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!
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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.
Christine and the Queens will follow up their 2022 pop opera Redcar les Adorables Étoile this June with Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, featuring guests like Mike Dean, 070 Shake and Madonna.
Ahead of the 20-song album’s June 9 release, the French singer known simply as Chris shared the English-language single “To Be Honest,” along with the video directed by the artist and filmed on the English coast.
“This new record is the second part of an operatic gesture that also encompassed 2022’s Redcar les adorables étoiles. Taking inspiration from the glorious dramaturgy of Tony Kushner’s iconic play, Angels in America, Redcar felt colorful and absurd like Prior sent to his insane dream-space,” Chris said in a statement.
“The follow-up Paranoïa, Angels, True Love is a key towards heart-opening transformation, a prayer towards the self – the one that breathes through all the loves it is made of,” Chris added. “Prior’s real agony in Angels in America is a deep, painful becoming, a shedding of all waters and memories, that then allows angels to immerse deep too, and offer back profound, narrative-altering love – a rest in true love.”
Like Redcar, Mike Dean serves as co-producer while also appearing on the album’s “Overture.” Madonna stops by for a trio of tracks, “Angels Crying in My Bed,” “I Met an Angel” and “Lick the Light Out,” while 070 Shake features on “True Love” and “Let Me Touch You Once.”
Christine and the Queens will briefly touch down in the U.S. this April with a handful of dates stationed around their Coachella performances, before heading to Europe for a lengthy tour in support of the new album, which is available to preorder now both in its triple-LP, 20-song form as well as a nine-song “highlights” version.
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Paranoïa, Angels, True Love Track List
1 Overture 2 Tears can be so soft 3 Marvin descending 4 A day in the water 5 Full of life 6 Angels crying in my bed (feat. Madonna) 7 Track 10 8 Overture (feat. Mike Dean) 9 He’s been shining for ever, your son 10 Flowery days 11 I met an angel (feat. Madonna) 12 True love (feat. 070 Shake) 13 Let me touch you once (feat. 070 Shake) 14 Aimer, puis vivre 15 Shine 16 We have to be friends 17 Lick the light out (feat. Madonna) 18 To be honest 19 I feel like an angel 20 Big eye
Home Before Dark, the 10-episode TV show is a fictional narrative based on a real-life nine-year-old investigative journalist, Hilde Lysiak, who broke the news of a national murder, in her self-published paper.
In the show, Hilde Lisko (Brooklynn Prince), a 9-year-old girl fancies herself to be a journalist like her father, Matt Lisko (Jim Sturgess) who works for a newspaper in New York. Unfortunately, Matt loses his job and has to move from Brooklyn back to his father’s house in small-town Erie Harbor, Washington along with his wife Bridget (Abbey Miller), Hilde, and his other two daughters. As it turns out, Matt has a mysterious past that involved the kidnapping and disappearance of his childhood friend Ritchie. A young teenager Sam Gillis (Michael Greyeyes) was arrested for the crime and put behind bars on circumstantial evidence that seemed tentative at best. Matt who had disagreed with the verdict had moved to New York to put the incident behind him.
As soon as Matt and the family arrive in Erie Harbor, the precocious Hilde befriends Sam’s socially ostracised sister Penny, only to find her dead a few days later. Hilde’s fertile imagination and inquisitive nature get her sniffing around for foul play despite the Sherriff’s assurance that Penny’s death was an accident. As things begin to unfold with Hilde’s persistent investigation, all hell breaks loose in the small town and skeletons from the past begin to tumble out. Hilde discovers that Penny’s death is connected to the 30-year-old case to which her own father was an eye-witness.
The story and screenplay in the early episodes layer the mystery very well and are powered by Hilde’s conviction that finding the truth will set her dad free of the burden of his past. As she sets about cocking a snook at her school authorities, the police and occasionally her family in her unwavering search for the truth, Hilde’s actions are mostly annoying and occasionally perplexing to those around her. Luckily despite being smart-alecky–whether standing up to school bullies or chasing up on her elder sister Izzy (Kylie Rogers) after a school prom—she is a likable protagonist through it all. It helps that the charming small-town dynamics and growing pains of the young are well explored throughout the show; plus the twists and turns keep you hooked enough to binge-watch all 10 episodes.
However, towards the end, it seems inevitable that it is the 9-year-old Hilde who’ll get to eventually solve the mystery. Hilde’s character arc also becomes mildly problematic because she goes from being smart to becoming a supersleuth with an almost magical knack of getting to the truth. Given the material, one begins to occasionally feel that Matt, the bonafide journalist in the family will take the lead at some point with Hilde as his chief weapon. Hilde, however, has other ideas. She solves the complex adult mystery entirely by her own smarts, childish appeal, and some incredible luck. The grown-ups are all reduced to being inconsequential support characters to Hilde the Heroine. Even the seemingly threatening characters become somewhat pointless bystanders watching Hilde go about her investigations with gusto. And in that transition which feels rather convenient, HBD becomes lackadaisical, hurriedly tying up the subplots.
Be that as it may, the first season of the series created by Dana Fox and Dara Resnik ends on finding the resolution to the town’s dark mystery and is still quite watchable. What works in the show’s favour is that it is not a drab and dreary murder mystery, but one filled with a lot of family drama. The terrific performance by the young star of the show Hilde (Brooklynn Prince) lifts the show above the mundane. The interplay between Hilde’s two young friends (Deric McCabe and Jibrail Nantambu) her two sisters and the parents make for interesting diversions, but this clearly is Hilde’s show and one that she holds masterfully.
HBD’s skillful crafting keeps the aura of mystery going nicely under the able direction of Jon M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) and Jim Mckay among others. At the end of the first season, a big part of the mystery is solved, but a final twist leaves it open to exploring a new line of investigation in the next one. With a strong hook for Season 2 that has already stoked much curiosity, HBD could well fill the void left behind by Stranger Things.
The challenge with throwing an annual event for more than 700 people is how to keep attendees engaged without recreating a “Groundhog Day” luncheon year after year. Tim Menke and Sheryl Main, reigning chairs of Local 600’s International Cinematographer’s Guild Publicists Awards, are up to the challenge.
This year’s celebration at the Beverly Hilton on March 10 marks 60 years of recognizing the individuals and teams whose job it is to promote entertainment content. “It is a luncheon, but it’s also part of seeing where we’re at in the industry, the importance of publicity and the work that we do,” says Main.
This year, some of the nominated campaigns include a “Top Gun: Maverick” (pictured above) promotion that saw James Cordon taking to the skies, a specially curated warrior workout tied to “The Woman King” and murder mystery dinners to boost “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”
Publicist of the year nominee Michelle Alt points out that the campaign challenges aren’t always the obvious. When it comes to her work on “Jackass Forever,” though the brand has been around for decades, that didn’t mean it was immediately recognizable to some younger moviegoers. And, unlike when the original series aired on MTV, audiences now can readily watch these types of antics on social media through TikTok and YouTube.
“How do you show people there’s a need for movies besides the superhero movies, to get people back into the theater?” asks Alt. It’s far easier to wait for movies to hit the streaming services than to expend the effort and spend the money on going out, she notes. So, Alt and her fellow nominees find themselves not only promoting projects in terms of visibility, but also striving to encourage theatergoing, especially coming out of the pandemic.
The publicists also find themselves cross-pollinating. “One of the biggest highlights is not just working with the press, but also working with personal publicists,” explains Alt. They collaborate to determine how to best benefit the actors individually, as well as the respective films.
Such an abstract concept can be hard to understand. “My parents still don’t know what I do!” laughs Alt.
Whether it’s working on a sequel or an original property, a studio tentpole or a niche indie, publicists are versatility personified. Career achievement in publicity nominee Carol McConnaughey started her trajectory with Universal’s “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,” the franchise’s third installment, and has worked on each one since, including this year’s “Fast X.” Her other recent projects include Warner Bros.’ “Black Adam,” starring Dwayne Johnson, and Disney’s “The Haunted Mansion,” starring Eddie Murphy. Her expertise spans genres and studios.
“It keeps you on your toes,” says McConnaughey of her successful decades-long career.
The political science major found her industry niche fairly quickly. “Luckily, public relations was the first thing that I tried,” she notes of the job she loves, which involves putting the creatives she works with front and center for entertainment purposes.
Some of the luncheon’s additional awards include best television publicity campaign, excellence in still photography for film and television, a press award and an international media award.
The organization will also recognize writer, producer and actor Quinta Brunson, the force behind “Abbott Elementary,” as the television showperson of the year. There will also be a special tribute to Fran Zell, the final president of Publicists Guild Local 818 from before its 2002 merger with Local 600. “We want to honor our history,” explains Main.
Last week, it was announced that we’ll be celebrating 60 years of the X-Men with Marvel Unlimited.Presented by the digital comics super-service, X-Men:60 Uncanny Years Live Virtual Event will spotlight the history and creative legacy of Marvel’s mutants, from their beginnings as the Original Five to their present era in the Krakoan Age.
The event gets even better today as GRANT MORRISON, writer of the New X-Men comics of the early 2000s will be joining the panel of iconic creators to talk about their work on Marvel’s Merry Mutants, the X-Men! Morrison scribed over 40 issues in New X-Men #114 to #154 that changed the X-Men forever, introducing secondary mutations along with leather jackets and ushered the mutants into the 21st Century.
The event is Thursday, March 16 at 7:00PM ET / 4:00PM PT and you’ll be able to go behind the scenes with some of the icons of X-Men lore on a journey through the history of mutantkind with live interviews, fanQ&As, giveaways, exclusiveannouncements, and more!
Marvel Unlimited Annual and Annual Plus members are eligible to register and attend this exclusive event for free. Current Marvel Unlimited Annual or Annual Plus members will receive an email with details on how to register for the event. To sign up or upgrade to Marvel Unlimited Annual or Annual Plus tier, go to marvel.com/xmen60event.
The 1980s introduced audiences across the world to some beloved and fan-favorite comedies, but many of these cinema greats are often overlooked. While the decade was full of memorable box office hits like Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there were many remarkable comedies that failed to get the praise and recognition they deserved. A great deal of these farces have gone on to become cult classics and have retrospectively been lauded, finally receiving their rightful appreciation.
Comedian extraordinaire Jim Carrey made his cinematic splash when he starred as a hapless teenager targeted by a powerful female vampire in Once Bitten, while Michael Keaton demonstrated his hilarious skills as a performer in Ron Howard’s sidesplitting gem Night Shift. Let’s take a look at some of the most underrated comedy movies of the ‘80s.
9 After Hours
Warner Bros.
The great Martin Scorsese directed the 1985 black comedy After Hours, which centers on mild-mannered word processor Paul Hackett as he finds his night go from bad to worse after meeting a beautiful but unwell woman who inadvertently sets off a chaotic chain of events throughout the unfortunate night.
For the low-budget independent flick, Scorsese embraced a more low-key and underground style of storytelling and nabbed the award for Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival. It earned widespread praise from critics for its delightfully bizarre elements, sharp humor, and lively performances, and since its release After Hours has been regarded as a widely underrated Scorsese film.
8 Something Wild
Orion Pictures
Touting a phenomenal cast led by Melanie Griffith, Jeff Daniels, and Ray Liotta, the 1986 action comedy Something Wild is one of Jonathan Demme’s often overlooked hits before he made waves with Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. The film follows the fun-loving and spontaneous Lulu as she finds herself enamored with a straight-laced banker; their clandestine affair becomes complicated when Lulu’s dangerous ex-convict husband shows up in hopes of reconciling.
Daniels earned a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as the reserved yuppie businessman, showcasing his comedic chops and ability to embrace the zany and strange. The film helped repopularize the screwball comedy genre at the tail end of the ’80s and showcased Griffith’s widespread mass appeal, leading to her nabbing the lead role in Working Girl.
7 Once Bitten
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
The always hilarious Jim Carrey nabbed one of his earliest starring roles in the 1985 teen horror comedy Once Bitten, in which he portrays a sex-obsessed high school virgin who becomes the target of a centuries old vampire (Lauren Hutton) that must drink his blood in order to stay young and attractive.
The teenager finds his life turned upside down when he begins to exhibit strange cravings and symptoms that have him wondering if he’s actually turning into a vampire himself. While the film failed to make a major splash with both critics and audiences, it has since gone on to become a celebrated cult classic that demonstrates Carrey’s early star power and exceptional range as a comedian.
6 Night of the Creeps
TriStar Pictures
Taking on both the undead and malicious alien parasites is one tall order for even the bravest of heroes, a fact two geeky teenagers learned firsthand in the 1986 sci-fi horror comedy Night of the Creeps. The Frank Dekker flick pays homage to the B movies of cinema’s past and fully embraces the slasher genre, delivering a hearty helping of blood and gore, zany humor, and entertaining characters that helped establish it as a charming cult classic.
The main characters in the comedy are all named after horror movie directors (like George A. Romero, John Carpenter, and Sam Raimi), and the ’80s gem uproariously chronicles two nerdy fraternity pledges’ efforts to take on alien invaders who are infecting the students on campus and turning them into zombies.
5 Top Secret!
Paramount Pictures
Val Kilmer landed his first big acting break when he nabbed the lead role in the 1984 spy movie comedy spoof Top Secret! The film has him appearing as an American rock star who gets swept up in a German underground resistance movement and sets out to help save a brilliant scientist captured by nefarious forces.
The sidesplitting farce was directed by ZAZ (Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker), the comedy geniuses who brought the world hits like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and served as a parody of popular film styles like war and spy movies. Top Secret! helped establish Kilmer as a certified leading man and displayed his range as a performer and ability to take on any genre.
4 The Man with Two Brains
Warner Bros.
The always delightful Steve Martin served up some serious laughs when he portrayed a gifted neurosurgeon whose world is turned upside after falling for a femme fatale in 1983’s The Man with Two Brains, a Carl Reiner picture co-starring Kathleen Turner as his devious wife.
Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr meets a mad scientist while at a medical conference in Vienna, and begins to develop romantic feelings for one of the crazed scientist’s living brains that he can telepathically communicate with. The Man with Two Brains was a modest box office success, though Martin’s zany performance as the lovelorn doctor in the outrageous farce earned rave reviews and demonstrates his phenomenal comedic prowess.
3 Better Off Dead
Warner Bros.
John Cusack stars as a lovesick high school student determined to end his life after being dumped by his girlfriend in the 1985 black comedy Better Off Dead, which follows the depressed Lane Meyer’s and his inept crusade to commit suicide after becoming completely consumed by his misery. After multiple failed attempts, Lane decides to instead challenge his ex-girlfriend’s new suitor to a dangerous ski race with the encouragement of his oddball buddy and a French exchange student.
Better Off Dead is one of Cusack’s earliest roles, and it led to the actor playing another charming loser, Lloyd Dobler in Cameron Crowe’s beloved 1989 hit Say Anything… His edgy and eccentric portrayal of Lane helped make the comedy a fun and goofy cult classic.
2 Night Shift
Warner Bros.
The talented Michael Keaton skyrocketed to stardom when he headlined Ron Howard’s criminally underrated 1982 comedy Night Shift, in which the revered comedian appears alongside Henry Winkler and Shelley Long in his first starring role. The flick tells the story of reserved night shift attendant Chuck (Winkler) as he finds his stress-free existence overlooking a New York City morgue compromised by the wild antics of his spirited co-worked Bill (Keaton).
When Bill concocts an outrageous plan to turn the morgue into a brothel and become pimps, uproarious chaos and hijinks naturally ensue. Night Shift was both a critical and commercial success, with Winkler earning a Golden Globe nomination and Keaton becoming an overnight sensation while also receiving widespread praise.
1 Heathers
New World Pictures
While there is no denying that the 1989 black comedy Heathershas gone on to become one of the greatest coming-of-age movies of all time, the cult classic still remains often overlooked for its sharp, dark, and biting humor and offers a scathing commentary on the high school social hierarchy.
Winona Ryder is phenomenal as popular girl Veronica Sawyer, who becomes smitten with the rebellious new student J.D, with their relationship causing an uproar among her mean girl clique and results in murder and mayhem. Heathers was a provocative and groundbreaking film that helped establish the careers of its young leads, and was lauded by both audiences and critics; its enduring legacy led to both a television adaptation and musical, with rumors of a potential sequel constantly swirling.
Bing has crossed 100 million daily active users a month after the launch of its chatbot AI, according to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s VP for Modern Life, Search and Devices. He said the company is fully aware that it’s still just “a small, low, single digit share player,” but hey, there was a time when Bing wasn’t even a part of the conversation. Now, after the tech giant released its next-gen version, even those who haven’t used it in the past are relying on it for their searches: Mehdi noted that one-third of Bing’s daily active users are new to the search engine.
“We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience,” the VP said.
In addition to seeing a boost in numbers, Microsoft is also apparently enjoying a growth in engagement, with more people conducting more searches. The company credits two factors for that particular victory, the first being Edge’s growth in usage, most likely aided by the addition of Bing’s chat AI as a new feature. It also said that the introduction of its Prometheus AI model made Bing’s search results more relevant, so people have been using — or at least trying out — the search engine more.
Apparently, around one third of Bing’s daily preview users have been using its chat AI for their queries every day. On average, Microsoft is seeing three chats per session, with over 45 million chats since it introduced the new Bing. Further, in 15 percent of all chat sessions, people have been using Bing to generate new content. The launch of Bing’s AI chatbot on mobile has propelled the search engine to a new level of popularity, as well, and has led to a six-time increase in daily active users from before it became available.
By integrating an AI chatbot into Bing earlier this year, Microsoft gave its search engine the weapon it needs to be able to compete against Google. That said, Google does have plans to launch a chatbot of its own and introduced a chat AI called Bard last month. Bard spouted misinformation during its unofficial debut, but Google is working with employees to improve the chatbot’s responses before it becomes available.
This is the camera and lenses you use to capture a deeply intimate drama like Women Talking.
Director Sarah Polley’s feature, Women Talking, has been highly praised since its debut at the 2022 Telluride Film Festival. Inspired by real-life events that occurred in a remote Mennonite community where women were repeatedly raped by the men in their community, the film sheds a light on the violence women in these communities face and the struggles they endure to face these issues.
Now, the film is nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay Oscars at the 95th Academy Awards. The film’s intimate setting lends itself beautifully to the style of Polley and cinematographer and collaborator Luc Montpellier, CSC.
Although the film was not nominated for Best Cinematography at this year’s Oscars, it is important to look at what made this film’s visual storytelling impactful to its overall narrative power. Panavision sat down with Montpellier to talk about the cameras and lenses used in this Oscar-nominated film and the decision behind those choices.
The Camera and Lenses Used on Women Talking
Montpellier and Polley embraced large-format cinematography to bring the visual style of the heavy burden the women carry onscreen. Using Panavision’s 1.65x-squeeze Ultra Vista anamorphic optics and Millennium DXL2 camera, Montpellier was able to capture the intimate drama’s visual language beautifully.
What drew Polley and Montpellier to the DXL2 camera and the Ultra Vista anamorphic optics was the full scope it provided to a shot without the sharpness associated with digital cinematography.
“The Ultra Vistas provided us with an image that took advantage of the shallow depth of field of large-format photography and the legacy characteristics of Panavision anamorphics,” Montpellier said.
The lenses’ soft edges and their de-squeezed ratio of 2.76:1 on the DXL2 gave the team that aspect ratio they needed to draw the audience into the scene while capturing the elements of a community that reminds us of what is at stake for the women on screen.
‘Women Talking’Credit: United Artists Releasing
The Visual Style of Women Talking
Montpellier revealed that he and Polley decided to embrace the large format because the visual style relied on embracing the precipice of a new world.
“It was important for the imagery in the film to mirror the weight of this seemingly impossible decision,” Montpellier told Panavision. “The desaturated palette and large-format anamorphic photography was intended to provide the gothic imagery necessary to support the idea of unwavering faith, and how the traditions of this colony can be suffocating yet beautiful.”
Although the story itself is full of tension, the visuals emphasize it through the lighting. The shifting light in the scenes often reflected the life-altering decision that the women must make throughout the film. Drawing inspiration from Larry Towell’s Mennonite photography, Montpellier was able to craft a scene that was haunting, full of emotion, and leaves the audience with a chance to explore the emotional landscape of a composition.
Let us know what you think of this film’s choice of camera and lenses in the comments below!
On February 20, during the European Film Market of the Berlin Film Festival, a round table was held dedicated to the launch of the European Solidarity Fund for Ukrainian Cinema (ESFUF), the purpose of which is to help Ukrainian filmmakers and promote co-production. ESFUF is funded by contributions from 16 partners from 13 countries and the EFAD. The Fund will support the development or completion of Ukrainian feature films produced jointly with participating countries.
Within the discussion, issues of the importance and urgency of Ukrainian cinematography in the European context, in particular, and culture during the war in general, were discussed.
The discussion was attended by:
Rima Abdul Malak, Minister of Culture of the French Republic
Claudia Roth, Minister of State for Culture and the Media of the Federal Republic of Germany
Sam Tanson, Minister of Culture and Justice of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg
“We must support Ukrainian filmmakers in creating new films. After all, the world needs new narratives, stories, new art. And our task is to give Ukrainian filmmakers hope for a better future,” noted Rima Abdul Malak.
Claudia Roth said during her speech that Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine is not only a war that kills people: “This is also a war against culture, a systematic war. Destroyed cinemas, theaters, libraries are attempts to destroy Ukrainian cultural identity.“
“Support for Ukrainian culture and the film industry is support for our values, for what we are fighting for. And the duty of the European culture ministers is to do everything possible to create a strong film sector. It is important that the voice of Ukraine continues to be heard in the world and not be lost,” added Sam Tanson, Minister of Culture and Justice of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.
The European Film Market will run until February 22 as part of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. The Ukrainian National Stand also operates at the EFM. It is organized jointly by the Ukrainian State Film Agency, the Film Industry Association of Ukraine, Film Industry Association of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Motion Picture Association and with the financial support of German Films with the assistance of the European Film Market. The catalog of Ukrainian production companies (Production Guide of Ukraine) and opportunities for cooperation with Ukraine in the field of cinema is showcased within the Ukrainian stand. EFM’s measures to support the presence of the Ukrainian film industry are co-funded by Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg.
About Berlin
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Berlin 2019: The dailies from the Berlin Film Festival brought to you by our team of festival ambassadors. Vanessa McMahon, Alex Deleon, Laurie Gordon, Lindsay Bellinger and Bruno Chatelin…
Ambiance, film reviews, trailers and podcasts, EFM insider information, and much more.
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Just in time for a spring beauty refresh, Ulta’s 21 Days of Beauty Sale 2023 is here. The mega-retailer is one of our favorite places to stock up on both drugstore and luxury beauty essentials all year long, but its annual blowout event is truly unmatched for scoring skin care and makeup essentials at incredible prices.
Here’s how it works: From Sunday, March 12 through Saturday, April 1, Ulta will be offering select products at (!!) 50% off. (That’s three full weeks of iconic products at half price.) The selection changes every day, meaning you’ll have to act quickly to snag your favorites. Plus, the retailer has already announced the majority of its markdowns so you can start planning what you want to score ahead of time.
With so much to sift through, setting a game plan can be a little intimidating. That’s where we come in: We combed through the retailer’s lineup and found the most exciting products to buy each day. Classics from Stila and Tarte are up for grabs, as are must-haves from Instagram favorites like Peach & Lily and ZitSticka. Bookmark this page, then discover what we’re prioritizing (and buying for ourselves) from Ulta’s 21 Days of Beauty Sale 2023.
Psst! Looking to score the biggest deals during Ulta’s 21 Days of Beauty Sale? We haveUlta promo codesthat will make this month of savings even sweeter.
Sunday, March 12
The sale is starting off with a bang, with 50% off beauty shelf mainstays like Tarte’s Face Tape foundation and ZitSticka’s top-rated pimple patches. Since you’ll probably use both regularly, we highly recommend stocking up now. Also discounted: MAC, Peach & Lily, and It Cosmetics.
Monday, March 13
Today’s deals might transform your entire morning routine. On top of an Elemis moisturizer with SPF and Urban Decay lipstick, you’ll also find pore-eliminating primers, eyeshadow palettes, and eye creams in the mix—many from women-owned beauty brands—all at half-off.
Tuesday, March 14
Time to update your beauty bag. Several glam essentials—including Nudestix bronzers, Dermablend’s setting powders, and dozens of skin care essentials are discounted today.
Wednesday, March 15
Take your eye makeup game to the next level with Stila’s iconic Stay All Day liner and Lorac’s moody Noir palette. Favorites from the likes of Murad and Erborian are also discounted.
Thursday, March 16
It’s a great day to target all of your skin concerns, considering plenty of products (including staples from StriVectin and SeroVital are half-off for a limited time). You can also score epic savings on Too Faced’s beloved lip plumper.
Friday, March 17
Although there are fewer deals today, they’re all heavy hitters. We’re stocking up on rarely discounted Anastasia Beverly Hills brow gel, Lancôme fragrance, and Clarins serum while we have the chance, and we suggest you do the same.
Saturday, March 18
Legends only today. Ulta went ahead and put It Cosmetics’ best-selling Confidence in a Cream moisturizer, NuFace Trinity device, and Benefit blushes on sale at the same time—and considering they’re all a full 50% off, you might as well add this trio to cart.
Sunday, March 19
Another day, another beauty shelf slay. We’ve got our sights on Kiehl’s fan-favorite overnight serum and an Anastasia brow pencil to keep our arches in check. Today’s also a great time to focus on coverage, considering Estée Lauder’s Double Wear foundation is also on sale.
Cosrx is one of our go-to brands for affordable skin care products, and its cult-favorite pimple patches are half off today only. Also coming in clutch is Kopari’s gel sunscreen with SPF 50, which will provide sun protection and an overall glow.
Tuesday, March 21
Whether you go with First Aid Beauty’s KP Smoothing body lotion or BareMinerals’ Gen Nude blush, you’ll walk away from Wednesday’s sales with flawless-looking skin. Today is also dedicated to women-owned brands: Indie Lee, Meaningful Beauty, Juice Beauty, BeautyBio, and Keys Soulcare are discounted, too.
Wednesday, March 22
Treat yourself to a self-care day with 50% off rejuvenating gems like Foreo’s Bear device (and serum) and Origins’ tinted moisturizer. Live Tinted’s viral Hue Stick and Jaclyn Cosmetics’ bronzer round out today’s markdowns in the makeup department.
Thursday, March 23
Get your skin care game on lock with Dr. Brandt’s smoothing primer and Lancôme eye cream—then head over to the makeup department for similar discounts on Lime Crime lipsticks.
Friday, March 24
Today’s offerings are almost too good to be true. We’re talking deals on Too Faced Mascara (great if you missed the first round) and Clinique perfume, plus discounts on Murad’s exfoliating cleanser. Go get ’em.
Saturday, March 25
Finish your morning beat with a top-rated brow pencil and fluffy brushes made just for Ulta—all at 50% off, of course.
The category is: full glam. If you’re hoping to plump up your lips, you won’t do much better than Tarte’s Maracuja Juicy Lip Plumping Gloss. And, for a crease-free base, MAC’s Prime Fix+ Primer and Setting Spray has your back.
Monday, March 27
Skin care enthusiasts, today is for you. There’s everything from a rose-infused toner and firming gels to sunscreens galore. Don’t miss the deals on eyeliners, matte lipsticks, and powder foundations too.
Tuesday, March 28
Hydration is the name of the game, thanks to Sunday Riley’s Ice Ceramide Moisturizing Cream and L’Occitane’s Almond Shower Oil. If you’re trying to keep your brows healthy and full, you can also pick up GrandeBrow’s serum.
Wednesday, March 29
PMD’s Microderm tool (formulated especially for pesky blackheads) and Dermalogica’s daily cleanser with glycolic acid are up for grabs for 50% off each today.
Thursday, March 30
We need only the slightest excuse to stock up on more gentle cleansers and pore-minimizing primers—and lo and behold, some of the best are on mega-sale today. Thanks, Ulta!
Friday, March 31
With only one day left of the sale, the discounted skin care picks are unsurprisingly good. Grab a skin-quenching moisturizer from Tula and First Aid Beauty’s exfoliating ingrown hair pads for less than $20.
Saturday, April 1
As expected, the sale is going out with a bang. Our final picks? Lancôme’s Lash Idole Mascara, Strivectin’s Tighten and Lift Neck Serum Roller, and Tarte’s Shape Tape Concealer.
A really fun day of podcasts. No, not just my two daily ones, “The Daily Roundup” and the “The Sports Daily,” but I also am a guest on Courtney Robertson’s “Off Contract” podcast today where, if I’m being honest, some excellent tea is spilled by both of us. She spilled some tea I’d never heard before regarding Chris Harrison. And I tell a story that I’ve never told before EVER – either in my column or on any of the over 500 podcasts I’ve done. Once Courtney mentioned to me months ago that she was gonna start a podcast and have me on it, I told her I would wait to share this story because it has to do directly with her season. I know a lot of you are interested in the process of how I get spoilers, and pretty much anytime I give a spoiler (especially about the final couple), I can’t reveal how I know. I’d be outing sources. Well, the story I tell today has to do directly with a finale spoiler and the lengths I went to one time to get it. Still crazy thinking back on it now. But go listen to her podcast because there’s also some really good stories shared by both of us regarding Chris Harrison, Arie, Nick, and much, much more. “Off Contract” by Courtney Robertson and you can find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
(SPOILERS) Today’s Daily Roundup covers a podcast you don’t wanna miss today, an update on our new “Bachelorette,” and a social media app brought to my attention yesterday that, well, I go off on.
A “Bachelorette” update for you that I just heard about yesterday. At the time of the Women Tell All taping back on Feb. 24th, there was not any announcement regarding the “Bachelorette” made on that show. However, yesterday I was told that after the audience was gone, Jesse Palmer actually told Charity for the first time that she’s been named the “Bachelorette.” I assume that was filmed, so there’s a good chance next week on the WTA episode, they are going to show Jesse post-filming that day telling her she’s gotten the gig. And if that’s the case, then I think for the first time ever (and the original reports I was hearing about Bachelorette beginning to film sometime the weekend of March 17th), that show will start filming before the “Bachelor” ends airing. In fact, if we do get that next Tuesday the “official” announcement from ABC that Charity is the next “Bachelorette,” makes all the sense in the world for them to start filming next weekend.
That’d also mean that the potential guys will be released on the “Bachelorette” Facebook page next Wednesday or Thursday. Wonderful. I’ll be out of town and having to post the guys while in Vegas. It’s happened once before and, man, that just sucks. Last thing I wanna do when checking in to Vegas is have to worry about finding guys last names and IG accounts. Ugh. But I have a feeling it’s coming next week now so be ready. It also now makes the live ATFR on March 27th for Zach’s season even more interesting because if they bring Charity out to have her do her first live interview as the “Bachelorette,” she’ll already be roughly a week into filming, something we’ve never seen before. Might be a nice little twist to things actually.
I was looking back at this post by @BachelorData and realized in 2015-2017, three seasons in a row the winner got their first 1-on-1 date in episode 3. But it hadn’t happened since then – until this season when Kaity got hers in episode 3:
Does it mean much in the overall grand scheme of things? Probably not. But it’s always stuff like this which interests me and see if patterns develop. There was a time there when winners weren’t getting their first 1-on-1 til travel started. But now 2 seasons in a row (and 3 of the last 6, the eventual winner (or final woman because, you know, Susie) got theirs before travel started. It’s why I love @Bachelordata’s info so much. I could nerd out over this stuff all day.
At a Wednesday press conference about what audiences can expect from Sunday’s Oscars telecast, the creative team behind the 95th Academy Awards, including executive producer and showrunner Glenn Weiss, confirmed Lady Gaga will not be performing her Oscar-nominated song from “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Hold my Hand.”
The Will Smith factor was also addressed by the creative team, which included executive producer and showrunner Ricky Kirshner, musical director Rickey Minor, writers Dave Boone, Nefetari Spencer and Agathe Panaretos and producer Sarah Levine Hall.
Traditionally, the previous year’s best actor winner returns to present the best actress award, but Smith, who resigned from the Academy following his slapping of host Chris Rock is banned from attending for ten years. Executive producer Molly McNearney said, “We’re going to acknowledge it, and then we’re gonna move on.” She added, “We don’t want to make this year about last year. It’s certainly something we can and will address in a comedic fashion.”
Kirshner, a new addition to the team, stressed, this was a new show that was going to differ from what regular viewers are used to. “There’s no more ‘This is what we used to do.’ We’ve rethought the show and we’ve got presenters that make sense for the categories.”
The show will encompass many themes. Bill Kramer, CEO of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed to Variety last year that all categories will be included in the live telecast, and that will be evident during the show. Kirshner said this year’s show is about “honoring the crafts and what it takes to make a movie.” He added, “Most people see just the actors in front of the camera, but as you know, there are hundreds of people that make movies and a lot of people across the country don’t know what it takes, but we’re going to show that.”
In terms of what audiences can expect from the musical aspect, Minor who last served as the show’s music director in 2020 said, “As a team, we talk about not only the presentation of the music but the diverse music that’s in all of these beautiful films and the great writers.”
The orchestra will be on stage and featured throughout the show.
Aside from celebrating Hollywood film music and its composers, Minor reiterated the ceremony would delve into the 95th anniversary of the awards. “It’s a treasure trove. We have a lot of material to choose from,” he teased.
Weiss took a moment to talk to the production of the show. He said, “We’ve added surround sound and you’re going to find an experience that is going to be adaptable, immersive and taking on the flavor of the winners and the movies. It’s going to be a really visually stunning experience.”
At a recent show at London’s Southbank Centre, Christine and the Queens, going under the guise of Redcar, performed the entirety of his latest album Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue). Dressed as a sailor, he donned a red strap-on, screamed existential questions to a papier-mâché moon, and danced with a giant robot arm. The show was ostensibly about some kind of salvation—ending with Letissier ascending to heaven—but the album he was performing felt strangely leaden. Where were the dazzling, hook-rich songs Chris had become known for? Where was the warm emotion of La vita nuova, or Chris’s sleazy razzle-dazzle?
As its title suggested, Redcar les adorables étoiles was just act one: The second part, Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, is slated to be released in June. And praise be—its lead single “To Be Honest” is dazzlingly grand, an understated but electrifying return to form. Over slowly-building synth chords, Chris sings in English about feeling estranged from his own past—“I’ve been through so much/That sometimes it feels far/It is like a movie played by another star/She’s a stranger, to be honest”—indirectly referencing the trauma and upheaval he has experienced since his transition and the death of his mother. A motorik drum beat and the faintest electric guitar solo give the song the feeling of a resplendent ‘80s power ballad; Chris sounds as if he recorded in the center of a cathedral, his voice reverberating skyward as the song builds. “Feeling kind of loveless/Yet always ready to try,” he sings, finally landing on something akin to hope.
Boston, the largest city in Massachusetts, has been the setting for countless movies, largely thanks to its rich history, distinctive neighborhoods, and unique cultural identity. From gritty crime dramas to heartwarming coming-of-age stories, the city has provided the backdrop for some of the most memorable films of the last two decades.
In this blog post, we’ll look at some of the best movies set in Boston from 2000 to 2022. Whether you’re a fan of intense action, complex characters, or poignant drama, there’s sure to be something on this list that will capture your attention and transport you to the streets of one of America’s most iconic cities.
So grab some popcorn, prepare your bets, settle in, and get ready to explore the best films set in Boston from the past 20 years.
The Departed (2006)
The Departed is a crime drama directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson. The movie is set in the gritty neighborhoods of South Boston and follows two undercover men in opposing criminal organizations. The Departed won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing. It is widely regarded as one of the best films of the 2000s and is a must-watch for fans of crime dramas.
Mystic River (2003)
Released in 2003, Mystic River is a gritty crime drama directed by Clint Eastwood and based on a novel by Dennis Lehane. The movie follows the intertwined lives of three childhood friends from the working-class neighborhood of South Boston.
The city’s rough streets and shadowy alleys perfectly capture the film’s dark and brooding atmosphere. Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon all deliver excellent performances, and the film’s gripping storyline will keep you on the edge of your seat until the end.
The Fighter (2010)
The Fighter, released in 2010, is a biographical sports drama directed by David O. Russell. The movie tells the story of boxer Micky Ward, played by Mark Wahlberg, and his troubled family, who are all involved in his career. Christian Bale delivers an outstanding performance as Micky’s older half-brother and trainer, Dicky Eklund, who struggles with addiction.
The film’s fight scenes were filmed at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, Massachusetts, which adds to the movie’s authenticity. Lowell is the home of many great boxers, including Micky Ward and his brother, Dicky Eklund.
The film also showcases the popular sport of betting on boxing matches, which is legal in Massachusetts. For those interested in betting on sports, Massachusetts betting promos are available for new customers, which can make it even more exciting to follow the sport.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Manchester by the Sea is a heartbreaking drama about a man named Lee Chandler, played by Casey Affleck, who returns to his hometown of Manchester, Massachusetts, after the death of his brother.
The movie explores themes of grief, guilt, and family dynamics. Manchester by the Sea beautifully captures the city’s picturesque landscapes, such as the scenic Manchester Harbor, where Lee and his nephew go fishing. The film’s quiet and contemplative tone is reflected in the peaceful surroundings of the city, making it a perfect setting for the story.
Spotlight (2015)
Spotlight is a riveting drama that tells the true story of how the Boston Globe newspaper exposed the widespread child abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. The movie was shot on location in Boston, and it brilliantly captures the city’s bustling newsrooms, busy streets, and iconic landmarks.
The film stars a talented cast, including Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, and Rachel McAdams, who all deliver powerful performances. The film was lauded for its attention to detail and accuracy in portraying the events that led to the uncovering of the abuse scandal, making it a must-see for anyone interested in the city’s history.
The Town (2010)
The Town, released in 2010, is a gritty heist film directed by and starring Ben Affleck. The movie is set in Charlestown, a neighborhood in Boston known for producing several generations of criminals. The film’s intense action scenes and the fast-paced plot will keep you on the edge of your seat, while the authentic setting and accents add a layer of realism to the story.
The Town features a talented ensemble cast, including Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, and Rebecca Hall, who all deliver standout performances. The film also includes a thrilling car chase through the streets of Boston, highlighting the city’s iconic landmarks, such as Fenway Park and the Bunker Hill Monument.
Boston has proven to be a remarkable setting for some of the most memorable films of the last two decades. From the gritty streets of South Boston to the picturesque landscapes of Manchester, the city has provided a unique and diverse backdrop for a range of stories
China has been accused of cutting the internet to one of Taiwan‘s outlying islands as part of its latest intimidation tactic to force reunification.
Some living on Matsu, close to neighbouring China, were struggling to pay electricity bills, make a doctor’s appointment or receive a package.
Matsu’s 14,000 residents rely on two submarine internet cables leading to Taiwan’s main island.
The National Communications Commission (NCC), citing the island’s telecom service, blamed two Chinese ships for cutting the cables.
It said a Chinese fishing vessel is suspected of severing the first cable some 50 kilometres (31 miles) out at sea. Six days later, on February 8, a Chinese cargo ship cut the second, NCC said.
A woman walks in front of the Lienchiang County government’s office in Matsu Island, Taiwan on March 6, 2023
Telecom equipment are seen on top of a hill in Beigan, part of Matsu Islands, Taiwan on March 5, 2023
Taiwan’s government stopped short of calling it a deliberate act on the part of Beijing, and there was no direct evidence to show the Chinese ships were responsible.
As the full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shown, Russia has made taking out internet infrastructure one of the key parts of its strategy.
Some experts suspect China may have cut the cables deliberately as part of its harassment of the self-ruled island it considers part of its territory, to be reunited by force if necessary.
China regularly sends warplanes and navy ships toward Taiwan as part of tactics to intimidate the island’s democratic government. Concerns about China’s invasion, and Taiwan’s preparedness to withstand it, have increased since the war in Ukraine.
The islanders were forced to hook up to a limited internet service via microwave radio transmission, a more mature technology, as backup.
This meant sometimes waiting hours to send a text, calls dropping and videos becoming unwatchable.
‘A lot of tourists would cancel their booking because there’s no internet. Nowadays, the internet plays a very large role in people’s lives,’ said Chen, who lives in Beigan, one of Matsu’s main residential islands.
The loss of the internet cables has also had huge implications for national security.
The cables had been cut 27 times in the past five years, but it was unclear which country the vessels hailed from, based on data from Chunghwa Telecom.
Taiwan’s coast guard gave chase to the fishing vessel that cut the first cable on February 2, but it went back to Chinese waters, according to an official who was briefed on the incident and was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.
Authorities found two Chinese ships in the area where the cables were cut, based on automated identification system data, similar to GPS, which shows a vessel’s location.
‘We can’t rule out that China destroyed these on purpose,’ said Su Tzu-yun, a defense expert at the government think tank, Institute for National Defense and Security Research, citing research that only China and Russia had the technical capabilities to do this.
Tourists were seen walking on the street in the shopping district on Nangan, part of Matsu Islands, Taiwan on March 7, 2023
Closed ticket machines are seen at a ferry station on Beigan, part of Matsu Islands, Taiwan on March 5, 2023. The signs read: ‘Due to Internet signal cut, machine temporary suspends service’
Off-duty Taiwanese soldiers use their phones at the Chunghwa Telecom office in Nangan, part of Matsu Islands, Taiwan on March 5, 2023
Tzu-yun added: ‘Taiwan needs to invest more resources in repairing and protecting the cables.’
Internet cables, which can be anywhere between 20 millimetres to 30 millimetres (0.79 inches to 1.18 inches) wide, are encased in steel armour in shallow waters where they are more likely to run into ships.
Despite the protection, cables can get cut quite easily by ships and their anchors, or fishing boats using steel nets.
Even so, ‘this level of breakage is highly unusual for a cable, even in the shallow waters of the Taiwan Strait,’ said Geoff Huston, chief scientist at Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, a non-profit that manages and distributes internet resources like IP addresses for the region.
Without a stable internet service, coffee shop owner Chiu Sih-chi said seeing the doctor for his toddler son’s cold became a hassle because they first had to visit the hospital to just get an appointment.
A breakfast shop owner said she lost thousands of dollars in the past few weeks because she usually takes online orders. Customers would come to her stall expecting the food to be ready when she had not even seen their messages.
Faced with unusual difficulties, Matsu residents came up with all sorts of ways to organise their lives.
One couple planned to deal with the coming peak season by having one person stay in Taiwan to access their reservation system and passing the information on to the other via text messages.
Some enterprising residents went across to the other shore to buy SIM cards from Chinese telecoms, though those only work well in the spots closer to the Chinese coast, which is only 10 kilometres (6.21 miles) away at its closest point.
Others, like the bed and breakfast owner Tsao Li-yu, would go to Chunghwa Telecom’s office to use a Wi-Fi hot spot the company had set up for locals to use in the meantime.
Wang Chung Ming, the head of Lienchiang County, as the Matsu islands are officially called, said he and the legislator from Matsu went to Taipei shortly after the internet broke down to ask for help, and was told they would get priority in any future internet backup plans.
Wang Chung Ming, the head of Lienchiang County, speaks during an interview on Nangan, part of Matsu Islands, Taiwan on March 6, 2023
Local B&B owner Tsao Li-yu works at the lobby of his establishment, which currently has no customers, in Nangan, part of Matsu Islands
Taiwan’s Ministry of Digital Affairs publicly asked for bids from low-Earth orbit satellite operators to provide the internet in a backup plan, after seeing Russia’s cyberattacks in the invasion of Ukraine, the head of the ministry, Audrey Tang, told The Washington Post last autumn. However, the plan remains stalled as a law in Taiwan requires the providers to be at least 51 per cent owned by a domestic shareholder.
A spokesperson for the Digital Ministry directed questions about the progress of backup plans to the National Communications Commission (NCC).
The NCC said it will install a surveillance system for the undersea cables, while relying on microwave transmission as a backup option.
Many Pacific island nations, before they started using internet cables, depended on satellites – and some still do – as backup, said Jonathan Brewer, a telecommunications consultant from New Zealand who works across Asia and the Pacific.
There is also the question of cost. Repairing the cables is expensive, with an early estimate of $30 million New Taiwan Dollars ($1 million) for the work of the ships alone.
‘The Chinese boats that damaged the cables should be held accountable and pay compensation for the highly expensive repairs,’ said Wen Lii, the head of the Matsu chapter of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.
Wang, the head of Lienchiang County, said he had mentioned the cables on a recent visit to China, where he had met an executive from China Mobile. They offered to send technicians to help. But compensation, he said, will require providing hard proof on who did it.
For now, the only thing residents can do is wait. The earliest cable-laying ships can come is April 20, because there are a limited number of vessels that can do the job.
A month without functional internet has its upsides too. Chen Yu-lin, the bed and breakfast owner, has felt more at peace.
It was hard in the first week, but Chen quickly got used to it.
‘From a life perspective, I think it’s much more comfortable because you get fewer calls,’ he said, adding he was spending more time with his son, who usually is playing games online.
At a web cafe where off-duty soldiers were playing offline games, the effect was the same.
‘Our relationships have become a bit closer,’ said one soldier who only gave his first name, Samuel. ‘Because normally when there’s internet, everyone keeps to themselves, and now we’re more connected.’
“Schwartz only found out about it a month ago,” Doute, 40, revealed on the Wednesday, March 8, episode, adding that she and the Schwartz, also 40 — who made out with Leviss, 28, in August 2022 at Scheana Shay and Brock Davies‘ wedding — were “texting yesterday” about the drama.
She continued, “[Schwartz] said that he told [Sandoval] he needed to tell Ariana before it blew up in his face and humiliated the hell out of her … Too little too late.”
Doute went on to share that she was with Ariana Madix at Schwartz and Sandoval’s restaurant, TomTom, when the Florida native found out about the cheating scandal.
“During Tom [Sandoval’s] performance, his phone fell out of his pocket or something and somebody — a mutual friend — picks up his phone, hands it to Ariana. … Ariana had his phone and she told me that she just had this gut intuition to look at it.”
Doute noted that while Madix and Sandoval “are a trusting couple,” the former bartender “just felt like she had to look,” adding, “So she went into his photos. He had screen recorded a FaceTime of him and Raquel masturbating with each other. That’s the truth.”
Us Weekly confirmed on Friday, March 3, that Madix and Sandoval called it quits after nine years together. Madix pulled the plug on her romance with the TomTom cofounder after discovering he was cheating with Leviss.An insider told Us at the time that while Sandoval and Madix had been “having problems for a while,” things didn’t come to a “breaking point” until the cheating scandal came to light.
Doute shared on Wednesday that since news of the affair broke, Leviss has been “saying that [she and Sandoval] are in love and they have matching necklaces.” While the Michigan native has “barely spoken” to Sandoval, she claimed that the musician was “gaslighting” and “blaming” Madix for their breakup, saying, “You know we haven’t been happy,” and that she “wasn’t supportive” of his “endeavors.”
“I stan Ariana. This is in real-time. I love you so much,” Doute said in an Instagram Story video with Madix. The James Mae cofounder also shared a video in support of Madix, adding: “Karma is indeed coming. So Raquel should just move home.”
Madix and Leviss aren’t the only Pump Rules women who’ve been romantically involved with the musician over the years. Doute dated Sandoval herself from 2007 to 2013 before breaking up between seasons 2 and 3 of the Bravo series.
“I don’t know why I feel like I need to make this clear, but there’s so many people right now wondering if this is making me happy,” she said via her Instagram Stories earlier this month. “And you guys, Ariana and I’ve been really good friends for many, many years now. So, I am team Ariana — all day, every day. That’s what’s up.”
Doute and Sandoval, however, have continued to have a contentious relationship following their 2014 split. The tense dynamic escalated when Doute started dating the Schwartz & Sandy’s co-owner’s friendJames Kennedy that same year.
Sandoval expressed his frustration about his ex’s new relationship during the season 2 reunion — where he revealed that Doute started sleeping with Kennedy right before Sandoval moved in with him, calling the entire experience a “nightmare.” Doute, for her part, said she owed the musician “nothing.”
After Doute and Kennedy called it quits in September 2015, the DJ moved on Leviss. The pair got engaged in May 2021, with Sandoval chipping in $25,000 to pay for the proposal. Leviss, however, broke off the engagement in December 2021.
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Scroll-down for Doute’s most eye-opening revelations from her “Sex, Love and What Matters” podcast:
On Wednesday, Spotify hosted a cross-generational conversation between popular Gen Z content creator Emma Chamberlain and The Ringer founder and CEO Bill Simmons. Both have podcasts in common: Chamberlain’s Anything Goes podcast has been hosted by Spotify for only two weeks as part of an exclusive deal (and has already more than doubled in listenership, the company said), and as part of Spotify’s purchase of The Ringer for $250 million in 2020, Simmons’ network has over 50 podcasts on the platform.
Interviewed by Spotify’s global head of public affairs Dustee Jenkins, Chamberlain and Simmons shared insights about the importance of authenticity in audio, why a pivot to video in podcasting makes sense, and where they see the industry heading.
“It’s always been so exciting to me to just be vulnerable in a new way online … I started podcasting because I thought that the medium would be perfect for me. I’ve always been a talker,” Chamberlain shared. “I just want to talk about everything and I think that’s the magic of what podcasting is. It’s this long form entertainment … a great way to dig into ideas.”
Known for her disarming charisma and shamelessly authentic storytelling style, Chamberlain said that authenticity online has always come naturally to her, and that’s been part of Anything Goes’ success. “For the type of content that I want to make, in order for it to be entertaining to anyone it has to be genuine, there has to be some sort of passion behind it,” she said.
Simmons agreed that authenticity is the key for content to “translate to something that’s going to last.”
“Social media is the cocaine of this generation,” the Peabody and Emmy-award winning sports and culture writer said. “There was this attention era that was so inauthentic, and everyone was presenting themselves in the best possible way all the time … but nobody is that happy all the time, life is never that great all the time … I think during the pandemic the authenticity thing started to win.”
Simmons went on to describe The Ringer‘s characteristic style as ‘conversational:’ “We always want it to feel like you’re hanging with the smartest guy at the bar, or the smartest gal in the movie theatre,” he said, adding that when looking for new voices to champion, his team looks for “the people who had the best takes on stuff and were as entertaining as they could be.”
Chamberlain also detailed the thinking behind inviting guests onto her show which, until now, has been a solo platform and pursuit. “I’m so excited. I think conversation brings out the most developed ideas, it brings out new ideas … communicating with other people expands where the conversation can go,” she said. “I’m more interested in talking to people who have personal interests that are more hidden or less discussed.”
As announced this morning, video will begin to play a larger role in Spotify’s platform and the content it promotes; in the podcast lane specifically, many of them will be filmed and watchable in-app.
“Some people just like to watch a podcast, but there’s also the value of being able to cut stuff up and put it on social,” Simmons said.
Chamberlain, who says she was once “frightened by video” because it felt safer to be heard and not seen, says that “the value of video is seeing somebody’s face and body language. There’s so much there that you do miss when you’re just listening to audio.”
The two also discussed their dream podcast guests. Simmons, who says he “felt like I’d peaked” when he interviewed Charlize Theron (and former president Barack Obama in the actual White House), named Eddie Murphy, David Letterman, and Tom Cruise. And Chamberlain listed Mac Demarco, Wes Anderson, and Paul McCartney.
Spotify currently hosts more than 5 million podcasts, making Simmons’ bet on the platform a strong one. When asked why he sold his company to the global audio giant, he said: “I looked at it like, there’s a chance those guys are gonna own audio [someday].”
Chaim Topol, the Israeli actor who achieved international stardom for his portrayal of Tevye in several stage productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” as well as the 1971 stage adaptation, died Wednesday following a years-long struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 87.
Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, announced the news, saying in a statement that Topol was a “gifted actor who conquered many stages in Israel and overseas, filled the cinema screens with his presence and especially entered deep into our hearts.”
Though Topal was best known for “Fiddler,” over his decades-long career he also starred in a range of films that have become recognized as classics. Among them, he portrayed mad scientist Hans Zarkov in director Mike Hodges’ “Flash Gordon” (1980), and the smuggler-turned-hero Milos Columbo in the 1981 James Bond film “For Your Eyes Only.”
Topal was born in Tel Aviv, then part of British Mandate Palestine, in 1935. He first developed an interest in acting as a young child but it wasn’t until his mandatory enlistment in the Israeli Defense Force that he began performing as part of the service’s entertainment division. Following his military service — which included active duty during the Suez Crisis in 1956 — he began working in mostly local theater.
His career took off in the 1960s, first in Israeli cinema before making his English language movie debut in the 1965 Kirk Douglas film “Cast a Giant Shadow.”
He landed his career-defining role of Teyve the milkman in 1966, starring in the Israeli production of the hit play. He was soon cast in the West End production, and eventually appeared in more than 400 performances. Director Norman Jewison cast Topol as the lead in his film adaptation of “Fiddler after seeing one of these performances,” choosing the 36-year-old over several major stars including Zero Mostel, who originated the part on Broadway.
In observance of International Women’s Day, TuneCore/Believe have shared the third installment of their gender equality study in conjunction with entertainment data company Luminate.
In an effort to take action against gender discrimination, bias and inequality in the music industry, this year’s edition of the study surveyed over 1,500 professionals across major and independent labels — including creators, distributors, live music execs, managers, publicists, radio and more — representing a total of 109 different countries.
Some of the issues targeted include sexual harassment in the workplace, the need for changes in hiring practices, the continued education of employees on how to confront such issues, and the demand for diversification of artist line-ups at live events.
The most striking findings reveal that 34% of women working in the music industry who participated in this year’s study have previusly reported being sexually harassed or abused at work; that number is increased to 42% and 43% for trans and nonbinary individuals, respectively.
Also, more than half of the music industry professionals and creators who responded to the survey agree that men are paid more than others in the industry though those in Africa (38%), Asia-Pacific (42%), and Latin America and the Caribbean (44%) are less likely to view gender discrimination in the music industry as a problem. Industry professionals and creators in Europe (59%) and North America (68%) are more likely to view gender discrimination in the music industry as a problem.
Courtesy of TuneCore/Believe.
The new report also features a foreword by singer-songwriter and actress JoJo who details her struggles and triumphs across her 20 years as an artist.
“Change is possible when we reflect, learn and then choose to grow. There’s a hopefulness found in refusing to let history repeat itself,” wrote JoJo. “Next year, I’ll be celebrating my 20-year anniversary in the music industry as a public figure, a journey that started when I was a young teenager. When I reflect on that time, I realize it’s hard for me to separate the formation of my identity as an adult woman from my identity as an artist. And while those blurry lines come from both external and internal influences, I’ve recently wondered if my male peers consider themselves ‘male artists.’ My suspicion is that the term is not as ubiquitous for them as the term ‘female artist’ is for myself and my fellow women in music, whether in the press, in business meetings, or in the studio.”
The study also includes comments and insights by Lzzy Hale, frontwoman of Halestorm, and artist and activist Jessica Betts, alongside a group of Believe and TuneCore’s global roster of artists, including Canada’s Alysha Brilla, Mexico’s Erika Vidrio, Italy’s Beatrice Dellacasa, and India’s Shalmali Kholgade, who all share personal reflections of gender inequality and inequity in the industry.
Courtesy of TuneCore/Believe.
“The good news is that ‘Be The Change’ is now in its third year and we’ve seen the study’s impact. It’s been quoted by the United Nations and widely discussed in creator and executive circles across the industry,” said TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson in a statement. “But here’s the bad news – we need more change. We, as individuals and as an industry must heed the calls to action and do just that – take action. Small changes add up and if we each do something different each day, week, month, year, we will see a sea change in the industry. So let’s go!”
“The development of a more diverse and equitable music industry is one of the core goals of Believe’s Shaping Music for Good strategy,” added Denis Ladegaillerie, CEO of Believe. “We have consistently worked to support gender equality and will ensure that the insights provided by this year’s Be The Change study will encourage even more of our industry peers to join us in shaping a more respectful, diverse, and transparent music industry for all.”
Tom Alter made his Bollywood debut in 1975 with the film Mrig Tushna.
At the age of 18, his parents sent him to his native country, the US, for higher studies but Tom’s heart was in India.
There was a time in Bollywood, in the 80s and the early 90s when a lot of movies were set in the colonial era. And one of the staple actors in those films used to be the late Tom Alter. Because of his Caucasian origins, Tom Alter used to be frequently cast as a British officer oppressing the people, although he has done a lot of positive roles as well. A respected actor in theatre, television and Bollywood, Tom Alter was born on June 22, 1950, in Mussoorie. His grandparents migrated to Chennai from the state of Ohio in the US in 1916. Tom was educated in Mussoorie and had Hindi as one of his subjects hence spoke impeccable Hindi without a western accent. He was often known as the “Blue-eyed Sahib who spoke Hindi”. At the age of 18, his parents sent him to his native country, the US, for higher studies but Tom’s heart was in India. He was not too interested in academics either and soon returned to India.
In 1970, Tom Alter happened to watch Rajesh Khanna’s superhit film Aradhana, and the desire to be an actor was born in him. He wanted to be just like Rajesh Khanna and made him his idol. He studied at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune. From 1972 to 1974, he remained in Pune. During this time, Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri were his juniors while Shabana Azmi was his senior. He was also the captain of the FTII cricket team.
Tom Alter made his Bollywood debut in 1975 with the film Mrig Tushna. He appeared in a series of films like ‘Hum Kisse Kam Nahin, Parvarish, Desh Pardes, Kranti, Kudrat, Gandhi, Vidhata, Swami Dada, Ram Teri Ganga Maili and Junoon. Apart from this, he worked in popular TV serials like Bharat Ek Khoj, Captain Vyom and the widely popular Shaktimaan, where he played Mahaguru, a mystical sage and mentor to the titular superhero.
Tom Alter spent his childhood in Rajpur between Dehradun and Mussoorie. While living here, he also learned about Garhwali. He wished to appear in films made in the Garhwali language but he could not fulfil this wish. Tom passed away from skin cancer in September 2017 in Mumbai at the age of 67. He had wished to spend his last few days at his birthplace at Mussoorie but even that wish remained unfulfilled. Tom had been a Padma Shri awardee in 2008.
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