The Jan. 21 episode of Saturday Night Live saw Amy Poehler and host Aubrey Plaza reprise their roles as Leslie Knope and April Ludgate, respectively, during Weekend Update.
Colin Jost introduced Plaza’s April as a longtime employee of the city of Pawnee, Indiana, who was joining the show to talk about local government.
“I will when you stop yelling at me,” April tells Jost. “OK, fine. So, yeah, everybody should get involved where they live. If you’re young, you should get a job as a garbage man or something.”
When asked if there were any other jobs, she replied, shocked that he actually wanted her to list them.
“Fine. Drive a bus. You don’t have to be on time. Nobody cares,” she said. “Work for the water department. You can drain the reservoir and find all the bodies and murder clues, or just be a dog catcher, and just say you couldn’t find any. Because when you work for the local government, doing the bare minimum is doing your part.”
Jost then asked what if someone actually wants to work hard, to which she said she didn’t know and told him to ask her old boss. Cue Poehler’s Leslie, who Jost prompted with a question about what it takes to run a federal agency.
“Well, all you do is you show up every day, and you do the job,” she said. “But I want to pick your brain about this job, about this show, because I used to watch this when Seth Meyers did it by himself with no one else, and he made it look really easy.”
She goes on to avoid every single one of his questions and said she and April couldn’t stay long because they had time-entry tickets to the M&M store.
Hulu has a new deal for new and eligible returning Hulu with Live TV subscribers, to kick off the NFL season. Now through October 5, 2022, you can take $20 off per month for three months for a total savings fo $60. That discount brings the price of Hulu with Live TV down to $49.99 per month for three months.
Hulu with Live TV gives subscribers over 75 live TV channels including NFL Network, ESPN, FS1, and locals including ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC so football fans can stream their home team all season. Hulu also has unlimited DVR so you’ll never miss a play.
Along with the regular lineup, Hulu with Live TV has an optional Sports Add-On. For $9.99 per month, subscribers can add NFL RedZone, FanDuel TV, FanDuel Racing, MAVTV, Outdoor Channel, and Sportsman Channel to their plan.
Bynum says he was not even aware of the technical issue at his film’s premiere, and looks forward to resolving the issue once the jury attends another screening.
Getty Images
For better or worse, Elijah Bynum’s “Magazine Dreams” has been one of the most talked about films of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. The dark character study, which stars Jonathan Majors as an aspiring bodybuilder battling some serious demons, debuted to strong reviews on Friday night. But jurors for the U.S. Dramatic Competition walked out of the screening due to a technical malfunction that prevented a deaf juror from watching it with captions. The incident sparked a larger debate about accessibility at film festivals, with the jury ultimately releasing an open letter asking Sundance to strengthen its efforts to create an inclusive experience.
As other films race to make accommodations for deaf audiences before their premieres, speculation has run rampant about the role that filmmakers play in deciding whether to include captions in their movies. While some directors might object to screening their movies with open captioning, Bynum isn’t one of them. In an interview with IndieWire, Bynum clarified that the incident was purely a technical malfunction, not an intentional act by anyone on the creative team.
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“No, no, of course not,” Bynum said when asked if he had objected to screening his film with open captioning. “We had been told that we were going to have a device that would allow anyone hearing impaired to have the captions. Those devices, or a single device, I’m not sure, malfunctioned last night. And I’m told that we’re doing a private experience where that’s going to be figured out. And hopefully open captions, so we don’t have that problem again. It was quite disappointing to hear about that.”
In her Sundance review of “Magazine Dreams,” IndieWire’s Kate Erbland wrote that: “what Majors does here, how raw and vulnerable and brave he is not just with his craft, but his very body, is something to behold. This is true artistry, absolute commitment, the kind of profound self-control that Killian himself could only dream of seeing through. For Majors, it’s simply the next step in a career on the rise. How lucky we are all to be along for this particular ride, how lucky to see the next big swing.”
Natasha Lyonne in Poker Face; Sarah Michelle Gellar in Wolf Pack; Nikole Hannah-Jones in The 1619 ProjectPhoto: Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock; Steve Dietl/Paramount+; Hulu
Welcome to What’s On, our weekly picks of must-watch shows. Here’s what you need to watch from Sunday, January 22, to Thursday, January 26. All times are Eastern. [Note: The weekend edition of What’s On drops on Fridays.]
The biggies
Poker Face (Peacock, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.)
Poker Face | Official Trailer | Peacock Original
Natasha Lyonne in a Columbo-esque mystery drama? Sign us up. The actor stars in Rian Johnson’s Poker Face as casino host Charlie Cale, who has a knack for sniffing out liars, which is useful as she goes on the run and finds herself solving murder mysteries during a cross-country road trip. The cast includes Adrien Brody and Benjamin Bratt, with notable celebrity cameos from the likes of Judith Light, Cherry Jones, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Stephanie Hsu, and Tim Meadows. Poker Face premieres with four episodes, with the remaining six airing weekly. Be sure to keep up with The A.V. Club’s recaps throughout the series.
Wolf Pack (Paramount+, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.)
Wolf Pack | Official Trailer | Paramount+
Sarah Michelle Gellar is back, baby. The Buffy actor returns to the small screen for another supernatural drama, but this time it’s wolves, not vampires. Based on Edo van Belkom’s books, the show is set in a California ravaged by wildfires, which awaken a terrifying creature. Four teens directly impacted by this occurrence come together to delve into this secret, with Gellar playing investigator Kristen Ramsey. Check out The A.V. Club’s review on Monday.
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
The 1619 Project (Hulu, Thursday, 12:01 a.m.)
The 1619 Project | Official Trailer | Hulu
The six-part docuseries The 1619 Project expands Nikole Hannah-Jones’ book of the same name. Through episodes focusing on race, democracy, capitalism, justice, and fear, the show examines how the legacy of slavery shaped different aspects of contemporary American life.
Hidden gems
American Auto (NBC, Tuesday, 8: 30 p.m.)
American Auto Season 2 | Official Trailer | NBC
American Auto, one of NBC’s most underrated comedies, returns for a 13-episode second season on Tuesday. Created by Superstore’s Justin Spitzer, the workplace sitcom unfolds in the world of automobile company Payne Motors. CEO Katherine Hastings (Ana Gasteyer) has to navigate the corporate challenges with her team of mostly talented employees while figuring out the one thing she doesn’t know about the job—that is, anything about cars.
Extraordinary (Hulu, Wednesday, 12:01 a.m.)
Extraordinary | Official Trailer | Hulu
From the producers of Killing Eve, the eight-episode Extraordinarytakes place in a world where everyone develops powers on their 18th birthday. Well, everyone except Jen (Máiréad Tyers), who’s 25, stuck in a dead-end job and relationship, and still waiting for her powers to arrive.
More good stuff
Accused (FOX, Sunday, 9 p.m.)
Accused | OFFICIAL TRAILER | FOX
Accusedis an anthology crime drama featuring Michael Chiklis, Margo Martindale, Rachel Bilson, Ian Anthony Dale, Grace Davenport, and Reid Miller. Based on a British drama, each episode is told from the defendant’s point-of-view and opens in the courtroom to peel back whether or not the, yes, accused is guilty.
How I Met Your Father (Hulu, Tuesday, 12:01 a.m., season two premiere)
How I Met Your Father | Season 2 Trailer | Hulu
Not only is a How I Met Your Motherspin-off in existence, but it’s about to launch its second season. How I Met Your Fatherreturns with Sophie (Kim Cattrall) telling her children how she met the man of her dreams. The show follows an adult Sophie (Hilary Duff) and her friends’ navigating life in New York City. Now let’s see if any HIMYM stars make an appearance after Cobie Smulders’ reprised Robin Scherbatsky in the season-one finale.
Teen Wolf: The Movie (Paramount+, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.)
Teen Wolf: The Movie | Official Trailer | Paramount+
Speaking of a show that continues to stretch its legacy, six seasons of Teen Wolf apparently weren’t enough. The series, which ended in 2017, returns in movie form with most of the cast reuniting, including Tyler Posey, Crystal Reed, Holland Roden, Shelley Henig, Tyler Hoechlin, and Colton Haynes. Just don’t expect to see Dylan O’Brien or Arden Cho.
The Showtime series “Couples Therapy” follows three New York couples as they work through conflicts with the counseling of Dr. Orna Guralnik. It may sound voyeuristic, but as we watch these couples experience breakthroughs in self-awareness, it becomes therapeutic.
When Kevin Williamson set out to make “Dawson’s Creek,” he had no idea what to expect. He definitely didn’t picture it becoming one of the biggest teen dramas of all time. In fact, in 1996, he had just sold “Scream” and didn’t even think of making a story based on his own childhood. But when it came up in a pitch meeting, “Dawson’s Creek” was born.
Following a high school group of friends as they learned about falling in love, creating real friendships and finding their footing in life, “Dawson’s Creek” went on to become one of the faces of The WB, airing for six seasons from Jan. 20, 1998 to May 14, 2003. James Van Der Beek, Joshua Jackson, Katie Holmes and Michelle Williams became household names.
Now, 25 years after the premiere, Williamson looks back. The writer and producer stepped away at the end of the second season but returned for the series finale, which jumped five years in to the future. Still, the show changed his life.
“I think in the beginning, it was a very, very difficult time for me because ‘Scream’ hit big, ‘Dawson’s Creek’ hit big and I was really pulled in a bunch of different directions. I stumbled a little bit, and and it took some time to get my footing and figure out how to do this,” he tells Variety. “‘Dawson’s Creek’ was the show I grew up on, and what was so beautiful about it was that it was my childhood. It’s so autobiographical in so many ways.”
The cast also grew up on the show. During a recent appearance at the TV Critics Association press tour, Jackson reflected on the 25th anniversary, noting that he began working at age 11, which means he’s 33 years into his career. “I’m both boggled that it’s 25 years and also not surprised at all,” he said, before noting that his first time at a press tour was for “Dawson’s,” which was during “the last millennia — not decade, not century. Millennia.”
Of course, he was also part of one of the most controversial storylines, during which his character, Pacey, entered a sexual relationship with a teacher in Season 1. Still, viewers were more up in arms over the fact that two kids (Dawson and Joey) were sitting on top of a bed talking about sex.
“If any child that I know had had this conversation with their potential sexual counterpart, clothed, sitting on top of the bed, just talking in the most elevated manor possible, my mother would have done fucking backflips! She would have been ecstatic,” Jackson said, laughing. “The fact that people were yelling about teenagers having frank conversations about sex, meanwhile, you have a pedophilic relationship — but it’s a boy being a boy! I was 16 or 17 in the show, having a sexual affair with a grown woman. And not one word. It’s mind boggling!”
Below, Williamson looks back at that storyline and many more as he celebrates the 25th anniversary of “Dawson’s Creek.”
When I say it’s been 25 years since “Dawson’s Creek” premiered, how do you feel?
I feel old! I don’t think of myself as someone who could have written that. I’m such in the now. Life goes by so quickly with so many different ups and downs and peaks and valleys. I don’t even remember those days. I was like a different person.
Going back to Season 1, some people were really up in arms about not only the Ms. Jacobs storyline, but also just the fact that teens were sleeping in a bed together. What do you remember about the initial reactions to the show?
100%. A boy and girl sitting on a bed — she’d crawl through the window and they sit in the bed together because they were friends and I don’t think that would be so scandalous today. The other thing people seemed to object to was the way they talked — the dialogue and the elevated psychobabble, I called it at the time. That got a lot of criticism too and then lastly, the “Summer of ’42” storyline.
Courtesy Everett Collection
How do you feel looking back at that storyline now?
I mean, it’s not what I would write today. If I did write it, I certainly wouldn’t romanticize it perhaps the way that I did, but it was different. I was definitely looking through a different lens then. It was more of the boyhood fantasy. “Summer of ’42” is quoted in the show. That was also a coming-of-age story, and they dealt with the pain of it. There were certain moments where I did see it through Pacey’s eyes. There were a couple of moments where we went in and we tried to do it through Ms. Jacobs’ eyes where we show that she was confused. There was something not quite right going on with her, and she ultimately packed up and left because she realized what she was doing. But we did not go deep there. We didn’t pull back the layers of Ms. Jacobs and show her side of things.
If we did it today, I think it’d have to be a little more equal balanced — you’d have to show the reality of it, you’d show the trauma of it. You’d have to really dig. We’re not in that place anymore. We can’t just look at storylines like that and just accept them. It’s not where we are. It’s not where I am. So, I know it would be different today. If someone pitched that in the writers room today, I’d probably go, “Okay, that’s great. Let’s talk about something else!”
Another Season 1 character who always stood out to me was Abby Morgan, played by Monica Keena. What can you tell me about crafting the arc that ended with Abby’s death?
I will tell you what I remember is that she didn’t want to be there. She did not want to be in Wilmington, N.C. She was a young actress, and I think she was in a relationship and she wanted to be killed off. She was, like, begging to be killed off. Unlike the other actors on the show, I think that she wasn’t as excited to be there. I loved her and I think she’s awesome. I thought, “Okay, well if you want off the show, can I kill you? Let me write to your death! You’ll be the first person that dies in ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ and it’ll be awesome.” And she was like, “Okay!” She was game. I ran into her a couple years later and she loved the experience, she just didn’t want to be on the show.
Not everyone likes living in a small town. I feel like the “Dawson’s Creek” cast became a family and really succeeded, in part, because they were so far away from Hollywood.
I think that’s how it was for most of us. We all bonded really quickly. It was sort of everyone’s first show. I think Josh had the most experience with “Mighty Ducks.”
Let’s talk about “Escape From Witch Island,” which paired up Jen and Pacey in a casual relationship. I know this was after you stepped back, but was there ever a discussion to explore a real relationship between them?
I was more overseeing at that point so you’d have to ask the showrunner at the time, but we always discussed the pairings and who’s going to be with who. In “90210,” the lesbian pairing happen in the fourth season. I always thought that was so weird how they would pair everyone up in the soap operas and then by the fourth season, the girl kisses the girl. It’s just weird, we’re just dancing in a circle until we get to that. I think we might have made a joke about it. But yeah, with the pairings, we never really talked about Jen and Pacey’s thing. We talked about them maybe having a long term [something], but then the triangle becomes a square. So we never went down that road because we brought in Andie (Meredith Monroe) for Pacey. Jen, we were pairing with her grandmother in storylines.
When we got to the “Blair Witch” of it all, the pairing that we talked about all the time was Pacey and Joey. That was the one. It was like, “When are we going to do that?” I mean, we saw that right in the very first season when they were paired up for the biology project [in “Double Date”]. They were in the water together, they had to change outside the car and we saw the chemistry there. We saw the dailies, and we were like, there’s something going on there. We were riding toward that.
You mentioned Andie. The storyline with her mental health struggles was a bit ahead of its time. What were those conversations like in the writers room,and was that the arc you planned when you brought in Andie?
No, it was not. She was always gonna be this sort of anxious character who they both [with Jack] were sort of living under the thumb of their father’s shadow — Jack in his way and Andie in her own way, which was to be the perfect daughter. That of course created a lot of anxiety. That was the conversation I remember happening. We weren’t so much talking about much more than that in the world; mental illness hadn’t really exploded in terms of the issue that it is today and the way we’ve become so aware of it.
That was something they went further a bit into the third and fourth season, to the point where I wasn’t a part of that. I don’t know if I would have gone… I might have handled that differently if I had been around.
But Jack’s coming out was done so beautifully— and made history.
Right when I was writing that episode in the second season, that’s when I told my parents I was gay. I was 30 years old. I came out earlier, but I hadn’t gone home and talked to them. When we were doing it, there was a lot of press about it and everyone was talking about it.
I know it’s a loaded question, but how do you view your experience in a writers room and on a set then versus how it is today?
Well, the one-hour drama has changed so much today, in terms of how we look at it. Our storytelling has shifted and it’s elevated. And we’re in the streaming universe. I feel like if you’re network, all network is trying to do is not be network, so it’s all different. Everything has shifted. But I am really enjoying the TV today. I’m excited that we have so much content because I devour it.
You’ve said before that you wish you had more time with certain episodes. Is there any story you really wanted to tell that you didn’t get the chance to?
You know, I don’t regret the past. One of the things people say to me is, “You had such a wonderful cast!” And we did. We had these great actors and they were astonishing. And every one of them I love to this day, but you know what else I had? Great writers. If you look back at our first two seasons, we had the most amazing group of writers and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t even know how wonderful they were and I remember having fun. We were all sort of sort of stumbling around trying to find the show. I had the first six in my head, and I could just write them in my sleep.
By the time we shot the pilot, I pretty much had that, plus some of the 12, but I just didn’t know how to make a TV show. I was not experienced. I didn’t know what I was doing. And I hired a bunch of people and we just sort of stumbled our way through it. That kind of messiness helped with the emotion. It was a very heightened situation!
Have you gone back and watched “Dawson’s Creek” on streaming? It’s a different experience watching it without commercials.
No. I try but every time I watch it, I’m like, “I wish I had more time” or “I wish I would have written this…” I turned on “The Vampire Diaries” to see how we did something on the first episode and I said, “I’m out.” And I love “Vampire Diaries.” It’s everything to me, I just can’t watch it. And “Dawson’s Creek,” it’s so ’90s. I watched “The Faculty,” it looks like a time capsule of the ’90s. We’re not there anymore.
I don’t know how “The Faculty” hasn’t been remade.
Just wait.
I cannot wait. You mentioned “The Vampire Diaries.” You and Julie mastered this universe and spinoffs. “Dawson’s Creek” tried to do that with “Young Americans,” again, after you left. Why do you think that didn’t workbut something like “Vampire Diaries” spinoffs worked multiple times?
That was the network. They had a whole new show and then they just decided to bring a character onto “Dawson’s” to introduce that world. “Vampire Diaries” was a universe. We created this little town and it was so much bigger. What I loved about “The Vampire Diaries” is it truly was a unique, original universe. It was not just planted in small town America. Like anything supernatural or that has vampires, werewolves or witches, you can just go and go and go with those storylines. When you have certain characters that have lived 150 years, there’s a lot there to mine and so they can go for 150 years more. The genius of Julie was that we always talked about “The Originals” as sort of a spinoff during the second season. We were writing it, and the timing wasn’t right. And then by the time we were doing the spinoff, we were writing the finale and she was like, “You know we’re gonna do another show. We’re going to do ‘Legacies.’” Then we went back in the writers room for the last season because we’re writing the finale and I was like, “Oh, I’m actually writing the spinoff,” because it was the Salvatore boarding school. Julie is a force of nature. She’s amazing.
Will that world continue eventually?
If you ask her, yes. I will leave it to her to figure out how. There’s been so many conversations of how you continue that universe. Nothing’s happening at the moment.
Going back to “Dawson’s Creek,” in the fifth “Scream,” there’s a moment where Jenna Ortega is watching the “Scare” episode — which of course, featured Scott Foley, who played one of the killers in “Scream 3.” I gasped when I saw it. How did that make it into the movie?
To be honest, they just surprised me with it. They didn’t even tell me it was in there. I screened the film for the first time and I went, “What?!” I didn’t even know it was there. And they just laughed at me! It was really sweet.
Does it ever surprise you how big the show still is in the zeitgeist, how much people still make references to it?
In everyone’s need for content, it’s just there. One of the things that I did during the pandemic and these last few years is I got very nostalgic for another time, because we were living in such a crazy, uncertain time. I revisited some old things. You go through a nostalgic phase. During the pandemic, I went through that phase and I think I revisited some things from years ago. I was watching all of my favorite ’80s films, all of my John Hughes and “Say Anything.” I feel like maybe some people started watching “Dawson’s Creek,” because I do think it got a rebirth. I started hearing about it. I’d get texts from friends back home, like, “I just watched all seven seasons of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ with my daughter.” I didn’t get that before.
Another loaded question: Looking back, what sticks out for you as something you learned working on “Dawson’s Creek” that you carried into yourcareer?
It was a very charmed experience. I think in the beginning, it was a very, very difficult time for me because “Scream” hit big, “Dawson’s Creek” hit big and I was really big pulled in a bunch of different directions. I stumbled a little bit, and and it took some time to get my footing and figure out how to do this. “Dawson’s Creek” was the show I grew up on, and what was so beautiful about it was that it was my childhood. It’s so autobiographical in so many ways. I could go through every episode in the first two seasons and just go, “Well, this is where this came from,” and “This is where this came from.”
Sometimes Greg [Berlanti] told me a story and we’d work it into the script. What I love so much about “Dawson’s Creek” is how much I learned from it. I grew from it. It’s how I met so many beautiful people that are just friends to this day. I look at Josh and what a beautiful man he’s become and I didn’t doubt it for a second. I look at Michelle who is so wonderful, and I look at James with all these beautiful children in Texas and Katie, who is a lifelong friend forever. The writers — I mean, Greg and Julie, we’re all family. It’s been a charmed experience. They’re not all that easy, and I got it again with “Vampire Diaries,” with actors and writers I love to this day. I’m very blessed in that way because they’re not all this way. There’s a lot of shows where none of that happened!
And it’s very rare that you get one of those, let alone two.
And yes, they were successful, they reached an audience but more importantly, they were personally successful for me. They personally brought so much to my life and enriched my life. And so to have that twice is great.
SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier this month, the FBI charged a Florida man with making detailed online threats to murder 100 gay people. He had called previously for Black people to be killed and said that he planned to tear-gas a synagogue, according to the criminal complaint.
Suspect Sean Michael Albert, who said that he had been joking, has found more to appreciate on Twitter since Elon Musk has taken control. The last 11 tweets he liked before his arrest were either from Musk or by or about Andrew Tate, the kickboxer charged with human trafficking Musk recently let back on the platform.
There is no evidence that what Albert saw on Twitter inspired him to make his own posts, which court documents say were made on Discord,and his attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment. But former employees and online researchers say that physical attacks in the United States have been tracking with Twitter spikes in some categories of hate speech, notably antisemitic and anti-gay slurs and rhetoric.
New research to be released later this month by the misinformation tracker Network Contagion Research Institute suggests a connection between real-world incidents and variations of the word “groomer,” often aimed at gays and suggesting that they are adults bent on seducing children. Although polls indicate a significant minority of the population believes otherwise, gay people are not more likely to be predators than straight people.
Pre-Musk, Twitter had classed the word “groomer” as hate speech. But usage began spiking not long after Musk said he would buy the platform, and it has surged repeatedly since, often after real-world incidents like the fatal shootings at a gay club in Colorado.
“In the past three to four months, we have seen an increase in anti-LGBTQ incidents, and you can see a statistical correlation between these real-world incidents and the increased use of the term ‘groomer’ on Twitter,” said Alexander Reid Ross, a Network Contagion analyst who shared the findings with The Washington Post. He did not say that use of the term had led to the violence.
The second biggest spike in tweets with the word “groomed” came just after Musk took control of Twitter. The biggest, to more than 4,000 in a day, came in late November, shortly before a record seven daily antigay attacks were recorded in the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a nonprofit tracker of worldwide political violence, Ross said.
While hate language leading up to incidentscould raise the possibility of it inspiring violence, hate language afterward is important as well, experts say. Calling the victims of violence “groomers” is “feeding into this highly pressurized, toxic discourse that condemns the victims and thus justifies further activity,” said Ross.
Musk plays a role not just by loosening speech policies and slashing moderation staffing but through personal choices in his interactions, researchers say.
Recent antisemitic incidents included direct references to rapper Ye, who issued tweets against Jews after Musk welcomed him back to the platformafter his suspension from Instagram. His return to Twitter saw him issue a pledge to go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Even after Musk suspended Ye again, tweets referring to Jewish “privilege” or “supremacy” rose, according to Joel Finkelstein, director of Network Contagion and a senior fellow at Rutgers University.
An assailant who attacked a man in New York City’s Central Park last month shouted, “Kanye 2024” along with antisemitic comments as he did so, police said. In November, vandals spray-painted “Kanye was rite” along with swastikas on headstones in an Illinois Jewish cemetery.
Hate crimes against Jews in New York jumped from nine in September to 45 in November, to make up more than half of bias incidents in the city, according to New York Police Department statistics.
White nationalists and some Black Americans at times amplified one another, Finkelstein said. Neo-Nazi groups posted memes on image boards with Ye as a heroic new Hitler, while Cynthia McKinneyof Georgia, a Black American Green Party activist who served six terms in Congress, tweeted that 2022 is “the year of #TheNoticing, the year that gaslighting finally began not to work!” That hashtag, driven by hardcore antisemites on Twitter and image board 4chan, refers to a supposed discovery that some Jews are in influential positions. McKinney did not respond to requests for comment.
Finkelstein has seen the same patterns before, including during an Israel-Hamas conflict in May 2021. A team of analysts from Network Contagion and elsewhere examined 6 billion tweets and Reddit posts and recently found that the volume of tweets using human rights language was a better predictor of both U.S. street protests and antisemitic incidents than was the actual fighting in the Middle East.
“We found that in parallel with fighting, there is massive spike in words like colonialism and apartheid, and then there are incidents,” said Aviva Klompas, chief executive of Boundless, a nonprofit group that also worked on the study. “Then you see the long tail of that weaponized language, and the incidents keep coming.”
Twitter keeps both legitimate debate and hate alive longer and spreads them wider, Finkelstein said: “Wars going on in the world are also waged online, and social media has become the weapon to expand it from a local conflict to a clash of civilizations.”
Beyond dismissing most of Twitter’s trust and safety team and its outside safety advisory council, Musk has reinstated accounts that stoke extremism and tweeted an image of Pepe the Frog, mascot of the alt-right.
He also went out of his way to criticize former trust and safety chief Yoel Roth, who resigned after the November midterms and faulted Musk’s habit of deciding content rules on the fly. Musk took an old Roth tweet of an article describing a criminal ruling against a teacher who had sex with an 18-year-old student and added “this explains a lot” amid a push to portray himself as a great foe of child sex abuse images and Roth as one who let it slide on Twitter — prompting hordes of Twitter users to call Roth a “groomer.”
Though Musk had said that “incitement to violence” remains grounds for suspension, suggestions that Roth should be killed remained on the site after being reported by a longtime researcher who uses the Twitter handle @conspirator0.
Roth fled his home as accounts tweeted images to him, including one of a man feeding another into a woodchipper, with the words “how else are you gonna dispose of stupid” and a plural epithet. Other images included a firing squad with no caption and containers of bullets, one marked “box of pills that cure pedophilia.”
Some of the tweets and accounts were removed a day later, the researcher said. But similar replies are still up. Roth has put his house up for sale and moved, according to someone in touch with him. He declined to comment.
Musk’s new head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
Roth alsowas singled outin tweets by the influential @LibsofTikTok account, which is led by activist Chaya Raichik and has 1.7 million followers.
The account has long crusaded againsttransgender medical treatment of young people at hospitals.A focus on Boston Children’s Hospital in August preceded threats against doctors there, while a Wisconsin school under fire for an investigation into the bullying of a transgender student temporarily shut down in May because of bomb threats and harassment.
Her spotlighting also has been followed by the Proud Boys and other violent groups protesting parades and other events.
Task Force Butler Institute, a counter-extremism nonprofit group, last month found 281 LibsofTikTok tweets that mentioned a specific event, location or person between April and November. In 66 of those cases, reports followed of digital harassment or real-world incidents, including death threats and bomb threats. On several occasions, organizers canceled events in response.
Before Musk’s takeover, complaints about LibsofTikTok sometimes resulted in individual tweets being deleted or week-long suspensions, including twice in September.
After Musk’s takeover, there have been no such suspensions, and he has personally interacted with the account, convincing some not to bother trying. “There’s no point,” said activist Erin Reed, who follows the account closely. Asked to comment, Raichik responded by accusing The Post of inciting violence against her.
Favorite subjects for the account have been drag shows and book readings, especially those open to minors. In November, it pointed out an upcoming performance at the Sunrise Theater in Moore County, N.C.
Minutes after the Dec. 3 show began, the lights went out. Two separate electronic substations had been shot with guns and disabled, leaving 40,000 people without power for days. The FBI is investigating the incident and declined to say whether it believes the blackout was aimed at the show.
Rumman Chowdhury, formerly Twitter director for machine-learning ethics and accountability, said that the escalation in hate speech and violence were predictable results of Musk’s decisions but still deeply upsetting.
“It’s certainly very jarring. It’s very sad to see this thing that so many of us cared for and built being decimated piece by piece,” she told The Post. “It’s very hard to see where it’s headed and how bad it’s becoming.”
Michael J. Fox nearly broke the internet last October when he reunited with “Back to the Future” co-star Christopher Lloyd on stage at New York Comic Con. The duo were on the verge of tears as Fox emotionally hugged Lloyd and Lloyd putt his arm around Fox. Their emotional reunion led many “Back to the Future” fans to wonder if the two might collaborate on screen again. Fox reflected lovingly on Lloyd at the Variety Studio presented by Audible at Sundance, revealing their friendship didn’t take shape until the third “Back to the Future” movie.
“Chris is a great guy. He’s very enigmatic,” Fox said. “It took me a few films to get to know him. On ‘Back to the Future Part III’ we connected in a way we hadn’t on the other films. I came to see how much he loved acting. I never got that before. To sit down and talk about acting and talk about Shakespeare and ‘King Lear’…this guy can play King Lear! People don’t expect that of him. He’s full of surprises.
Fox continued, “He can tell a movie’s worth of story in two seconds and you get it. Us regular actors have to lay out hours and hours to get the information out. Chris is brilliant of it. His love of film and his love of being an actor…he’s not just a crazy guy, he’s an artist.”
The “Back to the Future” star earned a big standing ovation at Sundance after the world premiere of his new documentary “Still.” Directed by Davis Guggenheim, the documentary explores the intersection of Fox’s legendary career and Fox’s Parkinson’s disease. The film is already backed by Apple. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the 1990s.
“I didn’t want to make a Parkinson’s movie. I don’t want to make a sick movie. I want to make a movie about a life,” Guggenheim told Variety. “The one think he said to me was, ‘No violence.’ We hope the tone of the movie is no pitying. This is a movie about a wild life, an incredible ride of ups and downs and a Hollywood 1980s movie star and what happens when life throws him a curveball.”
Fox famously joined the “Back to the Future” after production was already underway, with Lloyd having filmed scenes with original Marty McFly actor Eric Stoltz. Director Robert Zemeckis came to realize that Stoltz wasn’t right for the part, so Fox was cast and the production had to reshoot scenes.
Your weekly horoscope is here. Some of the best cosmic skies’s launch this week, so hit the ground running with a wildly positive, can-do mindset. Expand on what you think is possible, and you’ll be nearer your goal, don’t be shy; give it a try! Then follow on with tangible action because this season, where the mind goes, energy flows. Relationships and friending are rose-tinted as Venus, the planet of amore, heads into Pisces, the sign of universal love; so if you need a reason, ’tis the season.
Read on to discover your weekly horoscope and what’s in store for your sign during the week of January 22 through January 28, 2023.
Aries
The pleasure principle (Venus) fluffs up the pillows in your Zen den for the next few weeks, so why not give your bedroom or meditation nook a makeover. Even if that’s ambient lighting, flowing feng shui, or a well-placed crystal, add beauty and attend to how the space feels. Keep the aesthetic appeal strong with a bedside journal you’ll enjoy recording dream snippets in. Let the feeling and images surface before bounding out of bed and firing up the coffee machine. Revelations are valuable, so note what insights dawn.
Taurus
Your sign is associated with the pleasure-seeking planet Venus, and this week she moves into your zone of friendships and groups. When invitations come in, accept them. Send some out to your favorites. Get out to a creative class and be with people that share an interest. Actress-activist Jane Fonda’s advice is to state your aim when meeting someone you’d like to see more often. Let them know you intentionally want to be their friend. On the same note, this is also an excellent time to meet a romantic interest in that dance or art class you’re trying out!
Jason Segel is hot property right now. The How I Met Your Mother star has a second season of Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty in the works, and is getting good reviews for his indie film turns in movies like The Sky Is Everywhere and Windfall. Next up he will appear alongside Harrison Ford in the Apple TV+ show Shrinking.
Out doing press for Shrinking, Segal let slip that he’s developing a new live-action adaptation of the cartoon character Space Ghost.
Space Ghost (aka Tad Ghostal) was a fictional superhero created by Hanna-Barbera Productions in the 1960s for TV network CBS. He was designed by Alex Toth.
Originally he was a superhero who, with his teen sidekicks, Jan and Jace, and Blip the monkey, fought supervillains in outer space.
In the 1990s, Space Ghost was brought back as a fictional late night talk show host for Space Ghost Coast to Coast, on Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and GameTap, before being relaunched once again as a serious superhero in a DC Comics mini-series.
When he appeared on the 20 Questions on Deadline podcast, Segel remained tight-lipped about whether he’s working on a serious superhero, or a chat show host version of the character.
“There’s a character called Space Ghost who I really loved as a kid. He was like a 1960s superhero. He then was resurrected on Comedy Central as an ironic talk show host. So I wrote a live-action version of that that I would love to make.”
Segel’s resume includes Knocked Up (2007), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), I Love You, Man (2009), Despicable Me (2010),Bad Teacher (2011),Jeff, Who Lives at Home (2011), The Muppets(2011), The Five-Year Engagement(2012), This Is 40 (2012), Sex Tape (2014), The Discovery (2017), and Our Friend(2019).
Miss France Eva Colas’ introduction at the recent Miss Universe made her a global viral star, with viewers calling her screeching “France” shoutout anything from satanic to rooster-like. The moment was immortalized on Saturday Night Live, with host Aubrey Plaza as Miss France.
She was joined by six other contestants — all shouting the names of their countries — in the final round of Miss Universe, which host Kenan Thompson explained is “one of several shows still on the air where we rate women, but it’s not what you think, we do it based off of looks.”
While a parody, the skit (watch it above), is not that far off the real thing. (You can watch a montage of real contestants from the 2023 Miss Universe, including Miss France, shouting the names of their home countries.)
The skit also includes a dig at new movie 80 For Brady, Heidi Gardner doing a spot-on Nip/Tuck recap as Miss Belgium, and Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott as well as Tony Hawk as judges.
I have no idea if Amy Poehler is more fondly remembered for her eight season run on Saturday Night Live or her seven season run on the endlessly rewatchableParks And Recreation, but her two beloved projects came crashing together last night when she made a surprise appearance. Aubrey Plaza was hosting SNL last night and stopped by Weekend Update as her Parks & Rec character April Ludgate, and luckily for fans, she also brought along her old boss: Poehler’s Leslie Knope.
The point of the sketch originally was for April to explain to young people how they can get involved with local government. Given her personality, she didn’t exactly do it in the most enthusiastic fashion; so, it was up to Leslie Knope to jump in. You can check out the really fun moment below…
This is a great example of, to me, why Amy Poehler is one of my absolute favorite Weekend Update hosts ever. She just has the perfect cadence to how she speaks, which allows it to feel both like a real news broadcast and a comedic performance. She could jump in full-time tomorrow and be just as brilliant as she always was.
Poehler, of course, hosted Weekend Update during portions of her tenure on Saturday Night Live. She first grabbed the job in 2004 and co-hosted alongside Tina Fey. The two women were extremely successful and later partnered on projects outside of SNL like Sisters and the criminally underrated Baby Mama. After Fey left the show, she briefly hosted with Horatio Sanz before establishing another longer term partnership with Seth Meyers. As such, it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that she delivered her final dog joke to perfection.
As for the rest of the episode, Aubrey Plaza obviously crushed it. The comedian delivered a great parody of The White Lotus called The Black Lotus, as well as a spoof of Avatar and the more traditional sketch comedy you’d expect like a take on couples game nights. Plaza forecasted to be a really good host, given her comedic timing and willingness to get weird, and she lived up to the lofty hopes.
Saturday Night Live has been off for a bit with the holidays, but it’ll be back next week with upcoming host Micahel B Jordan and musical guest Lil Baby. It should be a great episode, though it’ll be the second the cast does without longtime SNL mainstay Cecily Strong. She left the show at the end of the year and of course, received a send-off that was very fitting for someone who had such a terrific impact on the long-running series.
SNL headman Lorne Michaels called this year a transition one at the beginning of the season, and it’s easy to see why. Thankfully, many of the new cast members are continuing to find their footing. It’ll be fun to see the cast continue to come together and gel as we move closer to SNL’s landmark 50th season, which should be filled with tons of fun and I’m sure, tons of returning players from the show’s glorious history.
Aubrey Plaza hosted the first episode of “SNL” of 2023, and yes, obviously she was a delight. But perhaps the most delightful moment of the episode came during “Weekend Update,” when Plaza resurrected the role that made her a star — April Ludgate from “Parks and Recreation” — and then held a “Parks and Rec” reunion with Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope.
And to be clear, if you’re the kind of person who gets cheered up by “Parks and Rec” rewatching, then prepare to be cheered the hell up, because it was great. And you can watch the whole clip here right now.
The bit started when “Weekend Update” anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che announced that April Ludgate was goin to come out and talk about working for government. Obviously because Ludgate works for the Parks and Recreation department of the city of Pawnee, Indiana.
Plaza, wearing a hoodie and embodying the April Ludgate goth-who-doesn’t-wear-black vibe, came out and said some real funny stuff. And then she was joined by Poehler, in character as Knope. Poehler, of course, use to anchor “Weekend Update,” first alongside Tina Fey and then with Seth Meyers, before leaving “SNL” in 2008 to star in “Parks and Rec,” which launched in 2009.
So of course Poehler launched into a stream, of very meta jokes about weekend update, pretending not to know anything about how “SNL” works — and of course, she made it clear Leslie Knope is still mad horny for Joe Biden, which was especially relevant since Biden recorded a fun message for Plaza earlier in the show (a fun reference to the time 5 years ago when Plaza was declared the most famous person from Delaware; in fairness Biden hadn’t been elected president yet.)
In any case, it was delightful, and you can watch the whole gag at the top of the page.
Also, NBC, if you see this: Please make the “Parks and Rec” COVID fundraiser special available for streaming.
The single, a music video for which came out last September, followed the release of “Love Me More” from the same album and preceded the title track, which Smith unveiled Friday and also performed on SNL.
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“Unholy,” a collaboration with German singer Kim Petras, garnered a nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the upcoming Grammy Awards.
The English singer is set to embark on a 27-date North American tour this summer, when they will return to New York with shows Aug. 8 and 9 at Madison Square Garden.
Let us talk about 3D animated shorts. Why is everyone creating these?
Ever wonder why?
Poor attention span. With an ever-declining attention span, we are hardly able to keep our eyes on anything we encounter on the internet.
Content creators are wary of that. They know we really struggle to keep up. That’s why they introduced us to shorts. Creators want to capitalize on the opportunity and are investing in 3d Animation services.
While shorts of 10-30 seconds are going viral, there is another category, that is proving to be groundbreaking for teachers and educators.
That’s animated shorts.
A 30-second 3D animated short featuring dreamy visuals, and wonderful characters and scenes, is not just compelling storytelling but can leave a truly inspiring and mesmerizing effect on a child audience.
And, it’s not just education. Pixar and other top studios are pumping money into animated shorts too.
The reason:
According to them, 3D animated shorts work like magic when pitching a concept or story, when it is in its infancy. It costs quite less to produce a 3D short than an entire video or episode.
And, more importantly, it’s great to share with investors.
Plus, with an audience excited about short-form content, there’s no reason to not create these amazing shorts.
Another solid reason:
Cost. Creating shorts is valuable given the growing demand. Plus, it would cost you much less than creating a full-blown 3d animated video.
But, how much does it cost?
It depends upon multiple factors. And, most people end up making wrong calculations and gave up the idea because of overestimating the price.
So, to ease trouble for you, we’ll give you a walkthrough of the cost of 3d animated shorts.
We will highlight key factors that determine cost. And, some affordable options you can choose to get your job done.
So, let’s dive right in.
Key pricing factors
There are a number of factors that would determine pricing for a 3D animated short. Pay close attention to these because it would also give you a better idea of how to estimate your cost of 3d animation.
Length of the video
One major factor is the length of the video. 3D animated shorts are usually 30 seconds in length. That makes them quite inexpensive when compared to full videos.
Customization
Videos made on predefined templates would cost much less as compared to those that are curated as per your specific needs. The more customized you want, the more you should be willing to pay for it.
Deadline
Tight deadlines can result in shelling out money from your pockets. A more flexible deadline can mean more reasonable pricing for the video.
Location of production house
Location is a primary factor. It can be the difference between affordable pricing and expensive cost.
Developed economies have higher wage rates. So, if you opt to outsource your project to a studio in Europe or Canada, expect the animator’s team to quote you a higher budget.
Style of animation
The style of animation is another key determinant. While 2D, motion graphics, and explainers are affordable, 3D requires a quality budget.
And, depending upon your demands, the price could be significant. But, since 3D is a visual treat, there’s no reason to retreat from the idea of creating it.
Talent
If you want a pool of talented animators to take your project, then don’t expect a measly offer from them. Freelancing amateurs and starters might cost you less, but you might not be able to churn the quality you want.
How much does animation cost per tier?
To help you gain a better idea, we’ll discuss some tiers of animation production. As we progress through each tier, the cost will increase. You can navigate easily what tier has the potential to solve your problem.
So, let’s give it a go!
Amateur level Tools
You can expect to pay nothing for some tools because they are absolutely FREE. Those having subscription fees might provide you with something cool. But it won’t be any close to professional 3D work.
Clientele:
For students or learners, these can be fascinating.
Price range:
$0 to $ 100 per minute
Freelancer level
The price range is massive. It is so since you have mediocre freelancers to professionals pitching you at the same platform. Moreover, one problem with freelancers is that they don’t cover all aspects of your project.
In most cases, you’ve to outsource the scriptwriting and voiceovers as freelancers have skills for the core of the project, animation.
Clientele:
Includes small businesses and entrepreneurs who want to outsource some part of the animation project.
Price range:
$ 50 to $ 3000 per minute
Quality animation studio
These comprise small teams with dedicated professionals.
The category is a level ahead of freelancers, but since teams are small, they tend to struggle when working on multiple projects. You can expect a flexible budget, but a long deadline.
Clientele:
Includes companies that demand a high level of customization.
If you’re tight on budget but have a flexible deadline, then this category might be good for you.
Price range:
$ 3000 to $ 7000 per minute
Professional level studio
These include a pool of highly skilled animators, scriptwriters, and talented storyboard artists.
You will probably have an account manager serving as an integral part of the entire chain. They will organize and plan the workflow and work relentlessly to satisfy your needs.
Clientele:
Ad agencies and mid-sized companies
Also includes companies that demand high-level customization. They fit in the category as they mostly need 3D explainer shorts.
Price range:
$ 8000 to $ 25000 per minute
Broadcast level company
This tier is dedicated to animated movies, series, and popular artwork we see in the cinema.
Though these studios are admirable for the quality of the product they provide, their budgets are out of reach of mid-sized business companies.
Clientele:
Top production houses with hefty budgets to produce animation movies, and series.
Price range:
$ 25000 to $ 100000 per minute
Final thoughts
Let’s wrap it up. 3D animated shorts have taken the world of content by storm. The trend is even though new, it’s picking up steam. You can’t create videos; you can opt for shorts.
Above, we discussed five key factors for 3D shorts pricing.
Pay close attention to the location, talent, and deadline of the project. Besides, we also discussed the costs of 3D shorts across multiple tiers. So, you can opt as per your budget.
John Richard, content marketer at BuzzFlick is a digital marketing fanatic who is constantly up to date on the newest trends, best practices, and growth plans in the industry. When he’s not at work, he enjoys watching animated movies and playing Sequence.
Eileen, directed by William Oldroyd, and written by Ottessa Moshfegh, and Luke Goebel, which is based on Moshfegh’s book of the same name. The film stars Thomasin Mackenzie, Anne Hathaway, and Shea Whigham.
Eileen (Mackenzie) starts with the titular character sitting in her car on a beach, watching a couple make up. Her arousal peaks as a voyeur, and stuffs ice down her pants to cool down so to speak. The 24-year old is the loner type who works as a prison receptionist. She has her eyes on one of the prison guards, and during her downtime at work her imagination runs wild with the possibilities of a hook up.
Her mother is dead and now she lives with her father (played by Shea Whigham) who is a retired cop and raging alcoholic. When Eileen comes home from work one day, she sees the police trying to calm him while he’s drunk and waving a gun around in the middle of the street. She promptly deescalates the situation and instead of thanking her for preventing him from getting arrested, the man insults her. His disdain for his own child is obvious and encourages her to get a life and not be such a boring deadbeat.
Dr. Rebecca St. John (Hathaway), a mysterious woman who shows up to the job as a new hire–and the young receptionist is smitten with her. The doctor flirts with her, is affectionate, and is the only one to tell Eileen she’s capable of more in life. Being wrapped around the doctor’s finger, and is willing to sacrifice anything at this point. What type of things she’s willing to do is a whole different matter.
The film is based on the book of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh and believe it or not, the film’s narrative fills in some of the gaps in her book. There’s also a lot of dialogue queues in the script that foreshadow what’s coming. We know Eileen is going to reach the breaking point, the audience is just waiting for who or what will be the catalyst. The wait is what makes the film an unsettling noir, and trust me it’s worth the wait.
The two lead performances from Mackenzie and Hathaway just ooze sex appeal and dominance in their performances Mackenzie’s ability to switch between the mousy and maniacal is masterful, and when Eileen finally stands in her power it’s beguiling. Hathaway smulders as Dr. Rebecca. Her character is so flirtatious, cool, and confident that sometimes I started to blush. The actress’ gaze cuts right through you, and that’s the type of talent that comes with being relaxed and having so much damn fun.
Eileen leans into pulp and camp sphere, but does not go far enough with the queerness. As a young woman searching for connection, She was looking for someone, anyone to give her attention and Rebecca was it. With all that build up, and all that pulp, why not dive further into the queer narrative. I don’t know how to describe how this film is simultaneously queer while slightly queer-baiting its audience. I am beyond tired of seeing this trope in LGBTQ content. Moshfegh and Goebel are forgiven because this script is a balanced mix of the hysterical and the macabre, all while maintaining the female gaze.
At the conclusion of the film, I had this theory about how Dr. Rebecca St. isn’t real and was a figment of Eileen’s wild imagination. And when she leaves her dad and the town behind for good, is she on her way as is, or a stylized version of who she wants to become? The ambiguity serve the movie quite well.
Audible signed an exclusive, multiproject development deal with Plan B Entertainment, the production company led by Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, for a slate of audio originals.
Under the worldwide deal — which represents Plan B’s entry into audio entertainment — the production company will create a slate of Audible originals. It’s the latest pact by Amazon-owned Audible with high-profile Hollywood talent to create exclusive audio productions.
Plan B’s inaugural project for Audible is “A Summer Love Thing” from cinematographer Bradford Young. Currently in active development, “A Summer Love Thing” follows a woman who leaves her successful singing career to return to her Southern hometown and pursue her first love, a blue-collar worker, for the second time. Plan B and Audible describe the project as “moody, lyrical and ethereal, as is all of Bradford’s work,” using “Southern soundscapes to evoke a place, space and time.”
“We are thrilled to collaborate with the dynamic team at Audible, who are leaders in this space, and who share our commitment to quality storytelling wherever audiences find and engage with it,” Plan B’s Pitt, Gardner and Kleiner said in a joint statement.
Audible Studios head Zola Mashariki commented: “It is beyond exciting for us to work with Plan B as they move into the audio sphere. Brad, Dede and Jeremy are devoted to the craft of storytelling and production and we can’t wait to hear the magic they bring to audio.”
Over the last few years, Audible has landed a series of development deals with notable creative partners as it looks to differentiate itself in the booming podcast realm. Those include President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground, George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Smokehouse Pictures, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, Lena Waithe and Rishi Rajani’s Hillman Grad Productions, Laura Dern and Jayme Lemons’ Jaywalker Pictures, Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit, Broadway Video, Kevin Hart’s HartBeat Productions, and SpringHill, founded by LeBron James and Maverick Carter.
Recent Audible Originals include best-selling audio series “The Sandman,” “The Sandman: Act II” and “The Sandman: Act III” from Neil Gaiman, performed by James McAvoy, Kat Dennings and a full cast; Jesse Eisenberg’s “When You Finish Saving the World”; LGBTQ comedy “Hot White Heist” produced in collaboration with Broadway Video, Adam Goldman and Alan Cumming and starring an all-queer cast led by Bowen Yang; “Moriarty” from Treefort Media; “Finding Tamika,” which explores the media’s disproportional coverage of missing Black women, and Leon Neyfakh’s “Fiasco: The AIDS Crisis,” which examines the history of the AIDS epidemic in America.
Sundance: Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s charming and hilarious “Theater Camp” is like “Waiting for Guffman” without the bite. Theater kids, get ready to be seen.
Real summer camp buffs have this saying: “10 for 2,” meaning they spend 10 months out of the year looking forward to the two they will spend at summer camp. For some people, summer camp is their true home, the one place they can really be themselves, a treat that makes the real world bearable. For the kids (and adults) of Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s charming and hilarious “Theater Camp,” it’s also a place where they can hone their craft without the prying eyes of the decidedly non-theatrical in their lives.
Cleverly conceived of as a mockumentary, “Theater Camp” picks up as our unnamed (and unseen) filmmakers are just a day into production. Their plan: follow a summer at “AdirondACTS,” an upstate New York theater camp run by the beloved Joan (Amy Sedaris). Joan and her righthand gal Rita (Caroline Aaron) are scouting talent at a middle school, and it’s more important than ever that they bring in some major young stars, because the camp (as is so often the wont of cinematic summer camps) sure could use an infusion of cash, and what says big bucks more than “young, striving, potential Broadway stars”? Alas, a strobe effect utilized during a production of “Bye Bye Birdie” sends Joan into a coma, and the camp into even more fraught circumstances.
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But, the show must go on, and soon AdirondACTS is in the hands of motley crew for what threatens to be its last summer, including Gordon, her co-writers Ben Platt and Noah Galvin, Jimmy Tatro, Nathan Lee Graham, Ayo Edebiri, and Owen Thiele. Joan’s son, Troy (Tatro), does not fit in with these misfits, however; despite his work as a “business vlogger,” it’s clear he wouldn’t know entrepreneurial (or, as he calls it, “entroypreneurial”) acumen if it fell on his head. Tatro makes for a wonderful straight man, a dumb bunny who grows a heart (and maybe even a brain) as the film winds on and the stakes, like the constantly trilled notes from this talented musical crew, get ever higher.
The main event, though, is Gordon and Platt, cast here as long-time best pals who seem to love nothing more than creating together (Gordon and Platt are, as charming archival footage deployed throughout the film reminds us, also long-time best pals who seem to love nothing more than creating together). Amos (Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Gordon) are former campers turned teachers, and the primo gig at every AdirondACTS session is a spot in whichever original musical they’ve cooked up specifically for the campers to perform (our favorite previous entry, shown by way of posters and t-shirts throughout the film: “The Hanukkah Divorce”).
This time around, they’re dedicating their skills to a production all about Joan (called “Joan, Still”) that every child wants to be a part of. They, of course, have not even written the damn thing before announcing it to the young thespians, a great gag that eventually turns into the emotional center of the film’s finale.
But will they ever get a chance to perform it? Galvin, Gordon, Lieberman, and Platt know their mockumentary tropes well — early comparisons to “Waiting for Guffman” without the bite are dead-on — but they also know what goes into making a summer camp movie, most of which hinge on a rivalry with a snazzy other camp. (This time around, that other camp is owned by an evil conglomerate that also wants to snap up AdirondACTS, what with its bad financial standing and great property.)
While the entire film is very amusing, the first half in particular is chock-a-block with jokes that don’t let up (everything from plans for a production of “Crucible Jr.” to an introduction to the “Fosse Kids” is funny, and the film makes off with a late-breaking gag about JFK that’s painfully, darkly hilarious). But there’s plenty of heart here, much of it livened up by a wonderful cast of young stars who play the plucky campers, including Bailee Bonick, Donovan Colan, Luke Islam, and “Minari” breakout Alan Kim. They’re credible as rising theater stars (and movie stars to boot), adding veracity to this already winning outing.
The mockumentary style lends itself well to the material, and is improved on by Gordon and Lieberman’s restraint (there are no confessional interviews, for instance; in a Q&A after the film’s premiere, Gordon said that keeping it verite was the aim, they imagined it functioning like “The War Room”) in a film that thrives on silly excess. The duo find plenty of humor in straight-faced intertitles that provide necessary information, and “lower thirds” that tell us subject names and occupations (Galvin isn’t just “Glenn,” but also a “third generation stage manager”). Being a theater geek isn’t required to enjoy “Theater Camp,” but it certainly can’t hurt. Mostly, though, this is just funny and smart and sweet stuff, a crowdpleaser for the misfit in all of us.
One of few nitpicks: not everyone in this very talented cast is allowed as much room to shine as we might like (“The Bear” breakout Edebiri for one, delightful comedian Patti Harrison for another). But that’s a minor quibble — what a treat to be able to say, “oh, the only real problem was I wanted more of it” — and “Theater Camp” otherwise packs so much fun and joy into its 94 minute running time, it’s hard to get too mad. And while some beats may feel expected — keep your eyes peeled for the breakout star, you’ll see him within the first ten minutes — the screenwriters still find ways to turn potential cliches into something fresh and funny. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, jeez, you might even sing.
Grade: A-
“Theater Camp” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.
Kylie Minogue asks what if. In her radiant pop world, every feeling tingles with possibility: the longed-for romance that you barely dare whisper, the intoxication after just one drop, the liberation under the strobe light. She is love’s defiant crusader who, in her 1987 single “I Should Be So Lucky,” made being ignored by a crush sound flat-out delightful. She has an answer to everything; rejection is her gasoline. You don’t want my love? Put your hand on your heart and tell me. Most famously, she is consumed with an infatuation so dizzying it defies words, bubbling to the surface only as la la la.
The Australian artist’s music is an invitation to share what she feels, an ethos that has enthroned Minogue as an icon of positivity and a poet laureate of dancefloor communion. “It’s hard work being a Kylie,” said Björk, a friend of Minogue in the ’90s. “It’s a service to the nation. You have to smile and do handshakes—it’s like being a diplomat, or the Queen.”
On her 1997 album Impossible Princess, pop royalty went rogue. Minogue simmers with rage, thrashing at the limits of torture and tenderness in a dark tango with the frenetic club music of the day. With help from a slate of buzzy producers, her unvarnished songwriting tangles with underground styles including pulverizing breakbeat and drum’n’bass, throbbing techno and ambient rave, as well as joyous jangle pop. If Minogue’s earlier music had been seen as a universal opiate, this was a mischievous abdication of civic duty.
Minogue considered the record a personal triumph. “I had people controlling me for years,” she told New Idea at the time. “Now I am reveling in the fact that I have control, I take responsibility for my decisions and I live and die by them.” But Impossible Princess was troubled by a messy rollout, label mismanagement, and some stale collaborations, making it more complicated than a straightforward artistic win. She would never make a record like it again.
Born in Melbourne, Kylie Minogue started acting professionally at age 8 in a period drama called The Sullivans. After a series of roles in her teens, she became a star in the UK and Australia thanks to a role on the sunny soap opera Neighbours, in which she played a tough-talking mechanic named Charlene. Within a year, Minogue became known simply as “Kylie” to an entire continent and was whooshing down the soap actress to pop star pipeline. She signed to PWL, the London-based label that was home to Stock Aitken Waterman (SAW), a British production trio that had helped to define ’80s Hi-NRG disco, crafting landmark singles for Dead or Alive, Divine, and Hazell Dean. SAW were the architects of Minogue’s sparkling early sound, powered by her winsome, youthful image and dance-pop that snapped like a rubber band. “They told me what to sing, what clothes to wear, and how to look in my photographs,” Minogue later said of PWL. She likened the experience to being “knee-deep in concrete.”
Cast: Bobby Deol, Bhupendra Jadawat, Hitesh Bhojraj, Sameer Paranjape
Director: Atul Sabharwal
Class of 83, which is based on a book authored by leading crime journalist Hussain Zaidi, is set in Bombay in the 1980s when the underworld’s stranglehold on the city was becoming hard to break. Dozens of young men rendered jobless as a result of the ongoing mill strike were being lured into joining local gangs, and the nexus between powerful politicians and criminal gang leaders made it hard for the police to weed out the problem. With this as the backdrop, the film follows an ideological cop-turned-trainer who moulds five cadets into encounter specialists.
Yanked off the field for doing his job with more integrity than those in power would like him to, upright officer Vijay Singh (Bobby Deol) lands a ‘punishment posting’ as the dean of the Police Training Centre in Nashik. Convinced that the only way to restore order in a flawed system is to fix it from the inside, he handpicks a clutch of bold young officers and trains them to bend the law in service of the larger good.
It’s an interesting premise, and director Atul Sabharwal constructs a believable world on the strength of strong atmospherics and period detail. The problem, however, is with the script, which spends more time establishing – then repeatedly reminding us of – the city’s political and social climate, instead of fleshing out the five officers at the centre of the story. We never really get an individual sense of these men aside from stray details like one is a compulsive masturbator, and another is the son of a laid-off mill worker.
The other crucial issue with the film is the miscasting of the mentor figure. The part required a possibly older actor with some gravitas, which Bobby Deol is unable to bring. Dean Vijay Singh was an idealistic, firecracker officer, now trying to adjust to a new world and a new order. Bobby sports greying temples and old-fashioned wire-rimmed spectacles, but he doesn’t have the manner of a world-weary gent.
Inspired from real accounts of the city’s first encounter specialists, the film depicts how the officers shrewdly planned and executed hits while staying within the system and following all necessary protocol. But then it quickly slips into a predictable rise-and-fall-and-rise narrative with egos and corruption breaking up the friends, and a last-ditch shot at redemption triggered by their mentor.
The thing about Class of 83 is that it probably sounded great on paper, but doesn’t translate as effectively to the screen. There’s more philosophy than action, and because we don’t get to know the characters in a deep or personal way we’re never genuinely invested in them. Of the five actors playing the encounter specialists only Bhupendra Jadawat is able to make an impression in the role of Shukla. It’s a shame because the others perform just as competently but get little scope to leave a mark. Anup Soni is expectedly reliable as your stock villain-politician, as is Joy Sengupta as a senior officer.
The film had potential but it feels unmistakably inert. It serves, at best, as a slice of Mumbai’s police history. It could have been – and should have been – so much more.
Rajeev Masand is the Entertainment Editor of CNN-IBN. An avid film buff, and critic, Masand also hosts the popular To Catch a Star on CNN-IBN. …Read More
It’s unheard of for a short story to go viral, but Kristen Roupenian’s “Cat Person,” published in The New Yorker in December 2017, hit a raw nerve, arriving at the height of the #MeToo movement a couple of months after the bombshell revelations about Harvey Weinstein inspired a cultural reckoning about sex and power. “Cat Person” was a self-reflective, first-person narrative that explored the awkward gender and sexual power dynamics in a dalliance between a college sophomore and an older man she meets working at a movie theater.
Roupenian’s “Cat Person” served as a mirror to the reader, many of whom could relate to the uncomfortable feelings that Roupenian laid bare, others who perhaps questioned their own actions and choices they may have recognized in her prose. That kind of reflection made “Cat Person” a discourse-generating machine, which revved into gear again in 2021 when Alexis Nowicki wrote an essay in Slate revealing that Roupenian had borrowed details from her personal life for the story, deepening the moral and ethical quandary within the story and around it.
The film adaptation of “Cat Person” was already in motion when Nowicki’s piece was published, and the finished product now debuts at the Sundance Film Festival, co-starring Emilia Jones (“CODA”) and Nicholas Braun (“Succession”). No doubt the discourse machine is bound to start cranking again, particularly around some of the choices made in the adaptation to expand the world and story of “Cat Person” to a feature-length film.
Veteran TV writer Michelle Ashford (“Masters of Sex,” “Mayfair Witches”) adapts the story for the screen, with Susanna Fogel (“The Spy Who Dumped Me”) directing the project. Necessarily, they have built out the world inhabited by college sophomore Margot (Jones), coloring in the details about Margot’s mother (Hope Davis), roommate Taylor (Geraldine Viswanathan) and high-school boyfriend (Isaac Powell, “Dear Evan Hansen”).
They’ve created a new character, Margot’s archaeology professor (Isabella Rossellini) whose lab, filled with animal bones and discussions of ant-colony behavior, offers a creepy setting and thematic underpinning for the stilted mating ritual Margot undertakes with Robert (Braun). She makes idle conversation with him at the movie-theater concession stand, negging the shy, bearded thirty-something about his Red Vines. In turn, he doesn’t so much as ask for her number but demands it, beginning a beautiful text-message relationship.
Margot, like many young women who grow up feeling like prey, has an active imagination about all the good things, and the bad things, that may be when it comes Robert. Most women will cop to indulging in terrifying thought experiments about the doom that may befall them when alone with a strange man, fueled by true crime of course, but also the reality that interacting with men as a young woman feels like being stalked by an apex predator.
Fogel and Ashford lay all of that plainly, often painfully bare in the film version of “Cat Person.” The film opens with the well-known Margaret Atwood quote about men being afraid women will laugh at them while women are afraid men will kill them. That quote doesn’t appear in Roupenian’s story, though it is obliquely referenced, and that very specific tension simmers underneath every interaction between Margot and Robert, and contributes to the shifting power trade-off between them.
Fogel and Ashford externalize and visualize Margot’s inner monologue. Taylor becomes the receptacle for Margot’s anxious text-message waffling about Robert as well as the voice of reason. But she’s not without flaw, and as the strident moderator of a militant feminist subreddit she faces her own comeuppance, too. It is most obvious with Taylor to see how the filmmakers yank the piece from a pre–#MeToo moment into the progressive politics of 2023, which are shockingly different compared to six years ago.
There’s also the question of Margot’s slightly paranoid fantasies about Robert that ping-pong from seductive to dangerous. She imagines Robert attacking her or, in session with a therapist, declaring his desire for her open vulnerability. The bravura centerpiece of the film is an extended sex scene between Margot and Robert, with Margot in conversation with herself as she questions if she even wants to be there as she consents to Robert’s awkward, yet porny, fumbling. She declares it “the worst decision of her life,” though there are some later decisions that may call that into question.
Fogel stylizes “Cat Person” as a thriller with horror elements. The film takes place almost entirely at night and an early scene features a bloody nightmare in which Margot dreams of a dog tearing her RA apart. The skeleton-filled labs and long, lonely walks home in the dark lend to the sinister atmosphere.
While Roupenian’s story ends with a decisive villain, the movie, expanding further into a third act, complicates matters, especially after taking a turn into the action-thriller vein. Margot and Robert constantly swap roles as predator and prey, their socially-ascribed identities making them defensive and irrational, their anxieties and paranoia eventually combusting into catastrophe.
But after the smoke has cleared, it’s all too confusing to figure out who has wronged whom. Robert is guilty of bad sex and bad texts, but Margot has also transgressed against him, and the repeated fantasy sequences render her, unfortunately, an unreliable narrator. You keep expecting her to snap out of the outrageous third act, that it’s just another florid fantasy about how things could go so wrong.
In the end, “Cat Person” is just as unsettling as the story that inspired it. But it is a bold, stylish and dynamic adaptation that makes big choices that may have one puzzling through both the characters’ and filmmakers’ intentions — or maybe not. It is a mirror after all, and the moral of the story is left up to us, which is perhaps the most daring move of all.
“Cat Person” makes its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
“Saturday Night Live” went heavy on recent TV and movie hits on Saturday, with cleverly-executed skits from “M3GAN,” “The White Lotus” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” livening up the selection of material.
“M3GAN” star Allison Williams made a cameo on “Saturday Night Live” spoofing a trailer for the sequel, M3GAN 2.0, celebrating the doll’s status as a gay icon on NBC’s Jan. 21 broadcast.
The trailer — featuring both host Aubrey Plaza and Chloe Fineman as the doll — declares the movie is a hit with audiences, including captivated one demographic most of all: gay men.
“It’s like ‘Bros,’ but for gays,” read one fake review from Variety.
As M3GAN, Plaza suggests hitting a drag show and doing poppers, and as she threatens to strangle Yang declaring she is bored, Williams bursts in to save the day.
“Wait, are you from the show, “Girls’?” Yang asks.
In another sketch, Fineman portrayed Jennifer Coolidge in “White Lotus” in the parody, “The Black Lotus.” Cast member Kenan Thompson took on the role of concierge.
“Oh, gosh, I forgot my credit card. I must have left it in the limousine, is that OK, can you trust me?” asks FIneman.
“Avatar: The Way of Water” gets a cheeky SNL parody with Aubrey Plaza.
“No, I can’t,” Thompson replied. “I don’t know you. I’m trying to run a business!”
An announcer then intones: “Coming soon to HBO, Black Lotus. All the decadence, all the intrigue, none of the foolishness.”
Michael Imperioli’s character — attempting to check in — is embarrassed as his guests are referred to as “hoes” that can charge anything they want to the room because they are given a spare key, while Plaza portrays a Latina bartender instead of her “White Lotus” character, Harper.
Later, Plaza and Heidi Gardner drop in to surprise the “Avatar: The Way of Water” cast as blue, sunglass-wearing “lesbians from Arizona.”
Teen Wolf: The Movie is premiering as part of the Paramount+ schedule for January 23-29.
On Thursday, January 26, the streaming service (sign-up for Paramount+ here) will add Teen Wolf: The Movie to its available content. The upcoming film hails from series creator Jeff Davis together with MTV Entertainment Studios and MGM’s Orion Television. Teen Wolf: The Movie will feature the return of lead star Tyler Posey.
Joining Posey are Holland Roden, Shelley Hennig, Crystal Reed, as well as Tyler Hoechlin and Orny Adams. Additionally, Linden Ashby, JR Bourne, Colton Haynes, Ryan Kelley, Melissa Ponzio, Ian Bohen, Vince Mattis, Nobi Nakanishi, Khylin Rhambo, Amy Workman, and Dylan Sprayberry. The only ones not included in the film are fan-favorite actors Dylan O’Brien and Arden Cho.
“In the Paramount+ film, a full moon rises in Beacon Hills, and with it, a terrifying evil has emerged,” reads the synopsis. “The wolves are howling once again, calling for the return of Banshees, Werecoyotes, Hellhounds, Kitsunes, and every other shapeshifter in the night. But only a Werewolf like Scott McCall, no longer a teenager yet still an Alpha, can gather both new allies and reunite trusted friends to fight back against what could be the most powerful and deadliest enemy they’ve ever faced.”
Loosely based on the 1985 Michael J. Fox-led coming-of-age film, Teen Wolf followed the story of a social outcast high-school student named Scott McCall (Posey), who was suddenly bitten by a werewolf the night before
Paramount+ Schedule January 23-29 | New TV & Movie Additions
Edward Berger’s gripping, and gutting, World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front continued its extraordinary award season run on Thursday when it picked up 14 BAFTA nominations, leading the pack, ahead of Martin McDonagh’s Irish drama The Banshees of Inisherin and Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s metaverse action comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once, which received 10 nods each.
The 14 noms tied the all-time record for a non-English-language film, blowing past the 12 nominations secured by Michel Hazanavicius’ silent film tribute The Artist (2011), while equaling the tally scored by Ang Lee’s wuxia masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon more than 20 years ago.
In addition to the expected nomination in the best non-English-language feature category, the war drama picked up nominations for best film for producer Malte Grunert, best director for Berger, best adapted screenplay (co-written by Berger, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell) and a best supporting actor BAFTA nom for Albrecht Schuch, who plays veteran soldier Stanislaus Katczinsky, the mentor to the fresh-faced recruit Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer).
All Quiet on the Western Front is the first-ever German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s classic anti-war novel, first published, in German, in 1929. The book follows the experiences of an ordinary German front line soldier in the trenches. Lewis Milestone’s English-language adaptation won the best picture and best director Oscar in 1930. A U.S. television version from 1979, starring Richard Thomas as Paul Bäumer and Ernest Borgnine as Katczinsky, won an Emmy.
“We are speechless and overwhelmed. It’s an enormous honor to be acknowledged by the British Film Academy,” Berger said in a statement, commenting on the BAFTA nominations. “That the film has resonated with so many people is a testament to Erich Maria Remarque’s extraordinary book, written one hundred years ago and yet sadly still relevant today. It was our north star. The novel’s powerful anti-war message unites us, no matter which country we live in.”
All Quiet producer Malte Grunert called the 14 nominations “overwhelming” and thanked the British Academy for the “incredible honor.” Citing the other BAFTA nominees, Gurnert said it was “humbling to be in such great company. Thank you, BAFTA.”
All Quiet dominated the BAFTA’s craft categories —picking up nominations for James Friend for best cinematography; Sven Budelmann for best editing; Volker Bertelmann for best original score; best production design for Christian M. Goldbreck and Ernestine Hipper; Lisy Christl for best costume design; Lars Ginzsel, Frank Kruse, Viktor Prášil and Markus Stemler for best sound; Markus Frank, Kamil Jafar, Viktor Müller and Frank Petzoid for best visual effects; Simone Bär for best casting; and Heike Merker for best makeup and hairstyling.
Led by All Quiet, Netflix easily won the BAFTA’s distributors’ horse race. The streaming giant reigned supreme with a total of 21 BAFTA nominations —in addition to 14 for All Quiet, Netflix secured 3 for Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and one each for Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, the Tobias Lindholm-directed The Good Nurse, Sally El Hosaini’s The Swimmers and Sebastián Lelio’s The Wonder.
That tally compares to 14 each for A24 — which received 10 for Everything Everywhere All at Once and four for Darren Aronofsky’s melodrama The Whale starring Brendan Fraser — and Searchlight — which picked up 10 BAFTA noms for The Banshees of Inisherin, three for Sam Mendes’ 1980s-set Empire of Light and a single nomination for Tom George’s West End period crime comedy See How They Run.
Berger’s anti-war epic was a frontrunner going into the nominations. The Netflix movie led the BAFTA longlist with 15 mentions, the most of any film since the BAFTA longlist was reintroduced three years ago. Of the 15 longlist contenders, only Felix Kammerer failed to score a BAFTA nom in the super-competitive best actor category.
The BAFTA bonanza should help maintain the awards momentum behind All Quiet, which is on the Oscar shortlist for best international feature and is considered a frontrunner to make the final five when the Academy Award nominations are unveiled in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Word-of-mouth buzz for the film, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in September and was released by Netflix worldwide Oct. 28, continues to grow.
Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon translated its record BAFTA performance into four wins, including best director, best non-English-language film, best costume design and best film music. The Artist fared even better at the BAFTAs, sweeping the 2012 awards with seven wins including best film, best director and best actor for star Jean Dujardin.
Crouching star Michelle Yeoh nabbed a BAFTA best actress nomination but no win, an oversight BAFTA voters could correct this year, as Yeoh is nominated in the same category for her performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Both Crouching Tiger and The Artist went from BAFTA to Oscar success, with the former winning four Academy Awards and later taking five, including best picture.
SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! From Japan comes the deadliest mash-up in movie history…KITTIES and KILLERS as an ancient curse is awakened in indie filmmaker Reiki Tsuno’s feature action flick, Mad Cats …fear the purr!
Mad Cats stars Sho Mineo as sad and pathetic Taka, who lives in a trailer ever since his archeologist brother, Mune (So Yamanaka), went missing. One day, Taka receives a cassette tape with a voice giving him clues to unlock the whereabouts of his brother Taka. With some harsh motivation from his landlord for being worthless, Taka is led to a mysterious house and told to find a wooden box containing some ancient catnip. When Taka finds the box, it contains the ancient Catnip of Bastet, which gives special powers to the cats, who imbibe the sweet catnip. It’s not exactly explained, but it essentially turns felines into cat monsters, taking on human form.
In finding the catnip, Taka finds his brother in a cage awaiting execution by the Boss cat (Hikari Aiko). When The Executioner (Chiyuki Kanazawa) arrives, Taka goes on the run and is safe by a homeless man, Takezo (Yuya Matsuura). As the relentless horde of cat monsters hunt for Taka and Takezo, they are aided by a mysterious young girl, Ayane, played by Ayane. The three must ultimately confront the Boss cat to rescue Takezo safely.
Normally I don’t read the press note before seeing a movie…but I did. Writer/director Reiki Tsuno talks about how Japanese films, especially horror, tend to be “sad, serious, and depressing.” Instead, with Mad Cats, he wanted to “make something exciting and flashy.” Which he does. Mad Cats is essentially an action-adventure thrill ride…if you were on a county fair thrill ride.
“…it contains the ancient Catnip of Bastet, which gives special powers to the cats…”
Mad Cats employs the storytelling devices of contrast while subverting expectations. Our heroes, Taka and Takezo, are both inept and ineffective. They are lucky to be alive and to survive, they must be lucky. On the other hand, there is Ayane, who is highly skilled in hand-to-hand combat, swordsmanship (swordspersonship), and firearms. Of course, this contrast leads to the comedic training montage, which (spoiler alert) leaves Taka and Takezo still inept and ineffective.
So cats and killer. This clowder of cats is essentially a crew of anthropomorphized cats in human form. Their feline facials and movements are creepy as hell, as budget restrictions thwart any attempt at cat costumes or make-up (a far cry from Tom Hooper’s creepy-looking CG Cats). The story also centers on legends and lore surrounding cats…catnip, stealthy movement, and their nine lives.
As the film plays out, this cat theme now serves as an overlay over a typical action story structure. With our three heroes on the run, one pair of cat monsters is sent after the other. The heroes much dispatch each pair who grow exceedingly more skilled and difficult to kill. Yes, we have a video game on our hands as our heroes are forced to become increasingly inventive to stand victorious.
This brings us to action. It’s good, particularly for a low-budget indie. Most of the action is hand-to-hand combat with ample gunplay, and Ayane is an exceptional action hero. Again, for a low-budget film, the action is shot brilliantly, but the film’s lack of money comes with its drawbacks. Quite frankly, the action sequences are small in scale and end sooner than expected (someone, please get Reiki Tsuno some money to realize his vision fully). I was definitely left wanting more than I got in the final product, which is on par for low-budget films).
Mad Cats is a fun movie. It doesn’t take itself seriously and has fun with the cat theme while never getting to 60s Batman level of camp. What’s in store for you is some amazing fight sequences dominated by women and their cat-like reflexes. It’s the purrfect movie to curl up to for a quiet evening or while engaged in some self-cleaning practices.
James Corden has denied that he purposely stole a joke that Ricky Gervais had made in 2018 first. Corden, 44 years old, tweeted on Tuesday that he had “inadvertently told a wonderful Ricky Gervais joke on the program last night, obviously not knowing it was from him.” Because it’s a Ricky Gervais joke, it’s hilarious. You can view every one of Ricky’s entertaining specials on Netflix.
Corden joked during Monday’s episode of The Late Late Show about Elon Musk’s comparison of Twitter to a town square when he purchased the company. However, this is not the case since residents of the town will not say, “I don’t want to learn the guitar!” when they see a sign in the town square that advertises the availability of guitar tuition if someone hangs the poster there. I’d love to learn how to play the piano!
He continued by saying, Well, then you weren’t the target audience for that sign. It was intended for another individual! So you don’t have to let all this get you in a rage.
In the wake of the show’s airing, internet users were eager to point out that his remark was strikingly similar to a joke from Ricky Gervais’s 2018 Netflix special, Humanity.
According to CNN, Ricky Gervais compared it to entering a town square as he spoke in the special. And there’s a signup sheet for guitar instruction, so you head over there. However, I have absolutely no interest in taking guitar lessons.
When accusations surfaced on Twitter that Corden had stolen a comedy piece from Ricky Gervais, the star of The Office, who is 61 years old, stated that he did not believe Corden willfully took the joke.
No. ‘I suppose one of the writers came up with it for him,’ Gervais tweeted on Tuesday, adding that he had doubts that the comedian would intentionally duplicate such a well-known stand-up routine word for word like that. After further investigation, Corden admitted that he had paraphrased Gervais’ joke without realizing it.
Amazon is the latest music streaming service, following Apple, to increase the price of its subscription plans.
In updates to its customer support pages in the U.S. and the U.K., Amazon said its Amazon Music Unlimited plan for individuals will go up from $9.99 to $10.99 a month (or £9.99 to £10.99 a month), while the student subscription will see a bump up from $4.99 to $5.99 a month (or £4.99 to £5.99). The price changes will go into effect on Feb. 21 in both regions.
With the upcoming price hikes, Amazon’s music streaming subscription will now cost the same as Apple Music, which saw a price increase for the first time last October. That same month, YouTube also bumped up the price of its YouTube Premium family plan, which includes access to music streaming, from $17.99/month to $22.99/month, though the individual YouTube Music premium plan remains at $9.99/month.
Spotify has thus far resisted a subscription price hike, keeping prices at $9.99/month for an individual plan and $4.99/month for a student plan, though CEO Daniel Ek has said the company is interested in raising its prices.
Amazon Music accounts for 13.3 percent of the global music streaming subscription market, according to the research firm Midia. Spotify leads with 30.5 percent, followed by Apple Music’s 13.7 percent. When it comes to podcasts, 0.7 percent of listening happens on Amazon Music, according to Buzzsprout. Apple Podcasts and Spotify take the lead with 38.6 percent and 26.7 percent, respectively.
In November, Amazon rolled out a set of perks for Prime members to include shuffle-mode access to Amazon Music’s library of 100 million songs, up from 2 million. Prime members without Amazon Music Unlimited subscriptions can also listen to podcasts from Wondery, Audible, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, Barstool Sports, Slate and ESPN without ads.
Anyone who saw British director William Oldroyd’s “Lady Macbeth” at the Sundance Film Festival back in 2017 will hardly be surprised to hear that Oldroyd’s followup, “Eileen,” is one of the boldest provocations to hit Sundance in 2023. A blackly humorous riff on film noir that tells you with the opening notes of Richard Reed Perry’s score that it’s heading for some very dark and doomy places, it’s both a tour de force for a cast led by Thomasin McKenzie and a sign that Oldroyd hasn’t lost his unsettling touch in the seven years since his last film.
“Lady Macbeth” was a twisted and bloody drama with only vague thematic ties to Shakespeare, and it provided a powerful breakthrough role for a young Florence Pugh as a 19th-century wife whose passions could be both empowering and disturbing. “Eileen” isn’t exactly a breakthrough role for the New Zealand actress McKenzie who, since she’s already made her mark in films from “Leave No Trace” to “Last Night in Soho,” doesn’t need one of those. But the title character is a rich, weird and multifaceted young woman to play, and McKenzie calibrates the changes with precision; she and Oldroyd know we’re waiting, and they enjoy making us wait.
Eileen is a 24-year-old woman in Massachusetts who works in a prison for young men and lives with her former police-captain father (Shea Whigham) who is slipping into an angry, drunken dementia after the death of his wife. His conversations with Eileen, the one daughter who still speaks to him, are models of vicious verbal abuse disguised as everyday chatter. Some people, he tells her, are like the characters you watch make big decisions in a movie. “Other people, they just take up space and you take them for granted. That’s you, Eileen.”
And for a while, that does seem to be Eileen. The movie begins with a shot of fog rolling in and some massive dark chords that seem to herald the start of a horror flick. At first we seem to be watching the character study of a painfully timid young woman whose only action comes when she fantasizes about having sex with a guard up against the big window of a prison room.
But it’s clear that there’s more going on here than simply another Sundance drama about a lonely young woman trying to find her inner strength. The film is more aggressive than that, the music hinting at drama to come. And McKenzie drops hints that while Eileen looks timid, maybe we’re selling her short; maybe she’s not timid, she’s implacable.
Whatever she is, it starts to come out when a new psychologist arrives. Since the film – based on the 2015 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, who co-wrote the script with Luke Goebel – is set in 1964, the arrival of a new female prison psychologist, Rebecca, is greeted with not-so-thinly veiled sexism by the prison brass. “Dr. Miss Rebecca St. John will be our new prison psychologist,” announces the warden. “She just got her PhD from Radcliffe.”
“Harvard,” corrects Rebecca curtly.
As played by Anne Hathaway, Rebecca could be a femme fatale heroine out of film noir: She’s a blonde bombshell who’s always smarter than the men around her, and one who knows how to hold a cigarette, wield a martini glass and deck a man who tries to make advances. Eileen, naturally, is transfixed, and in their first few brief conversations Rebecca seizes on the fact that beneath that meek exterior and squeaky voice (this time sporting a variable Boston accent), Eileen can drop some quiet barbs.
Eileen shaves her legs and dresses up to meet Rebecca for drinks, and she gamely tries to smoke when Rebecca lights up. “Sorry, I don’t usually smoke,” Eileen apologizes through a coughing fit.
“Nasty habit. That’s why I like it,” Rebecca says, reminding us that we’re pretty much in the world of noir now.
But this is noir with a twist, because the relationship between Eileen and Rebecca goes from adoration to flirtation. “You remind me of a girl in a Dutch painting,” Rebecca says. “You have a strong face. Plain but fascinating. I bet you have brilliant dreams.”
As an audience, we know that she does have vivid dreams, because we see them come to life every so often with a delicious shock. McKenzie suggests that Eileen is young woman with dark and unsettling depths, but the film simply drops hints until the two meet for a Christmas Eve dinner and everything changes with a single sentence.
It’d be a spoiler to say more, but “Eileen” embraces its heart of noir in the homestretch, giving McKenzie and Hathaway their share of big, bold moments and also giving Marin Ireland a showstopping sequence as a mother trying desperately to hide the darkest of secrets. It’s pulpy and provocative, and the remarkable thing about McKenzie’s performance is that even when she asserts herself, she does so without extraneous dialogue. Many of the strongest moments simply hold on her face for long stretches; not much happens, but everything happens.
Shot with a mean glow by Ari Wegner, “Eileen” isn’t concerned with delivering lessons about female empowerment. Oldroyd rather glories in dark, troubled and magnificently contradictory characters acting in gloriously twisted ways. Like the title character does in the film, the movie snuck up on the Sundance audience and gave it a swift kick.
While many TV shows have made household names out of their star players, occasionally showrunners have been able to corral some of Hollywood’s biggest names to drop in for a surprising cameo during a complete episode or a single scene.
Perhaps one of the most polarizing cameos belonged to Ed Sheeran on HBO’s Game of Thronesin July 2017. The singer appeared in a brief scene during the season 7 premiere, titled “Dragonstone.” In the episode, the “Bad Habits” singer plays a Lannister soldier sitting next to a campfire as Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) rode past on horseback. He sang a quick tune to his fellow soldiers and Arya replied, “It’s a pretty song. I’ve never heard it before.”
While some fans were pumped to see the “Thinking out Loud” crooner pop up in Westeros, others were really annoyed. Twitter users commented everything from “Ed Sheeran’s really looking for that castle on the hill, huh,” to “I don’t even watch Game of Thrones but still made Ed Sheeran ruined it” and “This is a show with dragons and I still can’t believe that Ed Sheeran is currently on screen.”
The HBO show’s creators David Benioff and D.B. Weisspreviously announced his cameo at South by Southwest that March. “We knew that Maisie was a big fan of Ed Sheeran and for years, we’ve been trying to get him on the show so we can surprise Maisie,” Benioff said at the time. “This year we finally did it.”
Following criticism of his brief role, Sheeran told MTV News that September that he was fine with it being a one-time performance. “No one wants to see me come back,” he said. “I wanted to be a cameo in it, and I’ve done the cameo. I’m cool with it, though. I enjoyed it.”
Another unforgettable cameo belonged to Taylor Swiftwhen she made a one-scene appearance on the season 2 finale of New Girl in May 2013. While Cece (Hannah Simone) was set to marry Shivrang (Satya Bhabha) in the episode, the duo both had cold feet about their upcoming nuptials.
As Shivrang called off the nuptials mid-ceremony, he remarked that he was in love with his ex-girlfriend Elaine, who stood up from her seat at the time. There, Elaine was revealed to be the “Cardigan” singer in a scene that seemingly replicated her “Speak Now” track off her third studio album.
“You may be asking yourself, Why is Gig-ers taking time out of her busy schedule to narrate the story of a 16-year-old old boy,” the model says at the start of the episode. “Believe it or not, I relate to this kid. We’re both constantly underestimated because people only see us as sex symbols.”
Hadid shared a trailer of her voiceover role via Instagram at the time with the caption, “Had the BEST time getting to narrate a new episode of @neverhaveiever — I got your back, Pax!” Barnet commented, “Thanks so much Gigi! you killed it! ?.” Show creator Mindy Kaling also replied, “I fainted” and “You did such a great job! We loved having you! ❤️❤️❤️??.”
Scroll through to revisit the most surprising TV show celebrity cameos:
The photo seems to be clicked between his workout sessions and Shah Rukh Khan flaunts his muscular arms in a black tank top.
The countdown for Shah Rukh Khan’s Pathaan has begun! We are just a couple of days away from witnessing King Khan’s return on the big screen. Ahead of the release, SRK fans are flooding social media with photos and fanmade posters of Pathaan. Not just fans, but his close ones, too, have started the countdown for Pathaan. On Sunday, Aryan, Suhana and AbRam’s taekwondo trainer Kiran took to social media to share an unseen picture with the actor and the netizens are going crazy over it.
The photo seems to be clicked between his workout sessions and the actor flaunts his muscular arms in a black tanktop. Sharing the photo, she wrote, “Wishing my mooossttt fav Pathan @iamsrk huge huge success for alll the hard work he and his team has put in ..ready for mausam bigadney key liye…❤️❤️❤️ #pathan”
Take a look:
Shah Rukh’s fans couldn’t thank Kiran enough for the photo. One user wrote, “Thank you so much for this photo❤❤❤❤” while another user added, “OMG!! Pathaan hotness ✨”. “omggggg pathaan is glowing ♥️” read another comment.
Meanwhile, the YRF film opened advance bookings on Wednesday night in selected theatres before they opened advance bookings on Friday. While official numbers are yet to come in, a Bollywood Hungama report has claimed that Pathaan has already sold over 3,00,000 tickets in India, amounting to Rs. 10 crores gross. The advance bookings are reportedly better than blockbusters KGF 2, Bahubali 2, Sultan, and War.
Backed by Yash Raj Films, Pathaan joins the production house’s Spy Universe. The trailer revealed that Pathaan was inactive for four years but is brought back into action after a terror group plots to attack the country. Shah Rukh is seen performing several high-octane action sequences. The trailer also revealed that Deepika Padukone is also a soldier in the film, designated to help Pathaan in his battle. John Abraham plays the villain in the film. The film is slated to release in theatres on January 25.
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Sundance: Susanna Fogel directs a mostly edifying take on Kristen Roupenian’s story, but a curious (and new) third act dilutes its power.
The final word of Kristen Roupenian’s viral 2017 New Yorker short story “Cat Person” is a gut-punch, a fitting capper on 7,000-or-so words that alternate between the hilariously true and the painfully honest. As short stories go, Roupenian’s was a winner, a discomfiting tale that turned played-out romantic tropes (he’s awkward! she’s cute!) into something far richer and wiser. It follows the seemingly ill-fated and short-lived affair between college student Margot and older man (but not too much older) Robert as it dips from sweet to scary, awkward to downright creepy. For many women, it felt terribly, painfully familiar, and that it ended the way it did, with that single horrible word, was just perfect.
One small problem for the inevitable film adaptation: that ending doesn’t quite follow the typical expectations of a movie. More directly? “Cat Person” the story doesn’t have a “third act,” a pretty hefty ask for “Cat Person” the film. And while Susanna Fogel’s feature film version of the story is appropriately excruciating (this is a high compliment; mostly, it will set your teeth on edge and raise the hairs on the back of your neck, just as it should), its muddled, messy, and brand-new final act feels at odds with Roupenian’s story and the very emotions it raised with its readers.
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Adapted for the screen by “Masters of Sex” creator Michelle Ashford (who certainly knows a thing or two about the ins and outs of human sexuality, power dynamics, and interpersonal communication), Fogel’s “Cat Person” boasts a strong start. College sophomore Margot (“CODA” breakout Emilia Jones) is wiling away another evening working the concession stand at her local arthouse theater when the awkward (but maybe cute?) Robert (“Succession” star Nicholas Braun) arrives, offering the bored Margot a chance to flirt, if only to break up the monotony of her night. Soon enough, he’s back, asking for Margot’s number and giving the whipsmart (but not street-smart) woman a new curiosity to occupy her time.
But even Margot is hip to more pressing concerns, like, oh, the general anxiety of being a woman in this world. And as she walks back to her dorm, all alone in the night, her best pal and roommate (the always-welcome Geraldine Viswanathan, taking on a role expanded from that of “Tamara” in the short story) chatters to her on the phone about being safe, getting home in good time, trying not to be murdered, etc. LOL! Isn’t being a lady fun?
It is, and it also isn’t, and that’s just one of the many binaries that exist in this story — the line between cute and weird, alluring and tragic, adventurous and just plain scary — and that Fogel ably examines in the film. Jones and Braun also make for keen casting, with Jones winningly working the line between Margot’s relative innocence and her tricky desires, and Braun turning creepy when you least expect it (again, another compliment).
Like Roupenian’s story, much of “Cat Person” the film hinges on the early, giddy text exchanges between Margot and Robert. They’re zippy and fun and flirty, so much less awkward than their in-person interactions, and while it’s initially hard to grasp why Margot is even giving this guy the time of day, their textual chemistry makes a fine case. Fogel shows texts in various formats, both with on-screen chat bubbles and glimpses of Margot’s actual phone. We hear her tapping out messages, we eagerly await the ding of an incoming text, we’re right there with her. That’s how it should be.
Fans of the story will not be disappointed by the bulk of the film, which adheres closely to Roupenian’s text (never fear, Robert’s horrifyingly bad kissing is very much here, even more disgusting and hilarious in the hands — mouths? — of Jones and Braun). Even before the film hits the skids on its final act, there’s more padding on offer, and understandably so (the film clocks in at just under two hours, and it rarely drags).
Some of it is more funny than necessary (like that Taylor runs a feminist subreddit called “The Vagenda”), while some is oddly undercooked (Margot’s work alongside a beloved professor, played by Isabella Rossellini, feels like a limp attempt at adding an anthropological element to the whole thing). Other expansions add important context, like a trip home that sees Margot’s mother (played by a wonderfully brittle Hope Davis) offering up romantic tips to her daughter that seem cogent and later prove disastrous.
The portrayal of Margot’s inner monologue — a key element of the story — is similarly handled in ways both good and bad. Quick-cut fantasy sequences in which Margot is actually attacked by Robert feel jarring and unnecessary, mostly because Jones’ solid performance already suggests her terror at appropriate moments and because Fogel has a damn fine time shooting other scenes with a horror-film feel (also aided by Heather McIntosh’s nerve-shredding score). A more complex sequence in which Margot imagines Robert unpacking his relationship worries to a therapist (Fred Melamed) works better, but nothing is as good as Margot talking to herself (literally) during an unnerving sex scene.
It’s that entire sequence that most directly showcases the strengths of this adaptation. And while bringing a second Margot into the picture might sound like the easy way out, the best part is, it’s not. It’s the much harder way, the much more painful, the much more honest. As Margot (and we) survey Robert’s house (no cats, despite his endless chatter about them, but plenty of empty McDonald’s cups and one hilariously placed “Minority Report” DVD), even those unfamiliar with the short story will know where this is headed.
The real drama? How Margot feels about it, how she tries to talk herself into an experience she does not want to have, all while Robert continually shows himself to be (at best!) a very bad dude indeed. It’s the finest parts of “Cat Person,” both story and film, distilled to a powerful essence.
Less successful is the film’s final act, which attempts to tie up all sorts of loose ends, answering questions that range from the mundane (does Robert really have cats?) to the unnecessary (is Robert really a bad dude?), all of them sewing up tight a story that hits much harder when it’s allowed to be more open. Is Robert really a bad dude? Isn’t that the point of this entire story? That Ashford attempts to answer it is odd enough, but the script folds back on itself so much that it, weirdly, becomes too muddled to land any of the hard and fast observations it was trying to make. What a bummer way to end it.
The final word on “Cat Person” the film? Not nearly as biting and perfectly pitched as the story that inspired it: It’s good…enough. It could have been more.
Grade: B-
“Cat Person” premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It is currently seeking distribution.
Saturday Night Live found the perfect host to bring it into 2023 in Aubrey Plaza. In addition to her deadpan delivery, she often treats press junkets, red carpets, and late-night interviews as her own experimental sketch show. It turned out to be a sort of homecoming for Plaza. She got her start in the entertainment industry in the NBC page program and even worked with the SNL set design department. Since those early years, she has built a surprising and impressive career with her role as April Ludgate in the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation, earned laughs in broad Hollywood studio comedies, and captivated in a litany of dark indie films from Ingrid Goes West to Black Bear. Hosting SNL caps off a stellar year for Plaza after the success of Emily the Criminal, which she starred in and produced, and her role in The White Lotus. Perhaps this all caused too high of expectations. The episode overall felt middle of the road, even though Plaza proved to be an excellent and enthusiastic first-time host.
Best sketch of the night
The Black Lotus – SNL
The episode was full of spoofs on recent pop culture entertainment from “M3gan 2.0” to “Avatar,” but “The Black Lotus” stood out as the best of the bunch. A terrific showcase for Ego Nwodim and Kenan Thompson, it makes a good argument for them to join The White Lotus cast next season as the hotel managers. The sketch allowed Chloe Fineman to reuse her Jennifer Coolidge impersonation and gave room for Plaza to show her range after playing Harper on the show’s second season. Most impressive is that the sketch works well for those who were fanatics of the series and for those who immediately dismissed the show as rich white people problems.
Worst sketch of the night
Avatar – SNL
Of the pop culture spoofs, “Avatar” was the worst. The sketch felt like an obligation as if the writers felt like they had to do something with the cultural phenomenon of Avatar. It lacked focus, direction, or commentary. It felt overlong, even though it was relatively short. It was a lazy sketch that relied more on costuming and sets than good writing or funny performances.
Reserve the next gen Samsung device All you need to do is sign up with your email and boom: credit for your preorder on a new Samsung device.
The most WTF moment of the night
Sam Smith: Gloria (Live) – SNL
It could be the best sketch of the night. It could be the worst sketch of the night. Sam Smith’s performance of “Gloria” was bizarre and bewildering. It took a while to realize that it was actually Sharon Stone surrounded by a choir in black sequin robes like a gay remake of Eyes Wide Shut. Smith sang in the back as Stone lounged before staring out into the horizon or the studio audience. Why all this was happening is up for debate. Is it camp? Is it a case of queerbaiting by an actual queer person? Is it a homage to Stone’s 1999 remake of the gangster film Gloria? We may never get the answer to these questions.
The most material of the night
Weekend Update: Colin Jost Interviews Rep. George Santos – SNL
The New York Times published its bombshell report about George Santos the day after the final 2022 episode of SNL.In the meantime, Santos’ web of lies has become as intricate as it is absurd. For SNL, it is the gift that keeps giving. Featured in a solid string of jokes in “Weekend Update,” Santos, played by Bowen Yang, made two separate appearances in the “Cold Open” and as a special guest on “Weekend Update.” There is something fascinating about Santos and the way that he embodies the fragility and failings of the democratic system in the United States.
MVP of the Night: Aubrey Plaza
Aubrey Plaza Monologue – SNL
While tempting to give the MVP slot to George Santos or even Molly Kearney, who had a good amount of screen time this week, Aubrey Plaza had the biggest impact on the episode. It was a mixed bag of sketches, but Plaza was committed throughout. She managed to show an impressively wide range of characters while infusing the show with her brand of off-beat deadpan humor. She was at her best during the monologue which played on her own history with SNL and NBC. She also managed to pull in a remarkable and peculiar collection of celebrity cameos from former co-star Amy Poehler to Tony Hawk to the aforementioned Sharon Stone, and even the President of the United States Joe Biden.
Stray Observations
Cecily Strong’s Verizon commercials got a shout out.
They felt like very short sketches this week, which was good and bad.
It was sort of funny when Michael Che didn’t seem to get the joke about the Staten Island Ferry.
“M3gan 2.0″ had some funny moments, but it needed to be pushed further and be much gayer. Like offensively gay. “Little Homo?” Just bleep out what she really should have said.
With Spy x Family‘s second season on the horizon and Buddy Daddies entering the fray as well, fans in the mood for upbeat humor and heartwarming slice-of-life scenarios have plenty of new favorites.
Whether the reader is a young fan just starting who can relate more to younger characters, or an older fan looking for a mood lightener after finishing a bleak seinen, there are plenty of manga featuring adorable kid protagonists navigating life with their friends and family.
SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY
Sweetness And Lightning
In one of the best anime about parenting, based on an equally good manga, newly widowed father Kouhei is struggling to balance work and raising his young daughter. One of the skills he most needs to work at is cooking, which he learns with the help of his student Kotori, a chef’s daughter.
Tsumugi gets just as much of a spotlight as the adults in the series. Much of the time, she goes through life with a cheerful smile, adoring her father and Kotori. But she is also dealing with the death of her mother, and often does not know how to handle the concept or the powerful emotions she’s feeling.
Magi: The Labyrinth Of Magic
While much of the action in Magi is carried out by adults young and old, the actual protagonist is the 10-year-old Aladdin, the mysterious Magi who seemingly appeared out of nowhere, with his flying carpet, magic flute, and loyal Djinn companion Ugo. He quickly befriends Alibaba, despite the older boy’s initial reluctance, and begins to explore the world.
Because he was raised in a separate dimension, Aladdin brings an innocence and kindness wherever he goes that is unfamiliar in an often-cruel society, always trying to understand even things and people that horrify him. Injustice confuses and enrages him, and as he matures and learns more about the world and himself, he uses his growing powers to create a better world alongside his friends.
Astro Boy
Because he was originally built to replace his creator’s young son, Astro Boy physically and mentally resembles an 8-year-old child. His round, wide-eyed, smiling face, designed by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, is one of the blueprints for the look of many future young manga protagonists, coming from one of the most influential manga ever written.
Programmed to be a good child and raised by a loving adoptive father after his creator abandoned him, Astro is as kind and heroic as he appears, believing wholeheartedly that he can foster peace between humans and machines. However, equipped with super strength, powerful weaponry, and the ability to fly, Astro is considerably stronger than the average robot, let alone the average boy, enabling him to protect his ideals and his loved ones.
Somali And The Forest Spirit
One of the most heartwarming anime of its season is this fantasy tale with a very grounded main story. A forest golem discovers an abandoned human girl in his territory, and the girl instantly latches onto him as a father. The golem decides to look after the girl until he can find her a human family, but that’s easier said than done in a world where humans have been hunted to near extinction by other creatures.
Despite the danger she is constantly in, Somali’s love for life and for her father are one of the cornerstones of both the show and the original manga. She and the golem are both learning how to relate to one another; she very much wants her dad to be happy too and tries very hard to be a good kid for him.
Cardcaptor Sakura
Even the younger shoujo heroines are usually at least in their early teens or close to it. The titular Cardcaptor Sakura in this classic ’90s manga is only 10 years old when she takes on the mission to recapture all the magical cards that she accidentally released from her father’s book. Using a magical wand, she must not only protect the town from them but claim their powers as well.
Sakura is joined in her quest by Syaoran, a boy her own age who competes with her for possession and mastery of the card spirits. He attempts to act as the typical cold and dismissive rival, but his burgeoning crush on her makes it very hard for him to maintain that image as they fight alongside each other.
Mahou Sensei Negima
Shounen heroes also trend towards their teens, but Negi Springfield is a 10-year-old magical prodigy who has not only graduated college way early, but is well on his way to earning his full magic license. However, to fulfill the requirements, Negi must complete a term teaching at a girls’ middle school, at which he must keep his magic secret.
Even leaving aside his career woes, Negi is also looking for his presumed-dead father Nagi, and is carrying plenty of baggage regarding that. He still keeps his chin up and always gives his all in everything he does. He bonds quickly with his students and is intensely protective of them; they in turn are fond of him, but find his efforts to act more dignified and mature than he is to be very funny.
Gakuen Babysitters
Though the protagonist is technically the teenage Ryuuichi, his toddler brother Kotaro and the other charges of Morinomiya Academy’s day care get the spotlight probably more often than the teens and adults do. From brash and aggressive Taka to cheerful baby Midori, the manga features an entire cast of adorable kids.
After their parents’ deaths, Ryuuichi is left to raise Kotaro on his own, and is constantly worrying about how Kotaro is affected by their loss. Kotaro isn’t given to showing much emotion, but he is very attached to his big brother, constantly trying to make Ryuuichi happy and afraid he’ll disappear one day too.
Dragon Ball
Most Dragon Ball fans of today, if asked to think about Goku, would picture him as an adult, as he is for most of one of the best Shonen Jump anime of all time. However, the original manga began with him as a child living in the mountains, full of raw power and entirely ignorant of people who aren’t his adoptive grandfather until about the age of twelve, let alone how to interact with them.
Small for his age and highly enthusiastic, Goku is still just as brave and kindhearted as a child as he is as an adult, though he has yet to achieve the height of his Saiyan strength. He is also special in that, after mangaka Akira Toriyama fought his editors for it to happen, he is one of the first shounen kid heroes to actually age into a teenager and then an adult as the manga went on.
Hunter x Hunter
While Killua and Gon both have moments that earn them spots among the scariest characters in Hunter x Hunter, they are both compassionate kids with power their trainers describe as “one in ten million” potential. They are both exploring the world for the first time and are each other’s first friends: their genuine joy in their friendship and in new things they find around every corner is infectious.
Interestingly, while the two are following the same path as Hunters, they appear very different between their first and most recent appearances. Killua’s more intimidating side is shown off often in the beginning of the manga, but as he gets further from assassin life, his kindness shines through more. Gon is introduced as bright and innocent, but by the later arcs, his capacity for ruthlessness is brought into full and shocking display.
Spy X Family
In his undercover mission, secret agent Twilight must acquire a family, so he marries assassin-disguised-as-civil-servant Yor and adopts telepathic orphan Anya, oblivious to their true natures. All three family members get largely equal time in the spotlight, including Anya, who, thanks to her power to read minds, knows all the secrets her new parents try to hide.
Though she doesn’t always understand what’s going on around her or in people’s heads, being only about four, Anya is determined to do the best she can in everything she does, whether it’s struggling with advanced classes in her elite school or trying to help her dad in his missions. Her earnest approach to her daily life endears her to both her parents and many manga fans.
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences today announced the winners of the 74thannual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards, which will be handed out in April. See the list below.
The awards are given to a living individual, a company or a scientific or technical organization for developments and/or standardization involved in engineering technologies that either represent so extensive an improvement on existing methods or are so innovative in nature that they materially have affected television.
The awards ceremony is set for Sunday, April 16, as part of the National Association of BRoadcasters convention in Las Vegas.
“The Technology & Engineering Emmy Award was the first Emmy Award issued in 1949, and it laid the groundwork for all the other Emmys to come,” said NATAS President and CEO Adam Sharp. “We are extremely happy about honoring these prestigious individuals and companies, again in partnership with NAB, where the intersection of innovation, technology and excitement in the future of television can be found.”
Here are the winners of the 2022 Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards:
Invention and Development of the Pinned Photodiode Now Used in Most Image Sensors Winners: Nobukazu Teranishi, NEC
Extraction of Granular Census Level Behavioral Data Using ACR Winners: Cognitive Networks, Enswers, Turner Media Lab
AI-ML Curation of Sports Highlights Winners: WSC, IBM, Comcast, Google
Digital Cinema Camera Mounted Video Extender for Live Audiences Winners: MultiDyne, ARRI
Pioneering Development and Deployment of Virtualized Cable Modem Winners: Harmonic, Comcast, Intel
TV PIONEER HALL OF FAME
Llewelyn Birchall Atkinson Jean Lazare Weiller Thomas Alva Edison Jan Szczepanik Constantin Dmitrievich Perskyi
On January 20, EmRata gave fans a peek at an unknown project, sharing photos and videos of herself being dropped from mid-air wearing nothing but a safety harness and strappy black heels. “I do my own stunts,” she captioned the post with a sunglasses smiley face emoji.
While Ratajkowski is particularly well known for her role in Gone Girl and the 2013 “Blurred Lines” music video, it’s likely this shoot, led by fashion photographer and director TORSO, is more likely for an upcoming campaign. According to their Instagram feed, the artist has recently worked with Shakira for Burberry, Bella Hadid for Mugler, and Nicki Minaj for Interview Magazine, just to name a few.
Perhaps we can look forward to a Viktor & Rolf video campaign, as Emily Ratajkowski was recently named the face of their Flowerbomb fragrance, which originally launched in 2005. “It’s so crazy—your mom knows the fragrance, but so does a 12-year-old girl,” she recently told Glamour. “When I first booked the campaign, my best friend was like, ‘Are you kidding? I was wearing that in high school and then when I first moved to New York, I’d get it in Chinatown.’ She was like, ‘That is the fragrance.’”
Ratajkowski, however, says she was pretty inexperienced with the beauty world when she was first starting out. “My first beauty product was something terrible, probably sparkly eye shadow from Limited Too,” she recently told Glamour. “I failed so much with beauty when I was younger because I would just let people do whatever they wanted glam-wise. Hair and makeup artists made me look insane, totally insane. But it’s kind of how I learned my face in a lot of ways and learned what colors look good on me, nothing too pink on my lips, and stuff like that.”
Go beyond the broadcast and join American Masters in person!
Whether it’s a theatrical screening or a film festival, your favorite documentaries can come to life right in your neighborhood.
This month, Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV will have its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Amanda Kim, the documentary will have its exclusive U.S. broadcast premiere on American Masters on PBS.
New York Knicks (25-22, seventh in the Eastern Conference) vs. Toronto Raptors (20-27, 12th in the Eastern Conference)
Toronto; Sunday, 6 p.m. EST
FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK NBA LINE: Raptors -2; over/under is 224
BOTTOM LINE: Toronto comes into the matchup with New York after losing three games in a row.
The Raptors are 3-9 against division opponents. Toronto has a 12-15 record against teams over .500.
The Knicks are 16-13 in Eastern Conference play. New York is fifth in the Eastern Conference scoring 114.3 points per game and is shooting 45.6%.
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Raptors Superfan Nav Bhatia gears up for new season
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The two teams match up for the fourth time this season. The Raptors defeated the Knicks 123-121 in overtime in their last matchup on Jan. 16. Fred VanVleet led the Raptors with 33 points, and RJ Barrett led the Knicks with 32 points.
TOP PERFORMERS: Pascal Siakam is scoring 25.2 points per game with 8.2 rebounds and 6.6 assists for the Raptors. VanVleet is averaging 18 points and 5.5 assists over the last 10 games for Toronto.
Julius Randle is shooting 45.7% and averaging 24.4 points for the Knicks. Jalen Brunson is averaging 22.5 points over the last 10 games for New York.
LAST 10 GAMES: Raptors: 4-6, averaging 116.0 points, 42.9 rebounds, 24.8 assists, 8.7 steals and 5.8 blocks per game while shooting 44.8% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 115.4 points per game.
Knicks: 6-4, averaging 113.6 points, 48.4 rebounds, 18.8 assists, 5.1 steals and 4.1 blocks per game while shooting 45.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 111.9 points.
INJURIES: Raptors: Otto Porter Jr.: out for season (foot), Fred VanVleet: out (rib), OG Anunoby: day to day (ankle), Dalano Banton: out (hip).
Knicks: Mitchell Robinson: out (thumb).
___
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar.
Lisa Marie Presley is being honored with a public memorial service at Graceland — the historic home of her late father Elvis Presley. The event is being live streamed by Graceland’s official website at 9 a.m. on Sunday, Jan. 22, and the video feed can be seen right here below. “In addition to family and friends, the general public is invited to attend,” Graceland’s website confirms. “Following the service, there will be a procession to view Lisa’s final resting place in Meditation Garden.”
The service will be attended by Lisa Marie’s mother, and Elvis’ ex-wife, Priscilla Presley, 77, as well as Lisa’s surviving children: Riley Keough, 33, whom she shares with first ex-husband Danny Keough, and her twin girls, Finley Lockwood and Harper Lockwood, 14, who’s dad is her fourth ex-husband Michael Lockwood. Both of her ex-partners are also expected to attend. Lisa has one brother via Priscilla, Navarone Garibaldi, who will also be present. Notably, she was also married to the late Michael Jackson as well as actor Nicolas Cage.
The Now What singer tragically lost her second eldest child, Benjamin Keough at the age of 27 in 2020. She will be buried next to her late son on the Graceland property, which is also where her father Elvis was laid to rest, as well as grandparents Vernon, and Gladys, and her great grandmother, Minnie Mae.
Lisa Marie Presley’s public memorial is set for Sunday, Jan. 22. ( Damian Dovarganes/AP/Shutterstock)
A day ahead of the service, images of her above ground stone sarcophagus were released. The large gray tomb stone is similar in style to her son Benjamin’s, which it will be directly next to.
Lisa sadly passed away at the age of 54 on Jan. 12 after going into “full cardiac arrest” at her Calabasas area home, where she was living with ex Danny. The musician found her unconscious and administered CPR while medical help was called. Lisa was sadly pronounced brain dead at West Hills Hospital, and died shortly after experiencing a second heart attack later that day.
Priscilla confirmed the death of her daughter in a heartrending statement to AP. “It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,” she said. “She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known. We ask for privacy as we try to deal with this profound loss. Thank you for the love and prayers. At this time there will be no further comment.”
More details have emerged around what we can expect from the iPhone 15 coming later this year: thinner bezels on the two Pro models, and curved edges on all four handsets, for an Apple Watch-like aesthetic.
This comes from experienced Apple tipster ShrimpApplePro (opens in new tab) (via MacRumors (opens in new tab)), who says that the display sizes on the four phones will remain the same as last year. What’s more, the Dynamic Island will be making its way to every model too.
The tipster emphasizes that the screens will remain flat – it’s only the bezels that will curve into the rest of the phone casing. However, there’s apparently not going to be much change in the design of the selfie camera phone unit.
Well I have the result for the display design of the iPhone 15 series. – all iPhone 15 series will have the same display sizes as iPhone 14 series- pro 15 will have thinner bezels with curve edges, display is still flat tho, only the bezels is curveJanuary 21, 2023
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The return of the curves
Take a look at the iPhone 14 and you’ll see that the bezels are already impressively thin, so it’s going to be interesting to see exactly how much they’re going to be reduced when it comes to the two more expensive handsets in the range.
We’re also keen to see these curved bezels too. It’s possible that Apple may go back to a more curved design overall, something like we saw with the iPhone 11. It wouldn’t be the first time that an iPhone screen tapered away at the edges.
The source here calls the most expensive model the “iPhone 15 Pro Max (aka Ultra)”, acknowledging that we’re still not sure what Apple is going to call this phone: we’ve heard several iPhone 15 Ultra rumors in recent weeks.
Analysis: the most beautiful iPhone yet?
The same leaker that has provided this new information also says that the iPhone 15 Pro Max (or iPhone 15 Ultra) is apparently “very beautiful” – and from the description we can see how these phones would have a lot of visual appeal.
With the bezels thinner on the Pro models, almost all of the screen will be taken up by actual pixels. Add in the curved effect right at the edges, and we get the impression that the iPhone 15 lineup might be very easy on the eye indeed.
While these thinner bezels aren’t coming to the iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Plus, according to the rumor, those handsets are also going to curve slightly at the edges. The angular look is out, and the more rounded look is back in, it would seem.
Given the experience and expertise of Apple’s design team, we’re now very much looking forward to seeing what the iPhone 15 series has to offer in terms of what they actually look like – and it’s been a few years since we’ve been able to say that.
The Deadline Studio at Sundance Film Festival runs January 20-23 at Hotel Park City, where the cast and creatives behind the best and buzziest titles in this year’s lineup sit down with Deadline’s festival team to discuss their movies and the paths they took to get to Park City.
INFINITY POOL
Section: MIDNIGHT Director: Brandon Cronenberg Screenwriter: Brandon Cronenberg Logline: James and Em Foster take off to an all-inclusive beach getaway in the fictional state of Li Tolqa to help jump-start his writer’s block. Their lazy days are spent relegated to their pricey resort, isolated from the surrounding land. Gabi introduces herself and her partner, Al, as she’s a fan of James’ last novel, and they would like to spend some time together with the Fosters. The couples plan a secret daytrip outside the compound that ends in a fatal accident with James to blame. For a hefty price, there are loopholes to aid foreign travelers convicted of crimes there, which is how James is first introduced to a perverse subculture of hedonistic tourism. Panelists: Cronenberg, Mia Goth (Gabi), Alexander Skarsgard (James) and Cleopatra Coleman (Em) Distributors: NEON First Screening: January 21, 11:55. MST, The Ray Theatre
Theatrical Release: Jan. 27 Key Quote: Cronenberg wrote the movie before his previous 2020 Sundance premiere, Possessor. “I started writing a short story a number of years ago, about the first execution scene, this idea of alternate reality fictional country, where people are executed for certain crimes, but they can have a double made of them to stand in for the execution. The story was about the one situation. Then as I was expanding it, I kept going back to memories I had of a resort I stayed at many years ago. They would bus you in at night…You’d be dropped in this weird resort compound surrounded by razor wire fence,” says the filmmaker.
Click above to watch the panel video, and track all of our Deadline Studio content here.
The 2023 Sundance Film Festival takes place from January 19-29. Follow Deadline’s complete coverage of the deals and the doings in Park City here.
Police in California responded to reports of a shooting that happened following a large Lunar New Year celebration in the east Los Angeles community of Monterey Park late Saturday.
According to multiple media reports, the shooting happened in Monterey Park just after 10 pm, with one witness telling the LA Times that they believed the shooting happened at a local dance club.
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, an official in the local Los Angeles government, posted a tweet sharing condolences after the news broke.
“Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones tonight in our neighboring city, Monterey Park, where a mass shooting just occurred,” he tweeted. “Monterey Park is home to one of the largest Asian communities in Los Angeles County, and many were out celebrating the Lunar New Year.”
Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones tonight in our neighboring city, Monterey Park, where a mass shooting just occurred. Monterey Park is home to one of the largest Asian communities in Los Angeles County and many were out celebrating the Lunar New Year.
Many details about the shooting remain unclear, including the number of casualties. However, the LA Times reports that internal police communication state that there have been fatalities.
A witness named Seung Won Choi, who owns a restaurant in the vicinity of the shooting, told the LA Times that three people “rushed” into his restaurant and told him to lock his door.
The newspaper continues to report that the people told Choi that there was a shooter with a machine gun and multiple rounds of ammunition in the area.
Earlier in the day, thousands of people had gathered in Monterey Park for the Lunar New Year festival. Saturday was the start of the two-day festival, and it is one of the largest Lunar New Year events in Southern California, AP reported.
The Monterey Park government website says that past Lunar New Year events in Monterey Park have “drawn crowds estimated at over 100,000 visitors per day from all over the Southern California area.”
Doing something out of desire rather than need is always the better way. That’s the happy situation for the Sundance Film Festival as this annual showcase of independent cinema reinvents itself for its 2023 edition.
Running Jan. 19-29 in Park City, Utah, the festival will for the first time be a hybrid affair, with screenings both in-person and online. For the past two years, due to the pandemic, the fest was forced to move online only.
Shaking off the COVID blues, Sundance is returning to its hometown next to the Wasatch Mountains, welcoming movie lovers back to picturesque Main Street and to such familiar local theatres as the cavernous Eccles, the Art Deco Egyptian and the barnlike Library.
But the fest also wants to hold onto the big online audiences it attracted in ’21 and ’22. You can bet that festivals everywhere, Toronto’s TIFF among them, will be watching to see if the combo works.
“Our online festival has been such a success that it is hard to let go of it,” Sundance senior programmer Heidi Zwicker said via email.
“It has not only expanded the access public audiences have to the festival, it has also provided new access to international industry members who could never make the trip to Utah. We know it is not possible for everyone to attend Sundance who wants to attend, and our online component has helped solve that problem.”
Sundance is hedging its bets by staggering start dates: the in-person version of the fest begins Thursday but public online screenings won’t commence until Jan. 24, with both formats ending on Jan. 29.
Online screenings are limited to U.S. viewers only, but international viewers, Canadians included, can get some of the Sundance spirit by watching online its popular “Beyond Film” discussion panels during the second week of the fest. One panel sure to attract attention, with participants that include rising star Jonathan Majors, is titled, “Going Nowhere? On Burnout and Attention Crisis.” (There’s no charge for the online panels but you need to register for a free account at festival.sundance.org.)
Even as it tinkers with the format for its 39th edition, Sundance is still promising to offer the best in independent cinema. It will screen 110 features and 64 shorts selected from thousands of submissions worldwide. The features are diverse: 56 per cent of them are directed by women and 49 per cent by people of colour.
It will be hard to top last year’s success: family comedy “CODA” and music documentary “Summer of Soul” premiered at Park City and went on to win Best Picture and Best Documentary Feature respectively at the Academy Awards.
High on the list of buzzed-about films at Sundance 2023 are two literary adaptations: Susanna Fogel’s “Cat Person” and William Oldroyd’s “Eileen,” both screening in the multiplex-friendly Premieres section of the fest.
“Cat Person” is based on one of the most-read and most controversial short stories of the 21st century: Kristen Roupenian’s 2017 tale of the same name in the New Yorker, based in part on a true story, which exploded in print and online just as the #MeToo sex abuse reckoning was getting underway. College student Margot (“CODA” star Emilia Jones) meets the considerably older Robert (Nicholas Braun, TV’s “Succession”) and thinks it’s a great match until reality harshly intrudes.
“Eileen,” a psychological thriller set in the wintry New England of 1964 and based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s award-winning novel, stars Anne Hathaway as a new employee of a prison who bonds with a younger co-worker, a secretary played by Thomasin McKenzie. Hathaway’s character has a secret; the movie by “Lady Macbeth” director William Oldroyd has sinister things to reveal.
Finding the dark truth of a place also animates “Infinity Pool,” a horror film by Toronto’s Brandon Cronenberg (“Antiviral,” “Possessor”) that’s set in an exclusive island resort in an unnamed Eastern European country. Starring Alexander Skarsgard, Mia Goth and Cleopatra Coleman, it’s a cautionary tale about wealth trumping morality that suggests it would make a great triple bill with such recent A-list attacks as “Triangle of Sadness” and “The Menu.”
Screening in Sundance’s Midnight section, where such horror classics as “The Blair Witch Project,” “Saw” and “Hereditary” were launched, “Infinity Pool” heads straight to theatres after its Sundance debut, opening Jan. 27.
It’s a strong year for Canada at Sundance. Besides “Infinity Pool,” there are four other long-form productions having their world premieres in Park City: Ido Mizrahy’s “The Longest Goodbye,” a documentary about a NASA scientist studying the risk of social isolation in Mars-bound astronauts; Lin Alluna’s “Twice Colonized,” a doc about Inuk lawyer and activist Aaju Peter as she searches for the truth about her son’s violent death; Jacqueline Castel’s Midnight program chiller “My Animal,” a secret-laden love story between a goalie and a figure skater in a northern town; and Xavier Dolan’s “The Night Logan Woke Up,” a TV mystery series set in 1991 in a Quebec town that sounds a lot like Twin Peaks, screening in the Indie Episodic Program.
Other hot Sundance 2023 picks include Roger Ross Williams’ “Cassandro,” a fact-based drama starring Gael García Bernal as a flamboyant Mexican wrestler known as “the Liberace of lucha libre”; Alice Englert’s wicked comedy “Bad Behaviour,” in which former child model Jennifer Connelly (“Top Gun: Maverick”) plays an out-of-control former child actor, wrecking the weekend retreat led by her guru (Ben Whishaw, “Women Talking”); and Elijah Bynum’s “Magazine Dreams,” the story of an amateur bodybuilder who goes to extremes, featuring actors from two recent Sundance breakouts, Jonathan Majors (“The Last Black Man in San Francisco”) and Taylour Paige (“Zola”).
Sundance is also known for its wealth of documentaries about famous and infamous people. This year’s bounty includes Lana Wilson’s “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields,” Thom Zimny’s and Oren Moverman’s “Willie Nelson & Family”; Lisa Cortés’ “Little Richard: I Am Everything”;Davis Guggenheim’s “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”; and Anton Corbijn’s “Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis),” a doc about the mad artists behind the covers of many classic rock albums, including Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.”
The subjects of Sundance docs usually show up at the premieres, another reason for movie lovers to brave the snow and slush of Park City and to attend the fest in person. Imagine bumping into Brooke Shields, Willie Nelson and the ghost of the late Little Richard on Main Street.
Peter Howell, a Star contributor, is a movie critic in Toronto. Follow his Sundance posts on Twitter: @peterhowellfilm
SUNDANCE SENIOR PROGRAMMER HEIDI ZWICKER OFFERS THREE FEST BETS:
• “Polite Society” (Nida Manzoor): “This is playing the Midnight section but don’t assume that it is a dark, horrific watch. I think it’s your best bet for a high-energy, uproariously funny movie at the festival this year. It follows a teenager’s martial arts-infused quest to prevent her older sister’s upcoming nuptials.”
• “Past Lives” (Celine Song): “This is an exciting feature film directorial debut from playwright Celine Song. It is an achingly beautiful drama that follows two childhood friends from Seoul who reunite as adults in New York City.”
• “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields” (Lana Wilson): “I am a big fan of documentary filmmaker Lana Wilson, and she continues to impress with her new film. This one explores Brooke Shields’ life in front of the camera, and dives deep into the sexualization of her as a child in pop culture and how she processes that today as a mother of two daughters.
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A day after the Golden Globes were telecast, the Screen Actors Guild Awards announced their nominees for the February 26, 2023 ceremony, to take place at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. Considering the dismal ratings that The Golden Globes received once again—airing on NBC—it’s not surprising that the SAG Awards will be going with a streaming platform for their telecast for the first time.
Usually a staple for the TNT/TBS channel for decades, the SAGs will run on Netflix’s YouTube channel, with plans to stream the award show directly on Netflix the following year. I wouldn’t be surprised if more award ceremonies go the way of streamers. Once a staple for the few basic television stations, the audience has been declining for all of them over the years.
Netflix Head of Global TV Bela Bajaria said in a press release: “The SAG Awards are beloved by the creative community and viewers alike, and now even more fans around the world will be able to celebrate these talented actors. As we begin to explore live streaming on Netflix, we look forward to partnering with SAG-AFTRA to elevate and expand this special ceremony as a global live event in 2024 and the years to come.”
Still, the SAG Awards have proven to be strong Oscar predictors in the past, with last year’s Actor winners—including Will Smith for King Richard (and the infamous slap), Jessica Chastain for The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and the sweep for CODA(a Sundance darling): the ensemble cast, Troy Kotsur, and Ariana DeBose—translating SAG wins into Oscars. That isn’t the case every year, and this year seems more of a mixed bag of titles than shoe-ins of performances that might continue to win all award season long like they did last year.
The surprise award season favorites will continue their streak into the SAGs with the dark Irish comedy The Banshees of Inisherin and the sci-fit sensation Everything Everywhere All at Once leading the field. Tying for five nominations each, they equaled the record set by critically acclaimed films Shakespeare in Love, Chicago, and Doubt, and swept the actor categories and ensemble nom. Expect co-stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan to be frontrunners in their respective actor fields, coming off their Globe wins Tuesday night. They will remain the betting favorites for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor.
Among the snubs, perhaps the biggest is the highly acclaimed performance of Michelle Williams in Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical tale, The Fabelmans, which won Best Director (of course!) and Best Drama at the 80th Globes ceremony. Instead, her spot seems to have been taken by Ana de Armas for the critically panned Blonde, a biopic of Marilyn Monroe.
Other surprise noms included Adam Sandler in The Hustle, and the well-deserved Hong Chau in The Whale as well as Stephanie Hsu for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Babylon—which received mixed reviews—was also surprised with an ensemble nomination. Other notable omissions include award-circuit darlings Tyler James Williams (who just won a Globe on Tuesday!) and Sheryl Lee Ralph (an Emmy winner) for the lauded Abbott Elementary. The heavily nominated Sebastian Stan and Lily James, who turned in chameleon-like performances in Pam and Tommy, were also left off the SAG list.
Two eyebrow-raising inclusions were The Patient’s Steve Carrell and 1883’s Sam Elliott, the sole nom from the Yellowstone camp. Continuing criticism that award shows don’t celebrate popular vehicles such as Yellowstone, it looks like the 29th SAG Awards will do nothing to let up pressure on that point, with no nominations for the series despite its huge success and Kevin Costner’s win at the Globes just last night. Equally perplexing was the exclusion of House of Dragon, which won Best Drama on Tuesday at the 80th Golden Globes. However, Severance—the series that I thought should have won over House of Dragon anyway—is thankfully included (and should win).
Perhaps the biggest disappointment is once again in the Director category, with no female nominations, despite seemingly making inroads with well-deserved back-to-back wins for Chloe Zhao for Nomadland and Jane Campion for The Power of the Dog. I can’t tell you how dispiriting it is that there are no female directors nominated this year, despite the influx of talented, powerhouse women turning out amazing work each year. Let’s hope this is a fluke (please).
Over the years, the film industry has gone through many, many changes. Studios have fallen apart, and new ones have taken their place. Generations of actors have come and gone. Genres have gone back and forth in popularity. The ways in which people watch movies have drastically changed. Most notably, what movies have been allowed to do has changed. A defining characteristic of an “old” movie is that there is no cursing or vulgar language, no sex or nudity, and no graphic violence or gore. It’s not that these movies were wholesome, it’s that they didn’t include any actions or language that could be deemed inappropriate.
From 1934 to 1968, film studios had to follow a guideline called the Hays Code. Also referred to as the Hollywood Codes or Production Codes, the Hays Codes regulated what studios were allowed to include in their films during the majority of Hollywood’s Golden Age of film. This dictated everything from costumes that could be worn, words that were allowed to be said, actions that could be depicted, to the actual plot of the film. The Codes specifically prohibited profanity, graphic violence, suggestive nudity, sexual encounters, and rape. Married couples could not even be shown sleeping in the same bed during this time period.
After the Hays Codes ended, the shift in filmmaking is noticeable. Hollywood had already started to loosen up a bit in the ’50s when movie studios were granted free speech protection under the First Amendment, but the stark difference didn’t occur until after 1968 when the Codes officially ended. Filmmakers from 1969 until now have been able to make films about whatever they want, however they want. This is great because so many incredible films would not have been made if the Codes were still in place. However, a lot of classic films have come out of the Golden Age as well, such as Casablanca, and even more films that go underappreciated. So, here are ten films from Hollywood’s Golden age that are underrated:
Released a year before the Hays Codes went into effect, She Done Him Wrong stars Mae West as a seductive nightclub singer named Lady Lou who flirts with several gentleman suitors including an escaped convict and a handsome temperance league leader, Captain Cummings. Since the movie was made and released pre-codes, Lady Lou is quite suggestive and shows no remorse in stringing along multiple men. She is fully confident in herself and her femininity. She may not be a choice role model for young girls considering she does knowingly sting people along, but it was refreshing to watch a movie from that time period where the female protagonist is so empowered. It was also amusing to see a very young Cary Grant test out his comedy chops as Captain Cummings in one of his earliest film roles.
9 The Awful Truth (1937)
Columbia Pictures
A couple on the brink of divorce after baseless suspicions start undermining each other’s attempt to find a new romance in The Awful Truth. The physicality of screwball comedy that was prevalent in the ’30s is certainly present here with the full-body comedy of Cary Grant. There is a scene in which Irene Dunne’s character Lucy starts singing and Cary Grant’s character Jerry literally falls down. It is a classic battle of the sexes here, where Jerry meddles with Lucy’s new relationship at first, but then she turns the tables on him later on by toying with his new romance. The dialogue is fast and witty and the comedic timing is set to perfection. It is also clear that a lot of the lines and actions were improvised by Dunne and Grant, which only enhances the comedy elements.
8 Bell, Book, and Candle (1958)
Columbia Pictures
After the success of pairing James Stewart and Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the two were paired to star opposite each other two years later in Bell, Book, and Candle. The movie follows Gillian (Novak), a modern-day witch, who likes her neighbor but despises his fiancée. She casts a spell on him to make him love her instead, except she falls in love with him for real. BBAC at times feels like it served as inspiration for shows such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch or movies such as Practical Magic with its quirky characters and spell-binding magic. Novak and Stewart are of course great together, but the real charm of this movie is the beatnik culture of Greenwich Village that kind of parallels with the unconventional lives of the witches.
7 Mildred Pierce (1945)
Warner Bros.
After her unfaithful husband leaves her, Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford) sets out to prove she can be successful without him. Although, winning the approval of her spoiled daughter Veda proves to be an even greater challenge. To put it lightly, Veda is an ungrateful brat who could not care less about all that her mother has sacrificed in order to give her the life that she so desperately desires. She berates her mother for being a working woman. She looks down on her mother for not having a husband. She ridicules her mother for not being as wealthy as others every time her mom achieves something.
In the middle of a murder investigation after the death of her second husband, Mildred has to reevaluate her own freedom and her complicated relationship with Veda. Mildred Pierce is a scathing noir that looks into the complications of mother-daughter relationships, selfishness, and the ways in which social status can bring out the absolute worst in people.
6 Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Warner Bros.
Playwright and author Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) has always been against marriage, but suddenly falls in love and gets married. He makes a trip home to tell his unmarried aunts the news, but discovers that they have a rather disturbing hobby; poisoning lonely old men and burying them in their cellar. Arsenic and Old Lace is an over-the-top black comedy that leaves you laughing even when the movie has ended. The dysfunctional Brewster family also includes Mortimer’s delusional uncle (who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt) and his homicidal brother. Most of the movie takes place in the Brewsters’ living room as Mortimer continues to uncover secrets his oddball family has been keeping from him. The combination of his two aunts, his uncle, and his brother adds a hilarious dynamic to this already entertaining movie.
Although there was a 1978 remake starring Donald Sutherland, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is deserving of just as much attention as its remake. Heavily influenced by the Red Scare and McCarthyism tactics during the height of the Cold War, the movie follows a small-town California doctor whose patients are convinced that their loved ones are being replaced by alien imposters. He soon learns that these creatures plan to inhabit the bodies of humans and use our planet as their new home since their planet is struggling. The similarities to McCarthyism are basically identical. A group of people is terrified that a new enemy is hiding in plain sight among people they admire and respect. It was a very real fear that is depicted very well here.
4 The Killers (1946)
Universal Pictures
Two hitmen walk into a dinner one night looking for a man who is known as “the Swede”. The Swede knew they would be coming for him, so he doesn’t put up a fight when they do find him. He had a life insurance policy, so an investigator decides to look more into the murder and discovers that the Swede was in love with a beautiful woman who may have persuaded him into pulling off a bank robbery overseen by another man.
The Killers is film noir at its finest. It is actually based on Ernest Hemingway’s short story of the same name but expanded further by director Robert Siodmak. It has everything a noir needs; suspense, seduction, crime, and manipulation. There’s the femme fatale whom the male protagonist is foolish enough to help and ultimately pays for it. It’s everything that makes a film noir worth watching.
3 Indiscreet (1958)
Warner Bros.
In 1946, Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant charmed audiences in Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller Notorious. Their instant chemistry and convincing performances led them to star together again 12 years later, but this time in the romantic comedy, Indiscreet. Grant was obviously well versed in comedy among other genres, but Bergman had never done a comedy before. Bergman stars as an accomplished actress who has given up hope in finding the man of her dreams. Until Philip Adams (Grant) walks in, and she realizes this is the smart, handsome man she has been waiting for.
This is an easy, comforting watch thanks to the ever-present likability of Bergman and Grant. Essentially, it is 100 minutes of watching the two of them fall in love and all the ups and downs that come with romance. A smile will be on your face the entire time.
2 It Happened One Night (1934)
Columbia Pictures
People who are very into film and the history of film will likely know about Frank Capra’s screwball romantic comedy, It Happened One Night. However, more casual fans of movies likely have not seen it, or maybe have never even heard of it. Clark Gable stars as a renegade reporter while Claudette Colbert stars as a runaway heiress who meet by chance on a bus headed from Miami to New York. They end up stuck with one another after the bus leaves a rest stop without them.
The two of them wind up on a wild journey throughout the East Coast involving hitchhiking, pretending to be a married couple, and spending the night outside on a farm. There is a scene in the movie where Colbert’s character, in an attempt to hitch a ride, sticks her bare leg out on the road to get a male driver’s attention after Gable’s failed attempt to get anyone’s attention. This is a scene that has been recreated many times, though many people probably don’t realize where it originated from.
1 Charade (1963)
Universal Pictures
Surely the most Hitchcockian film not to be written or directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Charade follows Regina Lamper (Audrey Hepburn) in her return to Paris after falling for a man named Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) on a skiing trip in the French Alps. However, she discovers that her husband has been murdered, leading her and Peter to be chased by three of her husband’s World War II buddies who are after the quarter of a million dollars they had stolen behind enemy lines. Even more peculiar is that Peter keeps changing his name.
Charade is an absolute blast from start to finish. It’s a murder mystery with plenty of comical moments. It’s a shame that Grant and Hepburn weren’t in more movies together, because they make an outstanding pair. Their comedic timing bounces off each other smoothly, and they are able to ease into more serious moments just as easily. Their chemistry is captivating which amplifies both the humorous and the thriller aspects of the film
All signs point to “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis” and “The Fabelmans” all dominating the Oscar noms with eight apiece. But if “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Top Gun: Maverick” manage some pickups, they could join or surpass the group.
On Jan. 24, AMPAS will unveil its nominees for the 95th Academy Awards. The season has been marked by the return of the Hollywood blockbuster, and a love for old-fashioned movie extravaganzas will play a crucial role in how the nearly 9,600 members rank their ballots.
So what will be the story of the day?
Warner Bros’ musical biopic “Elvis” is looking to assemble a robust showing in the tech races, which doesn’t include an overdue career nom for director Baz Luhrmann. Still, its star Austin Butler is a lock for his first nod in best actor.
Martin McDonagh’s Irish comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin” might only nab one technical achievement in editing. Nonetheless, all four of its cast members are expected to be recognized, two being first-time nods for veteran stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson.
If “Fabelmans” garners the most noms, it would be the fourth Steven Spielberg film – after “The Color Purple” (1985), “Schindler’s List” (1993) and “Lincoln” (2012) – to lead the nomination tally in a given year. Despite a weak BAFTA showing, Spielberg and Universal’s movie is predicted to rack up multiple mentions, including best picture.
Among the eight categories is a surprise nom for Michelle Williams in supporting actress, despite campaigning in lead actress. Academy voters have the freedom to vote for an actor in any category they choose, which they’ve done a handful of times with “supporting” performers who were moved to lead (i.e., Kate Winslet in “The Reader”). However, there is precedent for the opposite effect occurring in history. Most recently with Lakeith Stanfield for “Judas and the Black Messiah” (2020), and notably with Kevin Kline for “A Fish Called Wanda” (1988). As Otto in the classic Charles Crichton comedy, Kline only landed a single mention during the respective season at the BAFTAs (in leading actor). He was one of the shocking inclusions on Oscar nomination morning, eventually going on to win best supporting actor. This doesn’t necessarily mean Williams is switched. Perhaps she’s missing out entirely?
Populist titles should see a decent day, with multiple sequels on the bubble for recognition. The aerial crowd-pleaser “Top Gun: Maverick” is the only new installment predicted to make the lineup. A surprising outcome, despite PGA recognizing four sequels, which also included the visual spectacle “Avatar: The Way of Water,” the emotionally-charged “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and the whodunit comedy “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.”
A24’s kickass multiverse gem “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” along with leads Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, are locked in their respective races. However, despite a strong Critics Choice Awards showing and a DGA nom, it could be an uphill climb for the visionary duo the Daniels to make it onto the directing roster. I’m reluctantly predicting their inclusion, but crossing my fingers for them and acting hopeful Stephanie Hsu.
As for the overall performance of studios, streaming giant Netflix looks to lead the tally with 15. That’s impressive considering the bleak outlook on its awards prospects earlier in the season. Now, with the German entry “All Quiet on the Western Front,” at least one best picture nom could be headed the streamer’s way (and maybe two with a possible shocker like “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”).
However, Oscar nomination morning may not be purely celebratory if the forecast of no women director nods becomes a reality. After a steady improvement in representation, we could see a strictly white male directing lineup — a first since 2011.
Gloss Up and Glorilla are so tight they have the same line from Rihanna’s “Umbrella” tattooed across their thighs: “When the sun shine we’ll shine together/Told you I’ll be here forever.” The Memphis rappers met at a local talent show in 2019 and soon started co-writing bars; in the years since, as Gloss wrote in a glowing Instagram caption, they’ve survived homelessness and pregnancy together, fighting “304s”—“hoes,” if you turn the elementary-school calculator upside-down—side by side. As Glorilla’s career skyrocketed from her massive hit “F.N.F. (Let’s Go),” rumors of beef between the friends started circulating. But they want you to know their connection is stronger than ever: On “BestFrenn,” a rowdy single from Gloss Up’s upcoming debut Before the Gloss Up, they take pleasure in rising above gossip and gassing each other up.
Accompanied by a wrestling-themed video, the irresistible track is a warning to their mutual enemies. “Ain’t no E-N-D, this shit forever, we don’t break or bend,” Gloss Up raps, fired-up over the synth squeaks and pounding bass of a classic crunk beat. Across the track’s two-minute rumble, the two exude enough swagger to command the attention of an entire WWE Smackdown! arena. “Bett’ not try my best friend,” they chant in unison, two heavyweight champs rooting each other on. Big Glo’s gruff delivery gives her smack talk a rougher dimension as she cackles and roasts anyone who dare test them. Don’t get between the powerhouse pair; as they’ve promised, they’ll “smack your granny, smack your cousin, smack your auntie and her friend,” then gleefully leave to twerk on the nearest headlights together.
With the 2023 Sundance Film Festival kicking off tomorrow, in-person in Park City and Salt Lake City, UT, for the first time since 2020, and keeping me busy in my role as Senior Programmer, this is typically the time of the year when w(n)td goes on hiatus for the duration of the Festival.
This year, it also makes for a fitting time to bring this site to a close, more or less. I’ve been posting about all things documentary since the summer of 2010, usually multiple times daily during the work week. While my writing has been less in-depth in recent years, making the site function more like a nonfiction release listing, it’s still been a time commitment. With others providing similar information – I recommend interested readers sign up for DOC NYC’s Weekend Watch newsletter – I feel like it’s time for me to step away from regular posting for the foreseeable future. I may pop in with an occasional post, such as notable Sundance announcements or listings of Sundance alumni releases, but, after 12.5 years and more than 8000 posts, my daily contributions to w(n)td have now wrapped.
Thanks to everyone who has checked out this site over the years, which I’ll continue to maintain as an archive. If you’re headed to Sundance, I hope to see you in person there.
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