture winner for 10 years, and “Top Gun: Maverick” has to be recognized for its impact on the box office and on the movie business in general, doesn’t it? If so, this is one of its likeliest categories to win. P.S., for Oscar viewers who want to read the tea leaves as they’re watching, an “Everything Everywhere” win here will probably mean it’s unstoppable; a loss will leave the door open for a potential upset.
Predicted winner: “Top Gun: Maverick”
Elvis costume design sketches (Warner Bros.)
Best Costume Design
Nominees: “Babylon” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” “Elvis” “Everything Everywhere All at Once” “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”
In 2002, Catherine Martin won the only two Oscars that went to Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!.” one for costume design and one for production design. A dozen years later, she had the only two wins for “The Great Gatsby,” in the same two categories. It’s unlikely that Martin will be the only person to win for “Elvis” this year, but this category does give her a clear path to extending her record as Oscar’s winningest Australian ever. (But don’t rule out “Babylon” or “Black Panther.”)
Predicted winner: “Elvis”
Best Production Design
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “Avatar: The Way of Water” “Babylon” “Elvis” “The Fabelmans”
It’s safe to say that Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” was not particularly well received by critics and voters this year, but the over-the-top extravagance in its re-creation of old Hollywood makes it one of the frontrunners in this category. Its chief rival is probably “Elvis,” which built Memphis and Vegas in Australia. “Babylon” might be too huge to ignore, but you should never underestimate Baz Lurhmann/Catherine Martin collaborations in this category. Plus the last eight winners in a row, and 10 of the last 12, have been films also nominated for Best Picture.
Predicted winner: “Elvis”
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “The Batman” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” “Elvis” “The Whale”
What’s better, transforming Austin Butler into Elvis Presley or transforming Brendan Fraser into a 600-pound man? The makeup artists on “The Whale” may have had the more elaborate job on Fraser, but the last five winners in this category turned actors into the real-life people: Tammy Faye Bakker, Ma Rainey, Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, Dick Cheney and Winston Churchill. Do you sense a trend? And can “The Whale” buck that trend?
Predicted winner: “Elvis”
Best Original Score
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front,” Volker Bertelmann “Babylon,” Justin Hurwitz “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Carter Burwell “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Son Lux “The Fabelmans,” John Williams
The sentimental choice is John Williams. The degree-of-difficulty ones are “Everything Everywhere All at Once” or “Babylon,” both of which required enormous amounts of music. But if you’re looking for the single piece of music that is most identifiable with its film and most impactful in the film, it might well be Volker Bertelmann’s doomy theme to “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
Predicted winner: “All Quiet on the Western Front”
“RRR” (Variance Pictures)
Best Original Song
Nominees: “Applause” from “Tell It like a Woman” “Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick” “Lift Me Up” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR” “This Is A Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
For months, I’ve been convinced that if voters watched “RRR” or watched the film clip of the “Naatu Naatu” performance available on the Academy’s members website, that song would win in this category. But did enough voters watch it? And even if they did, will that overcome the fact that Rihanna had the massive showcase of the Super Bowl halftime show, which she performed while pregnant? Or the fact that 14-time nominee Diane Warren probably deserved to win a competitive Oscar before the Board of Governors stepped in last November to give her the first-ever Honorary Oscar for a songwriter? That’s a lot to overcome — but I still think that a crazy Indian film with an amazing dance sequence can and will do it.
Predicted winner: “Naatu Naatu” from “RRR”
Best Sound
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “Avatar: The Way of Water” “The Batman” “Elvis” “Top Gun: Maverick”
This is another of the two likeliest categories for a “Top Gun: Maverick” win, and the fact that it won at both the Cinema Audio Society’s CAS Awards and the Motion Picture Sound Editors’ MPSE Golden Reel Awards is significant. Other options: “Elvis” wins because music goes hand-in-hand with sound, “Avatar” wins on its huge scale or “All Quiet on the Western Front” uses this category to announce that it’s a serious across-the-board contender.
Predicted winner: “Top Gun: Maverick”
Best Visual Effects
Nominees: “All Quiet on the Western Front” “Avatar: The Way of Water” “The Batman” “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” “Top Gun: Maverick”
“Avatar” is such a crazy visual-effects achievement that it won one Annie Award as an animated movie and another as a live-action film. It’s impossible to imagine anything beating it.
Predicted winner: “Avatar: The Way of Water”
“Navalny” (CNN/HBO)
Best Documentary Feature
Nominees: “All That Breathes” “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” “Fire of Love” “A House Made of Splinters” “Navalny”
There’s often a runaway favorite in this category, but this year’s lineup is strong top to bottom. “Good Night Oppy” could have been this year’s “My Octopus Teacher” (the feel-good movie that wins over meatier competition) if it had been nominated, but its absence creates a wide-open field that includes Laura Poitras’ sharp “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Sara Doss’ playful but sadly romantic “Fire of Love” and Daniel Roher’s revealing “Navalny,” with a scene so startling that you can’t believe Roher had his cameras running to capture it. After a year of Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine, the fact that “Navalny” is about a dissident Russian who was targeted by Putin could give it the extra oomph it needs to stand out in a very even category.
Predicted winner: “Navalny”
Best Documentary Short Subject
Nominees: “The Elephant Whisperers” “Haulout” “How Do You Measure a Year?” “The Martha Mitchell Effect” “Stranger at the Gate”
The other documentary category doesn’t have an obvious frontrunner, either. “Stranger at the Gate” has made such canny use of Malala Yousafzai that some people are referring to the movie as “produced by Malala,” when she was actually recruited post-shortlist to be an executive producer and then deployed liberally on the campaign trail. Her presence has muted criticism of what would otherwise be the most polarizing nominee, giving it a real chance to win. Among the others, “Haulout” is noteworthy for, among other things, containing one of the year’s most mind-boggling cinematic shots: A door opens in a small hut above the Arctic Circle, and the entire beach is blanketed with enormous walruses who have been driven to rest there because climate change has melted their usual ice floes. “Stranger at the Gate” is probably the favorite, but that staggering scene might be enough to boost “Haulout.”
Predicted winner: “Haulout”
“The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse” (Apple TV+)
Best Animated Short Film
Nominees: “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” “The Flying Sailor” “Ice Merchants” “My Year of Dicks” “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”
“The Flying Sailor” and “Ice Merchants” are stylish and stylized entries, and “My Year of Dicks” is a provocative look at female coming-of-age that will likely garner a lot of support. But Charlie Mackesy’s “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” was an award-winning, bestselling book, and the film adaptation finds a lovely tone that serves the material while adapting it to another medium. Sure it’s sentimental, but it’s hard to watch it and not be moved.
Predicted winner: “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
Best Live-Action Short Film
Nominees: “An Irish Goodbye” “Ivalu” “Le Pupille” “Night Ride” “The Red Suitcase”
You could make cases for any of these films being a potential winner, from “Ivalu” (children in peril having a long history in the category) to “Night Ride” (pathos with a touch of humor) to “The Red Suitcase” (a timely look at women in the Muslim world). But despite the strength of that last film in particular, this feels as if it could come down to “Le Pupille,” the most lavish and playful entry and a film directed by Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher and produced by multi-Oscar winner Alfonso Cuaron, and “An Irish Goodbye,” the most sentimental nominee and one with the kind of amusing twist ending that often appeals to voters. The last of those films is also the only one in English.
His initial tenure as chief executive was marked by allowing for outside-the-box blockbusters, but now Wall Street could hem him in
The latest Marvel film’s underperformance is just one striking example of the obstacles in Iger’s way. With an end-of-weekend-three total of $187 million domestically and $420 million worldwide, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is on track to earn less in North America than “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and less worldwide than either previous “Ant-Man” film. Disney’s stock price ended Wednesday barely over $99, down from $117 a month ago after a confident performance by Iger on an earnings call.
The most pessimistic reason to doubt Iger’s promise is, as noted by Josh Spiegel, that “he’s probably only going to be CEO for another two years,” which naturally tilts his decisions to the short term.
“We have no idea how the new CEO will run the company,” the author of “Pixar and the Infinite Past: Nostalgia and Pixar Animation” told TheWrap. “Will they just double down on sequels, remakes and spin-offs to get off to a running start with guaranteed hits?”
By contrast, the most optimistic on Iger’s promises of more artistic freedom and creativity within established brands is that, to quote one unnamed high-level distribution executive, “He’s done it before [Disney stock went from $25 per share at the end of 2005 to $147 per share at the end of 2019], and he’s earned the benefit of the doubt.”
Franchises vs. brands
Quite a bit of creative control is being handed to co-chairpersons Dana Walden (the former Fox chief executive joined Disney in the merger after overseeing TV hits like “Ally McBeal,” “24” and “Empire”) and Alan Bergman (who served as president of Walt Disney Studios during much of Iger’s earlier reign).
The script Iger is handing Walden and Bergman is not that original. “A promise to cut costs, lean on franchises while still allowing for artistic freedom is the narrative being offered up by every studio head right now,” noted one high-ranking rival studio executive. It’s also, the executive noted, an implicit promise that layoffs and cost-cutting measures won’t affect the creator class, since that’s the arena needed to make content.
Photo: Disney
Yet Disney executives have promised shareholders they’ll keep a lid on the overall content budget. That may limit room for experimentation beyond safe franchises. And it may come down to defining just what a ”franchise” is, said Sean Nyberg, an attorney who runs the Disney Beat podcast and owns shares of the company.
“If it’s about being allowed relative creative freedom within the boundaries of specific Disney brands [like Lucasfilm, Marvel, Pixar or Walt Disney live-action departments],” Nyberg continued, “that’s promising.” However, if it means “just a bunch of sequels, prequels and spin-offs to existing franchises and properties [such as recently announced sequels to “Frozen,” “Zootopia” and “Toy Story”], that’s less so.”
Coloring outside the lines
Boxoffice Pro senior analyst Shawn Robbins said he has “always pushed back on the narrative that Disney or any other studio wasn’t being creative just because they were leaning on franchise blockbusters.” He argued that a studio can “strategically decide to focus on IP and still both take risks and push boundaries.” It’s also how Iger led Disney to fortune and glory last time.
“Maleficent” reworked “Sleeping Beauty” into “I Spit on Your Grave” for kids. “Iron Man 3” was a riff on the BBC documentary miniseries “The Power of Nightmares.” “Zootopia” was a “Training Day” meets “X-Files” mystery comedy centered on frank conversations about implicit racism. “The Force Awakens” was a nostalgic remake of “Star Wars,” but director J.J. Abrams and producer Kathleen Kennedy used its guaranteed-hit status to prove that big-budget blockbusters could be fronted by actors who looked like Daisy Ridley and John Boyega.
Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan in “Black Panther” (Marvel Studios)
Breaking conventions in conventional IP
Especially within trusted brands, Disney’s more outside-the-lines entries, including big movies fronted by women and people of color, tended to outgross the more conventional fare. Disney’s recent run-up to cinematic dominance began when it stopped trying to rip off the boy-targeted “Pirates of the Caribbean” and started trying to rip off the girl-targeted “Alice in Wonderland.”
“Inside Out” and “Coco” each topped $800 million worldwide while “The Good Dinosaur” and “Cars 3,” quality notwithstanding, ended with $332 million and $383 million, respectively. “Aladdin” cracked $1 billion globally while “Dumbo” barely breached $350 million. Ditto even in the streaming ecosystem, as “Encanto” and “Turning Red” pulled better viewership on Disney+ compared to “Lightyear.”
“Black Panther” was an unapologetically Afrofuturistic superhero movie that argued America was so intrinsically racist that a young Black Wakandan child left behind would inevitably grow up to be a supervillain. It grossed $1.35 billion, more than doubling the $644 million total of “Thor: The Dark World.” By 2019, Disney releases — not even counting the Fox offerings — accounted for one-third or $3.66 billion out of $11.44 billion of the entire annual domestic box office.
An overreliance on Marvel and “Star Wars”
However, Spiegel argued, “the online reaction to Rian Johnson’s ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’” seemed to make Disney skittish of creative freedom with its biggest brands. “Creative freedom,” added Spiegel, “means potentially making a film or television show that some audiences might not like.”
Moreover, said Gerber Kawasaki CEO Ross Gerber, “when you run these franchises into the ground, you have to make new stuff, even if it’s being willing to find the one hit from 15 crazy ideas.” Everyone TheWrap spoke to agreed that Disney had to stomach some failures to discover fresh, new franchises to exploit.
This is not a new problem. An overreliance on cinematic superheroes began to rear its head when $2.2 billion of Disney’s nearly $3 billion 2018 domestic box office came from Marvel movies like “Black Panther,” “Avengers: Endgame” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp” alongside Pixar’s “Incredibles 2.”
Iger’s biggest weakness the last time out was in creating new live-action theatrical franchises — specifically in terms of new IP not existing within a current brand or universe. The last two such unmitigated success stories, “National Treasure” in 2004 and “Pirates of the Caribbean” in 2003, preceded his tenure as CEO.
(Left to Right) Executive producer Dave Filoni, Pedro Pascal, Katee Sackhoff and showrunner/executive producer Jon Favreau onstage during “The Mandalorian” Special Launch Event at El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood.
Retraining the audience
Some blame lies with moviegoers. Disney would probably prefer to make money with both “John Carter” and “Finding Dory” or “Tomorrowland” and “Incredibles 2.” However, the market declared otherwise. Even in the streaming ecosystem, Marvel and Lucasfilm properties rule alongside Pixar and WDA theatricals over Disney+ originals like, again quality notwithstanding, “Magic Camp” or “Star Girl.”
Some blame lies with the choices made by ousted CEO Bob Chapek. Ambitious, creative, unconventional Pixar fare like “Turning Red” and “Soul” were sent to Disney+ while “Lightyear” went full theatrical, and consumers began to associate Disney films — even the MCU titles — with being free to stream in one or two months on Disney+. That strategy did damage to both box office and post-theatrical revenue sources.
Even prior to Iger’s return, the ruthlessly satirical “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” Marvel’s hyperviolent and macabre “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” and the stitched-by-hand “Star Wars” episodic “Andor” showed glimmers of an earlier decade when Disney was on top because it made better and more interesting blockbusters than its competition.
More than just Iger in 2023 remembering why everyone loved Iger in 2016, Disney needs to reposition itself as more than just a few key brands. That might mean offering up more non-sequel animated films. It will be about offering at least slightly unconventional films amid existing brands while repositioning the biggest screens as the first place to see Disney’s biggest movies.
As Gerber noted, “Disney owns entertainment venues, so they aren’t in as much competition with ‘real life’ compared to Netflix.” Theatrical success pays off in theme parks, on cruise ships and on Disney+. “Moana” still usually finds itself in the Nielsen top-10 SVOD movies ratings week in and week out.
And Disney can only bank on “Frozen III” or “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” because it rolled the dice on those initial, less surefire installments.
If Iger and friends need any more evidence of the value of letting talented people do their thing within the confines of a narrative conceit, well, James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” has earned $2.28 billion worldwide, with plenty more to come in the post-theatrical lifespan. It would take 208 million monthly Disney+ subscription fees to match that sum.
In Valerie Kontakos’ fourth feature, “The Queen of the Deuce,” the New York native, Athens-based director and NYU Tisch School of the Arts alumna, gives an alternate take on cultural history as seen through the eyes of Chelly Wilson, queen of the porno industry in 1970s New York and unconventional feminist, against the backdrop of the rise of feminism, the sexual revolution and gay pride. The film plays in the International Competition at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival.
Kontakos says she knew Wilson through her mother, whose brother was a producer of Greek films who, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, would provide Wilson with Greek family films for her Sunday programs. “When I turned 15 or 16, I said to [my mother]: ‘Now that I can work part time, I am going to get myself a job because I want to start making my own money and I want to be independent.’ And, because when she went to New York, my uncle had asked her to go see Chelly to see what kind of operation she was running, they had become friends. So, I guess my mom told her that I was interested in working. She was then still showing Greek films on Sundays. So, I worked selling tickets there at the box office on Sundays, when they showed the Greek films, and the rest of the week they would show porn.”
She adds: “I was fascinated by her at the age of 16, seeing her interact with people in the business. I think she always stayed with me since then because I admired her so much at that age, when I felt like: ‘I’m gonna be independent and I’m gonna be strong and I’m gonna do it.’ And, here she was, this personification of all these things that I wanted to be as a woman.”
Beyond her profession as the owner of several porn theaters in the infamous Time Square area known as the Deuce from the late ‘60s to the mid ‘80s, Wilson was the epitome of a feminist, a progressive, liberated and independent woman who knew what she wanted and how she wanted it – the personification of the American dream and the self-made woman. “More than a self-made woman because she did everything on her own terms, whereas you can have a self-made woman, but might not have all the other accoutrements. There’s a lot of suffering to being a self-made woman,” Kontakos says.
“The Queen of the Deuce”
When Wilson came to New York, she embraced its culture and herself as a person and a woman. “I think it was much more liberating than anything that she experienced in Greece. And, I think that she just built on it. She embraced it, but also went further with it. She was able to really fulfill all of these things that she couldn’t do in Greece. I think it was Bondi who said she loved America because she was able to own herself, because I think we’ve only done it in New York at that time.”
The animation in the film was done by Canadian-Indian animator Abhilasha Dewan. Kontakos opted for the animation element in her film because she wanted to bring Wilson into the film as a living character. “She created a living Chelly and I think it works really nicely. I think the editor [Rob Ruzic] does an absolutely fantastic job in the editing, being able to use audio material of Chelly with the animation in such a way that she comes to life.”
Kontakos admits she didn’t want to take the biopic road for this project in spite of an abundance of material for a fiction film or a series. “I just wanted to remember her; just let other people see her the way I saw her and what she meant to me, basically, and what I appreciated from who she was.”
The producers are Kontakos and Despina Pavlaki for Exile Films, and Ed Barreveld for Storyline Entertainment. Cinephil handles international sales.
Wildly popular movies like Encanto, Parasite, and Everything Everywhere All at Once have led to historic nominations and wins at the Oscars, proving that diverse stories deserve to not only be told, but also to be celebrated!
Fox News executives may be asking themselves that question as she emerges as a central figure in Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6-billion defamation suit against the conservative news network.
In released court documents and deposition testimony connected to the case, Bartiromo is cited throughout for allowing former President Trump’s false claims about 2020 election fraud to air on the network in an effort to stop angry viewers from abandoning the network.
Falsehoods such as the claim that the Denver-based voting machine maker was founded in Venezuela to aid Hugo Chávez and that its software manipulated votes to favor President Biden went unchallenged on the network in the weeks after the election, despite evidence to the contrary.
Court testimony shows that in the days leading up to and following the 2020 election, colleagues and executives raised questions about Bartiromo’s online activity and expressed concerns that she was influenced by right-wing conspiracy theorists.
Bartiromo’s texts, which showed up in court filings released Tuesday, said she was “depressed” over the results of the election won by President Biden and hoped to see fraud uncovered that would reverse the outcome.
“I want to see massive fraud exposed. Will (Trump) be able to turn this around. I told my team we’re not allowed to say pres elect. Not in scripts. Not in banners on air. Until this moves through the courts,” Bartiromo said in a text to disgraced Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who was convicted in July of contempt charges for defying a congressional subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“U are our fighter. Enough with the sad. We need you,” replied Bannon, who then urged Bartiromo to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Charles E. Schumer of New York.
On Nov. 5, 2020, two days after the election, Washington anchor Bret Baier warned Jay Wallace, who oversees news-gathering at Fox News, that Bartiromo had been pushing false claims about the election.
Gary Schreier, a producer who has worked with Bartiromo since 2012, told his bosses that Bartiromo was influenced by Trump’s most extreme supporters.
“The problem is she has (GOP) conspiracy theorists in her ear and they use her for their message sometimes,” Schreier said in a text to Lauren Petterson, who oversees Fox Business Network.
That same day, Wallace was told that Bartiromo was sharing conspiracy theories about Dominion on the right-wing social media site Parler, to which he responded, “I don’t know why she invites this.”
When Schreier flagged a Bartiromo tweet espousing conspiracy theories for Petterson, she suggested Bartiromo should “get off social [media] all together.” Schreier agreed, noting that Bartiromo was “say[ing] crazy s—t” online.
In his deposition, Schreier said his comments were made out of a concern that Bartiromo was straying too far from financial news and that coverage of divisive political issues would scare away advertisers from her program.
Dominion is asserting that Fox News acted with malice by recklessly disregarding the truth when it presented the allegations against the company, stoking the emotions that led to Trump supporters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Fox News maintains that its reporting and commentary was protected by the 1st Amendment because allegations presented by a sitting president are newsworthy, even if false.
Bartiromo is one of four Fox News and Fox Business Network personalities cited in the suit along with Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Lou Dobbs, who is no longer part of the company. Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch admitted under oath that they all promoted false claims about the 2020 election, which he believed was fair.
But the difference with Bartiromo is she identifies as a news anchor, as she indicated in her testimony.
Hannity, Dobbs and Pirro are considered opinion hosts, and executives at Fox News testified that they are not held to the same journalistic standards as straight news programs.
Schreier said opinion programs on Fox News have no obligation to correct falsehoods stated on their programs. Another Fox News executive, David Clark, told the court that Hannity — the network’s longest-running prime-time star — is not a credible source of news.
Bartiromo, 55, arrived at Fox News with a stellar background as a tireless financial journalist forged over 20 years at CNBC. She was a respected pioneer, being the first woman to report from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. She joined Fox News in 2013 for an annual salary of $5 million.
Bartiromo is on the air for 15 ½ hours a week on Fox Business Network as host of “Mornings with Maria,” and has the highest-rated Sunday morning program on Fox News with “Sunday Morning Futures.”
The anchor mostly talked to chief executive officers on her business programs, but became more political after moving to Fox News. Her conservative views became more apparent, and she is said to be beloved by Murdoch.
Bartiromo did not respond to a request for comment.
Before a court hearing Tuesday, Fox News lawyers presented new emails aimed at demonstrating that Bartiromo did not act with malice because she did not know whether allegations made by lawyers Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani on Fox News were true or false and that she had doubts about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
Court documents presented by Fox News included comments made in an December 2020 email by Nicole Beckman, then an associate at Dominion’s public relations firm, Hamilton Place Strategies. Beckman said Bartiromo “hasn’t made any statements that seem to have a strong case for defamation because she is always careful about either quoting other people (‘a report issued says…’) or not mentioning Dominion specifically. She leaves it up to her guests to make defamatory claims.”
Bartiromo testified that no one in management did anything to stop her or force her to correct the record. While Bartiromo devoted time to the story, top executives, reporters and even Fox News stars such as Tucker Carlson and Dana Perino were saying privately that Trump’s claims were bogus and questioned the sanity of Powell and Giuliani.
Carlson — the most popular and outspoken carrier of the conservative torch at Fox News — was particularly eager to move on from Trump, saying in one text, “I hate him passionately.”
Much of the deposition testimony related to Bartiromo focuses on the appearances by Powell and Giuliani. The duo were given a platform in front of the “Sunday Morning Futures” audience of nearly 2 million viewers a week, where they amplified Trump’s false election claims.
Bartiromo herself made misstatements, such as repeating inaccurate claims that Dominion was owned by voting software company Smartmatic, which is also suing Fox News and other conservative networks for defamation.
In her deposition, Bartiromo maintained that she still does not know whether the many charges made against Dominion on her show were true or false.
She said she repeatedly asked Powell and Giuliani when they would provide evidence to back up their claims and stopped having them on after they came up empty.
But several Fox News executives in their testimony concurred with Dominion’s assertions that Bartiromo did not challenge any of Powell’s false statements when she appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures.” Bartiromo also admitted that she never presented any evidence to counter Powell’s claims, even though she was provided with correct information provided by Dominion and other Fox News journalists.
Abby Grossberg, Bartiromo’s senior booking producer at the time, was asked in court if she believed “Sunday Morning Futures” had an obligation to correct false information presented by its guests. Her answer was “no,” a surprising admission, as Sunday morning political shows are traditionally where viewers expect to see government officials held accountable.
Bartiromo also testified that she did not feel she needed to independently investigate claims by her guests before bringing them on.
While correcting guests in real time can be challenging, Dominion argued that Fox News could have edited out misinformation for repeat broadcasts. But the programs repeated unchanged.
On Tuesday, Fox News attorneys attempted to mitigate the evidence against the network and Bartiromo by submitting to the court emails between the anchor and Tony Fratto, another Hamilton Place Strategies executive and a former spokesperson for the George W. Bush administration.
Fratto, who had a cordial relationship with Bartiromo, sent a message after her interview with Giuliani.
“What Rudy is saying is verifiably false, and the same for Sidney Powell — it’s tinfoil hat conspiracy stuff,” Fratto said. “And I think they need strong pushback with facts. I’m not saying you should ignore the story, but Rudy is literally making things up as he goes.”
An email reply from Bartiromo asked, “Are you saying I should not cover a sitting president contesting a presidential election? Should I just blow it off & go with the rest of the media . . . ?”
“I’m not saying you should ignore the story . . .,” Fratto said.
Bartiromo offered to have the Dominion chief executive on her show and read a lengthy statement from the company on her Nov. 20, 2020, show.
Fratto’s deposition testimony said his attempt to get Bartiromo to stop booking Giuliani and Powell had no impact.
He later wrote to Wallace, hoping to shame the network by comparing it to its upstart competitor Newsmax.
A court brief from Fox News said having some people in the organization who dismissed Trump’s claims did not mean those who did believe them acted with malice by presenting them.
“It is hardly unusual that some people in a newsroom (with the diverse political viewpoints one would expect) will disbelieve the allegations and hope that they ultimately prove false, while others will keep an open mind in hopes that they prove true.”
Eric & Dave pick their top ten comic book collected editions due for release this November! Some all-new stories, some classic reprints from DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse and more! What are their recommendations this month?
New info regarding The Flashconfirmed the film will return to Man of Steel‘s time period within the DCU.
After years of waiting, Ezra Miller’s DC solo story is finally looming on the horizon.
Much has been made about The Flash‘s Multiversal ties with the DCU, honoring not just the current on-screen DC canon, but the long history the franchise has had in movie theaters dating back to movies like 1989’s Batman and 1978’s Superman.
The official plot description for DC Studios’ The Flash revealed that the film will largely take place in 2013, during an alternate version of the events of Man of Steel.
The description (as reported by ToyArk) noted that the upcoming blockbuster will see “Barry Allen [arrive] in an alternate 2013” as seen in Zack Snyder’s DCEU debut.
It is from here that Ezra Miller’s Scarlet Speedster seeks out “his friend and mentor Bruce Wayne;” however, realizes that “the Multiverse is different on all fronts” with this world’s Bruce being “long-retired from service:”
“When Barry Allen arrives in an alternate 2013, he urgently seeks out the expertise of his friend and mentor Bruce Wayne – but the one he finds in the Multiverse is different on all fronts: older, long-retired from service as Gotham City’s protector and somehow even more hardened than the billionaire superhero Barry has grown to know. With a global threat on the horizon, Bruce Wayne must decide whether he can become Batman once more.”
During the recently release Super Bowl trailer for The Flash, the first hints of this jump back in time were sprinkled. During the teaser, Keaton’s Bruce directly referenced Barry Allen “go[ing] into the past:”
Bruce Wayne: “If you were to go into the past, you have no idea what the consequences would be.”
Barry Allen : “Bruce, I can fix things.”
Bruce: “You could also destroy everything.”
Barry: “This can’t be happening, I completely broke the universe.”
Zod: “We’ve been waiting for you.”
Other Universe Barry: “I created a world with no metahumans, and now there’s no one to defend us.”
This “past” comment, while undetected by fans at the time, was likely the first confirmation that the film would explore events of some prior DC films.
The 2013 reveal further justifies Michael Shannon’sMan of Steel villain General Zod popping up in the DC blockbuster and the inclusion of the World Engine seen in the climax of Henry Cavill’s first go-round as Superman.
What is Going On in The Flash?
DC Studios
Now that this 2013 detail is out there, The Flash and its Multiversal plot are starting to make a lot more sense.
When fans first saw Zod pop up in the recently released trailer for the film, it was a little shocking. That was amplified even further when Man of Steel‘s destructive World Engine was referenced, although the picture is starting to become a whole lot clearer now.
This is not the first time the close ties with Man of Steel have been bandied about in relation to The Flash. A previous synopsis for the film mentioned Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen traversing the Multiverse to “change the events of the past;” however, when the young hero accidentally alters the future he goes searching to save an “imprisoned Kryptonian… albeit not the one he’s looking for.”
“Worlds collide in ‘The Flash”’ when Barry uses his superpowers to travel back in time in order to change the events of the past. But when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation, and there are no Super Heroes to turn to. That is, unless Barry can coax a very different Batman out of retirement and rescue an imprisoned Kryptonian… albeit not the one he’s looking for.”
This is likely in reference to Shannon’s General Zod. Then, upon releasing the legacy DC villain in this world that Miller’s Barry has referred to as one “with no metahumans,” Zod is able to easier complete his plan that was cut short by Henry Cavill’s Superman in Man of Steel.
Warner Bros. Pictures
So would this cause the universe-hopping hero to grab a Superman-type from another universe? Or perhaps awaken one within this alternate 2013 universe?
‘Riceboy Sleeps’ Scoops Top Canadian Film Award Anthony Shim’s Riceboy Sleeps has won Canada’s biggest film award, the Rogers Best Canadian Film Award. The prize, decided by the Toronto Film Critics Association (TFCA), comes with a CAN$100,000 ($72,000) cash prize. Riceboy Sleeps beat nominees Clement Virgo’s Brother and David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future. The semi-autobiographical film explores the challenges of living between two cultures through the tale of a Korean immigrant single mother raising her son in Canada. Shot in the Greater Vancouver area and Korea, the feature world premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2022, winning its Platform Prize, and then played in Busan and a raft of other festivals. The win comes as Toronto-based distributor Game Theory Films gears up for the title’s Canadian release on March 17. The feature will also be released in Korea, Singapore and the US in the coming months. “The Toronto film community has been so good to us since TIFF where this crazy journey first began and I hope to make more films in the future that will warrant the same type of support,” commented Shim.
NFTS & Netflix Re-Team On Scholarship For Black British Women The National Film and Television School (NFTS) has re-teamed with Netflix to launch the second year of applications for its cinematography scholarship for Black British Women. The scholarship, supported entirely by Netflix, funds the recipient’s two years of study costs on the NFTS cinematography course and includes a stipend for annual living expenses. Filmmakers Ndrika Anyika and Lami Okrekson were the first recipients, beginning their studies at the NFTS in January 2023. Applications for 2024 are now open. Announcing the news, Fiona Lamptey, director of UK features at Netflix, said: “True diversity in film offers us a range of perspectives, it challenges us to see familiar things differently, to tell stories in fresh ways through alternative viewpoints. We are delighted to be continuing our work with the National Film and Television School this International Women’s Day to increase gender equality and representation behind the camera.”
Modern Films Marks Int’l Women’s Day With Launch Of New Digital Space Eve Gabereau’s innovative UK indie distributor Modern Films has launched a mixed-media, digital space called The Modern Line. The aim of the site is to create connections between current filmmakers and new releases on the Modern Films slate with previous filmmakers in its library, via podcasts, text, photos, music, moving images and personal stories from filmmakers on the inspiration behind their films. The site had a soft launch in February with a podcast featuring writer-director Emily Atef in conversation with filmmaker Lisa Rovner (Sisters with Transistors), to mark the UK release of her film More Than Ever. The film is now launching officially with a special International Women’s Day focus on female-identifying filmmakers, profiling them and asking who inspires them, what is their advice to young filmmakers and what is their creative process and bible. Participants include Jacqueline Lentzou (Moon, 66 Questions), Posy Dixon (Keyboard Fantasies), Zeina Durra (Luxor) and Dina Amer (You Resemble Me).
Tim Burton Expo Heads To Italy Globetrotting ‘The World Of Tim Burton’ exhibition has been booked by Italy’s National Cinema Museum. The show will run for a six-month stint from October 2023 to April 2024, against the backdrop of the museum’s dramatic Mole Antonelliana architectural landmark home. Burton will also give a masterclass during this period. He follows in the wake of recent honorary guests Kevin Spacey and Isabella Rossellini. Drawn from Burton’s personal archive, the show consists of some 500 artifacts connected to his work. Since its creation in 2014, the show has visited a dozen countries and is currently on display in the Pavilion Bukit Jalil in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumper. “It will be wonderful to see how Tim Burton’s colorful and whimsical world will fit into the magical space of the Mole Antonelliana,” said the museum’s director Domenico De Gaetano.
Natasha Lyonne and Benjamin Bratt in Poker FacePhoto: Peacock
In social media posts this week, Natasha Lyonne proclaimed she takes inspiration from Italian actor Giulietta Masina, who’s known for bringing an endearing humanity to her varied characters. It’s easy to see how this quality has seeped into Lyonne’s performances going all the way back to films like But I’m A Cheerleader and the TV roles she’s spent the longest time with. She found a certain tenderness in Orange Is The New Black’s Nicky Nichols and Russian Doll’s Nadia Vulvokov, two eccentric and goofy personas that benefited from Lyonne’s skills in elevating them from script to screen.
Lyonne’s talent lends well to Poker Face’s Charlie Cale, who is clearly written around her, as I mentioned in my recap of the series premiere. There’s an easygoing affability to Charlie. We know almost nothing about her, except that she possesses a superhuman ability to detect lies and has a knack of befriending everyone she meets. Yet you can’t help but root for her in the midst of all the enticing crime-solving shit she finds herself in throughout season one.
For the most part, Rian Johnson’s Peacock drama has evolved into a crackerjack hit centered around Charlie’s lie-sniffing gimmick. The show has delivered thrilling murder mysteries, fascinating characters played by notable stars, and the slowest of slow reveals about Charlie’s history. The first season wraps on a high note by finally pulling on that last thread and introducing Charlie’s estranged sister, Emily, played by Clea DuVall. It’s a proper BIAC reunion.
Charlie and Emily reunite when Cliff (Benjamin Bratt) nabs her two months after her hospital stint and drives her down to Atlantic City. She comes face-to-face with Sterling Frost St. (Ron Perlman) after running from him for the past 365 days. Here’s when we find out that Charlie grew up in this city, and her family still lives nearby. And she eventually seeks refuge with Emily once she is forced to go on the run again. We’ll get to why in a minute, but first I want to expand on the great and potent Charlie and Emily scenes from the finale.
Streaming time This stick can easily access the majority of streaming services, works with Wi-Fi 6 for excellent speed, can manage 4K visuals, and even comes with a voice remote.
Their interactions shed further light on both siblings’ upbringing in Atlantic City and hint at why Charlie isn’t connected to her family anymore. It all comes back around to her uncanny bullshit-meter, which she used to detect her father’s lies a long time ago that led to the Cale clan’s downfall. We don’t know the details yet, but it’s safe to assume that he was hiding major things until Charlie caught on. Emily tells her sibling during a years-in-the-making emotional confrontation, “You are ruinous.”
It’s a quietly volatile moment because their connection is clear as day, even if we’ve only just met Emily. She instantly points out that Charlie chooses to spend her good heart on strangers and then breeze on down the highway (a.k.a the plot of Poker Face). “I bet you do some good,” Emily says. And she’s not wrong, as proved by the number of criminals Charlie has helped put behind bars. But this same skill stops Charlie from having a personal life. You simply can’t afford to lie to her about literally anything.
Poker Face subtly explores this aspect of Charlie’s dilemma, and it perfectly explains why she’s learned to be content with living as a nomad as opposed to settling down. She could’ve tried to reconnect with Emily and bond with her niece over the years, but chose to travel and eventually work at Frost Casinos. Conversely, Emily’s love for Charlie notwithstanding, she doesn’t seem interested in having her troublemaker sister around. Lyonne and DuVall’s crumbling facial expressions when Emily tells Charlie to leave (with a crushing “We don’t need you,” no less) are terrific.
Clea DuVall in Poker FacePhoto: Peacock
Now, let’s shift gears to the central mystery of “The Hook” because the murder victim is none other than Sterling Frost. Poker Face pulls a bait-and-switch because the episode opens with Perlman’s Sterling in the morgue after identifying his son’s dead body and calling Charlie (it’s the same phone conversation we heard in the premiere from her end). He tasks Cliff to follow and find her, no matter what. We’re led to believe he has grand plans of vengeance. In reality, his reasons are far more selfish (sorry to Adrien Brody’s Sterling Jr.). He wants to use Charlie’s bullshit-meter while dealing with the “five families”—yes, Poker Face is bringing in the mob for season two. He promises her freedom and a $500k in return, but before she can do anything, Sterling is shot to death by none other than his seemingly loyal lapdog.
Benjamin Bratt finally gets more to do than run behind Lyonne, and boy does he deliver. Cliff isn’t happy living out of motels and eating shitty food for a year as he tries to capture Charlie, so he teams up with the head of one of the five families, Beatrix Hasp (Rhea Perlman). Beatrix and Cliff plot Sterling’s demise and plan to put the blame on Charlie. He’s followed her for so long now, but still doesn’t grasp her ability to bring herself out of danger one way or another, huh?
Admittedly, I thought Charlie would figure out much sooner that Cliff was responsible for framing her. She connects several pieces of the puzzle like how only someone who knew Sterling’s habits well would’ve pulled off his murder, but doesn’t put it together entirely until she finds the black light poker chips (!) in Cliff’s bag. Luckily, Charlie had already involved Simon Helberg’s FBI Agent Luca, so he arrives just in time to arrest him for Natalie’s death.
Luca (who’s harboring a crush on Charlie, right?) later invites her to join the FBI, and she rejects him again. He’s grateful she’s helped him nab some big wig criminals (including Kazimir Caine), so it’s safe to assume Luca will be showing up in PF’s second season. After all, he’s involved in the mob investigation too. And guess what, or rather who these mafia families want most? Charlie. Beatrix calls her in the episode’s closing moments in a way that’s reminiscent of Sterling’s phone call to her in episode one, so we never see Perlman. She offers her the chance to use her “circus freak lie detector thing” for the Hasps. Charlie refuses and drives off into the sunset, or whatever city and murder case beckons next, as Beatrix presumably preps to send her own minion after Charlie.
It’s going to be a long wait until we catch up to Charlie’s next adventures. Johnson is helming Knives Out 3 as we speak (I think) and hopefullt scripting the new Poker Face episodes. Until then, who’s up for a good rewatch?
Stray observations
I didn’t get to mention it in my recap, but Janicza Bravo’s direction is tremendous, especially the framing of Lyonne and DuVall’s scenes. We’ve discussed the actors a ton, but PF scored some winning directors like Bravo, Iain B. MacDonald, Lyonne, Johnson, and Lucky McKee.
Another major win for Poker Face is composer Nathan Johnson’s theme song for Charlie. (Is it me or does it have a Twin Peaks vibe?)
Ron Perlman makes his Poker Face debut after a season-long build up. While he’s only around for the first 10 to 15 minutes, he makes each one count.
In case you were wondering, no, Ron and Rhea Perlman aren’t related at all.
Ron Perlman’s delivery of this line is sublime: “There’s nothing that pulls you in more than being really good at something for unhealthy reasons.”
Who else is going to watch Benjamin Bratt reciting the lyrics to Blues Traveler’s “Hook” repeatedly?
You know what, shout out to the Poker Face prop team for the lavender and long dick-shaped ring Natasha Lyonne wears for most of this episode. She ends up with it while escaping from the cops by mingling with a bachelorette party. And an even bigger shout out to the writers for using this silly little prop in a significant way when Charlie uses the dick ring to punch Cliff in the eye and escape. (Will it be part of official Poker Face merch or…?)
I love the detail of how Charlie knew everyone’s names at the hospital where she recovered for two months after the accident. Nurses, clerks, fellow patients, their family members—she knows them all!
Now that Poker Face season one has wrapped, who were some of your favorite guest stars? It’s hard to narrow down from the impressive list, but some of mine are: Stephanie Hsu, Chloë Sevigny, Judith Light, S. Epatha Merkerson, Ellen Barkin, and Cherry Jones.
Related: Who are some of your dream guest stars for season two? You just know Johnson is going to bring in some big names for the next round, right?
How would you grade Poker Face overall? I’d give it an easy A- for season one.
The “Only Murders in the Building” star called her infamous viral paparazzi photos a “reality check” that she is now “grateful for.”
Cara Delevingne is ready to talk about those viral paparazzi photos in the wake of her newfound sobriety.
The “Paper Towns” actress and supermodel reflected on working since 2011 in both Hollywood and the fashion industry. “If you have problems going into this industry, they will only get magnified and exacerbated,” Delevingne said in a Vogue cover story. “There is nothing about it that makes it better.”
The British actress continued, “In a way, a lot of people have looked at my childhood or my family and thought, ‘She’s spoiled, there’s nepotism, she grew up extremely privileged,’ which I did, don’t get me wrong. But life wasn’t all that easy for other reasons.”
Delevingne detailed the at times “shallow relationships” wrought in Hollywood and shared with Vogue that she lost out on a brand that once promoted her as a mental health advocate as she began to personally struggle with her own well-being in the midst of quarantine lockdown and a “complete existential crisis.”
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“I have so many friends. They ride for me and I love my friends so much, but it felt like a lot of the time, they were shallow relationships only because I wasn’t able to be honest about the things I was going through. I didn’t want to burden anyone,” Delevingne said. “It was also like, ‘What if people leave?’ If you ask any of my friends, they would say they’d never seen me cry. From September, I just needed support. I needed to start reaching out. And my old friends I’ve known since I was 13, they all came over and we started crying. They looked at me and said, ‘You deserve a chance to have joy.’’”
Delevingne was at the center of viral paparazzi photos leaving the Van Nuys airport in September 2022, with “Suicide Squad” co-star and longtime friend Margot Robbie seen comforting her.
“I hadn’t slept. I was not OK,” Delevingne said of that time. “It’s heartbreaking because I thought I was having fun, but at some point it was like, ‘OK, I don’t look well. You know, sometimes you need a reality check, so in a way those pictures were something to be grateful for.”
The “Carnival Row” actress recalled of the COVID era, “All my sense of belonging, all my validation — my identity, everything — was so wrapped up in work. And when that was gone, I felt like I had no purpose. I just wasn’t worth anything without work, and that was scary. Instead of taking the time to really learn something new or do something new, I got very wrapped up in misery, wallowing, and partying. It was a really sad time.”
The “Planet Sex” docuseries star added, “There was this need for change, but I was fighting it so much. I was welcoming in this new time but I was also grieving. It was like a funeral for my previous life, a goodbye to an era. And so I decided I was going to party as hard as I could because this was the end…There’s an element of feeling invincible when I’m on drugs. I put myself in danger in those moments because I don’t care about my life. I would climb anything and jump off stuff…it felt feral. It’s a scary thing to the people around you who love you.”
Delevingne was supported by her “Only Murders in the Building” co-star Selena Gomez, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, fashion designer Stella McCartney, and Robbie as she entered a 12-step program.
“This process obviously has its ups and downs, but I’ve started realizing so much. People want my story to be this after-school special where I just say, ‘Oh look, I was an addict, and now I’m sober and that’s it.’ And it’s not as simple as that. It doesn’t happen overnight,” Delevingne summed up. “Of course I want things to be instant — I think this generation especially, we want things to happen quickly — but I’ve had to dig deeper.”
Farm life may not be what the ladies expect in the first season of the Farmer Wants a Wife TV show on FOX. As we all know, Nielsen ratings typically play a significant role in determining whether a TV show like Farmer Wants a Wife is cancelled or renewed for season two. Unfortunately, most of us do not live in Nielsen households. Because many viewers feel frustrated when their viewing habits and opinions aren’t considered, we invite you to rate all of the first season episodes of Farmer Wants a Wife here.
A FOX dating reality series, the Farmer Wants a Wife TV show is hosted by Jennifer Nettles and is based on a British show of the same name. This series follows a group of hard-working male farmers as they search for real, lasting love. Each farmer hosts a group of single women who leave behind the comfort and convenience of city life for the charms and challenges of country living. They embark on an adventure that could change their lives forever. Each farmer and group of hopeful singles meet and mutually select one another before the ladies are invited to experience life on their respective farms. With the hope of finding their ever-after, these singles endeavor to discover the beauty, humor, trials, and romance of finding “the one”.
What do you think? Which season one episodes of the Farmer Wants a Wife TV series do you rate as wonderful, terrible, or somewhere between? Do you think Farmer Wants a Wife should be cancelled or renewed for a second season on FOX?
Check out our FOX status sheet to track the network’s new series pickups, renewals, and cancellations. You can find lists of cancelled shows here.
After weeks of speculation, Oscarcast director Glenn Weiss said today that Lady Gaga will not perform her Best Song nominee “Hold My Hand” from Top Gun: Maverickat Sunday’s 95th annual Academy Awards.
The singer has told producers she is planning on coming to the ceremony as a nominee, but she won’t have time to prepare a musical number because she’s shooting the Warner Bros’ DC sequel Joker: Folie à Deux with Joaquin Phoenix.
In an interview this week with Deadline’s Awards Columnist Pete Hammond, Oscarcast producer Ricky Kirshner said of Gaga possibly performing on the show: “We’ve announced some of the performances, and there are still more announcements to come. So I will say that the ones we’ve announced, very creatively, have taken to make their song very performance based and very visual. Obviously, as you can imagine, Everything Everywhere All at Once. Very visual. David Byrne [who co-wrote and performed that film’s song “This Is a Life”] had a lot to say about what it’ll look like, so that’ll be cool. So we’re excited about all the performances that we have.
Lady Gaga has performed at the Oscars twice before, for the Diane Warren collaboration “Til It Happens to You” from the doc The Hunting Ground in 2016 and for “Shallow” from A Star Is Born, which won the Oscar in 2019. She also was featured in a 2015 Oscars tribute to The Sound of Music and appeared last year aiding Liza Minelli in presenting the Best Picture prize to CODA.
Jimmy Kimmel is hosting the 95th Annual Academy Awards, which will be handed out Sunday, March 12, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. ABC is airing the show live coast-to-coast at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT and in more than 200 countries around the world.
Leave it to Florence Pugh to keep the crop top trend alive. The Don’t Worry Darling actor stole the show at the premiere of A Good Person on March 8 in a structured black crop top with a ruffled neckline, which she paired with high-waist houndstooth trousers. The cameras caught each angle of Pugh’s look, but it was her opera gloves, which featured long sashes at the elbows, that had everyone mesmerized. Made of fabric that rippled like waves, the gloves moved with every gesture of her hands and followed her like a train.
Karwai Tang
On the red carpet, Pugh posed with ex-boyfriend Zach Braff, who wrote and directed A Good Person. The pair dated for three years before splitting up in 2022, though their breakup seemed amicable.
When writing the movie, Braff imagined only Pugh as the lead protagonist alongside Morgan Freeman. The role was literally written for her, and according to Braff, she delivered. “I quite simply think she’s one of the greatest actors of her generation. She’s just magnetic,” he said. “You cannot take your eyes off of her. And it’s not just her beauty and it’s not just her acting ability; it’s that thing, that magic thing that transcends the screen, where anyone and everyone goes: I want to see whatever this person does.”
For a field that has often blurred the line between cinema and anthropology, documentary filmmakers have long set off for foreign lands, lured by the prospect of “discovering” some seemingly untold story, set against an exotic backdrop that is all but certain to attract audiences and funding bodies alike. Rarely in the past have filmmakers from the West questioned the entitlement that enables them to tell those stories, or whether those communities have the right to share their own story in their own way.
“For a very long time, this has just been an acceptable practice,” said Selin Murat, markets manager at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), during a panel discussion Tuesday at the Thessaloniki Intl. Documentary Festival. “There has been a pervasive idea that you can tell whatever story you want without understanding the sociopolitical dynamics at play.”
As the industry has begun to train the lens on itself in recent years, however, documentary filmmakers are raising questions about the ethics behind those long-standing practices — and increasingly calling for a rethink. “If we understand that documentary filmmaking is a very important tool in social development, in human rights issues, we have to change our approach,” said Alex Shiraieff, of the Baltic to Black Sea Documentary Network (B2B Doc).
Tuesday’s panel in Thessaloniki focused on how to create a more equitable framework for filmmakers outside the traditional power centers of European film finance, particularly when many rely on European partners to get their documentaries made. “Traditional co-production forms are not functioning anymore, and we really don’t know what to do,” Shiraieff said.
Shiraieff’s organization works with filmmakers from Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, many of whom “have to work with the so-called ‘experienced’ filmmakers in Europe, producers and directors who would like to co-produce films with our region,” he said.
That invariably creates a power imbalance in which those filmmakers are relying on production partners who are able to raise financing but might lack understanding of the economic, social and political realities in which they’re forced to work.
Zeynep Guzel, an independent producer and consultant and head of talents at Berlinale Doc Station, cited a “lack of empathy” from foreign producers working with filmmakers in countries whose industries are less developed. She said more work needs to be done to create solutions that allow filmmakers from radically different production environments to meet on a level playing field. “In an equitable space…we are making decisions to collaborate with each other on equitable terms at all times,” added Murat.
One way forward has been proposed by the Documentary Convention, which established a framework for a “fair co-production” model after a gathering of industry professionals in Leipzig in 2018 and 2019. The organization put forth a series of questions for filmmakers to ask before entering into a co-production agreement, a checklist designed to help partners set and define the expectations of their collaboration while sidestepping potential friction over issues ranging from cultural differences to contract disagreements.
One question that looms large is how to create an equitable revenue-sharing agreement when a co-producer from the Global North is inevitably contributing a greater part of the financing.
Traditionally, said Murat, a producer contributing the lion’s share of the funding would also retain a lion’s share of the copyright and financial returns — a fact that “sustains this unequal balance of power in these co-production relationships.
“Even if you can never get to 50-50 in the financing, the fair co-pro says we value the quality of this work, and the creativity, and what you bring to the table,” she continued, calling for filmmakers to reimagine a system that has persisted not out of any binding legal or financial structures but out of the circular logic that old habits die hard.
“Everything is negotiable. There are only traditions, no rules. Everything can be discussed, and the value of your work is not just the money you bring [to the co-production],” she added.
“Don’t sit at the meeting [with foreign financiers] and feel like this is my only chance to get the money,” agreed producer Thomas Kaske, echoing the conversations he has with filmmakers from outside of Europe. “You have stories which German [and other European] filmmakers are lacking. You bring something to the table. And if they don’t like it, you will find [other] allies.”
Pictured (from L. to R.): Selin Murat, Alex Shiraieff, Thomas Kaske, Zeynep Guzel
“I am only here because of them,” Rapinoe told the room, which included other honorees and notable guests. “We all know what’s going on in our country with the attempted erasure of trans people.”
Transgender rights in the U.S. are in a precarious place, with legislation proposed in many states that would roll back care and freedoms for transgender people. To date, about 300 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced at the state level throughout the country. In January, for example, Utah passed the first law banning gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth, effectively erasing the opportunity for young people to seek out hormone therapy and change their names and genders on their birth certificates.
Speaking out against the spate of anti-transgender legislation and increasing anti-transgender sentiment, Rapinoe urged people to look at what transgender people have created for the world: “a way to live a whole life and to be a whole person, whatever that may mean to you.”
Rapinoe pointed out the perspective she’s gained from the transgender people in her own life. “The way they refuse to live their life any other way than completely whole is so inspiring. I’m inspired by the invitation to be completely myself. They offer us a full view of what it means to be a human in the world,” she said. “A whole opportunity to be the crazy ass human beings that we are. That’s a great gift.”
Rapinoe acknowledged the challenges and pressures—”to shrink, to soften, to disappear”—that women have historically faced. “We’re required to hold so much all of the time. Either carry the world on your back or you’ll be left behind,” she said.
But she also lamented that women seeking more for themselves haven’t always been inclusive: “White women have left Black women—and everyone else—behind. Straight women leave queer women behind.”
“Let’s not be those kinds of people,” Rapinoe concluded. “Being a woman: make it expansive. Don’t ever leave anybody behind. … Let’s bring everyone in and figure the rest out from there.”
The ending of season 4 leaves it wide open for You season 5.
Netflix has not confirmed if You season 5 will happen.
Joe Goldberg took chaos to a new level across the pond in London. The Netflix series ended You’s fourth season in jaw-dropping fashion. There were plenty of twists and bold moves that put Joe back on top.
With season 4 out in its entirety, what does this mean for You season 5? There’s plenty of story left to tell, that’s for sure. Joe’s not done just yet. Here’s everything we know so far about You season 5.
Penn Badgley and Ed Speleers in ‘You’ season 4. (Netflix)
Will There Be A You Season 5?
As of March 9, 2023, Netflix has not announced plans for You season 5 yet. The series has quickly become one of Netflix’s biggest successes, so it’s likely that You will get renewed for a fifth season. On February 14, Netflix announced that Part 1 of You season 4 had 92.1M hours viewed since its February 9 release date, according to Deadline.
With Joe back in New York City, season 5 could bring the show full circle. Penn Badgley hinted that a fifth season could be the final season of the show.
“I signed a six-year contract right out the gate. So they could do two more if they wanted,” Penn revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I think if there’s another season, I think it’s only going to be one. I think — this is my understanding, but I don’t know, I really don’t know. But I know that everybody concerned, from the top on down, nobody wants this show to become tired.”
Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg. (Netflix)
You showrunner Sera Gamble revealed that the show’s team already has a plan for season 5. She also elaborated on the show’s overall future.
“We have an idea for season 5 that we’re excited about. It was never anyone’s intention to run this one into the ground. When we’re done, we’ll be done. And we’ll pack it up,” she told THR. “Even in the early conversations with Penn, the idea was not to crank out episodes forever; it’s to feel like we have told the complete story. And though I feel like tonally, we’re very different and we are not trying to sell Joe as any kind of a hero with a straight face. This is a show that is in the tradition of these single-lead shows with a guy who does increasingly bad things. The beautiful thing about it is that when his arc is complete, so is the show.”
You Season 5 Cast & Crew
You season 5 would likely feature several new characters now that Joe and Kate have left London and moved to New York City. Penn Badgley would obviously be back as Joe Goldberg if a fifth season happened, along with Charlotte Ritchie’s Kate. Given that Joe saw Rhys again in the final moments of season 4, you could probably expect to see Ed Speleers again at some point.
Charlotte Ritchie as Kate. (Netflix)
Tati Gabrielle’s Marienne is still alive, but Joe has no idea that she managed to fool him by faking her death with Nadia’s help. Tati told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY that she would be down to catch up with Marienne in season 5. “I would definitely be open to seeing it because I do want to see Marianne actually have her happiness and her peace,” she said.
What Happened At The End Of You Season 4?
The ending of You season 4 was as wild and twisty as you’ve come to expect with the series. Joe Goldberg, along with Kate and little Henry, settled back in New York City after tying up several loose ends in London.
First, Joe dumped Marienne’s body in the park after believing she’d taken her own life while being helped captive. After Kate lamented that her father owned her, Joe decided to kill Tom and end Kate’s daddy issues once and for all. Joe easily killed Tom and framed his bodyguard for the murder.
Tati Gabrielle as Marienne. (Netflix)
Afterward, Joe believed that he needed to end his own life to protect Kate. He convinced himself that he’ll end up killing her like the other women he loved. Rhys, the other half of Joe’s consciousness, begged Joe not to go through with it.
Joe jumped but survived the fall. When he woke up, Joe was in the hospital. Joe admitted to Kate that he tried to take his own life. He also confessed his real name and that he’s killed people. Kate accepted Joe’s flaws, and they vowed to “keep each other good” moving forward.
Viewers learned that Nadia helped Marienne fake her death so Marienne could escape Joe’s clutches. After Joe left Marienne’s body in the park, Nadia rushed to her side to give her an injection that woke her up. Marienne was reunited with her daughter, Juliette.
While Nadia discovered all the evidence she needed to put Joe away for good, Joe killed Eddie and waited for her. Joe got the upper hand once again by framing Nadia for Eddie’s death and Eddie for Rhys’ murder.
Joe and Kate moved to New York City, and they managed to spin the whole Madre Linda saga in a positive light for Joe. Joe appeared to finally have the life he’s always wanted. When he looked out the window at Central Park, Joe saw Rhys’ face in the window. That darkness in Joe didn’t die when he tried to kill himself. He can’t escape it no matter how hard he tries.
Digital creator, podcaster and filmmaker Markiplier has signed an exclusive video partnership with Spotify for his two podcasts, “Distractible” and “Go! My Favorite Sports Team.” Video episodes of both podcasts will be available to stream on Spotify exclusively. Markiplier is set to debut additional exclusive video content on the platform.
“Distractible,” which Markiplier hosts with Wade Barnes and Bob Muyskens, reached the No. 1 spot on Spotify’s podcasts charts the week of its debut in 2021. The podcast centers on discussions of various, seemingly random topics such as anti-aging practices, Halloween candy and roller coasters. “Go! My Favorite Sports Team” is hosted by Markiplier and Tyler Scheid; it launched in 2022 and provides humorous commentary on the world of sports.
Markiplier, a YouTube creator since 2012, boasts over 34 million subscribers on the platform; his videos have garnered over 19 billion views. After gaining a following with video game play-through videos, the creator then branched out into various other ventures, creating interactive digital series “A Heist with Markiplier” and “In Space With Markiplier,” as well as a documentary titled “Markiplier From North Korea.”
Shortly before taking the stage to announce his exclusive partnership with Spotify, he chatted with Variety about his podcasts, upcoming film and whether he’ll be in the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie.
How did your partnership with Spotify come about?
[My friends and I] make content, because we want to make a really enjoyable experience for people while still being like authentic and genuine. We’ve been doing that for quite a while now; even before “Distractible,” we were always doing that. So it’s a strange thing to come now and there be an official partnership behind it. It was really a conversation that we had. I just explained my motivations for making things, the drive I have for creating not just with audio podcasting, but in all things that I do. That’s probably what led more to the partnership than just being like “Oh, ‘Distractible’ is successful, ‘Go’ is successful.” I think they do believe in creators and believe in the people that are making the things that people enjoy.
What will this video content look like? Will you have live-action podcasts, will it continue to be animated?
It just depends, because me and my friends, we actually are not in the same city. There’s a lot of podcasts out there that would do couch podcasts, I’m sure we would prefer to do that. We just so happen to have different living situations. But when it comes to “Go!,” me and Tyler are in the same city, so we are able to do that in person. Because it’s a sports related podcast, what we want to do is try to experiment with bringing things outside of just the podcasts that are related, like trying new sports and teaching me things, collaborating with athletes to be able to bring them in and do a video with them — and just show how bad a new guy is versus a pro. I think that video just offers a more robust way for people to connect.
What made this exclusive partnership with Spotify the right decision for your podcasts career-wise?
It seemed like they were going to be a good partner that was willing to both support and enhance what we were already able to do. That’s natural, you want to find a partner that is able to do that. It also just so happens that Spotify is a huge audio platform, a lot of people are listening on Spotify, it does seem like a good place to be and with a team that’s willing to take risks and innovate and that’s also who you want. I hate terms like influencer, innovator, all this stuff, but I like trying new things. I like learning new things. I like pushing myself — not like I’m trying to push these boundaries that are out there; I am weirdly narrow in terms of my worldview of what’s going on out there. But for myself, I always like to try new things, push myself in new ways so that I can build my own skills, so that I can try new things after that and continue to improve what I make. Immediately after this is done, I have to jet to the airport because I’m flying back to film my movie that I’m making and I wrote. A whirlwind of creativity is spiraling around, and I just keep getting dragged, and it’s fun.
What can you tell me about the film you’re shooting currently? I know you wrote it, are you directing it as well?
Write, direct, act. I can’t say anything, not until it’s announced. But it is, it’s different than my other projects that I made before. So I made “In Space,” and “Heist,” and those are interactives. Some people would probably categorize it like digital first stuff, yada, yada, whatever. I wanted to challenge myself with something new, even though I consider this particular production to be way less stressful than “Space.”
What’s your dream for this film? Are you planning for it to have a theatrical release?
As long as people enjoy it, that’s the only thing I’ve ever done when it comes to making films. I do it for the experience that people get out of it, and the experience that I get out of it, and walking away from a project, I look back, and I see that it’s great. I’ve been very fortunate in my career that a lot of things that I do are done in this way, and also they’re successful. That’s not always a promising thing, especially in the entertainment world. It’s so happened, it’s but it’s never my focus, like I always am just pushing myself to be like, I want to make this project the best that I can make it with all the skills and learning as much as I can to push myself to make it even better as I go along. I just want people to see something that they can remember and that can really stick with them.
You’ve been a creator for 11 years now. What’s the key to staying ahead of the constantly evolving digital landscape?
No matter what the changes of the Internet are, no matter what the changes of entertainment landscape therein — so long as you remember, it’s always people that are watching, and people that you’re making connections with. If you’re telling a story, if you’re doing a podcast, it’s unscripted, if you’re making TikToks, there’s always behind every single number, hopefully a person, a real person who is giving you their time. That is the most basic social contract that humans have. It doesn’t matter if it’s a movie, it doesn’t matter if it’s gaming video, doesn’t matter if it’s TikTok, it doesn’t matter if it’s music, if you’re connecting with people, you’re making them feel something, whether that’s laugh, be scared, fall in love, or just entertaining them for a brief moment so that they can get away from whatever was stressing them. It’s real people in real connections, you know, keep that in mind. You always put that at the most important part of what you make, you’ll adapt to the landscape because it’s not like people are going to change.
Are you going to be in the “Five Nights at Freddy’s” movie?
Everyone wants to know, there was a lot of confusion. Yeah, I can’t say anything particular about that. There was a lot of scheduling conflict. And I can’t say anything.
Deadline was first to report news of the partnership.
EXCLUSIVE: Deadline has the first clip from Lionsgate‘s comedy Scrambled marking the feature debut of writer-director Leah McKendrick, which is set to world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival on March 11.
McKendrick also stars in the pic as thirty-something Nellie Robinson, who is your quintessential eternal bridesmaid. Her weekends are spent hopping from wedding to baby shower to yet another she-said-yes engagement party, all while nursing a broken heart due to a recent breakup. Nellie distracts herself in the shallow dating pool of bartenders and Hinge bros, but when a doctor visit reveals her fertility may be in jeopardy, she stares down the barrel of a future without options and decides to freeze her eggs. The arduous (and pricey) process sends her on a journey of self-examination, confronting past lovers, dreams and regrets, and ultimately bringing her face to face with the one she’s meant to be with forever: Herself.
In the first-look clip from Scrambled, Nellie discusses the idea of freezing her eggs with family members (Clancy Brown, Laura Cerón, Andrew Santino) who don’t completely understand. The film based on McKendrick’s personal experiences also stars Ego Nwodim (SNL), Yvonne Strahovski (The Handmaid’s Tale), June Diane Raphael (Grace and Frankie), Adam Rodriguez (Magic Mike’s Last Dance), Brett Dier (Fresh) and Sterling Sulieman (I Know What You Did Last Summer).
BondIt Media Capital fully financed the project, with Megamix’s Jonathan Levine and Gillian Bohrer producing under their first-look deal with Lionsgate. Hearts Beat Loud filmmaker Brett Haley and Amanda Mortimer (Bone Tomahawk) also produced, with Mariah Owen, Grady Craig and BondIt’s Matthew Helderman and Luke Taylor serving as exec producers. Lionsgate picked up worldwide rights to Scrambled last September and will launch global sales out of SXSW.
McKendrick told Deadline that “Scrambled was inspired by the real trials and tribulations of being a single, 34-year-old woman freezing her eggs. My goal was to make a film as awkward, messy, raw, confronting, and ultimately empowering as the experience itself. It’s a privilege to premiere my 90-minute overshare at SXSW, and hopefully illuminate a process that has too often been discussed in hushed tones.”
Added Megamix’s Levine: “I got my start in independent film. It’s where my heart lies and I am so grateful to those who saw something in me and gave me the chance to make my first film. When Gillian and I started Megamix, we said from the outset that we wanted to be those producers — the ones who would take a shot on a voice we believed in. When we read Scrambled, we were blown away by Leah’s honest, raw, and deeply funny script.
“It reminded me of a movie I directed, 50/50, in its ability to tackle a very dramatic subject with levity, humanity, and a uniquely modern perspective,” continued the filmmaker. “We are honored to have played a part in bringing Leah’s intensely personal, yet also universal story to the screen.”
Scrambled‘s first SXSW screening will take place at Austin, TX’s Alamo Drafthouse Cinema South Lamar on the 11th at 4 p.m. View the first clip from the film by clicking above.
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