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Monday, Oct 19th, 2026
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Kim Kardashian is being transparent about how her marriage to Kanye West affected her top spot. The 41-year-old creator of SKIMS recounted the time she realized she had entered high society while interviewing with Interview editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg for the magazine’s September 2022 American Dream edition.

Kardashian stated, “I believe that certainly got a large number of individuals to have a new level of reverence when I was with Kanye, and he was presenting me to a number of individuals.

The former couple started dating in 2012 and got hitched in 2014 before Kardashian filed for separation. North, 9, Saint, 6, Chicago, 4, and Psalm, 3, are their four joint children.

Not just her relationship with 45-year-old West has earned Kardashian new appreciation, according to her.

Additionally, I’ve noticed that people admire me more now that I’m attending law school, doing what I want, and being my own person. The addition of the star added levels.

Additionally, during her conversation with Interview, Kim Kardashian was complimentary of her recently ended relationship with Pete Davidson. Davidson remarked, “He’s a hottie,” when Ottenberg made a BDE joke and mentioned Davidson as a potential Interview cover star.

He is genuinely such a lovely person that they no longer manufacture people like him, she said. I’m eager to see what he has in store.

In a comedy on her SNL hosting debut in October last year, Kardashian and Davidson shared their first smooch. The following month, when they were seen arm in arm on a rollercoaster ride at Knott’s Berry Farm, their relationship was publicized. Then, in February, Davidson called Kardashian his girlfriend and openly acknowledged their romance to PEOPLE.

According to a source who spoke to PEOPLE, Davidson and Kardashian called it quits in August after dating for nine months. Their hectic schedule was a factor in their separation.

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Apple’s new iPhone 14 has all the usual tweaks and upgrades you’ve come to expect from an annual update, including a better camera and interesting new features such as the ability to detect when you’ve been in a car crash. It’s tempting, but do you actually need it?

A new smartphone is a major purchase that can cost anywhere from $200 to $2,000. The companies that make and sell the devices would like you to believe it’s necessary to shell out for a new one every couple of years. In reality, a smartphone can live a long and fulfilling life with proper maintenance and, if needed, a few repairs.

Go easy on your wallet and the environment by only buying new devices when you really need them. To help you decide when that time has come, the Help Desk has made this quiz to guide you.

Question 1 of 5

How old is your phone?

To find the date of purchase for a new iPhone, log into Apple’s support site and select your device. For an Android phone, log into the Play Store or your Google Account. If you bought a used phone, use the year that model was released.

Question 2 of 5

Is anything wrong with your phone?

Question 3 of 5

How important is camera quality to you?

Question 4 of 5

What features are you currently missing and willing to spend money for?

Question 5 of 5

How important is it that you be seen with the newest phone?

You need to answer every question to see your result. You’re missing questions 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.

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Apple’s new iPhone 14 has all the

Following the global success of “Squid Game,” Netflix’s Korean survival drama series that scored 14 Emmy nominations this year, Korean television companies are intent on producing more content that appeals to international audiences.

“We surely [don’t] want this to be a one-shot opportunity, and I do agree [‘Squid Game’] opened a lot of doors — not only for the experienced creatives or directors, but even a lot of opportunities for newly coming creatives and writers,” Albert Park, senior sales manager of CJ ENM, told Variety. “I do think that it’s our job now to work with all these talented, young and upcoming creatives to really put up a show that is unparalleled to ‘Squid Game.’” 

In a Variety Streaming Room panel presented by KOCCA, Variety deputy awards and features editor Jenelle Riley spoke to Park; global business director of MBC Haewon Chin; SBS executive director and FormatEast senior director Iljoong Kim; and president of Something Special Jin Woo Hwang. 

The panelists discussed the types of shows their platforms are developing, particularly those that feature “universal” content.

On MBC’s thriller series “Hunted,” Chin said: “It’s setting is in a very rural Korean site. But actually, when you look at the story — the emotional thing — the ambition and the greed that they are getting at is a very human thing.”

Another topic was current trends in Korean television, such as reality dating series. 

“In Korea, it’s really hard to express there’s a sexual desire or get involved in the explicit sexual behaviors, so I [would] say that there is an implicit censorship on the dating show,” Kim, who was accompanied by a translator, explained. “So when we combine the different and the foreign elements into a dating show, it will make the dating shows more interesting.”

Meanwhile, Park compared CJ ENM’s “Exchange” to Western dating show formats, describing “Exchange” as “more authentic.”

“It’s not focusing on the appearance — or what we call the bikini formats — but more on the emotional lines and [the] complications of really playing around with these emotions,” Park added.

Watch the full conversation above.

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Following the global success of “Squid Game,”

Taylor Swift claims two rival experts tapped to testify at her upcoming “Shake It Off” copyright infringement trial are “not qualified” to take the witness stand and should be blocked by the “gatekeeper” judge.

In a new motion obtained by Rolling Stone, the superstar argues one of the challenged witnesses has failed to give a legitimate basis for his claim that 50% of “Shake It Off’s” profits are attributable to the “players play” and “haters hate” phrases that songwriters Sean Hall and Nathan Butler allege were stolen from their 2001 song “Playas Gon’ Play,” written for the all-female R&B trio 3LW.

Swift, who claims the phrases are public domain, also says the disputed expert, Bob Kohn, should be barred from sharing his opinion that Swift’s song would lose all “force, meaning and energy” without the phrases.

“[Kohn] is a lawyer who plays no musical instruments and claims expertise because he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show and—like most if not all of us—listens to music,” the new motion that was filed Monday on Swift’s behalf by lawyers Peter Anderson, Sean M. Sullivan and Eric Lamm at Davis Wright Tremaine argues.

“His deposition testimony confirms he is simply making it up as he goes along,” the lawyers said of Kohn, a New York-based lawyer who authored a book on music licensing.

Swift’s motion further claims that a George Washington University musicology professor also slated to testify for Hall and Butler has no training in “comparative literary analysis.” Swift’s side claims such expertise is necessary because the lawsuit makes no claim related to “Shake It Off’s” musical composition, only its “substantially similar” lyrics.

“He does not have any understanding as to the methodology used in the comparative linguistic analysis of two works. He also does not teach literature or poetry and has never written a song or lyrics,” the motion reads.

The lawsuit, originally filed in 2017, was initially dismissed by U.S. District Judge Michael Fitzgerald in 2018, but it was revived on appeal and returned to his court by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Judge Fitzgerald has yet to rule on Swift’s request to bar the experts.

“Taylor and the other defendants have filed dozens of motions to avoid facing the merits of this case.  We believe the court will see through this blizzard of filings to allow justice to light the way forward,” Hall and Butler’s lawyer Gerard Fox said in a statement to Rolling Stone on Wednesday. 

In Hall and Butler’s song, the allegedly infringed lyrics are, “playas, they gonna play,” and “haters, they gonna hate.” According to Swift and her lawyers, the short phrases are free for everyone to use. In her song, the lyrics state, “Cause the players gonna play, play, play, play, play, and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate.”

A rep for Swift previously called the lawsuit a shakedown.

“These men are not the originators, or creators, of the common phrases ‘Players’ or ‘Haters’ or combinations of them. They did not invent these common phrases nor are they the first to use them in a song,” the rep told Rolling Stone. “Their claim is not a crusade for all creatives, it is a crusade for Mr. Hall’s bank account.”

The trial is set to begin January 17, 2023.

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Taylor Swift claims two rival experts

Karan Johar has penned a heartwarming note on his father Yash Johar’s birth anniversary. KJo has pulled out a major throwback moment featuring himself and Yash Johar to mark the day. Along with the picture, Karan Johar wrote, “Blessings” and added a folded hand emoji.

See the story here:

Yash Johar was an inspiration to KJo and the director always makes it a point to celebrate his late father. Before this, Karan had shared a montage and wrote, “Today along with Dharma, Yash Johar Foundation is also now a reality and continues to form itself into an establishment that is making a difference in the society we live in and I can’t help but feel that he’s still here.”

TOP SHOWSHA VIDEO

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Karan added that his father’s kindness and inedible nature always inspired people, especially him. He expressed the desire that he wanted to take his father’s legacy forward and pass it on to his children. He ended the post by stating that he misses his father every day.

See the video he posted here:

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overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;”><a href=”https://www.instagram.com/p/CTd4GBkoFLL/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading” style=” color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none;” target=”_blank”>A post shared by Karan Johar (@karanjohar)</a></p></div></blockquote> <script async src=”//www.instagram.com/embed.js”></script>

Karan Johar is currently busy with the promotions of Brahmastra. The film stars Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in lead. The Ayan Mukerji directorial also stars Amitabh Bachchan, Nagarjuna, and Mouni Roy in key roles. Shah Rukh Khan also has a cameo appearance in the film. It will release on September 8.

Apart from this, Karan has Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani in his kitty. With this, he will mark his return as a director. Ranveer Singh and Alia Bhatt will play Rocky and Rani, respectively.

Read all the Latest Movies News and Breaking News here

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Karan Johar has penned a heartwarming note

It’s not often that Marvel Studios or Sony Pictures re-release one of their big budget films on the big screen, let alone as a different cut.  Prior to this film, Marvel Studios re-released Avengers : Endgame, only to include an unfinished scene of the Hulk.  It was practically the same movie.  Spider-Man : No Way Home, by comparison, adds a bit more to the experience that it does make a difference in key areas.

SPOILERS BELOW

 

Spider-Man : No Way Home

Courtesy of Sony Pictures/Marvel Studios

 

Understanding the Magic

Of the most noticeable changes to this extended cut, is the new post credit scene taking the place of the Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness teaser.  This new scene follows a recap of the previous movies presented as a student movie made by Peter’s class.  Due to the impact of Dr. Strange’s second spell, this new scene confirms all documentation of Peter’s existence has been erased or altered.  This clarifies one of the biggest questions of the original release.

With the original cut, many were unsure of how exactly Strange’s new spell worked. A brief shot of a G.E.D test hints at the extent of the spell in the original cut.  This new scene, however, confirms all documentation of Peter’s existence is altered in some form.  In most cases, Peter is entirely removed from video or photos.  In one photo, a bird flies in view of where Peter’s face is, essentially scrubbing him from the photo.

Perception of Peter

Courtesy of Sony Pictures/Marvel Studios

Among the other notable changes is the additional sequences of Peter’s time at school following his acquittal.  The original film only briefly touches on how chaotic and stressed Peter feels about the situation.  This new scene, however, better connects us to Peter’s struggle with being a controversial figure, as he gives into the pressure of using his powers during class.  The additional scene with Betty Brant interviewing Peter’s teachers and Flash also adds to this, while providing a bit of comedy as well.

This cut also features the implementation of a cut scene that involved Tom’s brother Harry as a thief.  While this does break the pace a bit, it does offer a better look at how people view him as Spider-Man now.  Multiple civilians have differing viewpoints of him, with some supporting him, others pointing out his youth, and others critical of him.  One man speculates that he was even working with the thief to make himself look good in the public eye.  It also better displays the moment when Peter’s suit was stained with paint by a Mysterio supporter, which was only briefly seen as a video in the original film.

A Little More Fun Stuff

'Spider-Man: No Way Home' Returning to Theaters With 'The More Fun Stuff Version'

Courtesy of Sony Pictures/Marvel Studios

Perhaps the most exciting prospect of this extended cut was the promise of more time with all three Spidey’s.  This extended cut does give the audience just that, albeit by expanding a scene.  This new cut expands upon the conversation the three have prior to the final battle.  While it may not seem like much, the conversation they have flows much better. When re-watching the original cut, it’s hard not to notice the strange cuts in the conversation now.  It also gives the organic webbing conversation a much different context now.  Yes, it is exactly what many suspect it would reference.

Among other scenes added was a scene with Matt Murdock defending Happy from the law.

FINAL THOUGHTS – A LITTLE MORE FUN, BUT NOT MULTIVERSE SHATTERING

Overall, Spider-Man : No Way Home’s re-release doesn’t add enough that would drastically change the film.  Rather, the scenes included refined aspects of the existing story.  Often they add more context to existing plot elements, while other scenes let us get more in the character’s head space.  It’s overall a slightly better film than the original cut, a film which already stands as one of Spider-Man’s strongest.

Purchase Tickets Here.

It's not often that Marvel Studios or

House of the Dragon is now on its third episode.  Much like the previous episode, the quality continues to soar upwards, and the episode stands among the strongest in the realm of Westeros.

The Downfall Begins

Skipping forward a year, the issues setup in the previous two episodes are starting to take effect.  Viserys’ is slowly losing his grasp on the situation, and stress is overtaking him.  With a newborn son to Alicent Hightower, daughter of the Hand of the King, questions begin to arise as to whether or not young Aegon will supplant Rhaenyra as heir, or if Viserys will stick to his word.  Rifts begin to form, with Rhaenyra now scornful towards her former friend turned queen, and her father who longed so much for a son.

Rhaenyra

Courtesy of HBO

Dreamers and Dragon Riders

Once again, the performances of Paddy Considine and Milly Alcock stand out.  While they clearly still care for each other, much like life, politics is slowly tearing them apart.  Considine takes multiple scenes to stand out, with a bonfire scene that burns brighter than others.  It’s here that all of Viserys’ frustrations come out, with a compelling speech of dreams and dragon riders.  Alcock’s performance continues to draw parallels to Danerys, as moments of her cold, calculating, and mad nature shine, along with a serene side which appreciates life.  Animals play a large part in this episode, particularly a deer and a boar.  The interactions Viserys and Rhaenyra have with them provide subtle, yet fascinating insights to their character.

Daemon

Courtesy of HBO

Blood of the Dragon

It isn’t just these Targaryens that get to shine this episode.  While the first two-thirds focus on those in King’s Landing, the final section focuses on the encounter with the Crabfeeder, and it’s here the show gets its first major battle scene.  Daemon’s ruthless, yet careless abilities are put on full display.  While undoubtedly a skilled combatant, his aggressive nature is shown to get the best of him.  If not for the reluctant re-enforcement he received from Viserys, it’s all too likely he’d have been defeated.

The battle is short, but its fire burns brighter than many.  Like the best battles of Game of Thrones, it’s bloody, it’s intimate, and it ramps up the longer it goes.  In many ways, the episode brought back memories of episodes like Battle of the Bastards, or Winds of Winter.  So much is set up, paid off, and well executed that it is hard to find any faults.

Final Thoughts

House of the Dragon has now reached the point where it is truly standing on its own.  Unique plot lines, characters, and set pieces give this show its own distinct identity.  Still, with the emphasis on blood, politics, and bloodlines, the spirit of Game of Thrones is strong.  While the first two episodes showed promise, it couldn’t quite find its own voice yet.  With Episode 3, Second of His Name; House of the Dragon now stands as more than just a simple Game of Thrones prequel.

House of the Dragon is now on its

Hugh Jackman says he was driven to reach out directly to Florian Zeller to ask if he could star in The Son, the playwright-turned-filmmaker’s sophomore feature following his acclaimed — and Oscar-winning — directorial debut The Father.

Like The Father, The Son was adapted from one of Zeller’s plays, this time tackling the subject of depression and centering on 17-year-old Nicholas — newcomer Zen McGrath — whose growing struggle with mental health begins to devastate the lives of his New York lawyer father Peter (Jackman) and mother Kate (Laura Dern). Vanessa Kirby, meanwhile, plays Beth, Pete’s new partner, the arrival of whom and his parent’s divorce Nicholas largely blames for his deteriorating condition.

Speaking at the film’s press conference in Venice ahead of its world premiere on Wednesday evening, Jackman said he’d seen The Father and had almost appeared in one of Zeller’s plays, but the script for The Son gave him a rare burning desire that told him he had to play Peter.

“When I read The Son I had a feeling like a fire in my gut,” he said, speaking alongside Zeller, Dern, Kirby and McGrath. “It’s a scary feeling to have, but it’s beautiful. You rarely get it as an actor, that this part is right for you at this part of your life and you must get it.”

The fear, Jackman admitted, was the he wouldn’t get the part, so he emailed Zeller directly. “I said, I don’t know if you’re dancing with someone on this, and I don’t want to cut in on that dance.”

Thankfully, Zeller hadn’t been dancing with any other actor, and a subsequent Zoom meeting with Jackman immediately told him he had his man.

“After 8 minutes I offered him the part,” Zeller explained. “I felt something really strong about why he was connected to that story, and that we could explore really emotional territories. And it was the best decision I ever made, because from then on it was the most fruitful journey.”

Dern noted the timing of The Son, saying that film was being released during “greatest crisis” coming out of the pandemic, which is the “epidemic of mental health, especially in adolescents.”

“It’s frightening,” she said. “Even you feel powerless, even when you feel alone in shame, guilt and blame, you can turn to so many who have been there before and may advise you. We all long to feel community in this larger conversation we must be having about mental health.”

Following its Venice bow, The Son is scheduled to be released in the U.S. on Nov. 11.

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Hugh Jackman says he was driven to

Jane Fonda issued a thank you to fans and others who have reached out with words of support in the four days since she revealed she has Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system.

Fonda, writing on her website Tuesday night, said she was “deeply moved and uplifted by all the expressions of love and support.”

“My heartfelt thanks to all,” Fonda wrote. “The messages of love and support mean the world to me. I want to say again that this is a very treatable cancer and much progress has been made with the medicines patients are given. 

“Since last week, so many people have written to me or posted that they have had this type of cancer and have been cancer-free for many decades,” Fonda continued. “Well, I’ll soon be 85 so I won’t have to worry about ‘many decades.’ One will do just fine.” 

Fonda, who stars with her good friend Lily Tomlin in “Moving On,” which premieres this month at the Toronto Film Festival, said she will start chemotherapy in three weeks and felt “stronger than I have in years.”

“The doctor told me the best antidote to the tiredness that chemotherapy can cause is to move. Walk. And I have been walking. Very early before the record heat kicks in. Also working out,” she wrote.

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Jane Fonda issued a thank you to


The Bordelon family’s return for their final season wasn’t as much of a bang as was expected, but more of a slow burn.


Something was missing from Queen Sugar Season 7 Episode 1, or should we say, someone. 


Dawn-Lyen Gardner chose not to return as a regular cast member this season, and her absence was felt during this premiere.


Charley was such an integral part of this series that simply having her name mentioned or her face show up on the phone wasn’t good enough. Queen Sugar may follow the Bordelon family, but Charley’s journey led viewers into this world.


Charley struggled to feel a part of this family. Her determination, intelligence, and love helped save it from the brink. And with Sam Landry again trying to destroy the family farm, it feels like they need her now more than ever.


But Charley and Davis are offscreen, as Charley chose to pursue her political career in California, and none of that feels right.


I’m sure Charley will do good work anywhere, but wouldn’t she have more of an impact in a conservative, red state like Louisiana?


But with the actress choosing not to return, I suppose there’s nothing more to do than have this story go forward without her.


And there’s certainly no lack of talent amongst the rest of this cast.


For the first half of this premiere, it felt like they were torturing us by calling Ralph Angel and Darla’s daughter everything but her given name.


Tru Bordelon is the perfect way for Ralph Angel to honor his mother and connect this child with her family history.


Speaking of Ralph Angel, he’s trying to pull together the co-op and working on the fish trawler to make ends meet.


As Darla pointed out, perhaps that’s a good thing. Ralph Angel does better when he’s too busy to make poor choices.

This isn’t the end. We begin again. Like you did before, and they did before us.

Darla


And those very choices are what handed the Bordelon farm over to Sam Landry. It’s why Ralph Angel can’t even bare to drive by the farm now. It must be all the more painful knowing that this is his fault.


But he’s making up for it by putting his heart and soul into the black farmers’ co-op. As Mo pointed out, 80% of the people farming in Louisiana are black and brown, but only 3% are the owners.


It will be difficult to change that if these farmers default on their mortgages because the debt relief has stalled. It was a relief to hear Billie take that seriously, but I don’t have high hopes that they’ll get the answers they need from the bank.


It appears Billie has settled into St. Jo’s, but if she doesn’t pick up the phone and talk to her ex, it will be no surprise when he shows up on her doorstep to disrupt her new life.


Prosper asked Sandy on a date, and the fact that it took him six months to ask her has me waffling between whether I find it sweet or sad.

Billie: You look nice. Hot date?
Prosper: Oh, hush. Just heading over to Sandy’s. She needs help fixing her window.
Billie: You must have fixed her whole house by now, Daddy.


It was good to see that Micah and Isaiah are still friends and that there’s no awkwardness with Isaiah sending Micah pictures of the guy he finds cute.


But I have mixed feelings about Micah’s run-in with Keke.

Micah: Honestly, I was just surprised to see you.
Keke: I know. You looked like a deer at the start of hunting season. You never liked surprises.


Micah still comes across as insecure around Keke, and I wish he didn’t. I also didn’t appreciate Keke pushing Micah to get high even after he told her he had an important family function to attend. That felt adolescent and disprespectful.


I don’t enjoy seeing Micah as a player jumping from one bed to the next, but I’d also like to see him grow up and move on from Keke. This feels like Micah being pulled backward instead of moving forward.


Finally, we get to Nova.


Nova and Dominic have been working together and dating for six months. So why is it I’m still not sure about him?


Regarding the long-term sustainability of this relationship, I think Aunt Vi pulled on the right thread. Nova described their relationship as “nice,” with no drama. To which Vi replied, “If nice is enough for you, then God bless.”

Violet: What are you all gossiping about? Dominic? I want to hear. Spill it. It’s been six months. That’s almost a lifetime in Nova years.
Nova: Hey, that’s not fair. I’m not that bad. I was with Calvin for almost five years. I know. Four of those, he was still married. Nothing to tell. Dominic is great.
Violet: Well, we’re all glad. We like him, and we were worried. We didn’t want to lose him. You know, you can go through men like water.
Nova: Where is this coming from? And I haven’t only dated men.
Violet: And we never meet the ladies.


I think we all know that “nice” isn’t going to hold Nova’s attention for long. And the sparks were definitely flying when Nova met Mo.


This leads me to something interesting that Vi pointed out about Nova. She only introduces the men in her life to her family, not women.


Does that hesitance mean she’s not entirely comfortable with her bisexuality, or is it because she doesn’t believe her family will accept her with a woman? I’m hoping this is explored more in-depth during this final season.


But Nova has far more significant challenges than her love life. She’s being offered close to $1 million to turn Blessings and Blood into a movie.


That much money could be life-changing. Unfortunately, that book caused nothing but pain for her family. It reopened old wounds and unearthed buried traumas.


A movie would reach an even wider audience and bring more attention to the Bordelons. It’s hard to see how any good will come of it, yet how many of us could turn down that kind of money?


Finally, we learned that all of Nova’s good work in researching the living ancestors of the massacre was being turned against her family. The only upside of Sam Landry’s visit was that he didn’t have Parker in tow. If Charley isn’t there to keep Parker in check, I see no reason for the character to return.


Sam, and the secrets he and Violet still share, are more than enough to pique my interest and add plenty of intrigue.

Violet: Sam, you’re sure you want to go down this path? You know where it leads.
Sam: You didn’t leave us any choice, Vi.


So what did you think, Queen Sugar fans? Are you upset by Charley’s absence? Is Nova ashamed of her bisexuality? Will Nova and Dominic become a long-term couple? And are you already in love with little Tru Bordelon?


Click that big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button down below to share your thoughts on the latest Queen Sugar.

C. Orlando is a TV Fanatic Staff Writer. Follow her on Twitter.

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The Bordelon family's return for their final


HBO’s “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” as well as Netflix’s “Stranger Things,” lead the early Emmy tally heading toward TV’s big night: All three series landed five trophies during the Creative Arts Emmys, dispensed on two consecutive nights over Labor Day weekend, and are in the hunt for more high-profile prizes Sept. 12 when the 74th annual Primetime Emmy ceremony gets underway on NBC.

Variety special “Adele: One Night Only” and docuseries “The Beatles: Get Back” also scored five trophies, though they won’t figure in the Primetime Emmy ceremony. Those wins, along with the Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show’s victory for variety special (live), led some to quip that the Creative Arts Emmys felt more like the Grammys.

Also notable: Former president Barack Obama landed his first Emmy win, as narrator (for “Our Great National Parks”), while Netflix became the first streamer to take the animated program Emmy, with “Arcane.” And “Chip ’N Dale: Rescue Rangers” became the first animated victor in the TV movie category.

In bittersweet news, Chadwick Boseman won a posthumous Emmy for character voice-over performance (for “What If …”). And the team for “Full Frontal With Samantha Bee” won for outstanding short form nonfiction or reality series, just a few weeks after TBS canceled the show.

Bear in mind that success in artisan categories doesn’t necessarily equate to trophies at the Primetime ceremony. “Stranger Things,” for example, did well over the weekend but is up for only the outstanding drama statuette (and not any acting, directing or writing Emmys).

There are nonetheless new clues to consider before filling out ballots for office Emmy pools. Here are what some of the more notable wins at the Creative Arts awards might say about the Primetime Emmy telecast:

The comedy race is wide open. Last year’s winner, “Ted Lasso,” has been considered the front-runner all season, but “Barry” and “Only Murders in the Building” landed three Creative Arts Emmys, with Nathan Lane triumphing as comedy guest actor for the latter, and “Hacks” was close behind with two, including Laurie Metcalf’s victory for comedy guest actress. (“Ted Lasso” didn’t get any.) And then there’s “Abbott Elementary,” which won the casting for a comedy series trophy this year. That category has predicted the comedy series winner every year since 2015.

Does “Squid Game” have momentum? Going by its drama casting win, “Succession” is still expected to score another drama series Emmy. But “Squid Game” has become more of a contender following its four wins at the Creative Arts Emmys, including guest drama actress (Lee You-mi).

The variety talk and competition category streaks look likely to continue. If you thought “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” would end its six-year streak as outstanding variety talk show, or “RuPaul’s Drag Race” might be vulnerable after four years on top of the reality competition category, think again. “Last Week Tonight” won the writing for a variety series award again this year, a category it has dominated since 2016. And RuPaul was once again named outstanding host for a reality or competition program. That means Charles has beaten his own record for the most Emmy wins by a person of color (12 overall).

Could variety sketch be one of the few categories with a new winner? TV Academy voters weren’t big on mixing things up this year. Besides the status quo listed above, “Queer Eye” won its fifth consecutive structured reality award, and “Carpool Karaoke: The Series” won its fifth straight short form award. But variety sketch is fifty-fifty: It’s either Lorne Michaels’ “Saturday Night Live” or Robin Thede’s “A Black Lady Sketch Show.” Last year, “SNL” won. But this year, it could be more vulnerable. Not only did the long-running series experience its smallest number of nominations in recent years, but “A Black Lady Sketch Show” did well at the Creative Arts, picking up variety series directing (over “SNL”) and variety picture editing.

All will be revealed in less than a week. Kenan Thompson hosts this year’s Emmy telecast, which starts at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on Sept. 12, live on NBC and streaming on Peacock.

[Photo: Colman Domingo won an Emmy for his guest performance on “Euphoria.”]

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HBO’s “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” as

Calling all little sisters and cool cousins! Megan Thee Stallion and Southern Black Girls are teaming up for a bus tour to bring joy and empowerment to young girls.

Through her Pete and Thomas Foundation, Megan is supporting the Southern Black Girls & Women’s Consortium’s #JoyIsOurJourney bus tour. Created for Black girls, young women, and gender-expansive youth ages 12 through 24, the event is part food truck, part block party, featuring health and wellness resources, a little STEM education, music and dancing, and an opportunity to connect with one another in a fun, supportive, safe space.

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LaTosha Brown, who founded Southern Black Girls, and the Houston native rapper met for the first time at last year’s Glamour Women of the Year Awards (read Megan’s emotional acceptance speech here); just goes to show that when you put incredible women in the same room, great things can happen!

“We are super excited to partner with the Pete and Thomas Foundation,” Brown told The Root. “Megan is the ultimate Southern Black girl. She is an entertainer, an artist, and a creative who masterfully balances being a hot girl, a college girl, and a businesswoman, and she certainly embodies the unapologetic spirit of our organization. Our partnership with the Pete and Thomas Foundation adds fuel to the mission of the Joy Is Our Journey tour, which is to connect with Black girls and young women throughout the South and create safe spaces to celebrate unlimited, unabashed Black girl joy. There is so much in store, and we look forward to all the great work we will do together. This just the beginning.” Megan Thee Stallion herself said (in a statement), “We both share the same goals—to empower our young Black women, give them the resources to succeed, and help them pursue their personal and professional dreams.”

The mini festival, which is free to attend, runs through September 17. Click here to register or find out more.


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Calling all little sisters and cool cousins!

“True Friends Stab You In The Front.” – Oscar Wilde

I have been looking back over the thirty years of Raindance Film Festival and our Film School. Whilst the films we have screened have seen many a dastardly deed, we at Raindance would never dream of such behaviour! We do however take great pleasure in ‘poking’ people in the right direction when it comes to their film career.

September is officially ‘Friendship Month’ and to celebrate the dictionary definition – ‘friendship, a state of enduring affection, esteem, intimacy, and trust between two people.’ – we are offering our friends old and new, the opportunity to join us in any number of ways.

Over the last thirty years, we have seen thousands of faces (many now famous) come through our doors. Some have gone onto international fame and hopefully fortune. Some have not sought the Hollywood spotlight, but preferred to indulge their passion for independent movie production and some have boosted their careers in specific elements such as acting, writing, or documenting amazing things happening in the world around us. No matter what path they have taken, after leaving Raindance… we have always remained friends.

Friends can see you through the tough times and both Raindance and our graduates have had our fair share of those. Friends can also enjoy your successes! And you only have to watch the footage of past festivals to witness the smiles on the faces of those coming back to be part of our celebrations.

What does friendship mean to you?

Someone to call on when you need a babysitter? Maybe it’s the person you go to when funds are low and you just need that few quid to get through a tight-spot. That few quid, which in reality means the world! Or is it the person who’s couch you crash on when you’ve had an argument with your partner. Is it the individual who drives miles and shows up at the hospital, when all your family who live locally, can’t make it?  Or maybe… it’s the quiet one. The one who, no matter how bad things get – never leaves your side. Sometimes actions speak louder than words.

Doing anything for thirty-years is difficult. Doing it well for thirty-years is next to impossible. So how has Raindance survived and thrived over this period of time, which has lasted longer than most marriages? With help! From friends.

Not the Government… they have been conspicuous by their absence at Raindance. The help that we’ve enjoyed over the decades has come solely from our friends. Individuals, companies, organisations and graduates. The ones who have worked through the night. The volunteers. The benefactors. The staff and the partners. The tinkers, the tailors, the soldiers and spies! (Couldn’t resist it – a great film). Raindance is not just a festival – it’s an achievement.

Juan Nepomuceno Guerra once said,

“A man is measured not by his enemies, but by his friends”. If this is true, then Raindance stands upon the shoulders of giants!
We are celebrating ‘Friendship Month’ throughout September by offering incentives to you and your friends. Come and join us. Everything in life is better when it’s shared, so bring a friend and share the experience. Share in the making of memories… and share in the fun!

Where does that leave you? And Raindance?

We really are counting on your support – and that doesn’t mean money. What is really important to Raindance, and our ability to thrive in a world that is turning upside down – is you. There are 7 different ways friends can support Raindance. to help us thrive. And more than money – it’s your time.

Time to like our social media. Time to write a review on Yell – or to like our blog post. Time to tell a friend about the disruptors at Raindance. Time to reflect on the value of independent filmmaking.

Do I sound too pompous? Would you feel like donating a few minutes of your time? Or, become a benefactor or patron of Raindance?
You could donate here. As they say at Tesco, “every little helps…’

Let’s make movies!

Did You Know?

• Raindance Film Festival is considered one of the top fifteen film festivals in the world?

• Raindance Film School London offers HND, BA and MA in Filmmaking, Performance and Screenwriting?

• Let Raindance guide you on your filmmaking pathway. call +44 (0) 207 930 3412 or email filmschool@raindance.ac.uk

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“True Friends Stab You In The Front.”

In flood-stricken Pakistan where an unprecedented monsoon season has killed hundreds of people, the rains now threaten a famed archeological site dating back 4,500 years, the site’s chief official said Tuesday.

The ruins of Mohenjo Daro — located in southern Sindh province near the Indus River and a UNESCO World Heritage Site — are considered among the best preserved urban settlements in South Asia. They were discovered in 1922 and to this day, mystery surrounds the disappearance of its civilization, which coincided with those of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The swelling waters of the Indus, a major river in this part of the world, have wreaked havoc as heavy rains and massive flooding unleashed devastation across much of Pakistan. At least 1,343 people have been killed and millions have lost their homes in the surging waters, with many experts blaming the unusually heavy monsoon rains on climate change.

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Floods in Pakistan: Officials breach swelling lake to avert overflow

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he is flying to Pakistan on Wednesday to express solidarity with its people and “to appeal for the massive support of the international community to the Pakistanis, in this hour of need after the devastating floods that we are witnessing.” He said the floods are a result of climate change that is “supercharging the destruction of our planet,” warning: “Today it is Pakistan. Tomorrow it can be anywhere else.”

The flooding has not directly hit Mohenjo Daro but the record-breaking rains have inflicted damage on the ruins of the ancient city, said Ahsan Abbasi, the site’s curator.

“Several big walls, which were built nearly 5,000 years ago, have collapsed because of the monsoon rains,” Abbasi told The Associated Press.

He said dozens of construction workers under the supervision of archaeologists have started the repair work. Abbasi did not give an estimated cost of the damages at Mohenjo Daro.

The site’s landmark “Buddhist stupa” — a large hemispherical structure associated with worship, meditation and burial _ remains intact, Abbasi said. But the downpour has damaged some outer walls and also some larger walls separating individual rooms or chambers.

Abbasi said the civilization at Mohenjo Daro, also known as “Mound of the Dead” in the local Sindhi language, built an elaborate drainage system, which has been critical in flooding in the past.

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Click to play video: 'Alberta physician traveling to Pakistan to help flood-ravaged country'







Alberta physician traveling to Pakistan to help flood-ravaged country


Alberta physician traveling to Pakistan to help flood-ravaged country

Though the floods have touched all of Pakistan, the Sindh province has been among the worst hit.

On Monday, army engineers made a second cut into an embankment at Lake Manchar, Pakistan’s largest freshwater lake, to release rising waters in hopes of saving the nearby city of Sehwan from major flooding.

The water from the lake has already inundated dozens of nearby villages, forcing hundreds of families to leave their mudbrick homes in a hurry, many fleeing in panic.

Meanwhile, rescue operations continued Tuesday with troops and volunteers using helicopters and boats to get those stranded out of the flooded areas and to nearest relief camps. Tens of thousands of people are already living in such camps, and thousands more have taken shelter on roadsides on higher ground.

Ghulam Sabir, 52, from the outskirts of Sehwan, said Tuesday that he left his home three days ago after authorities told them to evacuate.

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“I took my family members with me and came to this … safer place,” said Sabir, staying by the roadside where he has set up camp. He echoed complaints of several other villagers — that no government help had reached them yet.

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Floods in Pakistan worry Canadians: ‘It’s scary. There’s no water. There’s no food.’

Sabir said he did not know whether his home had collapsed or not.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif urged Pakistanis in televised remarks Tuesday to generously donate to flood victims, most of whom are relying on government help to survive. Sharif has also repeatedly asked the international community to send more aid to the flood victims. He insisted that Pakistan is facing a climate-change-induced tragedy.

In a statement Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency said it handed over thousands of tents and other emergency items to the Sindh government, meant for those affected by the flooded areas in the province.

Multiple experts say that since 1959, Pakistan has emitted about 0.4 per cent of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, compared to 21.5 per cent by the United States and 16.4 per cent by China. Last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also called on the world to stop “sleepwalking” through the crisis. He plans to visit flood-hit areas on Sept. 9.

According to Pakistani officials, Guterres will travel to Sindh but it’s unclear whether he will visit the archaeological site.

© 2022 The Canadian Press

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In flood-stricken Pakistan where an unprecedented monsoon




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Image Credit: Photographer Group/MEGA

The kids are headed back to school as summer comes to a close, and celebrity kids are no exception. Chicago Bulls player, Tristan Thompson, 31, showed that he is definitely ready for the morning school drop-off routine with a rare snapshot with his son! The ex-boyfriend of Khloe Kardashian, 38, shared a sweet photo with son, Prince, 5, to his Instagram on Sept. 6, as he took his child to school.

Tristan captioned the photo, “My young King’s first day,” along with a crown, pencil, and book emojis. His loving post is a slight rarity since the father-of-four does not share photos of his kids very often. For the back-to-school snapshot, the athlete kept his look casual with black pants, a black shirt with the Supreme logo, and a black cap. Tristan also made sure to look extra stylish and paired the outfit with colorful Nikes, a silver watch, and a classic gold chain.

Prince, who is Tristan’s eldest child, also looked like he was ready to take on the first day back in class with his handsome outfit. The adorable toddler wore a white Moschino t-shirt and green shorts; however, his shoes were covered by his customized backpack. And the unique school bag might just be the best part of the father and son photo, since it had his name written on it. The iconic backpack also had images of Grogu from Star Wars – can we say backpack goals?!

Tristan Thompson
Tristan Thompson is a father to four children, including his son Prince. (Photographer Group/MEGA)

While both Tristan and Prince smiled big for the photo, Tristan’s 3.7 million Instagram followers took to the comments section to gush over the milestone moment. One fan wrote, “Take it all in. The years go fast once they start school!” But some fans were wondering why the famous dad only shared a photo of Prince’s first day back in classes. A separate Instagram user wrote, “What about all the others?” It is likely that Tristan did not share the same type of photo with his other kids, as they are not yet old enough to start school.

He shares two kids with KUWTK star Khloe, including True Thompson, 4, and a newborn son, born on Aug. 5, whose name is not yet publicly known. And aside from Prince, who he shares with his ex-girlfriend, Jordan Craig, 31, he shares his eight-month-old son, Theo Thompson, with Maralee Nichols. Theo was born on December 1, 2021, and the birth revealed that Tristan had cheated on Khloe (once again) back in March 2021, while they were still together. The drama surrounding the paternity test broke on an episode of the Hulu series The Kardashians back on June 9. And while Khloe and Tristan are no longer romantically involved, they continue to co-parent both of their adorable kids together.

Khloe and her ex-boyfriend conceived their new bundle of joy back in November 2021, just weeks before he welcomed Theo with Maralee. The TV personality’s second child was conceived via a surrogate, Khloe’s rep told confirmed to HollywoodLife back in July. “We can confirm True will have a sibling who was conceived in November,” the rep said in a statement. “Khloe is incredibly grateful to the extraordinary surrogate for such a beautiful blessing. We’d like to ask for kindness and privacy so that Khloe can focus on her family.”

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View gallery Image Credit: Photographer Group/MEGA The kids are

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest school district in the U.S., said it was targeted in a ransomware attack and had confirmed “an external cyberattack” on its information-technology infrastructure. Despite the disruption, the LAUSD said schools will open as scheduled on Tuesday, Sept. 6.

The school district, in a notice released late Monday, said it “detected unusual activity in its Information Technology systems over the weekend” and said the incident is “likely criminal in nature.” The LAUSD said it assessing the situation with local law enforcement agencies alongside officials from the Department of Education, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

The school district did not provide details of the ransomware attack or which systems specifically were affected. On Tuesday, LAUSD said that all students and employees are required to change their passwords for @lausd.net accounts.

Visitors to the LAUSD site Tuesday were presented with a pop-up message that said, “We’re experiencing a service outage with multiple applications. Our team is currently working to restore the service. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

The LAUSD said it is “immediately establishing a plan of action, informed by top public and private sector technology and cyber security professionals, to determine additional protections for the District, and to provide an independent opinion on system-wide protective measures.”

The school district said it expected “uninterrupted instruction and staffing” for Tuesday. Ransomware is a type of cyberattack that demands that the target pay a ransom to access encrypted files that have been hijacked by an attacker.

The Los Angeles Unified School District serves more than 600,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade at more than 1,000 schools. The district also has more than 200 independently operated public charter schools, authorized by the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education. Los Angeles Unified’s boundaries stretch across 720 square miles and include the City of Los Angeles as well as all or parts of 31 municipalities and several unincorporated regions of Southern California.

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The Los Angeles Unified School District, the

The filmmaker explains his bond with the actor and why “Bones and All” could have been a lot gorier.

First things first: Yes, Luca Guadagnino still wants to make a sequel to “Call Me By Your Name” with Timothée Chalamet as the soul-searching Elio, but he wouldn’t put it in those terms. “A sequel is an American concept,” the filmmaker said during an interview at the Telluride Film Festival. “It’s more like the chronicles of Elio, the chronicles of this young boy becoming a man. It is something I want to do.”

For now, though, Guadagnino has already satiated his desire to collaborate with the actor who became a star as a result of that 2017 romance. With “Bones and All,” Guadagnino and screenwriter David Kajganich have transformed Camille DeAngelis’ 2015 cannibal into a gothic plunge into the ’80s-era midwest. Equal parts “Badlands” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” the movie is a sensitive look at the kind of marginalized characters who populate all of Guadagnino’s films.

A scrawny Chalamet plays Lee, the wily romantic interest of fellow “eater” and runaway Maren (“Waves” breakout Taylor Russell in her first lead role). The pair meet after Maren’s father has left her, and she has evaded the advances of a creepier nomadic cannibal named Sully (Mark Rylance). Scruffier and more antic than Elio, Chalamet’s character provides a new dimension to the actor-director team. Guadagnino said he had Chalamet in mind for some kind of collaboration even before “Bones and All” came his way.

“It’s not as if I left Timothée at the height of his booming success, and then I found him four years later,” Guadagnino said. “We kept close. I knew that there was not much time to wait until we worked together, but only for the right project.”

Guadagnino has already shrugged off the parallels between the subject of his movie and the cannibal sex fantasies at the root of accusations against Chalamet’s “Call Me By Your Name” co-star Armie Hammer. While that career has imploded, Guadagnino gushed about Chalamet’s ballooning star power. “To see the humbleness and rigor with which he made his first steps toward stardom — this bright, feverish young man became this planetary star — made me so proud,” Guadagnino said. “There is a very beautiful bond between me.”

“Bones and All”

MGM/United Artists

Chalamet has been unable to travel the festival circuit with “Bones and All” due to his production schedule for “Dune: Part Two,” though he made the rounds in Venice. Russell, however, joined Guadagnino in Telluride, where “Waves” premiered three years ago. She said that she and Chalamet had circled other projects before that never came to fruition.

“I think both of us had a feeling we were going to work together on the right thing,” she said. “From the beginning with Timothée, he made a point to make me feel like I deeply belonged with this group of people, that nothing I could do would be bad, and if I felt any sort of insecurity I could talk to him and he could comfort me. There’s a safety net we shared where there was no judgment.”

Russell had just watched Guadagnino’s Gen Z-infused HBO miniseries “We Are Who We Are” when he got in touch. “It hit me so deeply,” she said. “He’s on my list of directors where the best possible outcome would be me working with him. It could’ve been any film, and I would’ve done it with Luca.”

She added that the movie’s willingness to portray its cannibal protagonists in empathetic terms stood out to her in the script. “It felt very punk and authentic to just say, ‘Fuck everything, this is the reality of these people and it’s about love,’” she said. “At the end of the day, all of Luca’s movies are about that — love of people on the outside. This is an extreme version of that, but because it’s an extreme version, you really sink into it. I wasn’t worried about the cannibalism.”

Bones and All

“Bones and All”

MGM

Despite the “Badlands” comparisons, Guadagnino actually gave his actors a very different set of movies to watch to prepare for their roles: Agnes Varda’s “Vagabond,” Robert Bresson’s “A Man Escaped,” Roberto Rossellini’s “Germany: Year Zero,” and Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman.” All deal with ostracized people. “These movies are about people roaming around,” Guadagnino said. He was also inspired by Nicholas Ray’s “They Live By Night” and Friz Lang’s American films, in addition to William Eggleston’s photography. “The way in which he portrayed America is so touching,” Guadagnino said.

While the premise of “Bones and All” might scare off squeamish viewers, Guadagnino often cuts away from the goriest moments, though he said he had plenty of footage that could have yielded a different result. “We had way more,” he said. “I shot so much more, but in the editing process, my editor and I were always clear that we should never be selfish about our capacity to portray horror. There was a lot of pain that was happening to the characters, a kind of sacred reverence. It was quite beautiful, humbling, reverential.”

Still: There is plenty of blood. Guadagnino wasn’t worried about upsetting audiences. “I believe in the intelligence of people,” he said. “I don’t want to put an audience in a passive situation. I love the audience to be active with the movie. If that comes across, I have the possibility to express complexities that might seem intolerable.”

An exacting filmmaker, he has been reticent to take on commercial projects for years, including some major opportunities that came his way after the success of the Tilda Swinton vehicle “I Am Love” in 2009. “I was approached for big blockbusters, and some of them became huge,” he said. “But how can I manage that with my need for absolute control?”

Guadagnino shrugged off concerns for the industry as the pandemic entered a new chapter. “COVID has been a very powerful moment, but it’s been two years,” he said. “I’m 51 and have been doing this job since I was 15 making short films. I started professionally making films when I was 26. So almost 27 years passed by. I saw everything changing constantly. I don’t think things change in an irredeemable way in a year or two.”

UA/MGM releases “Bones and All” theatrically on November 23, 2022.

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Anyone who’s been to a concert knows the sound: The crunch of hundreds of plastic cups underfoot, which are used once and thrown away, creating countless acres of garbage.

Live Nation Entertainment has made a move to reduce that waste at its venues and festival via a strategic investment in Turn Systems, which operates a leading reusable cup system. According to the announcement, it is “another step in the company’s goal to eliminate single-use plastics and work toward zero-waste concerts.” 

The Turn system includes reusable cups, collection bins and mobile washing systems. A single reusable TURN cup has the potential to displace up to 100 single-use cups and can break even on its environmental impact in as few as three uses. (For more on Turn Systems, see the company’s website.)

As the primary option for beverages at participating Live Nation events, fans can easily use the return-bin system instead of a traditional trash or recycling bin. Similar systems have been successfully deployed at major European festivals for many years.

Live Nation successfully deployed the Turn system at several recent events, according to the announcement. At the Innings Festival in February, the reusable Turn cups were used in place of single-use plastic cups, and fans returned 86% of them. As part of the Turn pilot program at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte, NC, the venue avoided the use of 13,000 single-use cups, with fans returning 90% of the cups. Turn systems use software that allows customers to calculate their reuse impact, seeing the difference that simply using a non-disposable cup can make. According to a recent study by Live Nation, 82% of concert-goers say they strive to maintain an environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

According to the announcement, Live Nation will be rolling out Turn Systems across select festivals and venues this year, projecting to displace more than 1 million single-use cups this year. In recent months, the company also has partnered with Liquid Death canned water to avoid the usage of over 5 million plastic bottles last year with fans encouraged to refill at free water refill stations located throughout venues. Additionally, at Live Nation venues, food and beverage items are currently served in compostable and recyclable packaging and dedicated sustainability teams at each venue sort through all waste which is then donated, recycled and/or composted at local facilities. 

Artists playing at Live Nation venues featuring the Turn program have voiced their support for the initiative. Jack Johnson, a leader in promoting green touring, says, “I’m excited to see Live Nation taking their commitment to reduce plastic pollution to the next level by launching reusable cup programs at some of their concert venues this summer. It’s inspiring to see a music industry effort to offer alternatives to single-use plastic and to give music fans the option to choose reusables.”

5 Seconds of Summer added, “We are stoked to partner with Live Nation to promote a more sustainable touring environment, where our fans will leave behind a smaller footprint across several venues this summer and for many more to come. Reusable materials can be a wholly more sustainable and enjoyable experience and we hope to see this innovative program rolled out in more venues soon.”

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino said, “By investing in Turn, Live Nation is able to make events at our venues and festivals more sustainable. By rolling out real world solutions at scale we hope this helps the whole industry find solutions.”

Ryan Everton, Founder and CEO of Turn Systems, added: “To mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis, we need to take meaningful steps to reduce carbon emissions, divert waste from landfills and oceans, and create circular economies at scale. We are thrilled to partner with Live Nation to move the needle forward in achieving these ambitions. By deploying Turn across Live Nation’s extensive reach, we hope to not only reduce the environmental impact of these events but also to inspire others to take climate action at their own events and in their daily lives.”

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Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown give fully committed performances in “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul,” so why does the film lack faith in itself?

“Honk for Jesus,“ Adamma Ebo’s directorial debut based on her own short film, is centered on a pair ripe for parody: Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Brown) and his loyal wife, Trinitie (Hall), leaders of an Atlanta-area Southern Baptist megachurch called Wander to Greater Paths. It takes about half a minute to realize Childs’ spiritual center is more designer label than Deuteronomy. Showing off their closets, Lee-Curtis gives thanks for being “blessed with some beautiful Prada.”

After a quick montage of brighter days for Wander to Greater Paths, “Honk for Jesus” catches up with the pastor and his wife on the heels of a scandal that has emptied their congregation of 25,000. Their faces are still bright, though, as they welcome a documentary crew outside the church to chronicle their revival, leading up to an Easter reopening. When Lee-Curtis steps in chewing gum and Trinitie asks the camerawoman to edit around that, she gets no reply. “Oh, that’s right,” she says. “You’re the fly-on-the-wall type.“

The mockumentary has always been a dependable way to satirize not just a character or two but a subset of society. After what Christopher Guest did to the world of dog shows and Rob Reiner did to rock bands, Ebo and her producer sister, Adanne Ebo, have aimed at the rich realm of megachurches, taking inspiration from a real 2010 scandal at Georgia’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church.

But the art of the mockumentary is a funny thing. It has to look unrehearsed and seem real while, often, being meticulously planned. “Honk for Jesus,” though, only gestures at a mockumentary structure, and often simply abandons the premise. Some scenes are staged with a film crew hovering around, while others — like one of the couple in bed at night — are simply filmed like a movie, with no excuse for the camera’s presence.

There isn’t much that seems natural or lifelike in “Honk for Jesus,” including the church itself. Such a large congregation would have a large staff and more devoted parishioners — the kind of cast of characters that someone like Armando Iannucci would have a lot of fun weaving throughout the film. But “Honk for Jesus“ has an empty, airless chamber piece quality, sticking largely to small scenes around the edges of the church that mostly trade on Lee-Curtis and Trinitie’s obvious hypocrisy.

But it’s not often a bad move to give actors like Hall and Brown lots of room to play, and they certainly bring passion to their performances. They aren’t given anywhere especially to go, though. Lee-Curtis’ closeted homosexuality is played more for laughs than for empathy.

The film’s keenest sense is how it draws nearer to Hall’s Trinitie, as her confidence in her husband steadily wavers. “Honk for Jesus“ in the end doesn’t aim for anything like the madcap parody of, say, HBO’s riotous “The Righteous Gemstones,” but it may have been more successful if it took the approach of “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and kept its camera glued to the first lady of the church.

“Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul,” a Focus Features release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language and some sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes. Two stars out of four.

___

Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

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Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown give

Grief and guilt are the twin quiet rivers running beneath Koji Fukada’s ambiguously titled Venice competition entry Love Life, a delicately tangled story of generational conflict and the silences that, without being overtly aggressive, can drive people apart. Anyone familiar with the work of Japan’s greatest cinema maestro, Yasuhiro Ozu, will recognize the general territory. It is a space within which tectonic social shifts are disguised under layers of traditional social observance, often involving large meals, and where profound emotions may be — and often must be — contained within a glance.

Taeko (Fumino Kimura) and Jiro (Kento Nagayama) have been married for around a year, having met several years earlier in the social welfare office where they now both work. Taeko already had a child, Keita (Tetta Shimada), from a previous marriage to a man who abandoned them when Keita was a baby, perhaps because he was barely able to look after himself; he was deaf and a Korean immigrant, two social disadvantages, but perhaps also something of a wastrel. Taeko spent years trying to find him, fearing he might have met a grisly end: it was this search that initially brought her to the welfare office.

For Jiro’s parents, all these things are black marks against Taeko. The fact that their son has married a woman slightly older than he is, who has a child not of their blood, that she should have had something so irregular in her life as a deaf husband: couldn’t Jiro have done better? “Cast-offs are fine,” says his mother within Taeko’s hearing, “but not for everything.”

Jiro is calm in the face of this hostility. They are married now, he says reasonably, so they will have to wear it; Keita may not be his child, but he loves and cares for him as a hands-on modern father. It is harder for Taeko, who suffers their visits, insults and bigoted conversational gambits with surreptitiously gritted teeth. There is no avoiding them; they own the apartment where the couple live, just across a public square from their own. It is during one of their excruciating visits that Keita, left to his own devices, drowns in his leftover bath water.

Fukada presents this terrible event with chilling restraint, holding the camera for a seeming eternity on the side of the bath that nobody thought to drain. Taeko swings between bleak grief and blaming herself. When her estranged husband Park (Atom Sunada) bursts into the funeral, runs over to her screaming and attacks her, she succumbs to his flailing blows willingly. Spaces are crucial to this film: while the apartment seems tiny whenever the parents are there, so squashed that they can’t even close a door, the funeral home is an arena, a vast empty space where Park charges in like a bull looking for a matador. Every interior has a story to tell.

What follows Keita’s death is complicated. Nobody knows what they are supposed to feel. Jiro will say later that he felt left behind, that he felt he didn’t have enough grief to contribute. This mismatched bereavement creates a distance between the couple, while Taeko feels increasingly drawn to the dilapidated Park. He is homeless, jobless and obviously erratic, but she is responsible for him. As the only person in range who knows Korean sign language, she is his link with the world; he needs her. And he was Keita’s father, the man with whom she made a family.

Fumino conveys this confused grasping at the straws of the past with such commitment that Taeko never seems either weak or less than sympathetic, even at her most deluded; as Jiro tells her, more in sorrow than anger, Park is neither weak nor needy, but he is certainly manipulative. She doesn’t listen; she can’t listen. Jiro, the rejected husband, is bewildered as his domestic idyll falls to pieces.

All this is the stuff of melodrama, but Love Life never feels like one. Fukada works in pale colors, suburban settings and, in the early scenes, the kind of plinking musical score more typical of Japanese romances, all of which pulls the huge events that follow – Keita’s death, the return of Park, his monstrousness – back into the realm of the everyday. As a melodrama that has been normalized, it may be turned down way too low for some audiences. They may feel as if nothing much happened, however stuffed with tragic events it actually was. But for those of us who love silent family dramas where even eating noodles becomes a meaningful act, Love Life makes Koji Fukada a director to watch.

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Grief and guilt are the twin quiet

Both award-winning actors have spoken out against the Russian invasion of Ukraine since the conflict began almost seven months ago.

Ben Stiller and Sean Penn won’t be making movies in Russia any time soon.

On Monday, the country’s foreign ministry announced a list of 25 Americans — “high-ranking officials, representatives of the business and expert communities, as well as cultural figures” — who have been permanently barred from entering Russia. The list comes in response to the still-escalating international tensions brought on by Russia’s hostile invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

Stiller and Penn independently spoke out against Russian president Vladimir Putin in recent months. A representative of the UN Refugee Agency, Stiller spent World Refugee Day (June 20) with Ukrainian refugees currently living in Poland. The Emmy-winning writer-director-actor then met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, at one point telling the embattled leader, “You’re my hero.”

Penn began filming a documentary for Vice about the war in Ukraine in June, having visited the previous fall to prepare a production plan should the worst occur.

The two-time Academy Award winner said in a statement at the time: “Already a brutal mistake of lives taken and hearts broken, and if he doesn’t relent, I believe Mr. Putin will have made a most horrible mistake for all of humankind.” (In the weeks leading up to the 94th Academy Awards, Penn also threatened to “smelt” his Oscars if Zelensky was not invited to speak.)

23 other names appear alongside Stiller’s and Penn’s, including those of United States senators Mark Kelley, Kevin Kramer, Rick Scott, Krysten Sinema, and Pat Toomey, as well as trade officials, such as U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo.

On its website, Russia’s foreign ministry states these strategic “stop” orders are in keeping with the country’s “principle of reciprocity.”

The statement continues: “The hostile actions of the American authorities, which continue to follow a Russophobic course, destroying bilateral ties and escalating confrontation between Russia and the United States, will continue to be resolutely rebuffed.”

Morgan Freeman and Rob Reiner appeared on a stop list of 963 other Americans banned back in May. That order also targeted top-ranking government officials, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, as well as numerous journalists and politicians (some of which had already died: a key detail Russian intelligence managed to miss).

Representatives for Penn and Stiller did not immediately respond to IndieWire’s request for comment. No word yet on Russia’s plan for the whole of the 2022 Independent Spirit Awards, which collectively gave Putin the finger in March.

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Both award-winning actors have spoken out against

‘Nope’

As thrilling as it was to watch the visual spectacle of Jordan Peele’s latest horror film, Nope, on the big screen, this is one movie that might be even better on streaming. Why? Because you can pause, rewind, and rewatch it as many times as you want. As it turns out, that is incredibly necessary when it comes to catching all the tiny details of… Read more

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‘Nope’ By Anna Menta As thrilling as it was to

“The Mummy” actor appeared emotional amid the overwhelmingly positive response to his performance as a 600-pound man confined to a wheelchair.

Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” doesn’t have a trailer yet, but the overwhelming response to star Brendan Fraser, following a screening of the psychological drama at the Venice International Film Festival, is better promotion than any sizzle reel could buy.

In a pair of videos posted to Twitter by Ramin Setoodeh (co-editor in chief of Variety), the cast and top creative team behind the upcoming tearjerker can be seen reacting to a six-minute standing ovation after the film’s premiere on Sunday. Per Setoodeh, Fraser “sobbed” throughout the celebration and “tried to leave” but was forced to stay thanks to the raucous applause.

Fraser’s “The Mummy Returns” co-star Dwayne Johnson re-tweeted the clip, writing: “Man this makes me so happy to see this beautiful ovation for Brendan. He supported me coming into his ‘The Mummy Returns’ franchise for my first ever role, which kicked off my Hollywood career. Rooting for all your success brother and congrats to my bud Darren Aronofsky.”

Based on Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name, “The Whale” stars Fraser as Charlie, a 600-pound gay man who is confined to a wheelchair. Sadie Sink plays Charlie’s estranged 17-year-old daughter Ellie. Hong Chau appears as Charlie’s nurse and best friend. Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton, and Sathya Sridharan round out the cast.

“Adapting my play into a screenplay has been a real labor of love for me,” Hunter previously told Deadline. “This story is deeply personal, and I’m very thankful it will have the chance to reach a wider audience. I’ve been a fan of Darren’s ever since I saw ‘Requiem for a Dream’ when I was a college freshman writing my first plays, and I’m so grateful that he’s bringing his singular talent and vision to this film.”

“For Fraser, ‘The Whale’ is a confident leap forward into the movie-star status that he rightfully deserves,” writes Leila Latif in her review for IndieWire, recalling the emotional tenor of the Italian theater where Fraser welled up.

Latif continues: “For the normally more muted Venice audience who typically scramble for the exit the moment the film ends, just the sight of Fraser’s name at the end credits made the crowd turn back to the screen to cheer and applaud the actor’s triumphant return. If that rapturous applause carries on throughout awards season, that may prove the most wonderful and moving moment of this whale’s journey.”

“The Whale” hits theaters December 9.

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"The Mummy" actor appeared emotional amid the

In early August, Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod posted a cover of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Punisher” to TikTok, then followed up days later with a snippet of an original song inspired by her hero. Seated at the piano, she sang about the devastation of a one-sided relationship, the wifely impulse to relinquish your own personhood for the sake of an emotionally unavailable lover: “I’m not feeling human/I think he’s a good guy.” The unfinished track, “complex,” quickly became TikTok’s new sad-girl anthem, its raw emotionality attracting comparisons to Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license.” Popular Gen Z artists like Camila Cabello, Madison Beer, and Gracie Abrams dueted Gregson-MacLeod’s video, singing along or contributing their own lyrics. Record labels lined up at the coffee shop she works at; the 21 year old eventually signed with Columbia.

It’s increasingly common for young singer-songwriters to go viral with early drafts that bare their most intimate feelings. While Gregson-MacLeod’s lyrics could be gimmicky—relying on the cliché of needing someone “like water,” invoking the “cool girl” archetype—her stark, melancholic delivery still made the song striking. After their big moment, nascent TikTok songwriters scramble to finish their music before the internet moves on to the next tearjerker, which is perhaps why the recently released full version of “complex”—still labeled a “demo”—feels a little stitched-together. The new verses, which tell a coming-of-age story, feel like they belong to a separate song. The chorus, addressed to a man who seemingly couldn’t care less, makes your inner feminist want to scream “Girl, stand up!” But “complex (demo)” is a good example of how to go viral by tugging at heartstrings, and the urge to save someone who can’t give you the love you need is only too familiar.

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In early August, Scottish singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-MacLeod

Can faith be found in the worst of circumstances, and can God prevail in the most impossible situations? Miracles still happen in George A. Johnson’s faith-based drama, Pursuit of Freedom.

Anna is a Ukrainian mother of three whose deadbeat husband owes a lot of money to a local mob boss. When her husband can’t pay, the mobster abducts Anna forcing her into prostitution and sexual slavery. In the meantime, Anna’s husband flees, leaving the three children with her mother. Evading suspicion from the police, she takes them into hiding in Armenia.

After years of enslavement, Anna becomes ill and no longer attractive to male clients. Passed out and left for dead on the road, Anna awakens days later in a hospital in Amsterdam, tended by the compassionate nurse Naomi (Sharonne Lanier). As Anna recovers, Naomi reads her Bible passages and converts Anna to Christianity.

Now Anna is determined to reunite with her missing children, but because Anna has no documentation and no idea where her children are, there’s nothing anyone can do…except God, of course. Anna’s plight inspires Naomi to set off a seemingly random chain of events to find her children, starting with a call to an American pastor (Mark Lowry). Along the way, a missionary Bedros (Stelio Savante), takes up the mantle to find Anna’s children in Amenia in a literal needle in a haystack situation.

“…takes up the mantle to find Anna’s children in Amenia in a literal needle in a haystack situation.”

Let’s be abundantly clear, Pursuit of Freedom is unmistakably a faith-based movie. I’ve seen more than my fair share of faith films over my lifetime, and its overriding message of faith in God, specifically Christianity, is on full display. I mention this not because it’s a bad thing but merely to manage expectations. Look, Pursuit of Freedom is meant to be a witnessing tool to bring people to Christ, and as a Christian myself, that’s not a bad thing.

On the other hand, I review films…all films. Unfortunately, the mid-range indie budget, average acting skills, and deeply religious message keep Pursuit of Freedom from breaking into mainstream movie theaters. But, as a faith-based film, it’s a good one.

Inspired by a true story, the story’s central focus is on the miracles that can happen through faith in God and Jesus Christ. The film’s themes work itself around the idea of providence and “all things work together for the good of those who love God.” At the same time, it’s a call for people to have faith and believe that all we need to do as people is do what’s morally right and compassionate, and God will do the rest.

I believe the story’s primary focus is on how God brings the right people in at the right time for his good works. Anna fights her way through the worst of humanity, corrupt police, and an insurmountable level of bureaucracy to show that being with her children is more than pure coincidence.

What I like about Pursuit of Freedom is that aspect of Christianity that I found attractive in my youth—loving your neighbor and risking your life for the sake of the less fortunate. There’s also the idea that there are still good people out there who could care less about your skin color, gender, or political party and help solely because you are in need.

Let’s be brutally honest, I don’t think Pursuit of Freedom will find an audience beyond the faith crowd, but then again, God works in mysterious ways. Who am I to question that?

Pursuit of Freedom makes its theatrical release on September 16, 2022.

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Can faith be found in the worst

On his first week as a young Louisiana legislator, two powerful old politicians cornered Moon Landrieu in an elevator, poked their fingers in his chest, and threatened that if he voted against their racial segregation bills, they would destroy him. He did and they didn’t. At a time when George Wallace and others were hijacking southern populism and turning it racist, Landrieu forged coalitions that united Blacks and whites.

Chomping on an unlit cigar while arm-twisting a local assessor at a neighborhood bar, Landrieu, who died of heart failure on September 5 at age 92, could seem like an old-fashioned urban ethnic politician, which he was. But during his career as a legislator, councilman, and mayor of New Orleans during the 1960s and 1970s, he led a historic transformation in the city’s race relations and became one of the tribunes of what became known, for a glorious but brief period, as The New South. With a feel for how to balance progress and preservation, he helped build the city’s downtown Superdome and protect the French Quarter and other historic neighborhoods, displaying an urban sensibility that he brought to Washington when he became President Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. His ideals were later advanced by his daughter Mary, a two-term U.S. Senator, and his son Mitch, a two-term New Orleans mayor and currently President Biden’s infrastructure coordinator—and perhaps will be again by some of his 37 grandchildren.

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Emily Ratajkowski
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The shade of it all! Emily Ratajkowski joked that she prefers “ugly men” amid her split from husband Sebastian Bear-McClard.

The model, 31, participated in the viral “he’s a 10” trend in a TikTok video shared on Sunday, September 4. The Gone Girl actress posted a duet with an original video that featured the caption, “When he thinks he’s a 10 because he pulled you but you like ugly men.”

The My Body author also lip-synched to a clip from the song “Pump 101” by Digga D and Still Brickin, mouthing along to the lyric: “How can I say this in a friendly way?”

@emrata

♬ original sound – Emrata

In a follow-up comment on her original post, Ratajkowski added, “For legal reasons this is a joke.”

Us Weekly confirmed in July that the I Feel Pretty star and the producer, 34, called it quits after four years of marriage. Ratajkowski sparked breakup rumors one month prior when she was photographed in New York City without her wedding ring. The distinctive sparkler had also been missing from her social media posts since February.

Earlier this month, an insider confirmed that the iCarly alum moved out of the home she shared with Bear-McClard before their breakup. The Good Time star and the fashion icon share son Sylvester, 17 months.

“She got an apartment downtown to get away from her ex and start her new life,” a source exclusively told Us of Ratajkowski. “They’re only speaking to each other through the nanny.”

While the estranged pair haven’t publicly commented on what caused their split, the In Darkness actress made headlines in July when she “liked” several tweets about rumors that her partner had cheated on her. One such tweet read, “Can’t believe that little bitch cheated on emrata.”

Emily Ratajkowski Jokes About Liking 'Ugly Men' Amid Sebastian Bear-McClard Split 3

Emily Ratajkowski and Sebastian Bear-McClard
Matt Baron/Shutterstock

According to a second insider, the film producer had been in contact with “several women” via social media over the past two years, and a “cheating incident” ultimately caused their breakup. “Emily had seen some of his DMs and it became a pattern,” the source added.

The insider noted that Bear-McClard is holding out hope for a reconciliation, but the odds aren’t looking good. “Sebastian is trying for a second chance with Emily, but she doesn’t want to get back together,” the source told Us in August.

The twosome tied the knot in February 2018 after a whirlwind romance. Ratajkowski later defended the seemingly rushed timeline of their marriage, telling Busy Philipps that the pair were friends for years before their relationship turned romantic.

“We knew each other for a long time before,” she said during a November 2018 appearance on Busy Tonight. “He likes to joke, ‘Yeah everyone thinks we got married quickly, but you vetted me for two years.’”

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Emily Ratajkowski Gregory Pace/ShutterstockThe shade of

Paramount is revamping its streaming bundle strategy in a major way, centering it around the flagship Paramount+ app.

Beginning today, programming from Showtime is coming to Paramount+, as part of a revamped bundle offering of the two content services. The bundle will see Showtime programming like Yellowjackets, Billions, and Dexter: New Blood available within the same app as Paramount+ programs like Star Trek: Discovery, Halo, and 1883.

It’s the first time that programming from both services will be available in one app. While Paramount launched a bundle of the two services last year, subscribers had to access the content through separate Showtime and Paramount+ apps. Bundle subscribers can now access all programming through the main Paramount+ app, and users of Paramount+ can upgrade to the bundle at any time for instant access to Showtime shows.

The price of the bundle will be $11.99 (for the ad-supported Paramount+ tier) and $14.99 for the ad-free tier.

Paramount is also launching the new bundle with promo pricing of $7.99 per month for the base tier, and $12.99 for the ad-free tier, through Oct. 2. In addition, users can continue to subscribe only to Showtime’s streaming service for $10.99 per month, though the aggressive pricing by Paramount is likely to keep those numbers low.

Paramount said earlier this month that it had some 64 million streaming subscribers, with Paramount+ accounting for a majority of those.

As is the case with HBO Max’s ad-supported tier, Showtime programming will be ad-free on both tiers of the service. HBO Max incorporates both HBO programming and films, as well as a slate of HBO Max original shows. HBO’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery says that next year it will fold Discovery+ and HBO Max into a new super-service, details of which are still TBD.

By adding Showtime into the main Paramount+ app, Paramount can significantly increase the programming available to subscribers in one value proposition. In addition to Showtime series, the service also streams combat sports like boxing, as well as a slate of acquired films.

“The Paramount+ with Showtime bundle offers consumers unprecedented value by providing one of the broadest content libraries in streaming at one of the lowest prices in the marketplace,” said Tom Ryan, president and CEO of Paramount Global Streaming, in a statement. “This singular user experience streamlines sign-up and enhances discovery, and this lower price will allow more households to enjoy this exceptional combined entertainment offering.” 

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Paramount is revamping its streaming bundle strategy

YouTube’s recommendation algorithm pushed more videos about election fraud to people who were already skeptical about the 2020 election’s legitimacy, according to a new study. There were a relatively low number of videos about election fraud, but the most skeptical YouTube users saw three times as many of them as the least skeptical users.

“The more susceptible you are to these types of narratives about the election…the more you would be recommended content about that narrative,” says study author James Bisbee, who’s now a political scientist at Vanderbilt University. The research was done through the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University.

In the wake of his 2020 election loss, former President Donald Trump has promoted the false claim that the election was stolen, calling for a repeat election as recently as this week. While claims of voter fraud have been broadly debunked, promoting the debunked claims continues to be a lucrative tactic for conservative media figures, whether in podcasts, films or online videos.

Bisbee and his research team were studying how often harmful content in general was recommended to users and happened to be running a study during that window. “We were overlapping with the US presidential election and then the subsequent spread of misinformation about the outcome,” he says. So they took advantage of the timing to specifically look at the way the algorithm recommended content around election fraud.

The research team surveyed over 300 people with questions about the 2020 election — asking them how concerned they were about fraudulent ballots, for example, and interference by foreign governments. People were surveyed between October 29th and December 8th, and people surveyed after election day were also asked if the outcome of the election was legitimate. The research team also tracked participants’ experiences on YouTube. Each person was assigned a video to start on, and then they were given a path to follow through the site — for instance, clicking on the second recommended video each time.

The team went through all the videos shown to participants and identified the ones that were about election fraud. They also classified the stance those videos took on election fraud — if they were neutral about claims of election fraud or if they endorsed election misinformation. The top videos associated with promoting claims around election fraud were videos of press briefings from the White House channel and videos from NewsNow, a Fox News affiliate.

The analysis found that people who were the most skeptical of the election had an average of eight more recommended videos about election fraud than the people who were least skeptical. Skeptics saw an average of 12 videos, and non-skeptics saw an average of four. The types of videos were different, as well — the videos seen by skeptics were more likely to endorse election fraud claims.

The people who participated in the study were more liberal, more well-educated, and more likely to identify as a Democrat than the United States population overall. So their media diet and digital information environment might already skew more to the left — which could mean the number of election fraud videos shown to the skeptics in this group is lower than it might have been for skeptics in a more conservative group, Bisbee says.

But the number of fraud-related videos in the study was low, overall: people saw around 400 videos total, so even 12 videos was a small percentage of their overall YouTube diet. People weren’t inundated with the misinformation, Bisbee says. And the number of videos about election fraud on YouTube dropped off even more in early December after the platform announced it would remove videos claiming that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election.

YouTube has instituted a number of features to fight misinformation, both moderating against videos that violate its rules and promoting authoritative sources on the homepage. In particular, YouTube spokesperson Elena Hernandez reiterated in an email to The Verge that platform policy doesn’t allow videos that falsely claim there was fraud in the 2020 election. However, YouTube has more permissive policies around misinformation than other platforms, according to a report on misinformation and the 2020 election, and took longer to implement policies around misinformation.

Broadly, YouTube disputed the idea that its algorithm was systematically promoting misinformation. “While we welcome more research, this report doesn’t accurately represent how our systems work,” Hernandez said in a statement. “We’ve found that the most viewed and recommended videos and channels related to elections are from authoritative sources, like news channels.”

Crucially, Bisbee sees YouTube’s algorithm as neither good nor bad but recommending content to the people most likely to respond to it. “If I’m a country music fan, and I want to find new country music, an algorithm that suggests content to me that it thinks I’ll be interested in is a good thing,” he says. But when the content is extremist misinformation instead of country music, the same system can create obvious problems.

In the email to The Verge, Hernandez pointed to other research that found YouTube does not steer people toward extremist content — like a study from 2020 that concluded recommendations don’t drive engagement with far-right content. But the findings from the new study do contradict some earlier findings, Bisbee says, particularly the consensus among researchers that people self-select into misinformation bubbles rather than being driven there by algorithms.

In particular, Bisbee’s team did see a small but significant push from the algorithm toward misinformation for the people who might be most inclined to believe that misinformation. It might be a nudge specific to information on election fraud, although the study can’t say if the same is true for other types of misinformation. It means, though, that there’s still more to learn about the role algorithms play.

Update September 1st, 1:58PM ET: Updated to include the institution where the research was conducted.

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YouTube’s recommendation algorithm pushed more

As thrilling as it was to watch the visual spectacle of Jordan Peele’s latest horror film, Nope, on the big screen, this is one movie that might be even better on streaming. Why? Because you can pause, rewind, and rewatch it as many times as you want. As it turns out, that is incredibly necessary when it comes to catching all the tiny details of this complicated but brilliant film. Once you start noticing the visual parallels—the cowboy hat and Jean Jacket, the horse training mirror and a reflective motorcycle helmet, the cameras watching a Young Jupe and the aliens that he believes are watching him now—you won’t be able to stop. Also, Keke Palmer’s outfits are all bangers. Like, every single one. Don’t wait to buy this one digital.

Photo: ©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

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By Anna Menta As thrilling as it was to

1.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010) vs. Riverdale (2017–present):


Summit Entertainment / The CW / @jjmaybanks / Via tumblr.com

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Hacks (2021–present) vs. Grace and Frankie (2015–2022) vs. Killing Eve (2018–2022):


HBO Max / Netflix / BBC America / @warningsine / Via tumblr.com

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Drake & Josh (2004–2007) vs. Abbott Elementary (2021–present):


Nickelodeon / ABC / @tvandfilm / Via tumblr.com

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A League of Their Own (2022) vs. Gentleman Jack (2019–2022):


Hulu / BBC One / @darlingvita / Via tumblr.com

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The Batman (2022) vs. SpongeBob SquarePants (1999–present):


Warner Bros. Pictures / Nickelodeon / @bellas-lemonade-cap / Via tumblr.com

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022–present) vs. Napoleon Dynamite (2004):


Paramount+ / Fox Searchlight Pictures / @awkwardtrekphotos / Via awkwardtrekphotos.tumblr.com

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Megan Thee Stallion’s performance of “Savage” at the Grammys (2021) vs. Stormy Weather (1943):


CBS / 20th Century Fox / @madeline-kahn / Via tumblr.com

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WandaVision (2021) vs. Shrek Forever After (2010):


Marvel / DreamWorks / @wandatvvision / Via tumblr.com

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Star Wars: A New Hope (1977) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) vs. High School Musical 2 (2007) vs. The Social Network (2010):


Lucasfilm Ltd. / Disney Channel / Sony Pictures Releasing / @thelovingfeeling / Via tumblr.com

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Euphoria (2019–present) vs. The Craft (1996):


HBO / Columbia Pictures / @heroeddiemunson / Via tumblr.com

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Jennifer’s Body (2009) vs. Birds of Prey (2020) vs. Harley Quinn (2019–present) vs. Superstar (1999) vs. the Babysitter movies (2017/2020) vs. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) vs. The Haunting of Hill House (2018):


20th Century Fox / Warner Bros. Pictures / Paramount Pictures / Netflix / Universal Pictures / Netflix / @joyexe / Via tumblr.com

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Little Women (2019) vs. Bad Buddy (2021–2022):


Sony Pictures Releasing / GMMTV / @talaypuens / Via tumblr.com

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Home Alone (1990) vs. Mommy (2014):


20th Century Fox / Les Films Séville / @akvles / Via tumblr.com

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Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) vs. How to Train Your Dragon (2010):


DreamWorks / Paramount Pictures / @hangmangang / Via hangmangang.tumblr.com

16.

Community (2009–2015) vs. The Mummy (1999):


NBC / Universal Pictures / @just-a-lost-princess / Via tumblr.com

17.

Squid Game (2021–present) vs. Prison Playbook (2017–2018):


Netflix / tvN / @yardmargs / Via yardmargs.tumblr.com

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Moonlight (2016) vs. The Handmaiden (2016):


A24 / CJ Entertainment / @emojidocranio / Via tumblr.com

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Paddington 2 (2017) vs. The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014):


StudioCanal / Fox Searchlight Pictures / @thehumming6ird / Via thehumming6ird.tumblr.com

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Terrorizers (1986) vs. The Truman Show (1998) vs. The Skin I Live In (2011) vs. La La Land (2016) vs. All About My Mother (1999) vs. Closer (2004) vs. Persona (1966) vs. A Single Man (2009):


Central Motion Pictures / Paramount Pictures / Warner Bros. Pictures / Lionsgate / El Deseo / Sony Pictures Releasing / AB Svensk Filmindustri / The Weinstein Company / @t4xian / Via t4xian.tumblr.com

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Loki (2021–present) vs. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003):


Disney+ / New Line Cinema / @acupofbritishearlgrey / Via tumblr.com

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Miraculous World: Shanghai, The Legend of Ladydragon (2021) vs. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014):


Disney Channel / Sony Pictures Releasing / @iwasbored777 / Via tumblr.com

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Amphibia (2019–2022) vs. Chronicle (2012):


Disney Channel / 20th Century Fox / @unknownmorsel / Via unknownmorsel.tumblr.com

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Aladdin (1992) vs. Star Wars: Rebels (2014–2018):


Disney / DisneyXD / @spectre-six / Via tumblr.com

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Parks and Recreation (2009–2015) vs. New Pokémon Snap (2021):


NBC / Nintendo / @highinfortree / Via tumblr.com

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Broad City (2014–2019) vs. Sex Education (2019–present):


Comedy Central / Netflix / @mcxmayfields / Via tumblr.com

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Killing Eve (2018–2022) vs. Romeo + Juliet (1996):


BBC America / 20th Century Fox / @nicholasmillergf / Via tumblr.com

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Terrorizers (1986) vs. Strange Circus (2005):


Central Motion Pictures / Excellent Film / @mtonion / Via tumblr.com

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Blue Valentine (2010) vs. Scenes from a Marriage (2021):


The Weinstein Company / HBO / @m9ri6h / Via tumblr.com

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Russian Doll (2019–present) vs. The Truman Show (1998):


Netflix / Paramount Pictures / @cinematographylovers / Via tumblr.com

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Flavor of Love (2006–2008) vs. Ted Lasso (2020–present):


VH1 / Apple TV+ / @colins-farrells / Via tumblr.com

33.

And Mean Girls (2004) vs. John Tucker Must Die (2006):


Paramount Pictures / 20th Century Fox / @flicksdarlings / Via tumblr.com

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Netflix has snapped up “The Anthrax Attacks” from BBC Studios, a feature-length doc about the 2001 anthrax threat that paralyzed the U.S. in the wake of 9/11 and sparked one of the largest FBI investigations in history.

The doc will star Marvel’s Clark Gregg (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”) in scripted scenes recreating some of the events that took place.

Oscar-nominated Dan Krauss (“Extremis”) will direct the doc, which is set to premiere globally on Thursday, Sept. 8. It is produced by BBC Studios’ science unit.

One week after 9/11 the U.S. suffered one of its worst ever biological attacks, resulting in the deaths of five people, while at least 17 more were injured.

“Unfolding across America and beyond, the documentary follows the incredible scientific tale of deadly poison, obsession, and paranoia, all told against the backdrop of the American war on terror,” reads the longline.

“The Anthrax Attacks” combines interviews and dramatic scenes as well as stories from investigators, survivors and their families. Gregg will play Dr Bruce Ivins in scenes based on Ivins’ own words.

Krauss will exec alongside Andrew Cohen for BBC Studios .

“This was a sprawling and massively complex story, one that required an adventurous approach in our filmmaking,” said Kraus. “The team at BBC Studios was fearless in meeting the challenge head-on, attacking every obstacle with impressive skill and care. I couldn’t have asked for more capable partners on this journey.”

Cohen said: “Delving into the biggest investigation in FBI history is no simple task, but with an incredibly talented team of filmmakers lead by Dan Krauss and Sweta Vohra we’ve been able to create a powerful and provocative film that blends drama and documentary to reopen our understanding of one of the most shocking terrorist acts in U.S. history.”

Check out the trailer below:

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Netflix has snapped up “The Anthrax Attacks”

After a year (plus) of pared-down guest lists and socially distanced receptions, big celebrity weddings came roaring back in 2021 (Paris Hilton, thank you so much) and will no doubt continue into 2022.

From epic themed gatherings to faraway destination nuptials to those I do’s we only hear about because TMZ finds the certificate, A-listers find all kinds of ways to get hitched. Kourtney and Travis—a.k.a. Kravis—have already celebrated their nuptials three times, while Bennifer has said “I do” twice. 

And if you stumbled upon this page while looking for inspo for your own big day, first of all, congrats. And second, we hope you find it helpful! After all, despite their A-list guests and bloated budgets, at the end of the day celebrity weddings are just like normie weddings: a chance to drink champagne and eat cake in the name of love!

Here are the best celebrity weddings and marriages of 2022.

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After a year (plus) of pared-down guest

Idris Elba as Dr. Nate Samuels in ‘Beast,’ directed by Baltasar Kormákur.

Idris Elba is one of the best actors working today!

Not only does he have the new thriller ‘Beast‘ opening in theaters on August 19th, he will also be seen in director George Miller‘s ‘Three Thousand Years of Longing‘ opposite Tilda Swinton, which opens in theaters on August 26th.

In honor of the actor’s two upcoming movies, Moviefone looks back at the twenty best movies of Idris Elba ‘s career.

Without further ado, let’s begin!


Against his father Odin’s (Anthony Hopkins) will, The Mighty Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – a powerful but arrogant warrior god – recklessly reignites an ancient war. Thor is cast down to Earth and forced to live among humans as punishment. Once here, Thor learns what it takes to be a true hero when the most dangerous villain of his world, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) sends the darkest forces of Asgard to invade Earth. Based on the Marvel Comics characters, Elba plays all-hearing Asgardian sentry Heimdall.

Thor

“Two worlds. One hero.”

68

PG-131 hr 55 minMay 6th, 2011


Stranded after a tragic plane crash, two strangers (Elba and Kate Winslet) must forge a connection to survive the extreme elements of a remote snow covered mountain. When they realize help is not coming, they embark on a perilous journey across the wilderness.


A team of explorers (Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, and Elba) discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.

Prometheus

“The Search for Our Beginning Could Lead to Our End.”

65

R2 hr 4 minJun 8th, 2012


Terri (Taraji P. Henson) is a devoted wife and mother of two, living an ideal suburban life in Atlanta when Colin (Elba), a charming but dangerous escaped convict, shows up at her door claiming car trouble. Terri offers her phone to help him but soon learns that no good deed goes unpunished as she finds herself fighting for survival when he invades her home and terrorizes her family.

No Good Deed

“First he gets into your house. Then he gets into your head.”

60

PG-131 hr 23 minSep 12th, 2014


Sony Pictures

Sony Pictures

Things couldn’t be better for Derek Charles (Elba). He’s just received a big promotion at work, and has a wonderful marriage with his beautiful wife, Sharon (Beyonce). However, into this idyllic world steps Lisa (Ali Larter), a temporary worker at Derek’s office. Lisa begins to stalk Derek, jeopardizing all he holds dear.

Obsessed

“Sharon and Derek have all they’ve ever wanted… but someone else wants it more.”

58

PG-131 hr 48 minApr 24th, 2009


A man-cub named Mowgli (Neel Sethi) fostered by wolves. After a threat from the tiger Shere Khan (Elba), Mowgli is forced to flee the jungle, by which he embarks on a journey of self discovery with the help of the panther, Bagheera (Ben Kingsley) and the free-spirited bear, Baloo (Bill Murray).

The Jungle Book

“The legend will never be the same.”

69

PG1 hr 46 minApr 15th, 2016


Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), a young skier and former Olympic hopeful becomes a successful entrepreneur (and a target of an FBI investigation) when she establishes a high-stakes, international poker game. With her reputation in ruins and future in jeopardy, she turns to attorney Charlie Jaffey (Elba) for legal help.


The USS Enterprise crew including Captain James T. Kirk (Chris Evans) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) explore the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they encounter a mysterious new enemy (Elba) who puts them and everything the Federation stands for to the test.


The world’s favorite blue hedgehog is back! After settling in Green Hills, Sonic (Ben Schwartz) is eager to prove he has what it takes to be a true hero. His test comes when Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) returns, this time with a new partner, Knuckles (Elba), in search for an emerald that has the power to destroy civilizations. Sonic teams up with his own sidekick, Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and together they embark on a globe-trotting journey to find the emerald before it falls into the wrong hands.


Following the death of his employer and mentor, Bumpy Johnson (Clarence Williams III), Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) establishes himself as the number one importer of heroin in the Harlem district of Manhattan after killing fellow gangster Tango (Elba). He begins buying heroin directly from the source in South East Asia and comes up with a unique way of importing the drugs into the United States. At home, he crosses paths with a dirty cop (Josh Brolin), and a crusading detective (Russell Crowe).

American Gangster

American Gangster

“There are two sides to the American dream”

76

NR2 hr 37 minNov 2nd, 2007


A seasoned team of bank robbers, including Gordon Cozier (Elba), John Rahway (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse Attica (Chris Brown) successfully complete their latest heist and lead a life of luxury while planning their next job. When Ghost (Tip “T.I.” Harris), a former member of their team, is released from prison he convinces the group to strike an armored car carrying $20 million. As the “Takers” carefully plot out their strategy and draw nearer to exacting the grand heist, a reckless police officer inches closer to apprehending the criminals.

Takers

“Who’s Taking Who?”

62

PG-131 hr 47 minAug 26th, 2010


Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

On a mission deep in the Bolivian jungle, a team of elite commandos led by Franklin Clay (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and William Roque (Elba) finds itself on the receiving end of a lethal betrayal. Now presumed dead, the men join forces with a mysterious operative named Aisha (Zoe Saldana) to hunt down their enemy and even the score. Based on the DC Comics characters.

The Losers

The Losers

“Anyone Else Would Be Dead By Now.”

63

PG-131 hr 37 minApr 23rd, 2010


Directed by Guillermo del Toro, as war between humankind and monstrous sea creatures wages on, a former pilot (Charlie Hunnam) and a trainee (Rinko Kikuchi) are paired up to drive a seemingly obsolete special weapon in a desperate effort to save the world. Elba plays commanding officer Marshal Stacker Pentecost.

Pacific Rim

“To fight monsters, we created monsters.”

69

PG-132 hr 11 minJul 12th, 2013


Determined to prove herself, Officer Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), the first bunny on Zootopia’s police force, jumps at the chance to crack her first case – even if it means partnering with scam-artist fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) to solve the mystery. Elba plays Chief Bogo, an African buffalo who is the police chief of the Zootopia Police Department’s 1st Precinct.

Zootopia

“Welcome to the urban jungle.”

77

PG1 hr 49 minMar 4th, 2016


Ever since US Diplomatic Security Service Agent Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and lawless outcast Decker Shaw (Jason Statham) first faced off, they just have traded smack talk and body blows. But when cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist Brixton’s (Elba) ruthless actions threaten the future of humanity, they join forces to defeat him.


A chronicle of Nelson Mandela’s (Elba) life journey from his childhood in a rural village through to his inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.


Based on the experiences of Agu (Abraham Attah), a child fighting in the civil war of an unnamed, fictional West African country. Follows Agu’s journey as he’s forced to join a group of soldiers led by Elba’s Commandant. While he fears his commander and many of the men around him, his fledgling childhood has been brutally shattered by the war raging through his country, and he is at first torn between conflicting revulsion and fascination.

Beasts of No Nation

When fifteen-year-old Cole (Caleb McLaughlin) is expelled from school in Detroit, he is sent to North Philadelphia to live with Harp (Elba), his estranged father. Harp finds solace in rehabilitating horses for inner city cowboys at the Fletcher Street Stables, a real-life black urban horsemanship community that has provided a safe haven for the neighborhood residents for more than 100 years.

Torn between his growing respect for his father’s community and his reemerging friendship with troubled cousin Smush (Jharrel Jerome), Cole begins to reprioritize his life as the stables themselves are threatened by encroaching gentrification.


Gunning for revenge, outlaw Nat Love (Jonathan Majors) saddles up with his gang to take down enemy Rufus Buck (Elba), a ruthless crime boss who just got sprung from prison.


(L to R) David Dastmalchian, John Cena, Idris Elba and Daniela Melchior in 'The Suicide Squad.'

(L to R) David Dastmalchian, John Cena, Idris Elba and Daniela Melchior in ‘The Suicide Squad.’

Welcome to Belle Reve, the prison where the worst Super-Villains are kept and where they will do anything to get out, even join the super-secret Task Force X. Today’s  assignment? Assemble a collection of cons, including Bloodsport (Elba), Peacemaker (John Cena), Ratcatcher 2 (Daniela Melchior), King Shark (Sylvester Stallone), and everyone’s favorite psycho, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie).

Now arm them heavily and drop them on the enemy-infused island of Corto Maltese. Trekking through a jungle teeming with militant adversaries and guerrilla forces at every turn, the Squad is on a search-and-destroy mission with only Colonel Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman) on the ground to make them behave, and Amanda Waller’s (Viola Davis) government techies in their ears, tracking their every movement. And as always, one wrong move and they’re dead (whether at the hands of their opponents, a teammate, or Waller herself). If anyone’s laying down bets, the smart money is against them all!

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Idris Elba as Dr. Nate Samuels in

“Stranger Things” music supervisor Nora Felder emerged victorious at Sunday’s Creative Arts Emmys, winning Outstanding Music Supervision for the season 4 episode “Dear Billy,” the one that made a nearly 40-year-old Kate Bush song a hit again. In her acceptance speech, Felder gave a special thanks to Bush (and Metallica, whose music also appeared in season 4).

The episode prominently features Bush’s 1985 song “Running Up That Hill (Make a Deal with God),” empowering the character Max (Sadie Sink) to fight back against evil. After the series’ fourth season dropped on Netflix in May, the track started charting around the world, propelled in no small part by chatter on social media. It reached No. 1 on iTunes and by July, the “Running Up That Hill” video had hit 100 million YouTube views. (As of this writing, it’s now up to 127 million.)

Felder chose the track because she felt the lyrics perfectly captured Max’s experience. As she told Variety, “In the face of Max’s painful isolation and alienation from others, a ‘deal with god’ could heart-wrenchingly reflect Max’s implicit belief that only a miracle of unlikely understanding and show of support could help her climb the hills of life before her. In Max’s situation, the need for a ‘deal with god’ can perhaps be metaphorically understood as a desperate cry for love — to manifest the extraordinary understanding and support Max needed while feeling so painfully alone.”

Securing the song was a huge coup for Felder, who previously had been nominated for her work on “Stranger Things” three times. Bush is famously protective of her music and rarely grants permission for its use in movies and television.

But it turned out that the musician has been a “Stranger Things” fan from the beginning, so when Felder’s request reached her, she approved. The decision ended up giving new life to the song, the first single off her 1985 album “Hounds of Love.” In an interview with BBC One in June, Bush said, “I thought that the track would get some attention. But I just never imagined that it would be anything like this. It’s so exciting. But it’s quite shocking really, isn’t it? I mean, the whole world’s gone mad.

“What’s really wonderful I think is that this is a whole new audience. In a lot of cases, they’ve never heard of me. And I love that. The thought of all these really young people hearing the song for the first time and discovering it is, well, I think it’s very special.

“I thought, what a lovely way for the song to be used in such a positive way,” she added. “You know, as a kind of talisman almost for Max. And yeah, I think it’s very touching, actually.”

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“Stranger Things” music supervisor Nora Felder emerged

Action Bronson made a surprise in-ring appearance during All Elite Wrestling’s All Out pay-per-view tonight in Chicago. He came to the aid of Hook, the young wrestler who walks out to Bronson’s song “The Chairman’s Intent.” Following Hook’s FTW Championship match with Angelo Parker, Bronson hit the ring to eject “Daddy Magic” Matt Menard from the ring and then literally throw Parker. Watch it happen below.

In an interview with Pitchfork last year when Bronson’s song debuted on AEW television, Hook and Bronson revealed that the two had trained in the ring together. “I got in the ring with Hook, did a couple moves—it was beautiful,” Bronson said. Both men were cagey about whether or not the rapper was a member of Hook’s former wrestling stable Team Taz. “Hey, listen, I can’t talk about that right now,” Bronson said. “That’s to be left in the air. You know where my affiliations lie and how deep they run. You can do the math.”

AEW has been licensing a good amount of popular music, recently replacing Orange Cassidy’s Pixies entrance with the wrestler’s music on the independent wrestling scene, “Jane” by Jefferson Starship. Tonight at All Out, the company licensed the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” for a mystery wrestler’s masked entrance.

Read Pitchfork’s interview with AEW wrestler Lee Moriarty, “What Professional Wrestling Prodigy Lee Moriarty Is Listening to Right Now.”

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Action Bronson made a surprise in-ring appearance

As parts of the country are beginning to lament the always-dreaded end of summer and students are starting to stream back into class for a new school year, across the pond, the 79th Venice Film Festival has just gotten underway. And with is, the unofficial start of awards season. Among this month’s Don’t-Miss Indies are two titles that will feature at the venerated cinephile fête, along with a whole new batch of awards contenders.

 

ORPHAN: FIRST KILL

When You Can Watch: Now

Where You Can Watch: Theaters, VOD, Paramount+

Director: William Brent Bell

Cast: Isabella Fuhrman, Julia Stiles, Rossif Sutherland

Why We’re Excited: In William Brent Bell’s blood-curdling psychological thriller–a prequel to the 2009 cult hit Orphan–31-year-old Estonian psychiatric patient Leena (2022 Film Independent Spirit Award Best Female Lead nominee Isabella Fuhrman) suffers from the rare health disorder hypopituitarism, leading her to resemble a nine-year-old girl. Leena finagles a brilliant escape from her psychiatric facility and makes it all the way to America. Once in Connecticut, she starts impersonating Esther, the missing daughter of wealthy artist Allen (Sutherland) and wife Tricia (Stiles). Impressively, the 25-year-old Fuhrman–who first played the demented murderer at age 12–reprises her role here from Orphan, more than a decade later, looking every bit as young as she did in the first installment… without any digital tricks to de-age her onscreen visage.

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HONK FOR JESUS. SAVE YOUR SOUL.

When You Can Watch: September 2

Where You Can Watch: Theaters, Peacock

Director: Adamma Ebo

Cast: Regina Hall, Sterling K. Brown, Austin Crute, Nicole Beharie

Why We’re Excited: In 2019 Project Involve Fellow Adamma Ebo’s feature directorial debut, Support the Girls Spirit Awards alum Regina Hall’s Trinitie is the proud wife of Southern Baptist megachurch pastor Lee-Curtis (Brown, of NBC’s family melodrama This Is Us). But when their congregation of tens of thousands–”Wander to Greater Paths”–is shut down by a scandal, the couple must work through the fallout to mount the biggest faith-based comeback since Jesus rolled away the stone blocking his grave. Adapted from Ebo’s own 2018 short of the same title, this satirical comedy’s producing team includes Film Independent Member Carolina Groppa.

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PETER VON KANT

When You Can Watch: September 2

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (Limited)

Director: François Ozon

Cast: Denis Ménochet, Isabelle Adjani, Khalil Ben Gharbia, Hanna Schygulla, Stéfan Crépon

Why We’re Excited: Two decades ago, director Ozon’s feature adaptation of Ranier Werner Fassbinder’s 1972 stage play Tropfen auf heiße Steine gave us the sadomasochistic lesbian drama Water Drops on Burning Rocks. Now, he revisits another Fassbinder classic, putting a gender-flipped spin on the Sapphic melodrama The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, emerging with a French-language gay psychosexual drama. Middle-aged and famous, director Peter (Ménochet) lives in tense domesticity with his houseboy/assistant Karl (Crépon). While at lunch with his ex and former muse Sidonie (Camille Claudet’s Adjani), he’s introduced to aspiring actor Amir (Gharbia) and immediately becomes infatuated with the young man–soon inviting Amir to move in with him with promises to help him break into the movie business. Premiering at Berlin this spring to critical acclaim, the film is set in 1972 Cologne.

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HOLD ME TIGHT

When You Can Watch: September 9

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (Limited)

Director: Mathieu Amalric

Cast: Vicky Krieps, Arieh Worthalter, Anne-Sophie Bowen-Chatet

Why We’re Excited: “He’ll think I left for a week, then six months, and then he’ll drop it.” So says young mother Camille (Krieps, of Phantom Thread and Bergman Island) to a friend as we see her embark on a road trip, eager to get away (possibly forever) from her family: husband Marc (Belgian actor Arieh Worthalter), daughter Lucie and son Paul. Adapted from a 2003 stage play by Claudine Galea, Amalric´s sixth feature as a director takes its time cutting back and forth between Camille’s state of mind and the aftermath of her abandonment back at home, as Marc struggles with the children until the mystery surrounding the separation is finally revealed. English-speaking audiences will probably recognize the actor-director Amalric most from his turn as a receipt-obsessed Bond villain in 2008’s Quantum of Solace.

 

BLONDE

When You Can Watch: September 16

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (limited), Netflix (September 28)

Director: Andrew Dominik

Cast: Ana de Armas, Lucy DeVito, Garret Dillahunt

Why We’re Excited: Slated to premiere this month at the 79th Venice Film Festival prior to its streaming release on Netflix, this work of historical fiction is based on Joyce Carol Oates’ 2000 novel of the same name. Shot mostly in black and white, writer-director Dominik’s (Chopper, Killing Them Softly) spin on one of Hollywood’s more enthralling icons–Norma Jeane Mortenson, otherwise known as Marilyn Monroe–has faced some backlash for casting Cuban-Spanish actress de Armas (Knives Out, No Time to Die) in the iconic part. For her part, de Armas reportedly worked with a dialect coach for nine months for the role to prepare, though she retains part of her native Cuban accent in the performance. Not a traditional biopic by any means, the film has already proved divisive among critics. Producers include Film Independent Members Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner.

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LOS ESPOOKYS, SEASON TWO

When You Can Watch: September 16

Where You Can Watch: HBO (Season 2)

Creators: Fred Armisen, Ana Fabrega, Julio Torres

Cast: Cassandra Ciangherotti, Ana Fabrega, Julio Torres, Bernardo Velasco

Why We’re Excited: Three years after it first debuted, HBO’s bilingual English/Spanish dark comedy finally returns for its sophomore season after multi-year pandemic-imposed production delays. Featuring a mostly Latinx cast, friends and fellow gore enthusiasts in an unnamed Latin American country have figured out a way to leverage their love of horror flicks for profit: by recreating scenarios out of scary movies in order to trick their clients into believing everything is happening for real! In Season Two, the leader of the Espookys, Renaldo (Velasco), finds himself haunted by the spirit of a beauty queen while best friend Andrés (series creator Torres) has some tough work ahead fighting–quite literally!–his own demons. This season’s impressive lineup of guest stars includes Isabella Rosellini (Blue Velvet, Enemy) and Yalitza Aparicio from 2019’s Roma.

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DON’T WORRY DARLING

When You Can Watch: September 23

Where You Can Watch: Theaters

Director: Olivia Wilde

Cast: Florence Pugh, Harry Styles, Olivia Wilde, Gemma Chan, Chris Pine

Why We’re Excited: Another upcoming Venice premiere, actor-director Olivia Wilde’s (a 2020 Spirit Award winner for her directorial debut, Booksmart) psychological thriller is based on the 2019 Black List spec script by brothers Carey and Shane Van Dyke. Shot during the pandemic in Los Angeles, the film follows a young and happy couple, Alice and Jack (Pugh and Styles), living in an apparently utopic 1950s experimental community in the company town of Victory, California. But pretty soon, Alice begins to suspect Jack’s work on the organization’s secret “Victory Project” and uncovers disturbing secrets behind their seemingly benign suburban facade. The producing team includes EP Catherine Hardwicke, previously nominated for two Spirit Awards for her directorial debut, 2003’s teen drama Thirteen.

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SIDNEY

When You Can Watch: September 23

Where You Can Watch: Apple TV+

Director: Reginald Hudlin

Why We’re Excited: “From the time I got off the boat, America began to say to me, You’re not who you think you are. There was a habit in Hollywood of utilizing Blacks in the most disrespectful ways. I said, I cannot play that.” A Spirit Award nominee for the 1990 comedy House Party, director Reginald Hudlin’s latest project is a documentary deep-dive into one of the most endearing icons of American cinema: the late Bahamian-American Oscar-winner Sidney Poitier (To Sir with Love, Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night). Poitier was born in Miami but lived in the Bahamas until he returned to the U.S. at the age of 15, eventually making his way to Hollywood as a unlikely (for the times) leading man in films including To Sir with Love, Lilies of the Field, In the Heat of the Night, The Defiant Ones and more. Featuring interviews with some of Hollywood’s biggest names–Denzel Washington, Robert Redford, Spike Lee–the film goes beyond the legend’s acting career to show us another side of Poitier: the Civil Rights leader and activist. Producers Oprah Winfrey and Derik Murray worked closely with the Poitier family to illuminate the actor’s storied life.

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CARMEN

When You Can Watch: September 23

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (Limited), VOD

Director: Valerie Bulhagiar

Cast: Natascha McElhone, Steven Love, Michaela Farrugia

Why We’re Excited: Partly inspired by her own aunt’s life, Maltese-Canadian director Bulhagiar’s drama follows the titular Carmen–a woman in her 50s who has finally emerged into the real world after a life of servitude in the name of the Church. Played by British actress McElhone (Ronin, Solaris and more recently as the fictional First Lady in TV series Designated Survivor), Carmen lives in a small village in Malta, where it is tradition to have a younger sister devote herself to the Church whenever her older brother becomes a priest. That’s how Carmen ended up living a repressed and severely deprived life from 16-50, until her brother’s death finally releases her from this cruel custom, allowing her to re-enter the wider world hungry for all it has to offer.

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*PROGRAMMERS’ PICK* THE SILENT TWINS

When You Can Watch: Film Independent Presents (September 13), September 16

Where You Can Watch: Theaters (Limited), VOD

Director: Valerie Bulhagiar

Cast: Letitia Wright, Tamara Lawrance, Jack Bandeira, Michael Smiley

Why We’re Excited: From Jenn Wilson, Film Independent Senior Programmer: “Director Agnieszka Smoczynska–who previously stunned audiences with her incredibly inventive film The Lure (2015)–makes another brilliantly creative film with The Silent Twins, the true story of twin sisters who refused to communicate with anyone but each other. Letitia Wright (June) and Tamara Lawrance (Jennifer) deliver astounding performances as the twins who refuse to speak with anyone but each other.  Cutting themselves off from the outside world, June and Jennifer build an elaborate internal world that feels safe for them, but unfortunately society intrudes on them by deciding that the two are bad for one another and that both need to be institutionalized and separated.  The two are extremely misunderstood until a woman discovers a book that June publishes, and decides to try to help get them released. The beautiful animated and fantasy sequences that represent June and Jennifer’s internal lives are a wonder to behold. That visual creativity coupled with the terrific performances from Lawrance and Wright make this a movie not to be missed!”

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KEY

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Film Independent Fellow or Member

Film Independent Presents Screening, Q&A

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Filmmaker or Lead Characters of Color

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Film Independent Spirit Award Winner or Nominee

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Female Filmmaker

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First-time Filmmaker

(Header: Honk If You Love Jesus. Save Your Soul.)

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Wish sewer here? British tourist wakes up in a room flooded with ankle-deep ‘RAW SEWAGE’ as entire Cape Verde resort is swamped

  • Jamie Robert from Manchester was visiting the Tui resort on Cape Verde
  • He awoke in the night to find sewage flooding his room after rainfall
  • He claims the hotel only offered him towels and he lost half of his possessions 

A British tourist was horrified to wake up in a room flooded with ankle-deep sewage while on a luxury holiday in Cape Verde.

Jamie Robert saw faeces flowing from the shower after heavy rainfall at the Tui resort in Riu Touareg Boa Vista in Cape Verde yesterday.

A shocking video shows Jamie’s room completely overflowing with a brown murky water.

A British tourist was horrified to wake up in a room flooded with ankle-deep sewage while on a luxury holiday in Cape Verde

A British tourist was horrified to wake up in a room flooded with ankle-deep sewage while on a luxury holiday in Cape Verde

Jamie Robert saw faeces flowing from the shower after heavy rainfall at the Tui resort in Riu Touareg Boa Vista in Cape Verde yesterday

Jamie Robert saw faeces flowing from the shower after heavy rainfall at the Tui resort in Riu Touareg Boa Vista in Cape Verde yesterday

Jamie Robert saw faeces flowing from the shower after heavy rainfall at the Tui resort in Riu Touareg Boa Vista in Cape Verde yesterday

Mr Robert, from Manchester, claims staff at the hotel didn't take the incident seriously (bedroom pictured before the flood)

Mr Robert, from Manchester, claims staff at the hotel didn’t take the incident seriously (bedroom pictured before the flood)

The holidaymaker tried to salvage some of his belongings by piling his suitcase and clothing on top of the bed.

In the clip he can be seen wading through the rooms corridor as filthy water fills the room and up against the walls.

Mr Robert, from Manchester, claims staff at the hotel didn’t take the incident seriously and only offered him towels for his room following the incident.

He said he lost half of his possessions from the flooding which rose to his knees.

Jamie took to Twitter yesterday (THUR) in a bid to get help from his TUI reps, writing: ‘@TUIUK hello we need urgent assistance please RE Touareg Boa Vista.

A shocking video shows Jamie's room completely overflowing with a brown murky water

A shocking video shows Jamie’s room completely overflowing with a brown murky water

Mr Robert said staff at the resort (pictured) only offered him towels for his room following the incident

Mr Robert said staff at the resort (pictured) only offered him towels for his room following the incident

‘The entire resort is underwater and rooms are flooded out with raw sewage.

‘Staff at reception are not treating this seriously and we can’t get a response from anybody.

‘We woke up at 4am to our room ankle deep in wastewater.

‘We’d lost possessions and raw sewage was coming up from the shower drain.

‘No assistance from the hotel staff at all, I had to wake other rooms up to alert them. I am mortified.’

He later added: ‘I was repeatedly told by reception staff that the hotel manager would be unavailable for assistance until his shift started at 8am local time.

The holidaymaker tried to salvage some of his belongings by piling his suitcase and clothing on top of the bed

The holidaymaker tried to salvage some of his belongings by piling his suitcase and clothing on top of the bed

The tourist was initially told by reception staff that the hotel manager would be unavailable for assistance

The tourist was initially told by reception staff that the hotel manager would be unavailable for assistance

‘We went to reception at 4.30am and flooding had only worsened.

‘We’re wading through sewage to try and salvage what we can, this is horrendous.’

A TUI spokesperson replied: ‘Hi Jamie – Thank you for raising this issue to us and I’d like to apologise for what has happened.

‘I have raised this with our resort team and we will be in touch with you as soon as possible. Ashley.’

Jamie replied: ‘Thank you Ashley. This is the extent of the damage.

‘I understand you aren’t responsible for the weather but this was greatly mishandled by the hotel team and as a result we have lost half of our possessions.

‘Please get in touch when you know more information.’

TUI has been approached for comment.

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It’s widely expected that the Google Pixel 7 and the Google Pixel 7 Pro will get a full launch in October, after their existence was officially announced at Google IO 2022 in May, but more details about these phones continue to leak out.

Now we have a brief but interesting unboxing video of the Pixel 7 Pro to share with you. Posted by Gadgetfull BD (opens in new tab) (via 9to5Google (opens in new tab)), we see a brand new black version of the phone as it’s slid out of its box, with the packaging around it then unpeeled.

The 44-second video carries on so we can see the Google logo as the device boots up, and then the Pixel setup screen appears. The clip doesn’t go any further than that though, so we don’t get a look at the Android 13 software on board.

What we know so far

It’s an unboxing clip that Pixel fans are definitely going to want to check out, but it’s not particularly illuminating in telling us anything more about the phone that we didn’t know before – Google has already shown off the design of the phone, after all.

Being able to see the actual device in the real world makes a difference though. The Google Pixel 7 Pro is expected to closely match the Google Pixel 6 Pro in terms of physical size, with a 6.71-inch display on the front. Like its predecessor, the Pixel 7 Pro will also have a triple-lens rear camera setup.

There will be internal upgrades, with both the Pixel 7 and the Pixel 7 Pro being powered by the second-generation Tensor chipset developed by Google and Samsung. As for the other key specs, we’ll have to wait until the full unveiling for those.


Analysis: it’s Google vs Apple, again

There’s some debate over when exactly the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will get a full and proper launch: previous Pixels have usually launched in October, but there have been rumors that Google is going to push the 2022 models out into the world in September instead.

That would of course put the Pixel 7 launch even closer to the iPhone 14 launch. We know that Apple is holding an event on September 7, and while there’s no official confirmation yet, it would be a huge surprise if new iPhones didn’t feature at that event.

It seems as though this year Apple is saving a lot of the key upgrades for the Pro models: they’ve been tipped to get faster processors and a few important design tweaks, as well as the usual extra camera capabilities. 

While we’d say that the Google Pixel series is catching up to the Apple iPhone in terms of hardware and software quality, it’s still got a way to go – and so it’s going to be intriguing to see what both companies have to show off over the next month or two.

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It's widely expected that the Google Pixel

The existential drift of Japan’s post-bubble “lost generation” gets the mystery thriller treatment in Kei Ishikawa’s Venice Horizons entry, A Man.

Based on the novel of the same name by Japanese author Keiichiro Hirano, A Man follows a troubled lawyer (Satoshi Tsumabuki) who is drawn into a web of mystery when a former client (played by a soulful Sakura Ando, star of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters) asks him to investigate the mysterious past of her deceased husband (a beguiling Masataka Kubota). The attorney encounters an array of colorful characters in his pursuit of the identify of this man who lived his life as a different person — but as he comes closer to the shocking truth, mixed feelings about the nature of his own place in the world steadily creep up on him.

“Shochiku came to me with the idea of making Hirano’s book into a film, so I read it and found that it’s a very pure sort of literary novel, but it’s also an engaging mystery,” says Ishikawa of A Man‘s genesis. “It’s very intellectually interesting and encapsulates a lot of the problems that my generation is facing, but it brings a lot of entertainment as well, which quite surprised me. So, I felt that as someone of the same generation as Hirano, who understands these sentiments, I had to make it.”

The sense of lostness and the dawning need for new beginnings that Jo‘s two lead characters — the enigmatic mystery husband and the troubled attorney who pursues him — eventually come to share, is reflective of many Japanese who came of age in the early 1990s, Ishikawa says.

“We grew up during Japan’s declining economy years, but we were surrounded by adults who knew the glory years of Japan’s economic miracle and who were trying to carry on as if that time was still with us. We knew that it was long gone, so my generation’s response was to look inward — to ask how can we live in a way that is more suitable to ourselves and more in tune with what we really want? But then we entered society at a time of economic downturn, fewer good jobs, rising suicide rates — and these are not the time and conditions for self-discovery. We have no leeway and we begin to wonder, what is the point to self-discovery in the first place?”

A Man reunites Ishikawa with Tsumabuki, star of his well-received directorial debut, Traces of Sin, which premiered in Horizons in 2017. Marquee handsome, the actor embodies a successful, happily married attorney who in many ways has a model life — but one who nonetheless finds elements of discord everywhere he turns, leaving him wondering what it might be like to step into a new life altogether, much like the man he is pursuing.

The film opens and closes with a shot of René Magritte’s classic surrealist painting, Not to Be Reproduced, which depicts a man standing in front of a mirror, but with a reflection that shows him from behind, rather than his face. The enigmatic image “encapsulates many of A Man‘s ideas about the elusiveness of identity,” Ishikawa says.Shochiku, has lined up a sizable theatrical release for the film in Japan on Nov. 18. The Japanese studio also is handling sales on the title for Asian territories, while German outfit The Match Factory is selling rights for the rest of the globe. Heading into Venice, the film sold to France (Art House Films), Taiwan (Pigeon Co.), and Hong Kong and Macau (Golden Scene).

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Last Updated: June 11, 2021, 10:28 IST

Sunflower
Cast: Sunil Grover, Mukul Chaddha, Ranvir Shorey, Saloni Patel
Director: Vikas Bahl

Web series Sunflower, also the name of the housing society it chooses to center its erratic murder mystery plot around, tries to blend elements of humour with drama that ends up being neither compelling nor enjoyable. Throughout the eight-episode run, the focus keeps shifting from one character to another without any interesting hook for the viewers to lean into. Sure, you may choose to call them quirky, but really, they are just uninteresting and an end result of half-hearted characterisation.

At the heart of Sunflower is a murder mystery that gets things rolling and brings the attention on a group of residents in a Mumbai co-operative society. Sonu (Sunil Grover) and Mr. Ahuja (Mukul Chaddha) become the top suspects and are under the police radar for their odd behaviour. But the buddy cop duo DG (Ranvir Shorey) and Chetan Thambe (Girish Kulkarni) keep chasing red herrings until the last 30-odd minutes or so of the runtime, making you question if the case is in capable hands or not. You’ll find yourself wanting to get to the bottom of the ‘who killed’ question more than the makers or the law enforcement.

Characters are forcibly introduced for the most part to stretch the plot further and further and cram in humour. This keeps leading the viewers into the walls. We are constantly served with Sunil Grover’s ill attempts at delivering outdated, cell phone jokes with very little sincerity. When he is on a break from that, he turns to slapstick, which is even more disappointing as the situations are just too bland. Looking back, there are fonder memories of his comic characters on TV. Here he is a terrible misfit, just as Sonu is in his surroundings.

For a mystery that should warrant unwavering attention, Sunflower is constantly distracting and sub-standard. You will not regret sitting this one out.

Rating: 1/5

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Last Updated: June 11, 2021, 10:28 ISTSunflowerCast:

Taylor Hawkins in January 2021

Taylor Hawkins in January 2021
Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for iHeartMedia

The surviving members of the Foo Fighters—joined by a huge number of other big-name musicians—assembled at Wembley Stadium in London earlier today for a concert. Said show was the first of two planned tribute concerts in honor of Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, who died back in March. It was, to put not-too-fine a point on it, a massive and star-studded affair: In addition to Dave Grohl and the other members of the Foo Fighters—playing together publicly for the first time since Hawkins’ death—the setlist also included appearances from Dave Chappelle, Josh Homme, John Paul Jones, Liam Gallagher, Kesha, Nile Rodgers, The Pretenders, Krist Novoselic, Lars Ulrich, Roger Taylor, Brian May, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Brian Johnson, Stewart Copeland, Nandi Bushell, Paul McCartney, and more.

Although the whole event ran for six hours today—encompassing something like 50 songs in its setlist—we’ve picked out a few highlights from the day, which blended together heartfelt feeling with powerful musicianship, as many of Hawkins’ favorite performers came together with his bandmates to pay tribute.

For instance: Liam Gallagher, helping to open the show with a version of Oasis’ “Life Forever”.

Later on, Homme, Jones, and Grohl reunited their supergroup Them Crooked Vultures for their first time in 12 years:

Members of two of Hawkins’ biggest influences, Queen and Rush, also took the stage to pay tribute:

And here’s McCartney and Chrissie Hynde performing together for The Beatles’ “Oh Darling!”

The most emotional moments of the night, not surprisingly, came from the set by the Foo Fighters themselves, who brought in a rotating set of drummers to pay tribute to Hawkins. That included Josh Freese, Travis Barker, Rufus Taylor, and, yes, Bushell, who powered mightily through a version of the band’s “Learn To Fly.”

The final drummer of the evening was Hawkins’ 16-year-old son, Shane Hawkins, playing on the bands’ “My Hero.” Which, yeah: Hard to stay dry-eyed for that one.

Grohl finished the show with one final solo offering—for a definition of “solo” that includes an entire arena of people singing along—to the man he frequently referred to as his brother: An acoustic version of “Everlong”:

Foo Fighters (Dave Grohl solo) – Everlong [Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert]

The second Taylor Hawkins tribute concert is scheduled for September 27 in California.

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Taylor Hawkins in January 2021Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty

Starting today, a new bundle from Paramount+ combines the service’s collection of original series, hit programs, and blockbuster films with Showtime’s content, all within the Paramount+ app.

Bundle subscribers can now curate their watch list to include both Paramount+ and Showtime programming thanks to a quick in-app upgrade available across all platforms. Paramount+ and Showtime originals will also be available to bundle customers this fall, both new and returning.

U.S. subscribers can currently purchase the Paramount+ with Showtime bundle for a special, limited-time price of $7.99 per month for the Essential Plan and $12.99 per month for the Premium Plan.

“The Paramount+ with Showtime bundle offers consumers unprecedented value by providing one of the broadest content libraries in streaming at one of the lowest prices in the marketplace,” said Tom Ryan, president and chief executive officer of Paramount Global Streaming, in a statement. “This singular user experience streamlines sign-up and enhances discovery, and this lower price will allow more households to enjoy this exceptional combined entertainment offering.”

The bundle will cost $11.99 for the Essential tier or $14.99 for the ad-free Premium tier when the special promotional pricing expires on Oct. 2.

Showtime will still be offered individually for $10.99 as a standalone subscription and through other third-party distributors in addition to the Paramount+ with Showtime bundle.

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Starting today, a new bundle from Paramount+

If you’re used to getting your fill of Saturday Night Live and Law & Order on Hulu, all that’s going to change on September 19th. From then on, next-day premieres from NBC land on Peacock as part of the streaming service’s plan to consolidate NBC-branded content on its home platform.

Peacock terminated its content-sharing deal with Hulu back in March to prepare for its plans to exclusively secure more of its own content. This includes shows like One Chicago, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and The Voice.

The platform already streams next-day episodes from the NBC-owned Bravo, including The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, Below Deck, Top Chef, and Southern Charm. NBC has also made one of its longest-running shows, Days Of Our Lives, a Peacock exclusive, but it has had trouble getting people to stay on the service for more than just the Olympic Games, the NFL, and The Office.

To help bolster its offerings, NBC signed off on a deal with Universal Pictures last year to get the studio’s films on Peacock 45 days after they premiere in theaters throughout 2022. Peacock also has the rights to the John Wick franchise and will debut a John Wick prequel in 2023.

On top of that, it has secured two versions of Jurassic World Dominion — the original movie and an extended version — which will be exclusively available starting September 2nd, and it will stream Halloween Ends starring Jamie Lee Curtis the same day it releases in theaters on October 14th.

In July, NBC’s parent company Comcast reported that Peacock’s subscriber count stayed flat at 13 million despite having what it says was “extraordinary programming” during the quarter. Peacock has only managed to add 4 million paid subscribers since the end of 2021.

Despite a lack of meaningful subscriber growth in the previous quarter, Peacock president Kelly Campbell remains optimistic about the two-year-old service’s future. “We are feeling really good about the trends that we’re seeing in our subscriber trajectory right now,” Campbell said in an interview with Deadline. “As we move towards bringing our content exclusively next day to Peacock, we’ll be putting some special subscription offers in the market to help ease that transition for consumers.”

Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.

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The Beatles: Get Back and Adele: One Night Only won five awards apiece during the first of the two-night presentation of the Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles.

The Beatles: Get Back delivered two Emmys to Peter Jackson, for directing and outstanding documentary. “Shout out to the Beatles,” enthused Jackson, who is also a three-time Oscar winner for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and is now halfway to EGOT.

Adele: One Night Only’s five awards included outstanding pre-recorded variety special. With the win, Adele is now just a Tony away from achieving EGOT status.

RuPaul won an Emmy for hosting his RuPaul’s Drag Race, extending his record as the most honored person of color in Emmy history, with a total of 12 wins and seven consecutive wins for outstanding host.

Chadwick Boseman received a posthumous Emmy for his voice performance as T’Challa in Disney+ series What If…? Boseman’s wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted, saying, “What a beautifully aligned moment it really is that one of the last things he would work on would not only be revisiting a character that was so important to him and his career and to the world, but also that it be an exploration of something new, diving into a new potential future.”

Former President Barack Obama won his first Emmy, for narrating the Netflix docuseries Our Great National Parks. He is now halfway to EGOT, having previously won two Grammys.

Riot Games and Netflix’s animated series Arcane received four Emmys, including animated series and three juried awards. The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show was a big winner for three Emmys, while Netflix’s Love on the Spectrum also nabbed three.

Programs that won two Emmys include A Black Lady Sketch Show, Drag Race, Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, Luci and Desi and the Love Death + Robots episode “Jibaro” (including one juried award).

All 2022 Creative Arts Emmy attendees were required to show proof of a negative COVID test. The second Creative Arts Emmys ceremony will be held on Sunday.

The list of winners and nominees follows.

Outstanding Animated Program
Arcane • When These Walls Come Tumbling Down • Netflix • A Riot Games and Fortiche Production for Netflix (WINNER)

Bob’s Burgers • Some Like It Bot Part 1: Eighth Grade Runner • FOX • 20th Television

Rick And Morty • Mort Dinner Rick Andre • Adult Swim • Rick and Morty LLC

The Simpsons • Pixelated And Afraid • FOX • A Gracie Films production in association with 20th Television Animation

What If…? • What If… Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead Of His Hands? • Disney+ • Marvel Studios

Outstanding Casting For A Reality Program

Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls • Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Lynne Spillman, Casting by
Blair Kim, Casting by
Jazzy Collins, Casting by

Love On The Spectrum U.S. • Netflix • Northern Pictures for Netflix (WINNER)
Laura Ritchie, Casting by
Kat Elmore, Casting by
Jeffrey Marx, Casting by

Queer Eye • Netflix • Scout Productions Inc. and ITV Entertainment LLC for Netflix
Jessica Jorgensen, Casting by
Natalie Pino, Casting by
Quinn Fegan, Casting by

RuPaul’s Drag Race • VH1 • World of Wonder
Goloka Bolte, CSA, Casting by
Ethan Petersen, CSA, Casting by

Top Chef • Bravo • Magical Elves
Samantha Hanks, Casting by
Ron Mare, Casting by

Outstanding Character Voice-over Performance

Moon Knight • The Friendly Type • Disney+ • Marvel Studios
F. Murray Abraham as Khonshu

Bridgerton • Capital R Rake • Netflix • A Netflix Original Series in association with shondalandmedia
Julie Andrews as Lady Whistledown

What If…? • What If… T’Challa Became A Star-Lord? • Disney+ • Marvel Studios (WINNER)
Chadwick Boseman as Star Lord T’Challa

Big Mouth • A Very Big Mouth Christmas • Netflix • Netflix
Maya Rudolph as Connie The Hormone Monstress

Central Park • Central Dark • Apple TV+ • 20th Television Animation
Stanley Tucci as Bitsy

Archer • London Time • FX • FX Productions
Jessica Walter as Malory Archer

What If…? • What If… Ultron Won? • Disney+ • Marvel Studios
Jeffrey Wright as The Watcher

Outstanding Choreography For Variety Or Reality Programming

Annie Live! • Routines: Hard Knock Life / We Got Annie / NYC • NBC • Chloe Productions, The Green Room, Zadan/Meron Productions, Sony Pictures Television
Sergio Trujillo, Choreographer

Dancing With The Stars • Routines: I Got 5 On It / Dark Fantasy • ABC • BBC Studios Los Angeles Productions
Daniella Karagach, Choreographer

The Oscars • Routine: Be Alive • ABC • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Fatima Robinson, Choreographer

Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3 • Routine: Opening • Prime Video • Fenty Films & Endeavor Content (WINNER)
Parris Goebel, Choreographer

Step Into… The Movies With Derek And Julianne Hough • Routine: Moulin Rouge “Roxanne” • ABC • Done+Dusted in association with Walt Disney Television
Tessandra Chavez, Choreographer
Derek Hough, Choreographer

Outstanding Cinematography For A Nonfiction Program

The Andy Warhol Diaries • Collab: Andy & Basquiat • Netflix • Abstract Submarine for Netflix
Wolfgang Held, Director of Photography

McCartney 3, 2, 1 • These Things Bring You Together • Hulu • Hulu, Endeavor Content, A Tetragrammaton, Film 45, Kennedy/Marshall Company, MPL Communications
Stuart Winecoff, Director of Photography

100 Foot Wave • Chapter IV – Dancing With God • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with Topic Studios, Library Films, Amplify Pictures, React Films and Cinetic (WINNER)
Mike Prickett, Director of Photography
Laurent Pujol, Cinematography by

Our Great National Parks • Chilean Patagonia • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary Series / A Wild Space Production in association with Higher Ground Productions & Freeborne Media
Christiaan Muñoz-Salas, Cinematography by
Ignacio Walker, Cinematography by

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy • Venice • CNN • CNN Original Series, RAW
Andrew Muggleton, Director of Photography

We Feed People • Disney+ • National Geographic Documentary Films Presents an Imagine Documentaries Production
Kris Kaczor, Director of Photography
Sebastian Lindstrom, Director of Photography
Alicia Sully, Director of Photography

Outstanding Cinematography for a Reality Program

The Amazing Race • Series Body Of Work • CBS • WorldRace Productions, Inc.
Josh Gitersonke, Director of Photography
Joshua Argue, Camera
Kathryn Barrows, Camera
Marc Bennett, Camera
Denise Borders, Camera
Petr Cikhart, Camera
Dave D’Angelo, Camera
Chris Ellison, Camera
Adam Haisinger, Camera
Kevin R. Johnson, Camera
Daniel Long, Camera
Jeff Philips, Camera

Deadliest Catch • Series Body Of Work • Discovery Channel • Original Productions, LLC for the Discovery Channel
David Reichert, Director of Photography
Bryan Miller, Director of Photography
Kelvon Agee, Director of Photography
Charlie Beck, Director of Photography
Todd Stanley, Director of Photography
Dave Arnold, Director of Photography
Nathan Garofalos, Director of Photography
Shane Moore, Director of Photography
Randy Lee, Director of Photography
Jacob Tawney, Director of Photography
Sam Henderson, Camera
Carson Doyle, Camera
Antonio Baca, Camera

Life Below Zero • Fire In The Sky • National Geographic • BBC Studios for National Geographic (WINNER)
Danny Day, Director of Photography
Michael Cheeseman, Director of Photography
Simeon Houtman, Director of Photography

Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls • HBCYou Band • Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Michael Jacob Kerber, Director of Photography

RuPaul’s Drag Race • Series Body Of Work • VH1 • World of Wonder
Michael Jacob Kerber, Director of Photography
Jay Mack Arnette II, Camera
Jason Cooley, Camera
Pauline Edwards, Camera
Mario Panagiotopoulos, Camera
Brett Smith, Camera
Jeremiah Smith, Camera
Justin Umphenour, Camera
Jon Schneider, Camera

Survivor • Series Body Of Work • CBS • MGM Television
Scott Duncan, Director of Photography
Peter Wery, Director of Photography
Russ Fill, Director of Photography
Christopher Barker, Director of Photography
Granger Scholtz, Director of Photography
Josh Bartel, Camera
Marc Bennett, Camera
Paulo Castillo, Camera
Rodney Chauvin, Camera
Chris Ellison, Camera
Glenn Louis Evans, Camera
David J. Frederick, Camera
Ben Gamble, Camera
Kevin B. Garrison, Camera
Nixon George, Camera
Matthias Hoffmann, Camera
Toby Hogan, Camera
Efrain “Mofi” Laguna, Camera
Jeff Phillips, Camera
Louis Powell, Camera
Erick G. Sarmiento, Camera
Dirk Steyn, Camera
John Tattersall, Camera
Holly Tompson, Camera
Paulo Velozo, Camera
Ryan Hermosura, Camera
Cullum Andrews, Camera

Outstanding Commercial

Detectives – Apple iPhone 13 Pro O Positive, Production Company Apple, Ad Agency

Everyone But Jon Hamm – Apple TV+ Hungry Man Productions, Production Company Media Arts Lab, Ad Agency

The Lost Class – Change The Ref
Hungry Man Productions, Production Company Leo Burnett Chicago, Ad Agency

Skate Nation Ghana – Meta Love Song, Production Company Droga5, Ad Agency

Teenage Dream – Sandy Hook Promise (WINNER)
BBDO New York, Ad Agency Smuggler, Production Company

Walter The Cat – Chevy Silverado Commonwealth//McCann, Ad Agency O Positive, Production Company

Outstanding Directing for a Documentary/Nonfiction Program

The Andy Warhol Diaries • Shadows: Andy & Jed • Netflix • Abstract Submarine for Netflix
Andrew Rossi, Directed by

The Beatles: Get Back • Part 3: Days 17-22 • Disney+ • Apple Corps Limited and WingNut Films Productions Limited (WINNER)
Peter Jackson, Directed by

George Carlin’s American Dream • HBO/HBO Max • HBO Documentary Films presents an Apatow/Rise Films Production in association with Pulse Films
Judd Apatow, Directed by
Michael Bonfiglio, Directed by

Lucy And Desi • Prime Video • Amazon Studios, Imagine Documentaries, White Horse Pictures in association with Paper Kite Productions and Diamond Docs
Amy Poehler, Directed by

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy • Venice • CNN • CNN Original Series, RAW
Ian Denyer, Directed by

We Need To Talk About Cosby • Part 1 • Showtime • SHOWTIME Documentary Films presents a Boardwalk Pictures production in association with WKB Industries
W. Kamau Bell, Directed by

Outstanding Directing For A Reality Program

Cheer • Daytona Pt. 2: If The Judges Disagree • Netflix • One Potato Productions, Boardwalk Pictures and Caviar for Netflix
Greg Whiteley, Directed by

Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls • Naked • Prime Video • Amazon Studios (WINNER)
Nneka Onuorah, Directed by

Queer Eye • Angel Gets Her Wings • Netflix • Scout Productions Inc. and ITV Entertainment LLC for Netflix
Aaron Krummel, Directed by

RuPaul’s Drag Race • Moulin Ru: The Rusical • VH1 • World of Wonder
Nick Murray, Directed by

Top Chef • Freedmen’s Town • Bravo • Magical Elves
Ari Boles, Directed by

Outstanding Directing for a Variety Series

A Black Lady Sketch Show • Save My Edges, I’m A Donor! • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with For Better or Words, Inc., Hoorae, 3 Arts Entertainment and Jax Media (WINNER)
Bridget Stokes, Directed by

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver • Union Busting • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with Sixteen String Jack Productions and Avalon Television
Paul Pennolino, Directed by
Christopher Werner, Directed by

Late Night With Seth Meyers • Episode 1252 • NBC • Universal Television and Broadway Video
Alexander J. Vietmeier, Directed by

Saturday Night Live • Host: Billie Eilish • NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video
Don Roy King, Directed by
Liz Patrick, Directed by

Outstanding Directing for a Variety Special

Adele: One Night Only • CBS • Fulwell 73 UK Limited and Onward Productions in association with Harpo Productions
Paul Dugdale, Directed by (WINNER)

Dave Chappelle: The Closer • Netflix • Netflix | Lathan TV | Pilot Boy
Stan Lathan, Directed by

Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with Rotten Science
Bo Burnham, Directed by

Norm Macdonald: Nothing Special • Netflix • Irwin Entertainment for Netflix
Norm Macdonald, Directed by
Jeff Tomsic, Directed by

The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar And 50 Cent • NBC • Jesse Collins Entertainment, DPS and Roc Nation
Hamish Hamilton, Directed by

Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series

The Andy Warhol Diaries • Netflix • Abstract Submarine for Netflix

The Beatles: Get Back • Disney+ • Apple Corps Limited and WingNut Films Productions Limited (WINNER)

jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary / A TIME Studios Production in association with Creative Control and Leah Natasha Productions

100 Foot Wave • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with Topic Studios, Library Films, Amplify Pictures, React Films and Cinetic

We Need To Talk About Cosby • Showtime • SHOWTIME Documentary Films presents a Boardwalk Pictures production in association with WKB Industries

Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special

Controlling Britney Spears (New York Times Presents) • FX • The New York Times and Left/Right

George Carlin’s American Dream • HBO/HBO Max • HBO Documentary Films presents an Apatow/Rise Films Production in association with Pulse Films (WINNER)

Lucy And Desi • Prime Video • Amazon Studios, Imagine Documentaries, White Horse Pictures in association with Paper Kite Productions and Diamond Docs

The Tinder Swindler • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary / A Raw Production with Gaspin Media and AGC Studios in association with VG

We Feed People • Disney+ • National Geographic Documentary Films Presents an Imagine Documentaries Production

Outstanding Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking

Changing The Game • Hulu • Hulu, Superfilms Productions, Foton Pictures, Glanzrock Productions

Frederick Douglass: In Five Speeches • HBO/HBO Max • HBO Documentary Films presents a McGee Media and Inkwell Media Production

When Claude Got Shot • PBS • 371 Productions, Inc., Independent Television Service and Black Public Media (WINNER)

Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition Program

Queer Eye • Netflix • Scout Productions Inc. and ITV Entertainment LLC for Netflix
Bobby Berk, Host Karamo Brown, Host Tan France, Host Antoni Porowski, Host
Jonathan Van Ness, Host

Nailed It! • Netflix • Magical Elves for Netflix
Nicole Byer, Host

Shark Tank • ABC • MGM Television in association with Sony Pictures Television
Mark Cuban, Host
Barbara Corcoran, Host
Lori Greiner, Host
Robert Herjavec, Host
Daymond John, Host
Kevin O’Leary, Host

Top Chef • Bravo • Magical Elves
Padma Lakshmi, Host

Making It • NBC • Universal Television Alternative Studio in association with Paper Kite Productions and 3 Arts Entertainment
Amy Poehler, Host
Nick Offerman, Host

RuPaul’s Drag Race • VH1 • World of Wonder (WINNER)
RuPaul, Host

Outstanding Hosted Nonfiction Series or Special

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman • Netflix • A Jax Media and Worldwide Pants Production for Netflix

The Problem With Jon Stewart • Apple TV+ • Busboy / EDEN in association with Apple

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy • CNN • CNN Original Series, RAW (WINNER)

Vice • Showtime • SHOWTIME Presents, Vice Media LLC

The World According To Jeff Goldblum • Disney+ • Nutopia for National Geographic and Disney+

Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction For A Variety Series

America’s Got Talent • Finale Results • NBC • Fremantle and Syco Entertainment
Noah Mitz, Lighting Designer
Michael Berger, Lighting Director
William Gossett, Lighting Director
Ryan Tanker, Lighting Director
Matt Benson, Lighting Director
Patrick Brazil, Lighting Director
Scott Chmielewski, Lighting Director

American Song Contest • Semi-Final #1 • NBC • Propagate, Universal Television Alternative Studio, American Song Contest Inc.
Noah Mitz, Lighting Designer
William Gossett, Lighting Director
Patrick Brazil, Lighting Director
Rob Koenig, Lighting Director
Matt Benson, Lighting Director
Darien Koop, Lighting Director
Matthew Cotter, Lighting Director

Dancing With The Stars • Finale • ABC • BBC Studios Los Angeles Productions
Tom Sutherland, Lighting Designer
Joe Holdman, Lighting Director
Nate Files, Lighting Director
Matt McAdam, Lighting Director

The Masked Singer • Group A Semi-Final • FOX • FOX Alternative Entertainment and Smart Dog Media
Simon Miles, Lighting Designer
Cory Fournier, Lighting Director

The Voice • Live Finale • NBC • MGM Television and Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Warner Horizon and ITV Studios The Voice USA, Inc. (WINNER)
Oscar Dominguez, Lighting Designer
Samuel Barker, Lighting Director
Ronald K. Wirsgalla, Lighting Director
Daniel K. Boland, Lighting Director
Erin Anderson, Lighting Director
Andrew Munie, Lighting Director

Outstanding Lighting Design/Lighting Direction for a Variety Special

Adele: One Night Only • CBS • Fulwell 73 UK Limited and Onward Productions in association with Harpo Productions (WINNER)
Noah Mitz, Lighting Designer
Bryan Klunder, Lighting Director
Patrick Boozer, Lighting Director
Patrick Brazil, Lighting Director
Matthew Cotter, Lighting Director
Christopher Landy, Lighting Director

Annie Live! • NBC • Chloe Productions, The Green Room, Zadan/Meron Productions, Sony Pictures Television
Robert Barnhart, Lighting Designer
Pete Radice, Lighting Director
Ben Green, Lighting Director
Madigan Stehly, Lighting Director
Robert Styles, Lighting Director

The 64th Annual Grammy Awards • CBS • Fulwell 73 UK Limited
Noah Mitz, Lighting Designer
Madigan Stehly, Lighting Director
Bryan Klunder, Lighting Director
Andy O’Reilly, Lighting Director
Patrick Boozer, Lighting Director
Ryan Tanker, Lighting Director
Erin Anderson, Lighting Director
Matthew Cotter, Lighting Director

One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga • CBS • Alex Coletti Productions
Leroy Bennett, Lighting Designer
Jason Baeri, Lighting Director

The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back! • CBS • White Cherry Entertainment
Noah Mitz, Lighting Designer
Ed McCarthy, Lighting Director
Harry Sangmeister, Lighting Director
Richard Beck, Lighting Director
Jason Rudolph, Lighting Director

Outstanding Music Composition For A Documentary Series Or Special (Original Dramatic Score)

14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary produced by Noah Media Group in association with Little Monster Films
Nainita Desai, Composer

Lucy And Desi • Prime Video • Amazon Studios, Imagine Documentaries, White Horse Pictures in association with Paper Kite Productions and Diamond Docs (WINNER)
David Schwartz, Composer

Return To Space • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary / A Little Monster Films Production
Mychael Danna, Composer
Harry Gregson-Williams, Composer

They Call Me Magic • Earvin • Apple TV+ • New Slate Ventures / XTR / H.Wood Media / Delirio Films in association with Apple
Terence Blanchard, Composer

The Tinder Swindler • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary / A Raw Production with Gaspin Media and AGC Studios in association with VG
Jessica Jones, Composer

Outstanding Music Direction

43rd Annual Kennedy Center Honors • CBS • White Cherry Entertainment
Rickey Minor, Music Director

44th Annual Kennedy Center Honors • CBS • White Cherry Entertainment
Rickey Minor, Music Director

One Last Time: An Evening With Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga • CBS • Alex Coletti Productions
Michael Bearden, Music Director
Lee Musiker, Music Director

The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar And 50 Cent • NBC • Jesse Collins Entertainment, DPS and Roc Nation (WINNER)
Adam Blackstone, Music Director

Saturday Night Live • Host: Jake Gyllenhaal • NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video
Lenny Pickett, Music Director
Leon Pendarvis, Music Director
Eli Brueggemann, Music Director

Outstanding Narrator

Black Patriots: Heroes Of The Civil War • HISTORY • Six West Media group for HISTORY Channel
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Narrator

The Mating Game • In Plain Sight • Discovery+ • A Silverback Films Production for BBC, Discovery and NHK co-produced with Bilibili and France Télévisions
David Attenborough, Narrator

We Need To Talk About Cosby • Part 1 • Showtime • SHOWTIME Documentary Films presents a Boardwalk Pictures production in association with WKB Industries
W. Kamau Bell, Narrator

Serengeti II • Intrigue • Discovery+ • Produced by XIX Entertainment and John Downer Productions for the BBC, the Discovery Channel and BBC Studios Distribution
Lupita Nyong’o, Narrator

Our Great National Parks • A World Of Wonder • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary Series / A Wild Space Production in association with Higher Ground Productions & Freeborne Media (WINNER)
Barack Obama, Narrator

Outstanding Picture Editing for a Nonfiction Program

The Beatles: Get Back • Part 3: Days 17-22 • Disney+ • Apple Corps Limited and WingNut Films Productions Limited (WINNER)
Jabez Olssen, Editor

George Carlin’s American Dream • HBO/HBO Max • HBO Documentary Films presents an Apatow/Rise Films Production in association with Pulse Films
Joseph Beshenkovsky, ACE, Editor

Lucy And Desi • Prime Video • Amazon Studios, Imagine Documentaries, White Horse Pictures in association with Paper Kite Productions and Diamond Docs
Robert A. Martinez, Editor Dan Reed, Additional Editor
Inaya Graciana Yusuf, Additional Editor

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy • Venice • CNN • CNN Original Series, RAW
Hamit Shonpal, Editor

The Tinder Swindler • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary / A Raw Production with Gaspin Media and AGC Studios in association with VG
Julian Hart, Editor

We Need To Talk About Cosby • Part 1 • Showtime • SHOWTIME Documentary Films presents a Boardwalk Pictures production in association with WKB Industries
Meg Ramsay, Editor
Jennifer Brooks, Additional Editor
F. Michael Young, Additional Editor
Jeremy Lusk, Additional Editor

Outstanding Picture Editing for a Structured Reality or Competition Program

Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls • Naked • Prime Video • Amazon Studios (WINNER)
Deidre Panziera, Lead Editor
Hannah Carpenter, Editor
Brian Murphy, Editor
Jeanie Phillips, Editor

Queer Eye • Angel Gets Her Wings • Netflix • Scout Productions Inc. and ITV Entertainment LLC for Netflix
Nova Taylor, Lead Editor
Sean Gill, Editor

RuPaul’s Drag Race • Big Opening #1 • VH1 • World of Wonder
Jamie Martin, Lead Editor
Paul Cross, Editor
Ryan Mallick, Editor
Michael Roha, Editor

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars • Halftime Headliners • Paramount+ • World of Wonder
Michael Lynn Deis, Lead Editor
Mary DeChambres, ACE, Editor
Katherine Griffin, Editor
Laurel Mick Ostrander, Editor
Michael Roha, Editor

Top Chef • Restaurant Wars • Bravo • Magical Elves
Steve Lichtenstein, Lead Editor
Ericka Concha, Editor
Tim Daniel, Editor
George Dybas, Editor
Eric Lambert, Editor
Anthony Rivard, Editor
Jay Rogers, Editor
Sarah Goff, Additional Editor
Matt Reynolds, Additional Editor
Clark Vogeler, Additional Editor

Outstanding Picture Editing for an Unstructured Reality Program

Below Deck Mediterranean • A Yacht In Kneed • Bravo • 51 Minds
Cameron Teisher, Supervising Editor
Garrett Hohendorf, Lead Editor
Bil Yoelin, Lead Editor
Jonathan Anderson, Editor

Cheer • Daytona Pt. 2: If The Judges Disagree • Netflix • One Potato Productions, Boardwalk Pictures and Caviar for Netflix
Daniel George McDonald, Supervising Editor
Daniel J. Clark, Editor
Zachary Fuhrer, Editor
Stefanie Maridueña, Editor
Dana Martell, Editor
Jody McVeigh-Schultz, Editor
Sharon Weaver, Editor
David Zucker, Editor

Deadliest Catch • Five Souls On Board • Discovery Channel • Original Productions, LLC for the Discovery Channel
Rob Butler, ACE, Supervising Editor
Isaiah Camp, ACE, Supervising Editor
Alexandra Moore, ACE, Editor
Adrian Orozco, Additional Editor
Alexander Rubinow, ACE, Additional Editor
Hugh Elliott, Additional Editor
Chris Courtner, Additional Editor

Life Below Zero • Fire In The Sky • National Geographic • BBC Studios for National Geographic
Michael Swingler, Editor
Tony Diaz, Additional Editor
Matt Edwards, Additional Editor
Jennifer Nelson, ACE, Additional Editor

Love On The Spectrum U.S. • Episode 1 • Netflix • Northern Pictures for Netflix (WINNER)
Rachel Grierson-Johns, Editor
Simon Callow-Wright, Editor
John Rosser, Editor

Outstanding Picture Editing for Variety Programming

A Black Lady Sketch Show • Save My Edges, I’m A Donor! • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with For Better or Words, Inc., Hoorae, 3 Arts Entertainment and Jax Media (WINNER)
Stephanie Filo, ACE, Editor
Bradinn French, Editor
Taylor Joy Mason, Editor
S. Robyn Wilson, Editor

Conan • Series Finale • TBS • Conaco LLC
Robert James Ashe, Lead Editor
Mike Api, Editor
Christopher P. Heller, Editor
Matthew Shaw, Editor

The Daily Show With Trevor Noah • Jordan Klepper Takes On “Wellness” Anti-Vaxxers + Fringewatching Rep. Lauren Boebert
Comedy Central • Central Productions, LLC
Storm Choi, Editor
Eric Davies, Editor
Tom Favilla, Editor
Lauren Beckett Jackson, Editor
Nikolai Johnson, Editor
Ryan Middleton, Editor
Mark Paone, Editor
Erin Shannon, Editor
Catherine Trasborg, Editor
Einar Westerlund, Editor

Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return To Hogwarts • HBO/HBO Max • Warner Bros. Unscripted Television in association with Warner Horizon, Casey Patterson Entertainment and Pulse Films
Simon Bryant, Editor
Jim Clark, Editor
James Collett, Editor
Bill DeRonde, Editor
Asaf Eisenberg, Editor
Will Gilby, Editor
Lior Linevitz–Matthews, Editor
Pablo Noe, Editor
Tim Perniciaro, Editor
Jacob Proctor, Editor

Last Week Tonight With John Oliver • The Confesstigators (segment) • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with Sixteen String Jack Productions and Avalon Television
Anthony Miale, ACE, Senior Editor

Outstanding Production Design for a Variety Special

The 64th Annual Grammy Awards • CBS • Fulwell 73 UK Limited
Julio Himede, Production Designer
Kristen Merlino, Art Director

Live In Front Of A Studio Audience: The Facts Of Life And Diff’rent Strokes • ABC • Sony Pictures Television, Act III Productions, Kimmelot, D’Arconville, Gary Sanchez Productions, Simpson Street
Stephan Olson, Production Designer
Raf Lydon, Art Director
Jerie Kelter, Set Decorator

The Oscars • ABC • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
David Korins, Production Designer
Margaux Lapresle, Art Director

The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar And 50 Cent • NBC • Jesse Collins Entertainment, DPS and Roc Nation (WINNER)
Bruce Rodgers, Production Designer
Shelley Rodgers, Art Director
Maria Garcia, Art Director

Savage X Fenty Show Vol. 3 • Prime Video • Fenty Films & Endeavor Content
Willo Perron, Production Designer
Steve Morden, Art Director
Marc Manabat, Set Decorator

Outstanding Production Design for a Variety, Reality Or Competition Series

A Black Lady Sketch Show • Anybody Have Something I Can Flog Myself With? • HBO/HBO Max • HBO in association with For Better or Words, Inc., Hoorae, 3 Arts Entertainment and Jax Media
Cindy Chao, Production Designer
Michele Yu, Production Designer
Lizzie Boyle, Set Decorator

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert • Colbert’s “Lord Of The Rings” Rap Celebrates 20 Years Of The Greatest Trilogy In Movie History • CBS • CBS Studios
Jim Fenhagen, Production Designer
Larry Hartman, Production Designer
Brendan Hurley, Art Director
Riley Mellon, Art Director

Queer Eye • Angel Gets Her Wings • Netflix • Scout Productions Inc. and ITV Entertainment LLC for Netflix
Thomas Rouse, Production Designer
Josh Smith, Art Director

RuPaul’s Drag Race • Catwalk • VH1 • World of Wonder (WINNER)
Gianna Costa, Production Designer
Allison Spain, Art Director

Saturday Night Live • Host: Kim Kardashian • NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video
Eugene Lee, Production Designer
Akira Yoshimura, Production Designer
Keith Ian Raywood, Production Designer
N. Joseph DeTullio, Production Designer
Melissa Shakun, Art Director

Outstanding Short Form Animated Program

The Boys Presents: Diabolical • John And Sun-Hee • Prime Video • Amazon Studios, Sony Pictures Television Studios, Titmouse, Kripke Enterprises, Original Film, and Point Grey Pictures

Love, Death + Robots • Jibaro • Netflix • Blur Studio for Netflix (WINNER)

Robot Chicken • Happy Russian Deathdog Dolloween 2 U • Adult Swim • A Stoopid Buddy Stoodios production with Williams Street

Star Wars: Visions • The Duel • Disney+ • Kamikaze Douga and Lucasfilm Ltd.

When Billie Met Lisa • Disney+ • A Gracie Films production in association with 20th Television Animation

Outstanding Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Series

Carpool Karaoke: The Series • Apple TV+ • Apple presents a CBS Studios production in association with Fulwell 73 (WINNER)

I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson • Netflix • Netflix

Late Night With Seth Meyers CORRECTIONS • YouTube • Universal Television and Sethmaker Shoemeyers Productions

The Randy Rainbow Show • YouTube • 4 Irene Productions Inc.

Stephen Colbert Presents Tooning Out The News • Paramount+ • CBS Studios, Late Night Cartoons

Outstanding Short Form Nonfiction or Reality Series

Between The Scenes – The Daily Show • YouTube • Central Productions, LLC

Full Frontal With Samantha Bee Presents: Once Upon A Time In Late Night • TBS • TBS in association with Full Frontal Digital (WINNER)

RuPaul’s Drag Race Whatcha Packin’ With Michelle Visage • VH1 • VH1

Saturday Night Live Presents: Stories From The Show • NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal Television and Broadway Video

Top Chef: Last Chance Kitchen • Bravo • Magical Elves

Outstanding Sound Editing For A Nonfiction Or Reality Program (Single Or Multi-camera)

The Beatles: Get Back • Part 3: Days 17-22 • Disney+ • Apple Corps Limited and WingNut Films Productions Limited (WINNER)
Martin Kwok, Supervising Sound Editor / Dialogue Editor
Emile De La Rey, Sound Editor
Matt Stutter, Sound Editor
Michael Donaldson, Foley Editor
Stephen Gallagher, Music Editor
Tane Upjohn-Beatson, Music Editor
Simon Riley, Foley Artist

George Carlin’s American Dream • HBO/HBO Max • HBO Documentary Films presents an Apatow/Rise Films Production in association with Pulse Films
Bobby Mackston, Sound Supervisor
Miriam Cole, Dialogue Editor
Matt Temple, Sound Effects Editor
Joseph Beshenkovsky, Sound Effects Editor

Lucy And Desi • Prime Video • Amazon Studios, Imagine Documentaries, White Horse Pictures in association with Paper Kite Productions and Diamond Docs
Anthony Vanchure, Co-Supervising Sound Editor
Daniel Pagan, Co-Supervising Sound Editor
Mike James Gallagher, Sound Effects Editor
Jason Tregoe Newman, Music Editor
Bryant Furhman, Music Editor

McCartney 3, 2, 1 • The People We Loved Were Loving Us! • Hulu • Hulu, Endeavor Content, A Tetragrammaton, Film 45, Kennedy/Marshall Company, MPL Communications
Jonathan Greber, Sound Supervisor
Leff Lefferts, Sound Editor
Bjorn Ole Schroeder, Sound Editor
E. Larry Oatfield, Sound Editor
Kim Foscato, Sound Editor

The Tinder Swindler • Netflix • A Netflix Documentary / A Raw Production with Gaspin Media and AGC Studios in association with VG
Maria Kelly, Dialogue Editor
Chad Orororo, Sound Designer
Nirupama Rajendran, Sound Effects Editor

Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Nonfiction Or Reality Program (Single Or Multi-camera)

The Beatles: Get Back • Part 3: Days 17-22 • Disney+ • Apple Corps Limited and WingNut Films Productions Limited (WINNER)
Michael Hedges, Re-Recording Mixer
Brent Burge, Re-Recording Mixer
Alexis Feodoroff, Re-Recording Mixer
Giles Martin, Music Mixer

George Carlin’s American Dream • HBO/HBO Max • HBO Documentary Films presents an Apatow/Rise Films Production in association with Pulse Films
Earl Martin, Re-Recording Mixer
Jason Gaya, Re-Recording Mixer
Brad Bergbom, Production Mixer
Kevin Rosen Quan, Production Mixer

Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls • Becoming 100% That Bitch • Prime Video • Amazon Studios
Erik Brena, Re-Recording Mixer
Ross D’Alessandro, Production Mixer
Julianne Kane, Production Mixer
Deanna Decenario, Production Mixer

McCartney 3, 2, 1 • These Things Bring You Together • Hulu • Hulu, Endeavor Content, A Tetragrammaton, Film 45, Kennedy/Marshall Company, MPL Communications
Gary A. Rizzo, CAS, Re-Recording Mixer
Laura Cunningham, Production Mixer

RuPaul’s Drag Race • Big Opening #1 • VH1 • World of Wonder
Erik Valenzuela, Re-Recording Mixer
David Nolte, Production Mixer
Glenn Gaines, Production Mixer

Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy • Venice • CNN • CNN Original Series, RAW
Tom O’Pray, Re-Recording Mixer
Renato Ferrari, Production Mixer

Outstanding Sound Mixing For A Variety Series Or Special

Adele: One Night Only • CBS • Fulwell 73 UK Limited and Onward Productions in association with Harpo Productions (WINNER)
Paul Wittman, Production Mixer
Tom Elmhirst, Music Mixer
Eric Schilling, Music Mixer
Josh Morton, Re-Recording Mixer
Kristian Pedregon, Re-Recording Mixer
Shane O’Connor, Re-Recording Mixer
Christian Schrader, Supplemental Audio Mixer

The 64th Annual Grammy Awards • CBS • Fulwell 73 UK Limited
Thomas Holmes, Production Mixer
John Harris, Music Mixer
Eric Schilling, Music Mixer
Christian Schrader, Supplemental Audio Mixer
Eric Johnston, Playback Mixer
Josh Morton, Package Mixer
Ron Reaves, FOH Music Mixer
Jeffrey Michael Peterson, FOH Production Mixer
Mike Parker, Monitor Mixer
Tom Pesa, Monitor Mixer
Juan Pablo Velasco, Pro Tools Playback Mixer
Aaron Walk, Pro Tools Playback Mixer

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert • First Show Back With An Audience, Dana Carvey As Joe Biden, Interview With Jon Stewart, And Jon Batiste Performs “Freedom” • CBS • CBS Studios
Pierre de Laforcade, Production Mixer
Harvey Goldberg, Broadcast Music Mixer
Alan Bonomo, Monitor Mixer
Tom Herrmann, Front of House Mixer

The Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show Starring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar And 50 Cent • NBC • Jesse Collins Entertainment, DPS and Roc Nation
Thomas Holmes, Production Mixer
Alex Guessard, FOH Production Mixer
Dave Natale, FOH Music Mixer
Tom Pesa, Monitor Mixer
Christian Schrader, Supplemental Audio Mixer
Pablo Munguia, Pro Tools Playback Mixer

Saturday Night Live • Host: John Mulaney • NBC • SNL Studios in association with Universal television and Broadway Video
Robert Palladino, CAS, Production Mixer
Ezra Matychak, Production Mixer
Bob Selitto, FOH Music Mixer
Frank J. Duca Jr., FOH/Foldback Mixer
Caroline Sanchez, FOH Production Mixer
Josiah Gluck, Music Mixer
Tyler McDiarmid, Playback Mixer
Douglas Nightwine, Monitor Mixer
William Taylor, Sound Effects Mixer
Devin Emke, Package Mixer
Eric Pfeifer, Package Mixer
Andrew Guastella, Package Mixer

Outstanding Structured Reality Program

Antiques Roadshow • PBS • GBH

Fixer Upper: Welcome Home • Magnolia Network • Blind Nil

Love Is Blind • Netflix • Kinetic Content for Netflix

Queer Eye • Netflix • Scout Productions Inc. and ITV Entertainment LLC for Netflix (WINNER)

Shark Tank • ABC • MGM Television in association with Sony Pictures Television

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The Beatles: Get Back and Adele: One

After hours of emceeing and playing various instruments for other acts, Dave Grohl closed out the Taylor Hawkins tribute in London with the surviving members of Foo Fighters and surprise guest Paul McCartney.

Though no one can replace Hawkins behind the kit, the Foos were joined by a number of drummers during their set, including Josh Freese on “Times Like These” and “All My Life,” Travis Barker on “The Pretender” and “Monkey Wrench,” Rufus Taylor on “These Days and “Best of You,” 12-year-old phenom Nandi Bushell on “Learn To Fly” and Hawkins’ 16-year-old son Shane, who was absolutely thunderous on “My Hero.”

“Pulling this whole thing together over the last three months, we met some really amazing people — people I’ve never met before,” Dave Grohl said after “Best of You.” “One of them, I got to stand on stage with tonight and play the bass: Miss Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders, who I happen to think is the baddest motherfucker in the world. She brought a friend tonight.”

That friend was none other than McCartney, who shocked the crowd by dusting off The Beatles’ “Oh, Darling.” “God bless Taylor,” said McCartney, who inducted the Foos into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021. “Me and Chrissie are gonna do a song here that I haven’t done since I recorded it 100 years ago. I’ve never done it as a duet, but we’re gonna do it tonight for the first time, for you.”

McCartney stuck around to sing lead on “Helter Skelter,” not before relating an anecdote about being asked to play drums, of all instruments, on the Foo Fighters song “Sunday Rain.” “This group has two of the best drummers in the world, and they wanted me to drum on it, so I did,” he said with a smile of the track, which appeared on the Foos’ 2017 album Concrete and Gold. “Quite a memory.”

The set continued with “Aurora,” which had earlier soundtracked an emotional pre-show photo montage of Hawkins and, like the two Beatles covers, featured Omar Hakim on drums. “I think this next song was Taylor’s favorite Foo Fighters song, so we knew we had to do it tonight,” Grohl said.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone hit the drums as hard as this person,” Grohl told the audience when introducing Shane Hawkins after “Aurora.” “Beyond that, he’s a member of our family, and he needs to be here tonight with all of us.”

This was the first time the Foos have performed live without Hawkins, who passed away unexpectedly in March at the age of 50. Tonight’s concert was the first of two honoring the late drummer; the second is set for Sept. 27 at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles with many of tonight’s performers, as well as Alanis Morissette, Miley Cyrus, P!nk, Gene Simmons, Joan Jett, Nikki Sixx, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith and Rage Against the Machine’s Brad Wilk, among others.

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After hours of emceeing and playing various

Beyond classic musicals like “The Sound of Music” and “South Pacific,” writer Laurence Maslon breaks down the unparalleled career and influence of composer Richard Rodgers.


Among some notes for an unfinished novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald famously (or infamously) observed, “There are no second acts in American lives.” Using only 88 keys and a bottomless supply of genius, composer Richard Rodgers proved Fitzgerald dead wrong, living through a three act career and providing us with a fourth act in posterity.

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, 1936. Source: Library of Congress.

Rodgers’s first act as a theatrical composer began in 1919 as a collaboration with lyricist Lorenz Hart that lasted into World War II. Their witty songs and melancholy ballads made them the most popular and adventuresome songwriting team on Broadway and (briefly) in Hollywood. Among their three dozen projects were such triumphs as “Babes in Arms,” “The Boys from Syracuse” and “Pal Joey.” Rodgers and Hart also gave the world such immortal songs as “Where or When,” “My Funny Valentine,” “Falling in Love with Love” and “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.”

His second act was a partnership with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II, who also wrote the complex and moving narratives (“books”) for their shows. Beginning in 1943, they wrote nine shows together (and one television score and one film score), full-throttled musical stories that captured the imagination of the American public in the post-war years. With shows such as “Oklahoma!,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific” and “The Sound of Music,” Rodgers and Hammerstein created not only record-breaking commercial successes, but resonant and enduring tales of character, moral values and emotional aspiration.

When Hammerstein died in 1960, Rodgers might have retired, but as he said, “Well, I’m on a new road—I have to move forward, whether it’s with Joe Blow or someone else.” He did so initially by writing his own lyrics and winning a Tony Award at the age of 60 for his score to “No Strings,” a 1962 hit. He worked either on his own or with other collaborators for two more decades. In December 1979, Broadway produced the first full-scale revival of “Oklahoma!”—Rodgers died 11 days later, 48 hours shy of the 1980s.

What follows are some observations about the magnitude of his artistry and their ongoing influence on American culture:

Making—and breaking—records

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, Source: Library of Congress.

The 1949 original cast album of “South Pacific” was released at about the same time as record manufacturers and producers were trying to hook the public on a new technology: the 33 1/3 rpm Long Playing record. The Rodgers score and the new consumer product were made for each other and the Columbia Broadway cast album was number one for 63 weeks—an industry record at the time by a monumental margin. Only one other album in the next ten years came close to matching that—the 1958 movie soundtrack for “South Pacific;” the RCA recording was number one for 31 weeks.

The original cast album of “The Sound of Music” with Mary Martin was released in December of 1959 and hit sixteen weeks at number one—that is, “number one” of all popular music in America.  The cast album would stay on the charts for 276 weeks; from March of 1965 to November of that year, it overlapped with the movie soundtrack of “The Sound of Music.” That recording hit number one for two weeks in November 1965 and would remain on the charts for 233 weeks until late 1969. This means that, by one reckoning, the most popular and enduring music in America throughout the 1960s was the score to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music.”

Richard Rodgers had multiple key creative partners

Many people think that Rodgers wrote “Oklahoma!” with Oscar Hammerstein after Lorenz Hart died; far from it. When approached with the project in 1942, Hart was never interested in musicalizing the source material and gave Rodgers his blessing to work with Hammerstein instead. Hart even attended the opening night on April 1, 1943 and congratulated Rodgers enthusiastically. They took up one more project together in the hopes of keeping the collaboration going, a revised version of their 1927 hit, “A Connecticut Yankee.” It was playing on Broadway, on the other side of Eighth Avenue from “Oklahoma!” when Hart died on November 22, 1943.

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About the Master

Richard Rodgers • Composer • Jun 28, 1902 – Dec 31, 1979

The influence of “The Sound of Music” on jazz

In the middle of 1960, the famed jazz saxophonist John Coltrane had left the Miles Davis Quintet and formed his own quartet. Apparently, a song plugger—no one quite remembers who or where from—gave the sheet music from “The Sound of Music” to Coltrane. Thinking it was probably a good idea to render some popular standards, Coltrane included “My Favorite Things” on his third album for Atlantic, entitled “My Favorite Things,” released in March of 1961. Coltrane brilliantly rethought the melody as a nearly 14-minute hypnotic roundelay, performed on soprano sax in 6/8 time. Eventually cut down and released as a single, the song became Coltrane’s most requested number and he experimented with it relentlessly over the next six years of his tragically brief life. When asked in 2011 if the Quartet ever went to see the Broadway version of “The Sound of Music,” its pianist, McCoy Tyner, laughed and said, “That’s unimaginable.”

Dream ballets

The three greatest stage choreographers of the middle of the twentieth century were George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins. Rodgers was the only composer to collaborate with each of them—dance was always central to Rodgers’s sense of musical narrative. By extension, one could also include Bob Fosse in the list—he performed on-stage in a 1962 New York revival of “Pal Joey” as the lead character, Joey Evans.

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About the Master

George Balanchine • Choreographer • Jan 22, 1904 – Apr 30, 1983

Side-by-side with Stephen Sondheim

Stephen Sondheim sitting on couch with a dog.

Stephen Sondheim, source: Library of Congress.

If one could readily accede that Rodgers was the most revered Broadway songwriter for the first half of the twentieth century, Stephen Sondheim equally qualifies for the second half. Before Rodgers would pass the baton on to Sondheim, they were briefly teammates on the same project: the musical “Do I Hear a Waltz?,” which ran for 220 performances during the 1964-65 season on Broadway. Rodgers had known Sondheim since the 1940s when Sondheim was a protégé (and neighbor) of Oscar Hammerstein’s. Hammerstein had asked Sondheim once he had passed away to consider working with Rodgers; likewise, Hammerstein suggested to Rodgers that he work with a younger lyricist—Sondheim, in fact.

The two men approached each other warily. Sondheim thought Rodgers could be old-fashioned and rude, while Rodgers thought Sondheim was cynical and disrespectful. However, although “Do I Hear a Waltz?” was not a major hit, the score possesses moments of surpassing beauty with Rodgers’s melodies and Sondheim’s words blended together far more harmoniously than the collaborators did in rehearsal. That show would be the last time Sondheim would write significant lyrics for another composer, and although Rodgers would occasionally disparage Sondheim’s melodic ideas, he also praised Sondheim’s own shows and even invested money in them.

Did I write a waltz?

Rodgers was so prolific and popular throughout most of the twentieth century that practically every pop singer from 1925 to 1975 sang at least a half-dozen of his songs. Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Bing Crosby, Jo Stafford and Doris Day—among many others—each had hit singles and popular albums singing his tunes. Ella Fitzgerald released a groundbreaking two-album Rodgers and Hart songbook on Verve, covering 34 of their tunes in 1952, and as late as 1967, Diana Ross and the Supremes also tried their hands at a two-LP set of Rodgers and Hart tunes for Motown.

Singer Peggy Lee had a big hit in 1952 with “Lover,” a song written twenty years earlier for the film “Love Me Tonight.” Her version hit number three in the pop charts, which must have made Rodgers happy, but the arranger transformed the song from a waltz tempo into a Latin version with bongo drums—which didn’t. Lee wrote in in her autobiography that Rodgers “was usually very strict about how his songs were to be performed. All of us respected him so highly that we were happy to follow his orders. A bit later on, when I did ‘Lover,’ apparently I forgot that.” Supposedly Rodgers made a lot of noise in public over his displeasure, even writing an article for a New York newspaper: “I must admit that when a tune is new and offered to the public for the first time, I am inclined to protect it with my heart, soul and body as if it were a new baby . . . I suppose this recording [of ‘Lover’] is about as far as you can go in the way of distortion and still have the nerve to use the title.” Although his precise direction over his tunes became legendary, he must have made up with Lee at some point; she subsequently appeared in several television tributes to his work.

Of course, Rodgers wrote songs for some of the most admired and monumental stars of the Broadway stage—Alfred Drake, Mary Martin, Gertrude Lawrence—but the list of other stars and personalities who originated Rodgers melodies on stage or screen is astonishing in its variety and scope: Al Jolson, Jeanette MacDonald, Jimmy Durante, George M, Cohan, Gene Kelly, Desi Arnaz, Dick Haymes, Yul Brynner, Eddie Albert, Ray Bolger, Julie Andrews, Diahann Carroll, Sergio Franchi, Danny Kaye, Madeline Kahn, Nöel Coward, Keye Luke, Glenn Close and Liv Ullmann.

Richard Rodgers’ songs have come to represent these places

The title number from “Oklahoma!” was adopted as the state song in 1953. “Edelweiss” from “The Sound of Music,” however, is neither an Austrian folk song nor the Austrian national anthem, although someone in the Reagan White House apparently didn’t get the memo: Rodgers’s tune was used to introduce the Austrian chancellor during a state function in 1984.

Live from New York

Richard Rodgers and Ed Sullivan, 1952. CBS Television

“The Ed Sullivan Show” was the leading variety show on television for four decades, commanding national audiences every Sunday night from 1948 to 1970. On his very first show, Sullivan hosted Rodgers and Hammerstein, who talked about their upcoming musical “South Pacific” (that episode, sadly lost to history, also featured performances by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis). Sullivan, who had also been a Broadway columnist, was an immense fan of Rodgers. Rodgers was asked to appear on the Sullivan show more times than any other non-performer—a total of 17 appearances, including four separate hour-long tributes.

A firebrand at branding

Although Irving Berlin had pioneered the way for songwriters to take control over the publishing rights to their material back in 1917, it was Rodgers, in partnership with Oscar Hammerstein, who had the visionary idea of maintaining complete creative control of his work. Creative control was important to Rodgers; when he made his Broadway debut—still in his teens!—with a show called “Poor Little Ritz Girl,” he attended opening night with his parents only to open his program and discover that while he was away from rehearsals (as a summer camp counselor, no less), half of his score had been replaced. “Fifty years later,” he wrote in his 1975 memoir, “I still feel the bitter disappointment and depression of that evening.”

As soon as he had the clout to do so, Rodgers produced or co-produced his own stage musicals—he and Hammerstein were even executive producers of the film versions of “Oklahoma!” and “South Pacific,” a level of creative control rarely, if ever, conceded to Broadway songwriters.

In 1944, following the success of “Oklahoma!’s” debut on Broadway, Rodgers and Hammerstein formed their own publishing firm, Williamson Music. The name was a rare bit of whimsy on Rodgers’s part—both he and Hammerstein had fathers named “William.” To this day, Williamson Music is a powerhouse; in addition to Rodgers and Hammerstein, it represents the music publishing rights to artists such as Stephen Schwartz and Lin-Manuel Miranda.

You still hear Richard Rodgers’ music everywhere you turn

In the last ten years alone, Rodgers’s music has been used in nearly 50 movies, television shows and commercials, including “Bridge of Spies,” “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Watchmen,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “The Simpsons.” In the 2021 film “Being the Ricardos,” an entire scene is recreated from the film version of his 1939 stage musical, “Too Many Girls,” written with Lorenz Hart and featuring Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz.

In 2022, there is a national touring company of an acclaimed revival of “Oklahoma!” as well as a West End revival of “The King and I.” A Broadway revival of “Pal Joey” is planned for 2023, as is a television series suggested by “Oklahoma!”

When asked about his place in posterity, Richard Rodgers said, “If someone wants to sing something of mine 30 years from now, no one will be happier than my dead body.”

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Beyond classic musicals like “The Sound of

Like any other Saskatchewan kid, Rocky Trainor loves getting outside and playing sports, but not every kid has gone through open heart surgery. Or thrown the first pitch at a Toronto Blue Jays game.

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Rocky was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which means he only has half a heart. It required three operations to recreate his heart before the age of four. Now the seven-year-old is able to play all kinds of sports.

His love of sport has taken him all the way to the big leagues. After applying to the Make a Wish Foundation, Rocky was taken to Toronto where he got to throw the first pitch and watch the game.

“It was kind of quiet until he got out there and raising his arms. The crowd just erupted…. it was really cool to see the power a seven-year-old can have over a crowd,” Rocky’s father Scott Trainor said.

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His parents say the way he has been able to continue playing sports amazes them every day.

“It’s never been a horrible experience because it’s family time,” said Rocky’s mother Stacey. “It’s where he pulls through. He fights through it. (After) all the surgeries, we have not had a bad experience.

While Rocky’s relationship with his parents is special, he also has a little brother who he has introduced many sports to.

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Five-year-old Russell said while he likes to play all the sports with his brother, there is one he enjoys more than others.

“My brother likes to play football with me and it’s very cool,” Russell said.

Rocky’s favourite sport has been baseball, but time with his brother may have changed that, as he now flips between football and baseball as his favourite.

The family said through it all, the hospital staff have always been there to help Rocky get to his shining moment at centre field.

“It’s because of the amazing surgeons in Edmonton who did his heart surgery and the cardiologists here in Saskatoon,” Scott said. “We always had a positive attitude and knew it was all going to turn out, and it has.”

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Like any other Saskatchewan kid, Rocky Trainor