Trevor Noah doled out some rare praise while discussing New York’s new gun control measures on Tuesday’s episode of “The Daily Show.”
The late night host seemed shocked that any politicians had taken action in the wake of several mass shootings in the United States, including the tragedy at Robb Elementary two weeks ago in Uvalde, Texas.
“Wow. This is so weird. A mass shooting happened and then politicians did something,” he said. “I didn’t even know that that was possible. It’s like I showed up to McDonald’s and the McFlurry machine is working. I don’t even know how to react to this. Do I clap? Am I supposed to tip?”
Noah continued to try to find the words to express his elation, adding: “This feels like when you’re ready to argue with your partner and before you can say anything, they just apologize. Now you got a throat full of screams and nothing to do with it.”
The new measures in New York, which were signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday, ban the sale of semi-automatic weapons to anyone under 21 and require new buyers to obtain a permit. The provisions also expand red flag laws and require microstamping for semi-automatic handgun ammunition.
While he was generally happy with the new laws, Noah did have some suggestions for how they could be made better. For example, he thinks that the minimum age to buy a semi-automatic weapon should probably be about four days after a person’s 21st birthday.
“I don’t want someone buying a gun on the same night they’re slamming 10 shots of Jäger. Just spread it out. You know?” he said.
With Obi-Wan Kenobi dominating the pop culture conversation, now is the perfect time to start a rewatch — or just a watch — of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Over the years, the animated quasi-anthology series has gradually become the most important piece of Star Wars canon. If you want to know more about any number of characters or bits of lore, from the darksaber to Mandalore and Quinlan Vos, you gotta watch Clone Wars. The episodic nature of the show also makes it the perfect lunchtime watch; tune in for a half hour adventure and then come back tomorrow at the same Jedi time, same Jedi channel.
Starring Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Michelle Dockery, Maggie Smith, Allen Leech, Jim Carter, Robert James-Collier, Imelda Staunton, Hugh Dancy, Dominic West, Laura Haddock. Written by Julian Fellowes. Directed by Simon Curtis. At GTA theatres May 20, with evening screenings May 19. 124 minutes. G
Watching “Downton Abbey: A New Era” feels very much like the end of an era.
I’m not going to spoil plot details, but so many loose ends are tied up in this, the second film spawned by the beloved TV show, it’s hard to imagine where a third film could take the saga of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants.
The “Downton” franchise has been a juggernaut since the six-season TV series created by Julian Fellowes debuted in 2010. Fans still flock to Highclere Castle in the Hampshire countryside, where “Downton” was partially filmed; and “Downton Abbey: The Exhibition,” currently on hiatus, has been touring the U.S. since 2018.
But as a fan, I’d be fine with leaving Lord and Lady Grantham and the rest where they end up in “A New Era.”
As the movie opens, it’s 1929. All the key characters have gathered for the wedding of Tom Branson (Allen Leech), the family’s former chauffeur and widower of Lady Sybil Crawley, and Lucy Smith (Tuppence Middleton), illegitimate daughter of a lady in waiting to the queen of England.
That won’t be a shock to anyone who saw the 2019 film, called simply “Downton Abbey,” since it ended with Tom and Lucy kindling a romance.
That film also ended with fan favourite Violet Crawley, the dowager countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith), telling granddaughter Mary (Michelle Dockery) she wasn’t long for this world. But don’t worry, Violet is still around in “A New Era” to provide comic relief with her tart quips, albeit in a reduced physical state.
Violet is at the centre of the movie’s inciting incident, which brings a whiff of scandal: when she was a young bride, she spent a few days with a French marquis at his villa in the South of France. He registered the villa in her name — Violet claims not to know why — and now she has inherited it against his widow’s wishes. Violet has in turn transferred ownership to Sybbie, daughter of Tom and Sybil, since she’s the only one of the Crawley sisters’ offspring not in line to inherit an estate.
Thus most of the family — Tom and Lucy, the Earl and Countess of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) and husband Bertie, the Marquess of Hexham (Harry Hadden-Patton), and Maud (Imelda Staunton), the earl’s cousin and Lucy’s mother — decamps to France with a few servants in tow, at the invitation of the late marquis’s son (Jonathan Zaccaï).
Violet is too frail to travel and Lady Mary stays behind because somebody has to supervise the crew making a silent movie at Downton (yes, it’s rather meta). According to former butler Carson (Jim Carter), letting actors have the run of the estate “smacks of the worst excesses of the French Revolution,” but the roof is leaking and the film company is cutting a very large cheque.
And so some new blood is added to the mix: Hugh Dancy as the film’s director; Dominic West, soon to join Staunton playing a royal in “The Crown,” as the leading man and Laura Haddock as the leading lady.
This plot thread has echoes of the 1952 movie musical “Singin’ in the Rain.” Here, as in that flick, talking pictures are overtaking silent films, threatening the careers of actors like Haddock’s Myrna, with her decidedly non-posh accent.
But really, the point of it all is to allow the “Downton” characters to do what fans have come to expect, so Carson blusters; assistant cook Daisy (Sophie McShera) marvels at having movie stars in the house; awkward Mr. Molesley (Kevin Doyle) blunders into a scene and ruins a take; Violet and her frenemy Isobel (Penelope Wilton) crack wise in the wings; and Lady Mary keeps everything together in a well-mannered, slightly haughty way.
Without eight or nine episodes to spread the action around, and every character from the earl down to the new footman getting at least some dialogue, we don’t so much dig into the story as glance off it, and characters are not so much developed as sketched. (Lily James’ Lady Rose isn’t in this film and Mary’s husband Henry, played by Matthew Goode, is also MIA.)
All that being said, there is catharsis to be had for long-time “Downton” devotees — and, really, if you aren’t already invested why would you see this movie? This is fan service, pure and simple, and Fellowes lards the film with happy endings all around — except for one development likely to bring a tear to your eye.
There is a passing of the torch, and a sense of emotional bonds acknowledged and strengthened, both for the Crawleys and their help.
“Individual Crawleys come and go, but the family lives on,” says Cora, Lady Grantham.
Indeed it does, perhaps not onscreen in future instalments, but certainly in the hearts and imaginations of those who have long cherished these characters.
Debra Yeo is a deputy editor and a contributor to the Star’s Entertainment section. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @realityeo
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Angelina Jolie continues her legal battle with ex-husband Brad Pitt five years after filing for divorce.
In 2008, the former couple purchased a controlling interest in Chateau Miraval, a French company comprising of a home and vineyard in the south of France. Six years later, in 2014, Jolie and Pitt got married there. The couple, along with their six children, also vacationed there throughout their 12-year relationship.
Pitt accused Jolie, who filed for divorce in 2016 citing irreconcilable differences, of selling the shares to a Russian oligarch without Pitt’s knowledge. A source close to Jolie denies any ill intent in the sale, calling Pitt’s lawsuit a “false narrative,” per a report from People.
Pitt filed a claim alleging that Jolie “sought to inflict harm” by selling the shares in Chateau Miraval. The actor claims the couple agreed to never sell their shares in the vineyard without telling the other first, and wants the case to go to trial. “Jolie pursued and then consummated the purported sale in secret, purposely keeping Pitt in the dark, and knowingly violating Pitt’s contractual rights,” Pitt’s team wrote in the filing obtained by People.
“Mr. Pitt’s lawsuit against Ms. Jolie is an extension of a false narrative, and the truth of the situation has still not been made public,” an anonymous source told People. “After the events that led to Ms. Jolie filing for divorce and her years devoted to caring for their children, Ms. Jolie and the children have not been able to return to the property, and she made the difficult decision to sell her stake in the business. After making multiple offers to her ex-husband, and knowing the business will be inherited by their children, she found a business partner with experience in the alcohol industry…It’s unfortunate that after she properly and legally exited the business, Mr. Pitt is entangling her in multiple lawsuits,” the source said.
Two years to the month that it was canceled by A&E following nationwide protests against police brutality, the reality show Live PD is set to return to production with a new name, a tweaked format and a new television home.
The program will now be called On Patrol: Live, and it will air on Reelz, the independent cable and satellite TV channel. While the title and format have been tweaked, it is from the same producers (Big Fish Entertainment), and will be familiar to viewers of the original.
“I have been advocating for the show to return or two years now, and it was just a question of finding the right partner,” host and executive producer Dan Abrams tells The Hollywood Reporter. “I have had a number of inquiries from a number of networks about the show, and what I would typically do is have a conversation and then pass it on to the Big Fish folks, and then we would talk about whether it made sense. There had been a couple of other interesting discussions, but this one ended up making the most sense for everyone.”
In addition to Abrams, Live PD regular Sean Larkin will appear on the show, joined by Curtis Wilson, who had appeared on a handful of Live PD episodes. Abrams says that the new show will also feature civilian ride-alongs, and new police departments featured, which “fundamentally changes the fabric of the show.”
“In most ways it is going to be a very similar type of show to the one that existed previously,” Abrams says.
Live PD was, at the time of its cancellation, a ratings juggernaut from A&E. In fact, the channel had ordered an additional 160 episodes of the series just two months before it was canceled. The decision to pull the show followed a similar move by Paramount Network to pull the long-running reality series Cops.
Both shows were canceled in the wake of protests stemming from the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. At the time, executives told THR that the political environment, combined with concerns about keeping the crew safe in the field, meant that the show could not move forward.
Cops, as it happens, was revived last year at the Fox News streaming service Fox Nation, meaning that both shows at the heart of the controversy in 2020 will have returned to TV in one form or another.
Abrams argues that the focus on police departments should have made the show more important to keep on the air.
“I do think the environment has changed [since Live PD was canceled], but I don’t think that should have determined whether Live PD, or a show like it, what is now being called On Patrol: Live, should be on the air,” he says. “I think the more we talk about policing, the more we should want to watch police officers doing what they do. There was a conversation then about policing, there is a conversation now about policing, and as a result I think it is a good thing to have a lens on police departments.”
Batman has been such a “dark” character for so many years now, audiences probably forget how campy the DC superhero has the potential to be… and how campy he was in both the 1966 television series starring Adam West, and the two Joel Schumacher Batman movies that leaned into the comedic elements of the world (and were ahead of the curve, according to one of our writers). Tim Burton started the pivot to “darker” Batman with his 1989 origin story and its 1992 sequel, Batman Returns. But these days, he finds it incredibly funny that his movies were called “dark” given how gloomy modern Batman movies are… and he has choice words for the Schumacher costume decisions (which were part of the reason why Michael Keaton didn’t return for Batman Forever).
On the occasion of Batman Returns celebrating its 30th anniversary, Tim Burton looked back over his stewardship of Warner Bros.’ Batman series for two movies, which came with a lot of extra pressure but definitely expanded on Burton’s unique vision for Gotham and its protector. Though Burton was approached to return for a third Batman movie, both he and Keaton decided not to return. And when he looked back on the decisions that led to massive style changes in Batman Forever, Burton reflected to Empire Magazine:
[Back then] they went the other way. That’s the funny thing about it. But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go fuck yourself.’ Seriously. So yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film]…
You know what would be a lot of fun? Tim Burton returning to the superhero genre in the way that Sam Raimi, the shepherd of the Spider-Man saga, came back to Marvel to play in the sandbox of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Burton got his run in the comic-book realm cut short, and he’s clearly a fan of this type of storytelling, so hand him a Superman film. Give him Swamp Thing, or Plastic Man. Just get him back to work in the genre. He won’t give you nipples on the suits. But he will bring a different level of magic to the screen, and we are here for it.
Ahead of the 75th Tony Awards, which will be held at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, The Hollywood Reporter gathered five of this Broadway season’s acting nominees for a conversation about the challenges and rewards of working on Broadway, generally, and specifically this season, in the middle of a global pandemic.
Two already have Tonys to their name: Australian Hugh Jackman, a best actor in a musical nominee for The Music Man, in which he plays a conman who brings trouble to small-town Iowa (the Hollywood A-lister, who played Wolverine in the X-Men film franchise, previously won for the musical The Boy from Oz in 2004 and received a special Tony in 2012); and American Mary-Louise Parker, a best actress in a play nominee for How I Learned to Drive, in which she plays a woman recounting childhood molestation at the hands of her uncle (the Weeds Emmy winner was previously recognized for the plays Proof in 2001 and The Sound Inside in 2021).
They were joined at PMC’s New York offices by three first-time Tony nominees: Ethiopian-born Irishwoman Ruth Negga, a vet of stages in Dublin and London, who is up for best actress in a play for her Broadway debut in Macbeth, in which she plays the conspiratorial wife of the title character; American Oscar winner and theater stalwart Sam Rockwell, a best actor in a play contender for American Buffalo, in which he plays a small-time hustler who is also plotting a crime; and American Jesse Williams, best known for his 12 years on TV’s Grey’s Anatomy, who is in contention for best featured actor in a play for his first show on Broadway, Take Me Out, in which he plays a baseball star who comes out as gay.
Below, you can listen to the entirety of the conversation or read excerpts of it (edited for clarity and brevity).
Hugh Jackman at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable.
Photographed by Nina Westervelt
Each show represented at this gathering is a revival — in other words, a show which has been performed before, in some cases many times going back decades or even centuries — and all have previously been done on Broadway except for How I Learned to Drive, which was done Off Broadway. So I’d like to begin by talking about what led you to sign up for these parts, and why now was the time to revive these particular shows.
Hugh, you last starred in a musical on Broadway nearly 20 years ago, in the now-legendary production of The Boy from Oz, for which you won a Tony. You’ve since been back in plays, but this show — first performed on Broadway in 1957 with Robert Preston — is your first time back in a musical.
JACKMAN The first show I ever did was The Music Man in high school. I was 14 and I absolutely loved it. After I began acting for a living, for many years the idea of doing The Music Man at some point was bandied around, but I didn’t know when. But about four years ago, I don’t know, I went “The Music Man! Damn, I’m almost 50, I might have missed the boat!” All of a sudden, I felt an urgency, so I rang my agent, who, weirdly, had had a call that day inquiring about me doing The Music Man. So that’s how it happened.
Mary-Louise, you’ve been acting on Broadway since 1990, most recently, prior to this show, in The Sound Inside, for which you won a well-deserved second Tony. But it was Off Broadway, in 1997, that you and David Morse first starred in a production of Paula Vogel’s semi-autobiographical play. Here you are, 25 years later, reuniting in the same parts, along with the original’s director Mark Brokaw and company member Johanna Day.
PARKER I have a picture of myself standing on the street right after the last show [of the original run], and from that day, I think, I wanted to go back. I just wasn’t finished with it. I don’t know if I ever feel finished with any play, and every time I’ve gone back to do something — I’ve done many plays more than once, one three times — I’ve had a fear that was there won’t be there, but it actually always seems to distill it into something stronger. I was concerned that there might be a slightly different response to this one this time because we’re so polarized right now — everything is so black and white, and this play is all about the grey area — so it’s really moving to me that the audience has seemed to allow for that.
Sam, you made your Broadway debut 12 years ago in A Behanding in Spokane, a then-new Martin McDonagh show. I was lucky enough to catch you seven years ago in a Sam Shepard revival, Fool for Love. And now, in David Mamet’s American Buffalo, you are walking in shoes first occupied 45 years ago by Robert Duvall, and since by the likes of Al Pacino and Richard Jenkins.
ROCKWELL: You want to chew on the big parts — my mom or somebody told me you have to play the great parts if you want to be a good actor or, if you can get to there, a great actor — and I outgrew Hamlet, so this was one of the ones that was left.
Ruth, this is your Broadway debut, but you’ve done plenty of theater before in Dublin and London, including multiple productions of Shakespeare. But to come to New York to do the 48th production of Macbeth on Broadway, did you have to know that you guys would approach it in a way different from the others?
NEGGA No, I’m not really interested in doing something different just for the sake of difference, you know? And with Shakespeare, he doesn’t need anything gimmicky, the language is so beautiful. For me, Shakespeare cracks you open as a person and as an actor, so I just thought that to do my favorite playwright on Broadway would be extraordinary. I literally haven’t stopped smiling, it’s been such a joyful experience. It is everything I hoped it would be and more.
Jesse, you are best known for your 12 years on Grey’s Anatomy. But Take Me Out — which was previously performed on Broadway in 2003 — is not only your first Broadway production, but your first professional theatrical production.
WILLIAMS It’s my first play, yeah. I mean, I did a one-act play, to be fair, Off Broadway, with, of all people, Edward Albee, who directed us at the Cherry Lane — we did The American Dream and The Sandbox — but that was the only time I’d been on stage. Theater was something I always admired and respected, and it seemed like this really daunting mountain that was over there. When this one first came across my lap, it was a little too scary. I would have had to quit my job [on Grey’s Anatomy] to come out and try this amorphous, mysterious thing. And the lead headline was, “Do you want to be naked on Broadway this gay baseball play?” And I was like, “I don’t think I’m ready to pack up everything I know for that.” I wanted stability and it just seemed too intimidating. But in 2019, when it was sent to me again, I had a new perspective. I think I was just a little more emotionally mature. The story moved me. And the role was terrifying, and I knew that’s what I needed.
Ruth Negga at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable.
Photographed by Nina Westervelt
I believe that all of your shows except for Ruth’s were already in motion, to some degree, when COVID shut down Broadway on March 12, 2020. Mary-Louise, Jesse and Sam, your shows were coming up on your first previews.
PARKER We hadn’t moved into the theater yet.
WILLIAMS We were beginning our third week of rehearsals — we hadn’t gone into tech yet either — and rehearsals were going really well when we shut down. Those first couple of weeks, we thought, “This is just going to last a couple of weeks more.” So we were on Zoom running it every few days.
ROCKWELL Yeah, we were doing that too!
WILLIAMS The day that was supposed to be opening night, we did an opening night party on Zoom.
PARKER I did that too! I forgot.
WILLIAMS We kept up with each other until a certain point when I put it away because it had turned the corner into sadness. Like, “What if I don’t get to do this thing?”
ROCKWELL Yeah, I had the same exact experience — we were about to go to tech — except we felt we weren’t quite ready. Laurence [Fishburne, his costar] and I would FaceTime, and he had done this movie Contagion and knew some of the scientists, and I remember, we were running lines and I said, “Did you talk to your doctor/scientist friends?” He says, “Yeah, man, it’s gonna be two years.” I said, “Two years?!” But I felt we weren’t ready [before the shutdown], and I’m so glad it fermented like a wine. I don’t even know if the world was ready. There’s something about the play that is more relevant now.
Hugh, your show was going to begin previews in July and open in October.
JACKMAN In March when it all happened, we had a few months, and I had planned a bit of time off, so I had nothing except The Music Man. I actually had never had a summer without working for as long as I remember. Luckily enough, Warren Carlyle, who is our choreographer, and I, we got into a room, and we just danced four days a week for a year and a half. He would sit in a far corner yelling at me with a mask on, and I danced for three hours and sweated, because I didn’t know when I was coming back. And I sang every day.
When Broadway reopened last September 2021, audiences were, understandably enough, hesitant about coming back, but things really started to come back to life in December with The Music Man, which drew greater numbers of people and revenue than any other show. But I know that for The Music Man and all of your shows, COVID did not stop being a daily consideration just because you were back in a theater.
JACKMAN We have 40-something actors in our show — I’d never been part of anything with half of that — and there was one night when we had 14 people off because of COVID, and we still managed to do a show. My friend texted me, “I think you should change the lyric to ‘7.6 trombones.’” [laughs] We used understudies, swings, everybody — there was even one point when our assistant choreographer said, “Can I fit in a costume?” People were taking on roles that they hadn’t studied. Sutton’s [costar Sutton Foster’s] daughter got COVID and, of course, then she got COVID, and I knew it was only a matter of time for me because I’m kissing her every night. But when Sutton was off, the swing, Kathy Voytko, came in that day and they said, “Oh, you’re on,” and she’s a swing, so she’s covering eight or nine tracks, and she said, “Which part?” And they said, “Marian Paroo.” She had never had a rehearsal. They handed her a little mini script with just her scenes highlighted, and luckily she’d been at rehearsal watching, but she’s watching nine tracks, not just Marian. It was 12 o’clock when she found out she was on, and from 1 to 5 she went through every scene, and she went on that night.
ROCKWELL It really is a heroic time for understudies.
WILLIAMS Oh, my God, what a skillset.
NEGGA Our director [Sam Gold] went on one night! It was really weird.
ROCKWELL Who went on when Daniel [Craig, Negga’s costar] got it?
NEGGA I think if people had showed up to see Dan Craig in Macbeth and he wasn’t playing Macbeth, there would have been riots, so we just shut the show down. But Sam went on one night with a book in his hand and a microphone, and it was like performance art. It was surreal.
I’ve got to ask you about how audiences are behaving during this time. All of you have audience members right up in your face, none more so than Sam at Circle in the Square…
ROCKWELL Yesterday, Laurence went like this [motioning to an audience member to pull her mask up]. They’re in our lap, man.
WILLIAMS Yeah, you’ve got the whole cross-breeze of an audience.
I think the vast majority of people are doing what they’re supposed to do and adhering to the instructions of the ushers with the “Masks Up” signs at the front of the theaters — but most theaters are still selling concessions during intermission, and patrons are permitted to consume them from their seats, which means “Masks Down”…
ROCKWELL I like to think that we’re getting slow immunity. [laughs]
PARKER We don’t have an intermission.
ROCKWELL We do.
JACKMAN Yeah.
WILLIAMS We do, but you can’t bring drinks into our theater.
Mary-Louise Parker at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable.
Photographed by Nina Westervelt
Setting aside the stuff that’s going on around you while you’re performing, what do each of you find the most challenging or daunting about playing the characters you’re playing at the moment?
PARKER That it has to end.
JACKMAN Yeah. These old musicals — I’ve done Oklahoma! as well — were built in a way that was a little more actor-friendly than the modern musical. With The Boy from Oz I had 22 songs and was never offstage, but with The Music Man I have five or six songs and Sutton has five or six songs, and there’s a couple of moments that feel like a smoke break. [laughs]
NEGGA Totally! That’s exactly what it is!
JACKMAN “Let’s give Robert Preston 10 minutes here.” I remember that with Shakespeare too.
NEGGA Yeah, totally. Maybe it’s the time that we’re in at the moment, but there’s just this delicious energy that I feel super buoyed by. Everybody just feels utterly grateful to be on stage. It’s like we’ve been let out of jail — and we kind of have. Those two years just drove it home that this is a very special thing to be able to stand in front of people who have paid a lot of money to sit in a dark room to see people shout at each other.
PARKER And they’re risking something too. I feel so grateful and moved when I look out — I have a direct address — and there’s just a sea of masks. It’s so moving that these people bought these tickets that cost more than they probably should and are risking something by coming out and sitting in a crowd.
WILLIAMS For me, it has been the emotional turmoil and trauma and pain that my character experiences, and figuring out, as a human being, how to metabolize that and not let it take me into a downward spiral. That started to really beat the shit out of me, honestly, over a period of time.
ROCKWELL My character is a bit of a monster, so you kind of want a neurotic energy, and it’s sad to say, if I’m not having a good day, the performance is better. And that’s not necessarily a healthy way to go through life. It’s also funny when you’re angry in real life, but you can’t access that on stage.
You’ve all done screen work as well as stage work. Do you find that your experience with each helps you with the other, or are they just totally different?
JACKMAN I find both inform the other in really good ways.
PARKER Me too.
With Broadway productions, you guys perform the same show as many as eight times a week for months on end. To many non-actors, that sounds masochistic — people assume it must get old, it must get stale, it must get boring, it must start to drive you crazy. And yet, almost uniformly, actors say that’s not the case…
NEGGA Oh, no, it is.
ROCKWELL Well, that is the case — it is masochistic, it is all that — but then it’s also something else. It’s also glorious. When it’s great, it’s fucking great. And when you see Chris Walken do the monologue in Pulp Fiction — or Laurence Fishburne do Morpheus [in the Matrix films] — the reason he can do that is because Chris Walken has also done Coriolanus, he’s done Hamlet twice, he’s done Romeo, you know? And so that monologue in Pulp Fiction? Of course he can do that. It’s like butter. Definitely the stage informs the film work, I think. With George C. Scott. Viola [Davis]. Whoever.
WILLIAMS I’m super excited to see. I do feel like I’ve been on steroids. I feel like I’m using every molecule in my body in a way that I wasn’t. On stage, you’re shooting the master and the close-up at the same time all the time. Everything matters. Everything is communicating something to the audience. The amount of times I’ve had somebody who’s seen the show come up to me and comment on what my hands did? You wouldn’t have seen that on screen.
NEGGA The spatial awareness that you get as an actor on stage really helps, for me anyway, during screen work.
JACKMAN I love two-show days because you don’t have to wait and sleep to come back the next night and try to get it right. With film, you’re never really happy with anything.
Playing off of what you just said, Hugh, and knowing what you guys know from the inside: if you were a ticket-buyer on a two-show day, would you buy a ticket for the first show because the performers are fresh, or the second show because maybe they’ve worked something out from the first show?
JACKMAN Hmmm. I always go to a matinee.
NEGGA Me too, I love a matinee.
WILLIAMS Wow.
ROCKWELL Oh, interesting. And some heavy cats will show up on Tuesday night, almost every Tuesday. I’m like, “Why are Matt Damon and Chris Rock here? It’s a Tuesday.” But Tuesday shows are really good because you’re coming rested.
Sam Rockwell at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable.
Photographed by Nina Westervelt
Is Broadway doing enough to make shows accessible for people who aren’t older, white and wealthy?
PARKER No.
ROCKWELL The tickets are so fucking expensive, that’s the problem.
JACKMAN It’s more affordable in London.
NEGGA Oh, yeah. When I heard what it costs here, I couldn’t believe it. It’s prohibitive.
JACKMAN I really have given this a lot of thought, and I find it very disturbing and worrying what is happening, this idea of market forces being predominant and “whatever the market can bear is good for the whole” — I don’t think that’s true, and I wrestle with it because, of course, because I know I’m getting a wage which is not what the other kids are getting in our show, and that probably impacts on ticket prices as well. We have a ticket initiative for people, and I give a portion of my wage to people who have never been to the theater, but it’s not really getting to the root of the problem. We have to be very proactive about this to protect what the theater audience looks like 20, 30 years from now. And if we’re only really making it accessible to people who have a lot of money, or the very few lucky ones who get a free ticket somehow, which is probably three percent of the audience, we’re going to end up where people are not coming.
PARKER How is anyone going to even consider coming to the theater if it’s $125 for a bad seat? There’s something about the not-for-profit theaters. They draw a lot of people who want to do a limited run, they attract people who haven’t done a lot of theater, sometimes people who are TV stars or whatever, and I think there’s some flaw within that system also that doesn’t feel quite right.
WILLIAMS I know that ours offers, like, $30 tickets for people under 30, and a student ID gives you half-price, and things like that which people are taking advantage of.
NEGGA Like with anything at the moment, it’s really important to keep questioning the status quo. And in terms of getting people into the theater so that it’s not just a sort of playhouse for the elite? People will come to see themselves on stage. I want to see people like me — and I want to see people who are different, as well, but I want to see me occasionally. So I think it’s about encouraging all different kinds of people to be involved in our business — to be playwrights, to be actors, to be directors.
And that’s certainly the case with your show, Ruth. Lest anyone think they’re in for something stuffy, there’s an actor in a wheelchair, there’s colorblind casting—
NEGGA Intentional casting, not colorblind. That’s very modern. But you know what, I feel like Shakespeare is modern. It’s the language of the people. It wasn’t an elitist artform. The theater was the kind of place where people ran amok and you caught some of the speech but you didn’t catch the rest of the speech. He’s actually really democratic as a playwright, and I think we forget that that’s where the origins of theater come from.
PARKER Sometimes they do the student matinee thing [where a performance’s audience is comprised primarily or entirely of students], and I felt like our show was not a good show to do a student matinee for, but I wanted to have students there, so I said, “Can we please have them in, talk to them about their lives, spend more time with them, actually, do some scenes from the play, and then they can go home?” I had to push really, really hard, but they did it. And I went out early and just sat and talked to them. I think there should be more student programs like that.
JACKMAN That’s inspiring, that’s great.
WILLIAMS That sounds awesome. So they didn’t just watch the play, you sat with them, did a couple of scenes, and talked about what brought you here?
PARKER Mhmm. And we had them write scenes and we performed them. It was so great.
The vast majority of Broadway attendees conduct themselves as they should. But Jesse, on the same day that the Tony nominations were announced, which was probably one of the happier days of your life, you experienced what I would imagine was a very different sort of emotion when someone anonymously posted to the Internet a naked photo of you that they had somehow snapped during a performance, even though the theater had required people to store their phones in locked pouches. Did that make it harder for you to go back out and keep doing what you had been doing before?
WILLIAMS No. I still am processing how I feel about it. Sometimes you need some remove from some of this stuff. There were things that came out that and, if you can be lighthearted about it, you can laugh it off. But then also you think about what actually happened, and what it took [from the perpetrator]: You walked in and agreed to put your phones away, and you agreed that you would not film what we were doing — it’s a private, sacred space where we’re doing something — and you violated that, and you didn’t just violate it, you violated it and then said, “Fuck it, let me put it on the Internet for the world” — so that’s not good. But I’ve got a show to do tonight, and people came from all over the world to see this show, so you push through. So I have to be of two hearts about it: One is it’s not the end of the world, I have to do a terrific show eight times this week, and I can’t let it pervert or seep into that experience. It’s not me on stage, it’s the character, and I’m looking at my scene partner, and we’re in a different world; there’s no penetration — that’s a really poor choice of words here. [laughs] So it’s unfortunate, but whatever. It has not affected the performance. But it certainly improved ticket sales.
Jesse Williams at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable.
Photographed by Nina Westervelt
Let’s close with something we call “rapid fire” — just the first thing that pops into your head after I say something.
How you feel about entrance applause…
NEGGA It’s hilarious! What is this?!
JACKMAN Uncomfortable.
ROCKWELL It’s not great.
PARKER You can shut it down, I’ll tell you how. With Heisenberg [a Broadway play in 2016] — this was my idea, this is how much I loathe it — I entered with the stage manager, in my costume, who gave the cell phone speech as I entered. Never got it. Dead Man’s Cell Phone [an Off Broadway play in 2008], had a hat on, other people talking, lifted it up, nobody saw it. The Sound Inside, started speaking in the dark. This play, started speaking in the dark. I saw Paul Newman do it once.
ROCKWELL Oh, that’s clever.
NEGGA I want to know how you get it! [laughs]
WILLIAMS Exactly!
ROCKWELL It’s a good problem to have, but it’s distracting.
PARKER Because then you start the play feeling like you’re an actor in a play, and what’s worse than that?
JACKMAN I feel uncomfortable with it, but actually on this one, Harold Hill, who’s the greatest conman, would dig it.
PARKER That works.
JACKMAN And that’s actually informed my whole show. But I did get an “I love you, Wolverine!” [laughs]
Most annoying thing that audience members do…
WILLIAMS Let their phones ring, and the long crinkle of what-in-God’s-name-are-you-unwrapping?! They’re trying to be quiet, but they’re making it take 20 minutes.
NEGGA We had a “This is boring,” and then they left.
What you do on your day off…
NEGGA Sleep.
WILLIAMS Say “no” to all appointments or calls.
ROCKWELL Beer, chips, gym. Maybe a movie.
PARKER It just depends on my kids, really.
JACKMAN Same.
Most superstitious thing you do each show…
PARKER I’m so superstitious I couldn’t even tell you. I’m superstitious about my superstitions. [laughs]
JACKMAN I grab my suitcase — the prop guy has it out there behind the train, I’m there and I grab it, I flip it once, and I give it to him. And when he was off, and there was another prop guy, it was almost impossible to go on without him.
ROCKWELL I loathe superstition so much, but if I’m being honest with myself, I probably am superstitious about certain things. If I didn’t do a vocal warmup, I’d be scared.
WILLIAMS I stand in the wings before every show, while the house is chattering, and just take my hat off and just say a prayer of gratitude for everything in my life.
NEGGA I’m playing a woman who laughs in the face of superstition, and I’m really superstitious usually, so I’m kind of using this as an opportunity to surrender a bit.
Most unconventional thing in your dressing room…
JACKMAN This is easy for me and I keep it there because it makes me laugh. On opening night, I walked in and Ryan Reynolds had two massive portraits of himself [laughs] — on my makeup mirror was Gene Kelly’s famous kick with Ryan’s face superimposed on top of it and “Good luck with your little show.” I didn’t stop laughing for about a minute, and then I turned around to go to my bathroom, and there was another one of him, literally framed.
PARKER My son gave me some Ethopian incense. I have an altar.
WILLIAMS A papier-mâché box for bad feelings made by my niece and nephew, three and four.
The person whose attendance at your show has meant the most to you…
ROCKWELL We got excited about Holly Hunter.
PARKER Jill Biden.
JACKMAN A bunch of people come to mind, but one is Barbara Cook’s son-in-law. Barbara Cook was a really great mentor of mine, and she was incredible, and she was in the original production. One of the great actors of all time who just happened to be an incredible singer.
The number of shows per week you wish you had…
WILLIAMS I’m okay with our usual number — although we’re going to do seven shows in the last four days before we close this week, which I’m a little worried about, but it will be fine.
NEGGA For me, it’s just about stamina. You here [in America] have your dark day on Monday — I’m used to it being on a Sunday — so that means you’ve got your Friday night show, your two shows on Saturday and your matinee on Sunday. That’s tough. That’s four shows in less than 48 hours.
WILLIAMS I like having the Sunday matinee and then having Sunday night and all day Monday and Tuesday.
ROCKWELL Yes. I would say seven would be the way to go. [Bryan] Cranston had that for Network.
JACKMAN I don’t mind eight, but if I had my way there’d be six matinees and two evening shows.
ROCKWELL Oh, that’s cool!
NEGGA That’s such a good idea.
PARKER What a great idea.
ROCKWELL That’s a great idea. The evening thing is tough.
JACKMAN It keeps a lot of actors away from the theater who’ve got kids.
Hugh, you will be in your show through January 2023, having started in December of 2021, meaning 14 months, just like you did with The Boy from Oz, never missing a performance…
JACKMAN Yeah.
WILLIAMS Insane. Insane.
NEGGA How do you keep the stamina?!
JACKMAN I don’t know. I’m feeling good. I think it’s a lot to do with the show and the company. I feel different than I did on The Boy from Oz. I’m really excited about it.
ROCKWELL But let’s face it, you’re a beast.
Mary-Louise, what’s your number? Again, you’ve had different shows in back-to-back seasons…
PARKER I actually was supposed to go from The Sound Inside right into How I Learned to Drive. I shipped my stuff from one dressing room to the other. But seven sounds great. And I love some version of Hugh’s idea.
Jesse Williams, Ruth Negga, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Rockwell and Hugh Jackman, at the THR Tony Nominees Roundtable.
Photographed by Nina Westervelt
Ray Liotta in Black BirdScreenshot: AppleTV+/YouTube
The trailer for Black Bird is here, and with it comes our first look at the late Ray Liotta’s final completed television series. The Apple TV+ miniseries is a chilling crime thriller written and executive produced by bestselling author Dennis Lehane (Gone Baby Gone, Mystic River).
Liotta’s is the first voice we hear in the trailer, counseling his imprisoned son Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton) that there will be no “quick” way out of his 10-year sentence. But the former high school football star is given a critical choice: stay and serve his time with no chance at parole, or transfer to a maximum security facility “specializing in the criminally insane” and befriend a possible serial killer, Larry Hall (Paul Walter Hauser).
Jimmy has to move carefully to get a confession out of Hall, as prison is famously unkind to snitches. Plus, Hall is creepy as hell (to put it lightly), and Jimmy only has so much time to discover where he may have buried the bodies of several young girls. “Hall’s conviction’s on appeal. He could win and walk,” says Lauren McCauley (Sepideh Moafi) in the trailer. “If he walks, he’ll kill again and again.”
“I wrote the part of Big Jim Keene in Black Bird for Ray,” he wrote. “I had no other actor in mind and was floored—humbled, honored, fist-pump elated—when he leapt at playing the part less than 24 hours after we sent him the scripts. And the performance he gave? It was a master class.”
He added that “as deeply flawed and compromised as the character is, Ray found the nobility in a man who would run into a burning building for that same son and never break his stride. It was that duality I counted on to carry the emotional heart of our show from beginning to end.”
Black Bird, which was inspired by the true crime memoir In With The Devil: A Fallen Hero, A Serial Killer, and A Dangerous Bargain for Redemption, also stars Greg Kinnear. The series premieres on Apple TV+ on July 8.
“Calendar Girl” profiles Ruth Finley who created the Fashion Calendar that was an indispensable resource for designers. Filmmaker Christian D. Bruun illuminates a hidden history through interviews with fashion icons such as Carolina Herrera, Nicole Miller and Diane von Furstenberg.
“I met Josh when I wasn’t in a state of fear or fight-or-flight. … The synchronicities hit us so hard and fast they were impossible to ignore,” she wrote on July 8, 2021. “I felt immediately crazy protective over him and wanted to keep him for myself and get to know each other before the tornado (media attention) hit.”
“We’ve had a few solid months of just us getting to know each other and I’ve loved every second of it,” Haack wrote.
The Wellness Remodel author also slammed critics who said the relationship came along too soon.
“Yes ‘another relationship’ and guess what. I’m 38 — I’ll do what I want,” she added. “The synchronicities hit us so hard and fast they were impossible to ignore.”
Before her marriage to Anstead, Haack was married to her Flip or Flop costar Tarek El Moussa. The California native seems to approve of his ex-wife’s new relationship, having told Entertainment Tonight in July 2021 that he’s met Hall “a few times” through real estate work.
The Tarek’s Flip Side host also said that he thinks Hall “seems like” a good guy.
“[I] don’t really know him, but I sure hope so,” he added.
“I never thought I would have one divorce let alone two,” Haack wrote via Instagram in September 2020 to announce her second split. “I never thought I would have 2 baby daddies – but sometimes life throws us curve balls. Instead of getting stuck in these ‘setbacks’ I choose to look at these challenges as opportunities to grow. So while some may judge me and throw around rumors about me, most of you support me. And that says a lot about this world and where we are headed. I’m messy, I’m real and I’m working on healing. … We are all a work in progress.”
Scroll to see a timeline of Christina Haack and Joshua Hall’s love story:
Every three months, Tesla publishes a safety report that provides the number of miles between crashes when drivers use the company’s driver-assistance system, Autopilot, and the number of miles between crashes when they do not.
These figures always show that accidents are less frequent with Autopilot, a collection of technologies that can steer, brake and accelerate Tesla vehicles on its own.
But the numbers are misleading. Autopilot is used mainly for highway driving, which is generally twice as safe as driving on city streets, according to the Department of Transportation. Fewer crashes may occur with Autopilot merely because it is typically used in safer situations.
Tesla has not provided data that would allow a comparison of Autopilot’s safety on the same kinds of roads. Neither have other carmakers that offer similar systems.
Autopilot has been on public roads since 2015. General Motors introduced Super Cruise in 2017, and Ford Motor brought out BlueCruise last year. But publicly available data that reliably measures the safety of these technologies is scant. American drivers — whether using these systems or sharing the road with them — are effectively guinea pigs in an experiment whose results have not yet been revealed.
Carmakers and tech companies are adding more vehicle features that they claim improve safety, but it is difficult to verify these claims. All the while, fatalities on the country’s highways and streets have been climbing in recent years, reaching a 16-year high in 2021. It would seem that any additional safety provided by technological advances is not offsetting poor decisions by drivers behind the wheel.
“There is a lack of data that would give the public the confidence that these systems, as deployed, live up to their expected safety benefits,” said J. Christian Gerdes, a professor of mechanical engineering and co-director of Stanford University’s Center for Automotive Research who was the first chief innovation officer for the Department of Transportation.
G.M. collaborated with the University of Michigan on a study that explored the potential safety benefits of Super Cruise but concluded that they did not have enough data to understand whether the system reduced crashes.
A year ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government’s auto safety regulator, ordered companies to report potentially serious crashes involving advanced driver-assistance systems along the lines of Autopilot within a day of learning about them. The order said the agency would make the reports public, but it has not yet done so.
The safety agency declined to comment on what information it had collected so far but said in a statement that the data would be released “in the near future.”
Tesla and its chief executive, Elon Musk, did not respond to requests for comment. G.M. said it had reported two incidents involving Super Cruise to NHTSA: one in 2018 and one in 2020. Ford declined to comment.
The agency’s data is unlikely to provide a complete picture of the situation, but it could encourage lawmakers and drivers to take a much closer look at these technologies and ultimately change the way they are marketed and regulated.
“To solve a problem, you first have to understand it,” said Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor in the University of South Carolina’s law and engineering schools who specializes in emerging transportation technologies. “This is a way of getting more ground truth as a basis for investigations, regulations and other actions.”
Despite its abilities, Autopilot does not remove responsibility from the driver. Tesla tells drivers to stay alert and be ready to take control of the car at all times. The same is true of BlueCruise and Super Cruise.
But many experts worry that these systems, because they enable drivers to relinquish active control of the car, may lull them into thinking that their cars are driving themselves. Then, when the technology malfunctions or cannot handle a situation on its own, drivers may be unprepared to take control as quickly as needed.
Older technologies, such as automatic emergency braking and lane departure warning, have long provided safety nets for drivers by slowing or stopping the car or warning drivers when they drift out of their lane. But newer driver-assistance systems flip that arrangement by making the driver the safety net for technology.
Safety experts are particularly concerned about Autopilot because of the way it is marketed. For years, Mr. Musk has said the company’s cars were on the verge of true autonomy — driving themselves in practically any situation. The system’s name also implies automation that the technology has not yet achieved.
This may lead to driver complacency. Autopilot has played a role in many fatal crashes, in some cases because drivers were not prepared to take control of the car.
Mr. Musk has long promoted Autopilot as a way of improving safety, and Tesla’s quarterly safety reports seem to back him up. But a recent study from the Virginia Transportation Research Council, an arm of the Virginia Department of Transportation, shows that these reports are not what they seem.
“We know cars using Autopilot are crashing less often than when Autopilot is not used,” said Noah Goodall, a researcher at the council who explores safety and operational issues surrounding autonomous vehicles. “But are they being driven in the same way, on the same roads, at the same time of day, by the same drivers?”
How Elon Musk’s Twitter Deal Unfolded
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A blockbuster deal. Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, capped what seemed an improbable attempt by the famously mercurial billionaire to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion. Here’s how the deal unfolded:
The initial offer. Mr. Musk made an unsolicited bid worth more than $40 billion for the influential social network, saying that he wanted to make Twitter a private company and that he wanted people to be able to speak more freely on the service.
Analyzing police and insurance data, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit research organization funded by the insurance industry, has found that older technologies like automatic emergency braking and lane departure warning have improved safety. But the organization says studies have not yet shown that driver-assistance systems provide similar benefits.
Part of the problem is that police and insurance data do not always indicate whether these systems were in use at the time of a crash.
The federal auto safety agency has ordered companies to provide data on crashes when driver-assistance technologies were in use within 30 seconds of impact. This could provide a broader picture of how these systems are performing.
But even with that data, safety experts said, it will be difficult to determine whether using these systems is safer than turning them off in the same situations.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group for car companies, has warned that the federal safety agency’s data could be misconstrued or misrepresented. Some independent experts express similar concerns.
“My big worry is that we will have detailed data on crashes involving these technologies, without comparable data on crashes involving conventional cars,” said Matthew Wansley, a professor the Cardozo School of Law in New York who specializes in emerging automotive technologies and was previously general counsel at an autonomous vehicle start-up called nuTonomy. “It could potentially look like these systems are a lot less safe than they really are.”
For this and other reasons, carmakers may be reluctant to share some data with the agency. Under its order, companies can ask it to withhold certain data by claiming it would reveal business secrets.
The agency is also collecting crash data on automated driving systems — more advanced technologies that aim to completely remove drivers from cars. These systems are often referred to as “self-driving cars.”
For the most part, this technology is still being tested in a relatively small number of cars with drivers behind the wheel as a backup. Waymo, a company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, operates a service without drivers in the suburbs of Phoenix, and similar services are planned in cities like San Francisco and Miami.
Companies are already required to report crashes involving automated driving systems in some states. The federal safety agency’s data, which will cover the whole country, should provide additional insight in this area, too.
But the more immediate concern is the safety of Autopilot and other driver-assistance systems, which are installed on hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
“There is an open question: Is Autopilot increasing crash frequency or decreasing it?” Mr. Wansley said. “We might not get a complete answer, but we will get some useful information.”
EXCLUSIVE: The Canadian drama You Can Live Forever is setting up for its world premiere this weekend at the Tribeca Festival. Here’s the first-look trailer for the Prospector Films pic, which stars Anwen O’Driscoll, June Laporte, Liane Balaban, Deragh Campbell, Tim Campbell, Antoine Yared and Hasani Freeman.
Montreal-based writer-directors Sarah Watts and Mark Slutsky’s debut feature film, in both English and French, is a period drama is set in the early 1990s and follows gay teen Jaime (O’Driscoll), who is sent to live with her devout Jehovah’s Witness relatives after the death of her father. She makes an unexpected connection with Marike (Laporte), daughter of a prominent Witness Elder.
The two begin a secret, unspoken romance, but when their attraction becomes too obvious to hide, the community moves to separate the two, forcing them each to make a terrible choice between faith and love.
Orly Ravid of The Film Collaborative and Bill Straus of Bridge Independent are handling sales at the festival, which kicks off Wednesday. Robert Vroom is producer and John Christou is executive producer.
You Can Live Forever has its world premiere screening Saturday at 5:30 p.m. at Village East by Angelika: Theater 6 in the festival’s Viewpoints section.
Legendary political director Costa-Gavras (Z, Missing) will receive this year’s lifetime achievement award from the Locarno International Film Festival.
The Greek filmmaker, who has been making social-activist cinema for nearly 60 years, will be honored at the 75th edition of the Swiss festival on Aug. 11.
Locarno will also screen two of Costa-Gavras’ early works, that are now rarely seen: Shock Troops from 1967 and The Sleeping Car Murders (1965).
Costa-Gavras is perhaps best known for his political thrillers Z (1969), a look at the Greek military coup of 1967, which won the best international feature Oscar in 1970 as well as the Oscar for best editing for Françoise Bonnot, and for Missing (1982), a dramatization of the CIA’s involvement in the coup d’état in Chile in 1973, which starred Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek and which was nominated for four Oscars, winning best-adapted screenplay honors for Costa-Gavras and co-writer Donald E. Stewart. His most recent feature, Adults in the Room, which premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival, looked at how the European Union forced a brutal austerity program on Greece after the financial collapse of 2008/2009.
Giona A. Nazzaro, the artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival, called Costa-Gavras “the cineaste who has investigated most extensively the history of the 20th century, without ever being blinded by ideologies. Although regarded as a ‘political filmmaker,’ Costa-Gavras is first and foremost a remarkable auteur, gifted with an extraordinary sense of form and style. Never one to wallow in self-referential mannerisms, he has tirelessly renewed his own gaze and approach. Costa-Gavras is the embodiment of a truly noble idea of cinema as a tool for progress and knowledge, a filmmaker who has never given up the conversation with his audience, always offering his candid version of amusement value and entertainment.”
Costa-Gavras will also take part in a panel discussion in Locarno on Aug. 12.
“The Twilight World” is a surprising late-career turn for Herzog, who is known for art-house classics like “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre, the Wrath of God,” and searching, existential documentaries like “Grizzly Man,” “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” and “Into the Inferno.” But Herzog thinks of himself primarily as a writer — he has written poetry and kept journals throughout his career — and has long maintained that his writing, not his films, will be his legacy. With “The Twilight World,” Herzog feels he has finally found his medium.
“It’s odd, but I can explain it easily in a sort of dictum: My films are my voyage, and my writing is home,” he said.
“The Twilight World,” which was translated from German by Michael Hofmann, unfolds over 132 pages. Most of the narrative takes place in the claustrophobic, delirious confines of the jungle, an environment Herzog is intimately familiar with and evokes with eerie precision.
“I function well there,” he said. “It’s a place of fever dreams.”
As he does with his documentaries, which he often narrates, Herzog inserts himself in the story as a guide. The novel begins with his account of meeting Onoda, then jumps back in time to the island, where Onoda was held captive by his own self-delusion. Even when Herzog recedes into the background, adopting the voice of an omniscient narrator, the prose is unmistakably Herzogian: “Onoda’s war is formed from the union of an imaginary nothing and a dream, but Onoda’s war, sired by nothing, is nevertheless overwhelming, an event extorted from eternity.”
“His is just one of the great inimitable voices in any form,” said William Heyward, who acquired the novel and Herzog’s forthcoming memoir, tentatively titled “Every Man for Himself, and God Against All,” for Penguin.
“The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change.”
That’s the tagline for Warner Bros. and DC’s upcoming Dwayne Johnson-starrer Black Adam, and today audiences got a sneak peek at what that looks like as the studio dropped the first official trailer for the film. From filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra, writers Adam Sztykiel, Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshirvani, and producers Beau Flynn, Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia, Black Adam stars Johnson opposite Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate, Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher, Aldis Hodge as Hawkman and Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone.
The story follows what happens after Black Adam is freed from his earthly tomb nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed almighty powers of the Egyptian gods and immediately imprisoned. He is then ready to “unleash his unique form of justice” on the modern world. It marks Johnson’s first time starring in a live-action superhero movie.
During an April appearance onstage at Caesars Palace during CinemaCon, Johnson told the audience of exhibition insiders that he’d been working on the film for more than a decade. “The whole idea was, if we were going to do it, we were going to take our time and do it right. It really served us well to wait and hold and watch these other stories and these superheroes unfold,” Johnson said. “Black Adam is one of the things in my life that gets me out of bed.”
Warner Bros. Discovery has officially laid out its senior EMEA leadership team under President and Managing for the region (excl Poland) Priya Dogra.
She unveiled the new-look structure today, revealing how local territory chiefs will feed into her centralized EMEA operation. Five senior execs — including former Country Managers Sylvia Rothblum, Susanne Aigner and Thomas Ciampa — are stepping down at the same time.
Each territory manager will be responsible for Warner Bros. Discovery’s combined businesses in their respective territories, working closely with the company’s global functions across streaming, sport, US programming and the Warner Bros Discovery studio.
The team is as follows, in alphabetical order:
Alessandro Araimobecomes General Manager, Italy, Spain and Portugal. He was previously EVP and General Manager for Discovery in Italy.
Pierre Branco becomes General Manager, France, Benelux and Africa. He was previously Country Manager for WarnerMedia in France, Benelux, Middle East and Africa and Head of Affiliates and Ad Sales for EMEA.
Jamie Cooke becomes General Manager, CEE, Baltics, Middle East, Mediterranean and Turkey. He was previously Country Manager for Discovery across CEE and Middle East & Africa.
Hannes Heyelmann becomes General Manager, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. He was previously EVP Programming for WarnerMedia across EMEA.
Antonio Ruiz becomes General Manager, UK and Ireland. He was previously General Manager for Discovery in Spain, France and Portugal.
Christina Sulebakk becomes General Manager, Nordics. She was previously General Manager of HBO Max across Europe.
Also confirmed in post are Vanessa Brookman, whocontinues as SVP Kids and Family, EMEA and takes on responsibility for Adult Swim across EMEA with a dual reporting line to Michael Ouweleen, who leads Cartoon Network, Adult Swim and Boomerang. Antony Root remains with oversight of original production for HBO Max across EMEA and original production for WarnerMedia general entertainment channels in Germany, France and Spain.
Ragnhild Thorbech keeps programming and acquisitions duties for HBO Max EMEA, while Myriam Lopez-Otazu continues her responsibilities, which include investment for the Discovery linear channels and Discovery+. She’ll work closely with the territory GMs and coordinate with the US programming team.
Qaisar Rafique expands his Discovery role to become lead for commercial strategy expanding the role he played at Discovery to the broader portfolio and, as previously announced, Leah Hooper is regional lead for Streaming for EMEA, sitting on JB Perrette’s leadership team and taking a place on Dogra’s senior team.
‘Balance Of Experience, Perspective And Talent’
Former WarnerMedia exec Dogra took up her EMEA role following Warner Bros and Discovery’s merger, with Discovery Europe’s Kasia Kieli remaining in charge of Discovery’s strategically important Poland operation.
“My focus has been to build a senior team that harnesses and balances the experience, perspective and talent from across the Discovery and WarnerMedia businesses,” said Dogra. “Each leader will be responsible for continuing the necessary transitions into new means of distribution and new forms of growth, as well as integrating our two organisations into one team, with one clear strategy and a common, respectful culture.”
Of those departing, Rothblum was Country Manager, Germany, Austria and Switzerland for WarnerMedia, while Aigner was SVP and General Manager, Germany, Switzerland, Austria & Benelux for Discovery. Ciampa was WarnerMedia’s Country Manager for Italy, Spain and Portugal.
The other exits are Lydia Fairfax, SVP Commercial Partnerships, EMEA for Discovery and David Fisher, Discovery’s VP Advance Advertising for Discovery.
“Sylvia, Susanne, Thomas, Lydia and David have created enormous value for our company and each have shaped the careers of so many along the way. I am grateful for their many contributions and their assistance in ensuring a smooth transition and I wish them the very best,” said Dogra.
The first Black Adam trailer has been released for the Dwayne Johnson-led DC Extended Universe film. The video comes as Black Adam is currently undergoing final reshoots ahead of its release on October 21.
“Nearly 5,000 years after he was bestowed with the almighty powers of the ancient gods— and imprisoned just as quickly—Black Adam (Johnson) is freed from his earthly tomb, ready to unleash his unique form of justice on the modern world,” says the synopsis.
Joining Johnson is Pierce Brosnan as Doctor Fate, Noah Centineo as Atom Smasher, Quintessa Swindell as Cyclone, and Aldis Hodge as Hawkman. Other cast members include Sarah Shahi, Marwan Kenzari, James Cusati-Moyer, Bodhi Sabongui, Mo Amer, and Uli Latukefu in undisclosed roles.
Based on the DC Comics character created by Otto Binder and C.C. Beck, the film is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Jungle Cruise) from a screenplay written by Rory Haines and Sohrab Noshiryani. Producers are Johnson, Dany Garcia, and Hiram Garcia of Seven Bucks Productions along with FlynnPicturesCo’s Beau Flynn, with Scott Sheldon overseeing the project for FlynnPictureCo.
He replaces Dawn Hudson, who is exiting her post after an 11-year run. Kramer will assume his new role on July 18, with Hudson remaining as an adviser during the transition period. She had said in October that her current term will be her last; she signed her latest deal in March 2020 for what was expected to be three years through May 2023.
We’re hearing the board vote for Kramer was unanimous; he had been widely considered the front-runner for the post.
As CEO, the Academy says Kramer will lead the global membership; the Oscars; the institution’s education and emerging talent initiatives; the Academy’s collections housed in the Margaret Herrick Library and Academy Film Archive; and the Academy Museum and its ongoing calendar of exhibitions, screenings, educational and public programs, and retail operations.
The news means that the appointment of a new director of the Academy Museum is “currently being addressed by the Museum Board of Trustees and the Academy Foundation Board and will be announced in the near future,” the Academy said today.
“Bill Kramer has been a transformational leader in establishing the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures as a beacon for movie lovers and a manifestation of everything the Academy represents and celebrates,” said Academy president David Rubin. “His vision for the Academy’s future is likewise bold and inspiring, and our governors have agreed he is the ideal choice to lead at this pivotal moment for the organization. We believe Bill has the ability to bring together all corners of the motion picture community, and we’re thrilled to have him in this role to elevate the organization and unite our global membership.”
He added: “I cannot stress enough the deep respect and appreciation we have for the groundbreaking achievements Dawn Hudson has brought to the Academy during her 11 years as CEO. She initiated unprecedented efforts to create more space for diverse voices, both within the membership and our industry. She was tireless in shepherding our long-awaited museum to its opening and has fortified the Academy’s financial stability, allowing us to develop programs and provide mentoring for those in front of and behind the camera. Our gratitude for her accomplishments and guidance is beyond measure.”
Kramer was originally managing director of development and external relations at the long-in-the-works Academy Museum under Kerry Brougher before exiting briefly in 2016, returning as the head man in 2019. He helped steer the project that had been originally announced in 2012 and missed targeted openings in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to its opening September 30. During that span he oversaw the completion of a $388 million fundraising campaign and established an ongoing $40 million annual operating revenue program that includes an annual gala, ticket sales, museum membership and more.
“The Academy Museum Board of Trustees is thrilled that Bill will be continuing his work with us as the CEO of the Academy and as a Trustee of the Museum Board,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, chair of the Academy Museum Board of Trustees. “The museum’s opening has been a resounding success, and I look forward to working with Bill to help further amplify the museum’s robust programs and create a unifying and strategic vision for the future.”
Between stints at the Academy Museum, Kramer served as VP Development at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He previously led campaigns for the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the California Institute of the Arts and worked at Sundance Institute, Rhode Island School of Design and Columbia University School of the Arts.
“It is the great honor of my career to take on the role as CEO of the Academy,” said Kramer today. “I deeply believe in the power and artistry of cinema. I so look forward to galvanizing the unparalleled assets of the Academy—the Oscars, our global community of more than 10,000 Academy members, and our museum, library, and archive—to promote and elevate the arts and sciences of the movies and inspire the next generation of filmmakers. I am deeply grateful for this opportunity and for the incredible work of my colleagues Brendan Connell Jr. and Jacqueline Stewart, who will continue the exceptional work of the Academy Museum.”
Billie Eilish premiered a pointed new song, “TV,” that appeared to include references to the impending overturn of Roe v. Wade, the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, and more. Eilish debuted the song during her show in Manchester, England, last night, June 7.
On “TV,” Eilish is accompanied by her brother and collaborator Finneas on acoustic guitar as she descends into a thick media haze that feels at once distant but still connected to the real world. “I”ll but on Survivor just to watch somebody suffer,” she sings in the first verse, while in the second verse, she adds: “Did you see me on TV?/I”ll try not to starve myself/Just because you’re mad at me.” That latter verse also ends with a line that seems to nod to the Depp/Heard trial, “The internet’s gone wild watching movie stars on trial/While they’re overturning Roe v. Wade.”
“TV” ends with Eilish repeating the refrain, “Maybe I, maybe I, maybe I’m the problem.”
Eilish recently kicked off the European and U.K. leg of her world tour, which will continue through the end of the month. She’s then set to play a bunch of shows in Australia and New Zealand in September. The musician released her most recent album, Happier Than Ever, last year.
When I started Raindance I can remember thinking: “This is it! This is the moment we’ have all been waiting for. No more waiting for someone else to decide which films get seen. If Raindance is going to succeed or fail, Raindance is going to do it on our its own terms with our own ideas and our own brand.”
And just like that, Raindance was born.
Remarkably, that first year’s event only cost £150. Plus something creatives have in abundance – a thousand hours of time.But we had a dream, our love for film, a ton of ambition, shelves full of scripts and VHS cassettes, and a big “R” on all of them. The rest is history. Our history.
That day, when we started, we were three people around a table. Looking back, we were far away from the dream team we have today. But we are visionaries, creators, and filmmakers. And we do what visionaries, creators and filmmakers do best. We got better.
Every day, every festival, and every film course we got better. With every new idea we got better. With every mistake we got better. And because of that, every filmmaker and everyone taking our courses got better.
From Day One, everything we did – and still do – was to unleash the potential of every visual content creator around the world. To make you stronger, more exciting and more entertaining. And to help you reach new audiences. To help you do things you never knew you could do. And it is because of you that we are who we are today.
How You can Support Raindance
Money is important, of course. But there are lots of other ways that you can support Raindance and Independent Film.
1.Tell your friends!
Did you know that word-of-mouth is the most powerful tool that Hollywood uses to market films? If you have had a good experience at a Raindance event, or enjoyed a Raindance article, pick up your phone and SMS, email or call a friend. I really helps us get the word about independent film out there
2.Follow us on social media
Blow nor ego and follow us! Whether you are a fan of social media or not – follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or TikTik.
3. Subscribe to our mailing list
Did you know that our potential sponsors look at the size of our mailing list? Simply joining adds another name to our list. It makes us look better to potential brand partners. And, you’ll be getting weekly tips and tricks about screenwriting and filmmaking
4.Comment on our blog posts and articles
Did you know that one of the best ways to enhance your own personal branding, and to increase your ‘social media authority’ is to comment on blog posts about subjects of interest to you? Your comments on the 2.000+ Raindance blog posts increases our social reach and authority too. It’s like a 2-4-1: You win. We win.
5.Become a member
Your membership fees allow us to do all sorts of cool things like, the Raindance Film Festival. Member get a whole range of free things, plus discounts and special privileges. You can Join Here right now.
We can discuss a strategy that meets your wishes and which will enable us to ampliphy the work Raindance does.
7. Create a brilliant script or film
Why are you reading this anyway? The best way to help Raindance is to do something brilliant. That we we can champion your successes like we do with Christopher Nolan, Edgar Wright, Gareth Edwards and a host of other truly notable filmmakers who have made the most incredible and memorable films.
The severed carcass was found on a beach in Canada
2
The shark is believed to be an Atlantic SharpnoseCredit: Alamy
The Reddit user who posted it said they had seen “this poor guy yesterday” on a beach in Oak Island and were left gobsmacked as to why it was sliced in half.
One user said the shark was a “Atlantic Sharpnose” because of its “nose shape, white spots and dark backside of the dorsal”.
Others were keen to understand how it died, with some claiming it could have been mauled by a bigger beast or chopped in half in a horror propeller accident.
“This was not a boat accident! This wasn’t any propeller. This wasn’t any coral reef. And it wasn’t Jack the Ripper,” one user wrote.
“Definitely not a great white but I’ve seen many sharks eaten by other sharks. There’s always a bigger fish,” posted another.
A third suggested it was a shark attack that left the smaller predator severed in half.
They said: “Another shark would do that all day every day.”
In the video footage, the shark can be seen swimming near the Great Point Lighthouse near a popular Nantucket beach, according to the local media outlet Nantucket Current.
The video was posted on Twitter and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy confirmed veracity of the sighting.
people can be heard in the background reacting loudly as they spot the massive ocean dweller.
If the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is on your wish-list but beyond your budget, you might like the look of the ZTE Axon 40 Ultra, a new Android phone from Chinese tech company ZTE that’s a dead-ringer for Samsung’s flagship.
While the S22 Ultra starts at $1,199.99 / £1,149 / AU$1,849 for 8GB RAM and 128GB storage, the Axon 40 Ultra offers the same specs for just $799 / £709 (roughly AU$1,200).
The phones aren’t hugely different in most other respects either. Design-wise, both the Samsung and ZTE phones have ‘waterfall’ displays that curve at the edges, the same screen size and refresh rate, and the same Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset and 5,000mAh-capacity battery.
The ZTE Axon 40 Ultra even has a few features the Galaxy doesn’t: it has an under-display selfie camera, so you’re not losing any screen, and it charges fast at 65W.
Admittedly, the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is the better phone overall – it comes with a stylus and has much better cameras. But we’ve tested both smartphones extensively, and the ZTE certainly isn’t inferior to the tune of $400 / £400.
(Image credit: Future)
Analysis: ZTE is a true ‘best phone’ contender
We haven’t quite finished our in-depth ZTE Axon 40 Ultra review, but based on what we’ve seen so far there’s a good chance that it could end up on our list of the best smartphones.
It feels a lot like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, which currently tops that list, both in terms of its hand-feel and its performance – and those are the two key attributes of a phone that we pay the most attention.
Its faster charging, and the lack of a ‘punch-hole’ cut-out in the screen, also contribute to a solid all-round user experience.
What lets the phone down is its camera setup – it’s not bad, but it’s not good enough to compete with the Samsung, or with newer iPhones. The AI scene optimization isn’t great, and autofocus is slow too. The front-facing camera is especially disappointing, likely thanks to its under-display placement, and snaps seem incredibly soft with an odd aura effect around subjects.
We did find ourselves missing the Samsung’s S Pen too – the lack of a stylus isn’t normally an issue on smartphones, but with our hand telling our brain ‘this is a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra’ we did find ourselves reaching for the stylus on a few occasions, and being disappointed not to have it.
Another negative is the battery life, as the phone didn’t always last through a day of use without needing to be recharged.
But with this Galaxy S22 Ultra doppelganger costing around the same as the Samsung Galaxy S22, Xiaomi 12 or iPhone 13, it’s easy enough to look past a few rough spots. Look out for our full review very soon.
When “Peacemaker” premiered on HBO Max this January, it attracted attention for its memorable opening credits sequence, which sees the entire cast of the show perform a blocky, stylized dance routine to “Do Ya Wanna Taste It” by Wig Wam. According to the show’s choreographer, Charissa Barton, very few of the actors had background in dance and many were nervous going in.
“I wasn’t going for perfection. There’s something about each character bringing their own quality that keeps it interesting,” Barton told Variety. “So there was sort of finding a fine line between nailing it and allowing for some freedom for imperfection as well.”
Barton spoke to Variety senior artisans editor Jazz Tangcay for Variety Artisans presented by HBO to break down the process of choreographing the opening credits sequence and working with the cast to bring the dance to life on set.
To choreograph the routine, Barton enlisted the help of her husband, actor Alan Tudyk, so she could see how the movement would translate when done by an actor with no formal dance training. Barton focused on developing a comic edge to the routine to fit the heightened world of the show that her choreography introduces.
Once she began working with the cast to block the sequence, certain members of the cast impressed her, with Danielle Brooks and Jennifer Holland demonstrating strong awareness of their bodies. Two of the cast members who surprised her the most were Steve Agee, who in spite of his six-foot stature was able to move quickly and fluidly, and Robert Patrick, who brought energy to his big hip thrust moment. Going in, she had high expectations for “Peacemaker” himself John Cena, who she had heard was a great collaborator, and those expectations were more than met.
“It was one of the most hyper-focused hours in my professional life,” Barton said. “There are just some people who are laser-focused.”
“Peacemaker” is streaming now on HBO Max. Watch the full video above.
France’s National Cinema Federation (FNCF), which represents exhibitors in the market, has said it “firmly protests” Disney’s decision to bypass French cinemas with animated adventure pic Strange World. As we reported earlier today, Disney has opted to forego theatrical and will release the movie directly on Disney Plus in France, taking a stance versus the country’s recently revised windowing system which the studio calls “cumbersome” and “anti-consumer.”
Reacting in a statement, the FNCF called Disney’s decision “a losing choice for everyone” that would “seriously undermine the economy of cinemas and the sector as a whole.”
France updated its arcane windows back in January this year, shortening the span between theatrical and the market’s long-held 36-month SVOD waiting period, but Disney was not among the signatories of an agreement between TV channels, streamers and the film industry.
Currently, Disney’s theatrical releases must wait 17 months after their debut in cinemas to go to Disney Plus, and for a period of just five months. At 22 months, they come off the service and go to free-to-air channels for a 14-month exclusive window before reverting to Disney Plus again after 36 months.
The FNCF today said that exhibition was being “instrumentalized” in the matter which it said is “totally unacceptable and terribly unfair.” It invited Disney to participate in meetings to be organized by national film body the CNC within the framework of the clause provided for in the media chronology agreement that was signed in January. It also called on public authorities to allow a rapid resolution of this “major problem… by leading a conciliation between the stakeholders, and by avoiding making spectators and cinemas the collateral victims of these disputes.”
This year’s Banff World Media Festival is set to be one of the most international yet and will go beyond TV trends to address some of the globe’s biggest topics, according to Executive Director Jenn Kuzmyk.
Speaking to Deadline in the lead-up to the annual event, which takes place in-person after two years online from Sunday 12 June to Wednesday 15 June, Kuzmyk pointed to a flurry of non-North American delegates journeying to the beautiful Rockie Mountains from the likes of Netflix, Warner Bros Discovery, Amazon, the BBC and production companies based in Nigeria, France, Sweden and Korea.
“Going virtual during the pandemic has widened our reach and that’s definitely represented in the breadth of participation,” she added. “We’ve always been represented well internationally but perhaps a bit more this year.”
She pointed to big international hits in line for the prestigious Rockie Awards such as BBC comedy Motherland, Jack Thorne’s Help and Denmark’s Kamikaze for HBO Max.
There were entries from around 45 countries for this year’s Rockies, with more than 150 jurors from a variety of nations.
The 2022 festival will be headlined by keynotes from some of the biggest names in the world of TV including Netflix Head of Global TV Bela Bajaria, Universal Studio Group Chair Pearlana Igbokwe and Participant Media CEO David Linde, along with a wealth of panels talking showrunning, distribution, kids’ content and spotlighting various networks and streamers.
Delegates are already numbering more than 1,500, which would be a record, although Kuzmyk stressed “this isn’t the biggest event in the world, we’re not Mipcom, but we like to say ‘the right people are at Banff’.”
Panel sessions will cover the likes of content trends, consolidation and “point to opportunities and pathways for future business,” but Kuzmyk added that the festival will go beyond TV topics to think about some of the biggest issues facing the world today.
To that end, a day one keynote from Lionsgate founder Frank Giustra and White House Coronavirus Response Co-Ordinator Ashish Jha will discuss the responsibility of the media to combat disinformation and misinformation.
“The festival will kick off with something that attendees can get real depth from,” added Kuzmyk. “We don’t only want to talk trends but I think at Banff we’ve always touched on issues that have a greater meaning. We want to examine the responsibility and power that we as the media have to change minds and policy around the world.”
With the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic tentatively consigned to the past, Kuzmyk has been impressed with the way in which society and the business world has “got on with it.”
In terms of the festival she has overseen for five years, she “learned that Banff is more than just a place” when it operated virtually.
“We learned about the strength of the festival [when it was virtual] and were able to facilitate thousands of meetings resulting in new shows being commissioned.”
Banff’s “point of difference” is also in diversity, added Kuzmyk, who pointed to a focus on Black and Indigenous-led companies over the past couple of years, along with the the BANFF Spark Accelerator for Women in the Business of Media, designed to address the systemic gap in gender equality and representation.
This year’s first day will kick off with a pitching session for 15 Indigenous producers to present their shows to a panel of buyers and an industry audience.
“So many festivals around the world are embracing the opportunity [to commission more diverse content] and I think we’re leading on that front,” she added. “This can only result in more interesting content and better businesses around the world.”
Ben Chew and Camille Vasquez, the lawyers who represented Johnny Depp in the recent defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, have made joint talk show appearances following the conclusion of the trial.
On Wednesday, the two made appearances on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and NBC’s “The Today Show” to discuss the case, which ended last week with both Depp and Heard being awarded compensatory damages, albeit with Depp receiving significantly more.
On “Good Morning America,” the two were asked by George Stephanopoulos about two points brought up several times by Heard’s camp and victims’ advocate groups. When asked if social media swayed the jury, Chew responded, “Social media played no role whatsoever. This was a decision made by the jury on the evidence presented by both sides, and as Camille said [earlier in the interview], it was overwhelmingly in Mr. Depp’s favor.”
Savannah Guthrie asked the duo a similar question on “Today,” and they said that even though social media and the 24/7 news cycle are unavoidable, they believe the jury was not swayed.
“No, I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that the jurors violated their oath” Chew said. “And again, that suggestion was disappointing to hear [from Heard’s lawyer Elaine Bredehoft].”
“It is everywhere, but at the same time, they were admonished every single night,” Vasquez said. “They had a tremendous amount of respect for the court and the process, and they were doing they best that they could.”
Stephanopoulos also asked the pair about criticism that the verdict will have, as he paraphrased victims’ advocate groups, “a chilling effect on domestic violence victims and it’s a blow to the #MeToo movement.”
“I think our response to that is we encourage any victim to come forward,” Vasquez said. “Domestic violence doesn’t have a gender.” When pressed further, she continued, saying, “We do not [think is has any negative impact to the #MeToo movement]. We believe that the verdict speaks for itself, the facts are what they were, the jury made a unanimous decision based on those facts.”
The trial began when Depp, the plaintiff in the case, sued Heard for three counts of defamation, claiming that an op-ed she published in the Washington Post in 2018 for damaging his reputation and stalling his career, though he was not mentioned by name in the piece. A year prior to the op-ed’s publication, Heard and Depp divorced after two years of marriage. Heard has alleged that Depp abused her throughout the relationship.
In 2020, prior to the American trial, the High Court of London ruled against Depp in a separate defamation case spawned by Depp suing The Sun for writing about the abuse allegations. The U.K. court ruled that he assaulted Heard in 12 of 14 alleged incidents. In spite of the previous verdict, the jury in the U.S. trial ruled in favor of all three counts of defamation brought by Depp and ruled in favor of only one count of defamation brought by Heard in her counterclaim.
The verdict has caused significant controversy in the days following the trial. Heard’s attorney Bredehoft, during a talk show appearance of her own on “Today,” has publicly stated her client plans to appeal the verdict.
Prior to the Chew and Vasquez’s appearances, a spokesperson for Heard sent a statement regarding their appearances to Variety.
“It is as unseemly as it is unprofessional that Johnny Depp’s legal team has chosen to do a victory lap for setting back decades of how women can be treated in the courtroom,” the statement reads. “What’s next? A movie deal and merchandising?”
Since the trial reached its verdict, Heard has largely stayed out of the public eye, releasing only a single social media statement. Depp has been much more active, announcing a new collaborative album with Jeff Beck and joining TikTok, where he thanked his “loyal fans” for their support.
Have a personal and business number you need to use? Planning to travel abroad where you’ll need international service? This is where dual SIM helps.
The Samsung Galaxy S22 ships with a massive list of features/specs to keep users busy, and included in that is support for dual SIM. Smartphones become more powerful with each year that passes. Processors get faster, batteries last longer, cameras become more capable, etc. While some people claim that phones have gotten ‘boring,’ this is only because they’re already so good. The year-over-year differences may not be as drastic as they once were, but the smartphones available today are infinitely better than the ones available a few short years ago.
Take the Galaxy S22 series as a prime example. The Galaxy S22, S22+, and S22 Ultra aren’t revolutionary upgrades over their predecessors. However, they still make smart refinements to position themselves as Samsung’s best Galaxy S handsets to date. This is achieved in a few different ways. The phones have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 flagship processor, improved AMOLED displays, new camera systems, and refined designs. If you’re shopping for a new smartphone and can afford to spend on a flagship, the Galaxy S22 family is difficult to ignore.
Alongside a powerful processor and excellent displays, another exciting feature of the Galaxy S22 is dual SIM support. Dual SIM isn’t the most talked-about smartphone feature, but for some people, it can be one of the most important. A phone with dual SIM enables it to connect to two wireless networks at the same time. Whether you have a personal and work number or need to add additional wireless service when traveling abroad, dual SIM support is great to have. Thankfully, this is something Samsung thought about when creating the Galaxy S22. Whether you buy the Galaxy S22, S22+, or S22 Ultra, all three phones fully support dual SIM functionality right out of the box.
How Dual SIM Works On The Galaxy S22
As for how that dual SIM support works, it’s done using a combination of eSIM and a SIM card. Physical SIM cards are how people have been getting wireless service for years. You buy a new phone, take out the SIM tray, insert the SIM card from your carrier, and then the service starts working. eSIM achieves the same thing, but it builds that technology directly into the phone without the need for an actual SIM card. You can use either option on the Galaxy S22 if you only need service from one carrier, or use both a SIM card and the eSIM feature for dual SIM.
Using a physical SIM card is exactly the same as it is with any other smartphone. Using the SIM removal tool included with the S22, insert it into the small hole to the left of the USB-C port on the bottom of the phone. Make sure you’re using the hole furthest away from the USB-C port, as the one right next to it is one of the S22’s microphones. With the SIM tray removed, insert the SIM card from your carrier, slide the tray back into the Galaxy S22, and it should start working.
As for the Galaxy S22’s eSIM, turning this on can be a bit trickier. Open the Settings app on the S22, tap ‘Connections,’ tap ‘SIM card manager,’ and tap ‘Add mobile plan‘ under the ‘eSIM‘ section. The S22 will then search for any eSIM plan that a carrier may have added to it out of the box. If there isn’t one, users can scan a QR code from their carrier to add their plan information and get things set up that way.
Set A Preferred SIM Card On The Galaxy S22
Once dual SIM has been set up on the Galaxy S22, you’ll need to set up a primary or preferred SIM card. While it’s true that both SIMs can be active on the Galaxy S22 at the same time, only one can be used for cellular data at any given time. The primary SIM is the one that the phone defaults to for calls, messages, or data. To switch the primary SIM on a Galaxy S22, open the Settings app, tap on ‘Connections‘, and then ‘SIM card manager‘. Click on ‘Preferred SIM card‘. You’ll now see three tabs for ‘Calls‘, ‘Messages‘, and ‘Mobile Data’. You can set a default SIM for each of these options. Below this, there’s also an option to enable ‘Auto data switching’, which will switch to the other SIM card for data if the primary SIM can’t connect to the internet.
Once dual SIM is set up, you can also create a second account for apps like WhatsApp and Telegram using Samsung’s inbuilt Dual Messenger or Secure Folder feature. This allows you to effectively clone an app and use the second SIM card to set it up. Follow these steps, and you’ll be a dual SIM expert on your Samsung Galaxy S22 in no time at all.
Joe has been actively writing and talking about consumer tech since 2012. His biggest passion lies with smartphones, but he’s happy to talk your ear off about just about anything with a CPU. He lives in Kalamazoo, MI with his wife, two cats, and pit bull/boxer mix.
Kramer, who was unanimously elected by the AMPAS board, will assume his new role on July 18. Hudson will remain with the Academy as an advisor during the transition period. Kramer will lead the global membership, the Oscars, the institution’s education and emerging talent initiatives, the Academy’s extensive collections housed in the Margaret Herrick Library and Academy Film Archive, and the Academy Museum and its ongoing calendar of exhibitions, screenings, educational and public programs, and retail operations.
In his current role, Kramer was responsible for successfully opening the Academy Museum in September, 2021. The museum has sold more than 550,000 tickets in the first nine months of operation. The appointment of a new Director of the Academy Museum is currently being addressed by the Museum Board of Trustees and the Academy Foundation Board. It will be announced in the near future.
“Bill Kramer has been a transformational leader in establishing the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures as a beacon for movie lovers and a manifestation of everything the Academy represents and celebrates,” said current Academy president David Rubin. “His vision for the Academy’s future is likewise bold and inspiring, and our governors have agreed he is the ideal choice to lead at this pivotal moment for the organization. We believe Bill has the ability to bring together all corners of the motion picture community, and we’re thrilled to have him in this role to elevate the organization and unite our global membership.”
Before heading up the museum, Kramer had served as managing director of development and external relations from 2012 to 2016. He oversaw the production of the museum’s Hollywood Costume exhibit, which drew more than 78,000 visitors. He was more recently VP of development at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
“What a privilege it’s been to work with an exceptionally talented staff and dedicated board members to create a truly global institution, a world-class museum that honors this art form so beautifully, an abiding commitment to representation and inclusion, and a modern organization ready to lead in a changing world,” said Hudson
After a decade as CEO of AMPAS, Hudson announced in October 2021 that her current term would be her last. Hudson’s contract was scheduled to end in May 2023, after she joined the Academy in 2011. As CEO, Hudson oversaw the Academy’s 450-person staff in Los Angeles, New York and London; operations and outreach, including awards, membership, marketing, communications, finance and technology; and the Academy Foundation, which includes educational initiatives, fellowships and grants, the Margaret Herrick Library and the Academy Film Archive. Her most notable accomplishment was the opening of the Academy Museum.
Chair of the Academy Museum Board of Trustees and Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said, “The Academy Museum Board of Trustees is thrilled that Bill will be continuing his work with us as the CEO of the Academy and as a Trustee of the Museum Board.
Hudson’s exit comes after the eventful 94th Oscars when best actor winner Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock as he was presenting best documentary feature. David Rubin, Academy president, will be finishing his term this summer, with a new leader set to be voted on by the Board of Governors. Kramer and the incoming new president will be responsible for ushering the Oscars telecast and organization into a new era. The 2022 Oscars drew 16.6 million viewers, up 58% from last year’s record-low audience of 10.5 million. While the year-over-year growth was noted, it was still the second-lowest viewership and rating performance in telecast history.
“It is the great honor of my career to take on the role as CEO of the Academy,” said Kramer. “I deeply believe in the power and artistry of cinema. I so look forward to galvanizing the unparalleled assets of the Academy — the Oscars, our global community of more than 10,000 Academy members, and our museum, library, and archive — to promote and elevate the arts and sciences of the movies and inspire the next generation of filmmakers.
The 95th Oscars will be held on March 12, 2023, and will air live on ABC in more than 200 territories worldwide from the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.
K-pop superstars BTS has confirmed that its latest album “Proof” will stretch across three CDs and consist of 48 tracks. It will drop on Friday.
The album and the composition of the disks are intended to represent the past, present and future of the nine-year-old band, agency Big Hit Music said Wednesday (Korean time).
Within the mix are three new songs: “Yet To Come,” “Run BTS” and “For Youth.”
“Proof” will be available from 1pm local time on Friday, or midnight EST and 9pm Thursday PST, for U.S. fans on the North American West coast. It is BTS’s first physical album since last year’s CD single “Butter” and “Permission to Dance” and was teased in April with the tagline ‘We are Bulletproof.”
The Yonhap news agency reports that the three CDs break down as follows: the first, with 19 tracks, is largely an assembly of hits, including “Danger,” “Fire,” “DNA,” “Boy With Luv” featuring Halsey, “Spring Day,” “Fake Love,” “Dynamite” and “Butter”; the second consists of subunit tracks; the final disc is dedicated to Army, the group’s activist fans and will include the three new tracks and songs and demo versions of some of the band’s past hits.
The band has so far revealed relatively few promotional events and is not planning a press conference for the album release. It will introduce its new songs Monday via YouTube channel Bangtan TV and pre-record a segment for Mnet’s program “M Countdown” at the Jangchung Arena in Seoul. The show will air on June 16.
A 35-second teaser for “Yet to Come,” subtitled “The Most Beautiful Moment” is already available on the Big Hit website and the band’s social media platforms.
“As BTS celebrates the ninth anniversary of its debut and is about to open a new chapter in their 10th year as artists, ‘Proof’ was designed to look back on the group’s past activities and ruminate on their meaning,” the group’s agency Big Hit Music said in a statement.
The seven-member BTS has become one of the most successful pop acts of all time and represent a breakout for Korean music into the international scene. It has won six American Music Awards, 12 Billboard Music Awards and two Grammy nominations. The members have fronted a UNICEF anti-violence campaign, addressed the United Nations general Assembly and recently met with U.S. President Joe Biden.
Over the course of their career, BTS have amassed over 66 million subscribers on their official YouTube channel, making them the third most-subscribed to artist on the platform and have earned six music videos in the platforms’ Billion Views Club to date.
The video for “Butter” amassed 108.2 million views in its first 24 hours and saw over 3.9 million peak concurrent views during its premiere. Over the last 12 months alone, the band has earned over 14 billion views globally on the platform.
Jack Wagner’s son Harrison has died at the age of 27.
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The Los Angeles Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner revealed that Harrison was found dead in a parking lot in North Hollywood, California, on Monday morning.
The cause of death has not been revealed, but an investigation is currently underway. An autopsy has also been scheduled.
Harrison is Jack’s son with his ex-wife Kristina Wagner.
Jack and Kristina have not publicly commented on their son’s death.
It is unclear whether Harrison’s past struggle with addiction played a part in his death.
In 2016, Harrison went missing for almost a week after suffering a relapse.
At the time, Jack tweeted, “I’m going to ask those who want to share their fears, addictions & struggles to do so w me via Twitter. We can face them 2gether, I’ll start. I fear for my youngest sons safety. Harrison has struggled w drugs & alcohol just as I did when I was younger. He’s relapsed & is MIA 5days.”
Jack later gave an update on Harrison, tweeting, “Harrisons been in touch. He’s 21 & in charge of his life, ty for the lv & prayers, please continue to share your struggles, it helps us all.”
Harrison’s last Instagram post was on May 23. Along with a photo of himself sitting on a bench staring off into the distance, he wrote, “Focus. YOU are left with YOU and your thoughts.”
Harrison described himself as a “crazy boy” who enjoyed hiking, dogs, and time at the gym.
A few days before, Kristina shared a photo of Harrison and his older brother Peter. She wrote, “A bittersweet farewell to the place we called Wagner Ranch for 25 years. The prickly beauty of the high desert and a landscape surrounded by national forests always reminded us that there is peace when you are willing to look for it. Oh Ranch, it’s time to part. We’ll miss you so much with our heartwarming memories. We know that there are many opportunities for joy ahead.”
Jack and Kristina were married for 13 years but finalized their divorce in 2006.
Jack is also a dad to daughter Kerry, who was born five years before he married Kristina.
Todd Phillips looks like he is moving forward on a sequel to “Joker,” posting photos on Instagram of the apparent cover of a script titled “Joker: Folie a Deux” and, in another shot, a sitting Joaquin Phoenix appearing to read through it.
In 2019, “Joker” became one of the most successful comic-book movies ever, both at the box office and on the awards circuit. After surprising the film world by winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, “Joker” became the first R-rated movie ever to gross $1 billion worldwide and earned 12 Oscar nominations, with Phoenix winning his first Oscar for his performance as struggling comedian Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. The Joker.
While Phillips provided no hints about the sequel’s story — or even a caption for his Instagram post — the title “Folie a Deux” may be a clue. The phrase roughly translates to “shared madness,” which may be a comment on how the Joker tapped into the boiling rage in Gotham City over its growing inequality, leading to the original film’s dramatic climax in which Batman’s future arch nemesis dances on top of a police car as a rioting crowd cheers him on.
Warner Bros. has not announced a production start or release date for a “Joker” sequel, as the studio is continuing its transition process under new CEO David Zaslav. TheWrap has reached out to Warner Bros. for comment.
Madonna has offered the “Inventing Anna” and “Ozark” actress the lead role in her own biopic. Garner is rumored to have endured a “grueling” audition process to beat out Florence Pugh, “Euphoria” star Alexa Demie, Odessa Young, and Emma Laird, who were also on the shortlist to portray Madonna.
The Grammy winner and pop icon Madonna is directing her own life story for the big screen, from a script co-written with Erin Cressida Wilson. Amy Pascal is currently on board to produce the Universal Pictures musical biopic.
Garner’s team is said to be reviewing the offer and is considering accepting. Universal confirmed to IndieWire that the film remains in active development but that Garner is the choice to play the role.
The untitled film culminates with Madonna’s 1990 Blonde Ambition tour and will require multiple dancing and singing sequences. Madonna has worked with Diablo Cody and playwright Erin Cressida Wilson on the script.
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Casting director Carmen Cuba led a boot camp of sorts with the final five actresses up for the role of Madonna going through “up to 11-hour-a-day choreography sessions” with Madonna’s personal choreographer, followed by choreography sessions with the “Like a Virgin” singer herself. Callbacks allegedly consist of readings with Madonna, plus singing auditions.
“You have to be able to do everything,” one source with knowledge of the process told The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year.
Lead star Garner previously shrugged off casting rumors while on “Watch What Happens Live,” saying, “You know as much as I do” to host Andy Cohen, who pointed out Madonna follows her on social media.
As for how the film is coming along, Madonna said last year, “It’s a pretty crazy experience so far, I’m just in the writing process, and just deciding which stories to tell, how much detail to go into, which characters to develop. It’s really been a long and arduous process, but it’s been really therapeutic as well.”
The rest of the cast for the untitled film is still under wraps, but “Uncut Gems” breakout Julia Fox is rumored to portray longtime friend and fellow actress Debi Mazar.
Disney has revealed that it will forgo the French theatrical release of “Strange World,” Don Hall’s animated action adventure movie, which was scheduled to hit local cinemas on Nov. 23.
The writing had been on the wall for the studio since France unveiled its new — and still very strict — windowing rules in late January, setting Disney’s subscription-based streaming window at 17 months following the French theatrical release of one of its movies.
Besides the lengthy SVOD window, Disney has also been up in arms about the fact that it must temporarily pull titles from its platforms five months later so that free-to-air channels can have their own exclusive window. The measures were imposed on the studio by the French government even though it hadn’t yet signed the agreement following months of heated debates with other industry players.
A statement from Disney shared with Variety reads: “‘Strange World’ will be available to all Disney+ subscribers in France, forgoing a French cinematic release. While we support French cinema – and have for decades – the new, cumbersome media chronology is anti-consumer, ignoring how behaviour has evolved over the last several years and putting us at increased risk for piracy. We will continue to make decisions on a film-by-film basis and according to each market’s unique conditions.”
A spokesperson for the French Exhibitors Association (FNCF) told Variety that Disney was using the release of “Strange World” as leverage to obtain better conditions for its windowing rules, which will up for re-negotiation in January 2023.
“From what we understand, Disney is unhappy with the fact that they have to pull out their titles from their service to allow free-to-air channels to have their exclusive window, so what we are telling them is, ‘Instead of putting pressure on cinemas, please come and discuss with TV channels,’” said a spokesperson for the org, who added that he’s asked the National Film Board to put together a mediation between all parties involved.
When the windowing rules were announced early this year, Disney said it was “not consumer-friendly nor does it establish a balanced or proportionate framework between the various players in the French audiovisual ecosystem.”
“This is especially frustrating as we have been increasing our investment in the creation of original French content while also supporting French cinema through our theatrical releases,” declared Disney at the time.
Eric Marti, Comscore France’s general manager, said if Disney decides to forgo the theatrical release of more movies and is followed by other studios, it could lead to a box office loss of 20 million admissions annually in France. “With Warner and Paramount about to launch their streaming services in France, we could end up in the same situation if they follow the same path as Disney,” said Marti.
“The windowing model today around the world is a 45-day window between the theatrical release and SVOD. Studios spend tons of marketing money to promote their movies on a global scale; why would they want to wait 17 months to release their movies in France and spend extra marketing dollars on this market?,” said Marti. The executive pointed out the windowing rules are more flexible elsewhere in Europe. “France and Portugal are the only countries in Europe where those rules are set by the government,” said Marti.
Dybbuk Director: Jay K Cast: Emraan Hashmi, Nikita Dutta, Manav Kaul, Gaurav Sharma, Denzil Smith
Dybbuk has an interesting line of cast that includes Emraan Hashmi and Manav Kaul, but the film, now out on Amazon Prime Video, has too many convenient points that make it somewhat of an implausibility. Helmed by Jay K, he has remade his debut Malayalam movie, Ezra (with Prithviraj), in Hindi as Dybbuk. Hashmi as Sam or Samuel reprises Prithviraj’s role, and does a decent job of a man who gets a new posting in a nuclear waste disposable plant in – believe it or not – the Mauritius capital of Port Louis. His wife, Maahi (Nikita Dutta), is not too keen to translocate, because that would mean going far away from her parents. But she plays a sport and accompanies Sam to a really scenic city that sadly harbours a demonic spirit inside a Jewish wine box. It can emerge for its run of death and destruction only after the last of the Jews dies on the island, and Sam’s transfer coincides with the death of a rabbi, the last of the tribe there.
But for some above average performances, Jay’s work looks like yet another horror story of red-eyed ghosts descending from roofs, rocking chairs, cracking mirrors and flickering lights. And the atmosphere gets eerie at the colonial bungalow in which the couple decide to live. I sometimes wonder why writers and directors do not think of something different to frighten viewers instead of beating the same old drum of jump-scares. These shake and shock you momentarily, but beyond this, they merely produce yawns.
Dybbuk is an ancient Jewish custom which was written in the 16th century, but was ignored by scholars till S. Ansky’s play (The Dybbuk)in 1914 popularised it in literary circles. About a form of transmigration of a restless/unhappy soul, the film narrates this through rather clumsy writing. With a local Muslim police inspector, Riaz (Gaurav Sharma), a Catholic priest (Denzil Smith), a Jewish Rabbi, Markus (Manav Kaul), a Hindu woman, Maahi, and her Christian husband, Sam, Dybbuk seems like a cocktail of religions out to bring about societal transformation and harmony. It does not quite achieve that; instead it appears forced and confused with a story that resembles a fairytale with a wicked spirit and all the good men around her.
It is not just this, but we also learn as the movie progresses that there is revenge and retribution to the extent that a nuclear catastrophe is waiting to wipe out the scenic vacation island of Mauritius. That will be terrible.
Unfortunately, Dybbuk offers little novelty, falling back on a plot that has been beaten to pulp.
(Gautaman Bhaskaran is author, commentator and movie critic)
Global arthouse movie streamer, producer and distributor MUBI has acquired all Turkish rights to Iranian director Saeed Roustaee’s timely Cannes title “Leila’s Brothers.”
A female empowerment drama set against the backdrop of a family crushed by debts linked to international economic sanctions, “Leila’s Brothers” won the International Federation of Film Critics (Fipresci) prize for best film in Cannes’ main competition.
The film, which is Roustaee’s third feature, follows from his tense actioner “Just 6.5,” about a cop trying to pin down a drug lord. This hit film, which exposed Iran’s heroin addiction plague, made an international splash and this year was nominated for France’s César Award for best foreign film.
“Leila’s Brothers” sees the 40-year-old Leila, played by Taraneh Alidoosti (“The Salesman”), as the titular character who has spent her whole life taking care of her parents and her four brothers. She has a plan to save the debt-crushed family from poverty, but obstacles tied to tradition get in the way.
“There’s no question that ‘The Salesman’ alum Taraneh Alidoosti, who plays Leila, towers over this male-dominated ensemble,” wrote Variety critic Peter Debruge in his review, in which he also noted that “Roustaee represents a new generation of Iranian auteurs.”
“Leila’s Brothers” looks set to resonate with audiences in Turkey where MUBI’s upcoming and past releases comprise Park Chan-wook’s Cannes prize-winner “Decision To Leave”; Céline Sciamma’s BAFTA-nominated “Petite Maman”; and Julia Ducournau’s 2021 Palme d’Or winner “Titane.”
MUBI, which has a unique business model that sometimes involves theatrical distribution prior to platform play, did not specify if it has theatrical plans for “Leila’s Brothers” in Turkey.
The MUBI platform offers a lineup of 30 movies. A new title is added each day as another is removed.
Earlier this year, MUBI bought prominent European sales company The Match Factory and its production arm Match Factory Productions.
Since then MUBI has also been on a buying spree, taking select territories for another standout Iranian title in Cannes, Danish-Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider”; Belgian director Lukas Dhont’s Cannes competition title “Close”; and Un Certain Regard film “Return to Seoul.” The company swoooped for “Decision to Leave” before the festival kicked off.
J.J. AbramsPhoto: Emma McIntyre (Getty Images for TCM)
When J.J. Abrams opens a mystery box, we expect him to toy with us for somewhere between two and 92 hours before reaching a serviceable but not wholly satisfying answer to anything.
Unfortunately, some mystery boxes will never be closed.
J.J. Abrams’ Demimonde is no more. Not that it ever was. But now, it can never be. HBO has killed the project they won in a bidding war with Apple in 2018. The series was to be Abrams’ first original TV creation since 2008. However, HBO didn’t want to pay more than $200 million on a show with a French title—at least not properties that don’t include the words “Joker” and “Two.”The Hollywood Reporter puts it in perspective: Even House Of The Dragon, the new Game Of Thrones prequel, cost less than $200 million, and that can disappoint fans just as well as Abrams can.
This is the second show to get a pass from HBO since Abrams and Bad Robot entered a multi-million dollar overall deal in 2019. HBO already declined to make a reservation at Overlook, a Shining prequel that would have seemingly built out a Shining-verse that any studio could parlay into a vertical-crossing, paradigm-shifting, network-synergizing behemoth. Now set up at Netflix, Overlook has no release date or cast.
Demimonde was to star Danielle Deadwyler from Station Eleven and Watchmen. Producers are currently shopping the show to other streamers, including Apple, which reportedly pursued a $500 million exclusivity deal with Abrams and Bad Robot that the director turned down. Apparently, he’s still on good terms; Abrams is working on a Wachowski-less Speed Racer TV series, a Presumed Innocent series, and a Jennifer Garner show called My Glory Was I Had Such Friends. He’s also doing a scripted U2 series at Netflix, which he can keep, and another season of Westworld. So there’s no shortage of Abrams, even if we’ll never see whatever Demimonde was.
This article obviously contains spoilers for the film Crimes of the Future.Crimes of the Future, the new film from the great Canadian auteur David Cronenberg, was recently released and, like almost all the director’s output, has received somewhat mixed-to-favorable reviews. Some have unfortunately reviewed it as a “grotesque misfire,” while others consider it to be a late-period masterpiece for the filmmaker, with Dana Stevens of Slate writing, “Our modern anxiety over everyday lives that are ever more suffused by technology […] has rarely been expressed with such simplicity and intuitive rightness.”
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The film, starring Viggo Mortensen and Lea Seydoux as surgery-loving performance artists and Kristen Stewart as a post-apocalyptic fangirl, can certainly be divisive. Hardcore Cronenbergers (a neologism one may regret) are likely to love it; most people will find it to be too gruesome and odd (as evidenced by large amounts of walk-outs at Cannes). Both sides of the deserted aisle are likely to agree on one thing: it’s not an easy watch and, like many Kristen Stewart line readings, it doesn’t always make sense. But, as in every Cronenberg film, there is a method to the madness here (or at least something diagnosable). Take a look at some interpretations of Cronenberg’s new film, but by all means, see and experience it for yourself.
Crimes of the Future is About the Evolution of the Body
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“Body is reality,” some cold text ironically displays on an outdated television. Has there ever been a more succinct thesis statement for a film?
Crimes of the Future opens in an appropriately shocking and disturbing way — a seemingly normal boy brushes his teeth and goes to spit in a trash can; except, he begins eating the plastic wastebasket, his mother watching in complacent horror but exuding the sense that this isn’t the first time. Later that night, the mother will smother her son to death with a pillow. Immediately, a major theme of the film is put on display: bodies doing things they aren’t supposed to be doing, why they’re doing it, and either the fascination or horror this evokes in others as a result.
Essentially, this is the name of the game for two performance artists in Crimes of the Future, Saul Tenser and Caprice, whose favorite instrument is the organ in their gutsy art show. Surgical puns aside (they’re all ‘in vein’ anyway), the ice-cold lovers use complicated medical equipment such as an autopsy machine to slice into Tenser and remove his organs in a bit of performance art that would make even Marina Abramović blush. This is because Tenser, like many ‘humans,’ is changing — he’s growing strange new organs at an exponential rate, in a period of human evolution in which the somatic sensation of pain and the vulnerability to infection has drastically decreased. When humanity gets less nociceptive, society gets more bizarre.
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The government is threatened by the bizarre evolutionary changes taking place in the grim, ash-like society of Crimes of the Future, which makes 1984 look like Mardi Gras. There’s a bureaucratic institution called an ‘organ registry,’ which requires the registration of these mutations, and a governmental police force which seems to be investigating a group of radicals who put the ‘evolutionary’ in ‘revolutionary,’ and who believe their bodies are changing in a way which can allow for the consumption of plastic.
As such, Crimes of the Future is uniquely obsessed with the biological organism and the set of visceral processes known as ‘the human being.’ The film envisions a world in which the body is changing drastically (Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, as it’s called here), and asks us to consider what it means to be human within the fluidity of evolution.
Crimes of the Future is About the Technology of the Self
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What it means to be human, as Crimes of the Future and Cronenberg postulate, is intricately tied up with the technology of the species. In a delightful interview for the Canadian radio show q, Cronenberg went into a soulful soliloquy about the film and his work in general:
The body, for me, is the essence of human existence. It is what we are, and everything comes from that, including technology. In the 1950s, technology was this inhuman stuff from outer space that threatened us, you know, strange weapons and stuff like that. For me, technology has always been ultra-human and a complete extension of what we are. Our fists become, you know, missiles […] So technology also becomes what we are, for the good and the bad. And you see it with every new technology. You see the internet, you see social media. It’s wonderful, and it’s horrible, horrible and horrifying. At the same time, it brings out the worst of us, and also the best. So to me, it’s just natural to go there. I’m diving into the essence of what we are and the essence of the human condition, and [Crimes of the Future] takes me there.
Technology is thus an extension of biology, and in the shiny, polished reflection of a society’s tools, you can see its citizens. The sleek, weird contraptions of Crimes of the Future help people eat, sleep, reach orgasm, and experience pleasure in ways not unlike our own dog days of digital summer. In the film, machines slice the human body to create pleasure, while in reality, people swipe right on different machines they rely upon.
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Like dogs, technology evolves alongside the human species. Unlike dogs (hopefully), it seems to affect the evolution of human biology almost in a symbiotic way. The technology in Crimes of the Future often does what the characters themselves cannot, just as the convenience of technology leads to the obsolescence of certain mental capacities. Try remembering numerous phone numbers now that you can save them in your contacts; in 20 years, try remembering anything, now that you can Google it at any given moment. “The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people,” Karl Marx said
In a very important sense, the Accelerated Evolution Syndrome in Crimes of the Future is a result of humanity’s industrial technology. Organs are trying to keep up with the pace of technology and the effects of pollution, toxicity, and ecological catastrophes, because evolution is ultimately about survival, and the body will change to survive the technologies we’ve created that pollute it.
Crimes of the Future is About Ecological and Climate Collapse
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The very first scenes of Crimes of the Future explain a lot about the veins coursing through this film, if you watch them ‘varicosely.’ The opening image is of a capsized ship, a corroded vessel rusting through incessant tides. The film is apocalyptic in obvious ways, and the corrosion of industrial objects like this boat and practically every building speak to the notion of a careless species indifferent to its surroundings (or anything that isn’t the body). There are no cars in this world, no phones or internet to speak of, and there don’t seem to be any animals either; this is a chronicle of collapse, but one which takes place after the fall, in which newly evolved humans have managed to outlive their own destruction.
After the shipwrecked images, Crimes of the Future delivers its first plastic-munching moment, something which (aside from symbolic connotations with ‘plastic’ surgery) is key to the movie’s eco-horror themes. The synthetic-slurping murdered child in the beginning of the film is important, because it appears that his organs have allowed him to eat plastic. His father is leading the revolutionary evolutionists, who are creating plastic candy bars (with a Willy Wonka purple that seems like the only bright substance in this nickel-colored world) for people to subsist on; they’re toxic if your body hasn’t evolved in the right way or had the surgery required to adapt.
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In one of the (thankfully) rare instances of child autopsy in Tinseltown, the father hopes to show the world that humanity can evolve to eat plastic and survive this apocalypse in an ‘organ-ized’ way. The government, rather nefariously, is concerned about this; in Crimes of the Future, evolution, technology, and biology are inherently connected to (and a concern of) politics.
Perhaps, in its own artistically sick and depraved way, Crimes of the Future is an optimistic love letter to the future, one where humanity overcomes what it’s done to itself. After all, humanity is destroying the planet and themselves in a variety of ways, one of which is with plastic. As of 2016, there’s been over nine billion tons of plastic produced since 1950, enough to bury Manhattan under two miles of garbage.
“At the current rate, we are really heading toward a plastic planet,” the industrial ecologist Roland Geyer says in a CTV article. “At some point we will run out of room to put it,” Chelsea Rochman, a professor of ecology at the University of Toronto, said in the same article. “Some may argue we already have and now it’s found in every nook and cranny of our oceans.” Maybe humanity can take one for the team and start eating it, like in Crimes of the Future.
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Eventually, the human body might have to. Microplastics are being discovered in everything, from rice to tap water, shellfish to sardines, and in 2018 considerable amounts were found in human feces for the first time. Plastic is showing up in children’s blood and in human placenta, which was gross enough to begin with. Perhaps the real Crimes of the Future are what we’re doing to the planet, something which is actually being pushed by legal experts to be considered as an international crime against humanity.
When Tenser eats plastic at the end of the film, he sheds a tear, a rare instance of emotion in this chilly world. Maybe he’s overjoyed that he can finally consume something without pain and that the body has evolved to consume plastic; or perhaps he’s overcome with sadness that this is what we are reduced to. Crimes of the Future depicts the body’s adjustment to the damages caused by our own technologies, and in this sense, perhaps Cronenberg is right to call it “body beautiful” rather than “body horror.”
Crimes of the Future is About Artists Like David Cronenberg
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Crimes of the Future often seems to be Cronenberg’s artistic way to work out these themes; in a much less sociopolitical sense, the film is about art itself, especially Cronenberg’s. More than half a century before this film, David Cronenberg’s second movie (after the experimental short Stereo) was released. The 1970 film concerns a so-called “house of skin,” a “residential clinic for wealthy patients who were treated for extremely pathological skin conditions induced by contemporary cosmetics,” as the narrator says. This 1970 picture is titled Crimes of the Future.
To possibly be reductive for a moment, it could be said that Cronenberg has come full-circle as an artist. From his experimental beginnings, to the schlock horror of the ’70s and his wild body horror films of the ’80s, his cold intellectual experiments in the ’90s and his more dramatic and much less gory films of the 2000s, the evolutionary progression of the director has slowly begun to eat its own tail with the ouroboros that is Crimes of the Future. Essentially his first ‘body horror’ film since 1999’s masterpiece eXistenZ, this new film graphically allegorizes what Cronenberg has been doing all along — opening himself up.
It’s hard to mistake the metaphor in Crimes of the Future of a performance artist (played by someone who has worked with the director four times now) literally dissecting himself for his art, and showing off his gory viscera as provocative entertainment. The idea of growing new organs is tantamount to developing new projects, and the people he works with (the organ registry, like a production studio, or his partner and the machinery, like a cast and crew) have an artistic dedication to bring these projects into realization. Even Kristen Stewart’s incredibly awkward (and somehow awkwardly incredible) performance, alongside the slew of gawking spectators and adorers, indicates a destructive and ruinous fan culture. For each organ, a film.
Crimes of the Future is Not About Anything
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The title of one of Susan Sontag’s greatest books (and essays), Against Interpretation, speaks to something often ignored on the internet or in fan culture: nothing needs to mean anything. When being interviewed about his swan song Inland Empire for The New Yorker, David Lynch said, “As soon as you put things in words, no one ever sees the film the same way. And that’s what I hate, you know. Talking — it’s real dangerous.”
With that said, it’s perfectly okay to not understand a minute of Crimes of the Future. Its plot is abstract and its world-building vague, its themes obscure and its characters opaque. Unlike teenagers, it does not cry out to be understood. Like food poisoning, it gives the viewer a gut feeling — flight or fight, run away and never watch this horrifying offal or sit with the masterpiece and confront the enigma. If you stick around long enough to get sucked into its dark and otherworldly atmosphere, it is truly an experience, even if you don’t understand a lick of it. Crimes of the Future is a feeling, an unsettling gesture, part nightmare, part techno-prophecy, and 100% Cronenberg.
Go (literally) inside the massive penis prosthetic that had an explosive debut in the Season 3 premiere.
[The below contains spoilers from “The Boys” Season 3, Episode 1.]
First, Hulu’s “Pam & Tommy” debuted a wise-talking animatronic penis. Then, HBO Max’s “Minx” showed us all the real thing — many, many times. Now, Prime Video’s “The Boys” is taking onscreen male nudity to another level — literally.
The reign of penis representation on TV continues thanks to the Season 3 premiere of “The Boys,” where Ant-Man-esque superhero Termite (Brett Geddes) shrinks down to enter his partner’s urethra and find his prostate as a sex act. Yet a coked-up Termite sneezes while inside his love interest and accidentally returns to normal size, splitting his lover in half from the inside, out.
“For those wondering…the dick is real,” actor Geddes captioned a behind-the-scenes Instagram pic of him and Termite stunt double Alex Armbruster posing in front of the giant 11-foot high and 30-feet long penis, covered in white powder.
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“The Boys” showrunner Eric Kripke previously confirmed that Season 3 will include the sex-fueled Herogasm storyline from the comic books by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, while also using three times the amount of blood for the third season.
Kripke also told Entertainment Weekly that the gigantic penis prop was a no-brainer for the explosive sequence.
“Once you realize you’re gonna do a tiny Ant-Man character, you have to have that Ant-Man run up someone’s butt and then blow them up,” Kripke said. “But then we realized that we already had blown up someone’s ass [in Season 1]. There’s only so many orifices a person can go in. So really, by process of elimination, you [have to] run into a urethra.”
And Amazon had no problem with the Prime Video show taking the…leap. “They were cool with it,” Kripke added. “You’re not supposed to show an erect penis. So we had to be very careful with the design of the penis — ’cause we built it practically. That’s a real 11-foot-high, 30-foot-long penis built at great expense. But if you look at it, we had to design in all these wrinkles to make it clear that it wasn’t erect. So, anyway, it’s exhibit 7,023 why I love this job.”
“The Boys” VFX Supervisor Stephan Fleet told IndieWire that the show will always opt for practical effects when possible.
“In this day and age, there’s a tendency to lean on visual effects very heavily because it’s quicker in production, but we don’t do that,” Fleet said in 2021. “We go the other way on this show. We always start with the most practical way we can do it.”
Fleet continued, “You try to find that grain of reality in everything, and that can be very hard to do. You could have a sentence that’s like, ‘We want the Boys to crash into this whale, but it needs to look as real as possible’ — or, ‘We want this giant dick monster to wrap around Mother’s Milk’s neck, but it has to feel real.”
In that quarrelsome family of Italian tragic operas, “Rigoletto” is like the odd but lovable cousin: His story is so complicated and messy that you are drawn to him time and again despite his serious anger issues.
It is also considered a masterpiece of Verdi’s middle period, just before the composer began a prolific stretch toward old age with the grit of a marathon runner. So, a new and modern production at La Scala, replacing a lavish 28-year-old one, is a major event. It is also a seismic career moment for many of the artists involved, including a bold new approach to Verdi’s intricate score by a conductor who has pored over Verdi’s early notes on the opera, as well as a production designer and director inspired by the South Korean film “Parasite.”
At the center of all of this is the Mongolian baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat, who returns to La Scala in the title role less than two years after his debut there in “Aida” in October 2020. Bringing the role of the cursed court jester to La Scala is a personal milestone for Mr. Enkhbat, 36. It is also a signature role, but never an easy one, especially at an opera house as prestigious as La Scala.
“I’ve sung the role of Rigoletto about 60 times, but this time at La Scala is a little bit intimidating and exciting,” Mr. Enkhbat said in a phone interview from Milan last month, the day before rehearsals began. “It’s a difficult role to sing in terms of acting, singing and artistic expression, and requires a lot of concentration and ability. For me, the character of Rigoletto brings out everything in me.”
After this “Rigoletto,” which runs from June 20 to July 11, Mr. Enkhbat will sing in no fewer than five other Verdi operas in the coming months: “Nabucco” and “Aida,” in Verona this summer, followed this fall by “La Forza del Destino” in Parma, “Il Trovatore” in Florence and “La Traviata” in Vienna. He will repeat “La Traviata” for his Metropolitan Opera debut in January. It is the kind of schedule befitting in-demand opera singers who book engagements months or years in advance.
“I’m getting used to it,” he said. “This is a new normal for me.”
And normal — or at least natural — is something he can relate to when it comes to music. Mongolia may not be known for producing opera singers, but it has an ancient culture steeped in music. The main city, Ulaanbaatar, has an opera house and a music academy, the State University of Arts and Culture, from which Mr. Enkhbat graduated in 2009. It was there that he got his first taste of singing opera. But from an earlier age, he sang Mongolian folk songs and urtyn duu, the traditional “long songs” of Mongolia. These lyrical chants, requiring an enormous range, are thought to be more than 2,000 years old. They could even be called operatic because of their vocal demands.
“As a child, around age 3 or 4, I had no problem singing these songs in front of my family,” he said through an interpreter. “But my first stage appearance was in the fifth grade, and I asked my classmates to turn the other way when I sang. But they all applauded, and I became the star.”
Mr. Enkhbat certainly has become that. He began singing opera professionally after graduation — including “Prince Igor” and “Rigoletto” in Mongolia. He was a winner in the Operalia competition in 2012 and won the audience award at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition in 2015. He has had steady work since, to say the least, mostly with Verdi’s baritone roles with what one critic called “a lavishly upholstered voice, dark and velvety and simply enormous.”
For the Italian conductor Michele Gamba, that is exactly what “Rigoletto” should capture: a darkness, or what he calls a more nuanced effect that Verdi intended for the opera, one that he feels has been lost in the last 170 years.
“It’s a big challenge balancing out what I think is a coherent and cohesive dramatic vision of ‘Rigoletto’ these days and the gravitas of ‘Rigoletto’ in Italy,” said Mr. Gamba, who is making his La Scala debut. “Show business has taken over the specificity of the opera. My approach is aiming for something more intimate and not as showy.”
A trip to the archives at La Fenice, Venice’s beloved opera house where “Rigoletto” premiered in 1851, revealed what Mr. Gamba says is a different concept for a popular opera.
“I wanted to see with my own eyes what Verdi wrote down to try to be as close as possible to what he wanted,” he said. “It’s a constant examination of the sources and thinking through it. I’m looking for the dark whispered sounds that Verdi wrote about and a huge amount of pianissimo.”
A new approach is also behind the production itself. Margherita Palli, the designer, and the director, Mario Martone, who also directs movies, drew inspiration for this “Rigoletto” from the Oscar-winning South Korean film “Parasite” to show how worlds — and socioeconomic classes — can collide with tragic results. It could be seen asa fitting parallel to the story of “Rigoletto,” a humiliated court jester who seeks revenge on a wealthy playboy duke, with a curse, a murder or two and a few mistaken identities thrown in to complicate matters.
“It’s about two different populations living very close to each other but from very different worlds,” Ms. Palli,explained. “There will be a great door at the center connecting the world where the peasants live and the house of the duke. In a way, Rigoletto is that door. He is the one who is part of two worlds.”
Mr. Enkhbat knows something about two worlds.
Despite his ascent in the world of Italian (and some Russian) opera, he is drawn back to the opera “Genghis Khan” by the Mongolian composer Byambasuren Sharav, which Mr. Enkhbat has performed five times in his home country. He hopes to bring it to a wider audience.
“We Mongolians love this opera because it’s in our language and in our blood,” he said. “I love singing ‘Rigoletto’ and so many other baritone roles, but I also want to bring Mongolian music to the world, too.”
Over the past week or so our already polarized national discourse has been further electrified, thanks an uncharacteristically leaky Supreme Court, which let slip recently with details about a shock overturning of the landmark 1973 civil rights case Roe v. Wade. But what the ensuing cacophonous reaction—online and otherwise—to this news too often left out were the experiences of actual women whose lives would and have been most affected by America’s complicated web of jurisdictional restrictions and pervading stigmas surrounding abortion.
Of course, cinema is the ultimate way to peer through a window into someone else’s experiences, good or bad. Which is why there are so many compelling abortion stories being told in film across a variety of genres—from dramas, to mainstream rom-coms, to vulgar teen comedies, horror movies and beyond.
Below, we’ve picked out five great indies—two dramas and three unabashed comedies—capturing just a fraction of the scope of experiences surrounding the termination of an unwanted pregnancy; great stories that deserve an audience.
OBVIOUS CHILD (2020)
Writer & Director: Gillian Robespierre
Starring: Jenny Slate, Jake Lacy, Gaby Hoffman
Producer: Elisabeth Holm
Why It’s Important: The perfect vehicle for star Jenny Slate’s oddball comic energy, Obvious Child somehow manages to be both cringe and cozy at the same time. A portrait of how the termination of an unwanted pregnancy might play out in properly functioning, if not entirely ideal, circumstances, writer/director Gillian Robespierre’s debut follows Donna, a struggling New York stand-up whose chaotic love life eventually leads to fleeting encounter with amiable doofus Max (Jake Lacy), resulting in a situation that requires the quarterlife-crisis-plagued Donna to do a little bit (but not too much!) growing up in order to make what she feels is the right decision for her—a messy, empathetic and contemporary rom-com instant-classic.
Where to Watch: Fubo TV, Showtime, Hoopla, Kanopy, Direct TV
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (2020)
Director & Writer: Eliza Hittman
Starring: Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder
Producers: Sara Murphy, Adele Romanski
Why It’s Important: With nods for Best Feature, Director, Female Lead, Supporting Female, Cinematography, Screenplay and Editing (phew!) at the 2021 Film Independent Spirit Awards, Eliza Hittman’s third drama feature features a standout lead performance by newcomer Sidney Flanigan as—you guessed it!—a 17-year-old Pennsylvania woman struggling to navigate her options after a pregnancy test turns up affirmative. Barred from seeking an abortion in her home state without parental consent, Sidney and cousin Skylar (Ryder) boost some cash from their local grocery store and hit the road to terrifying New York City in search of Planned Parenthood. With elements of thriller-like tension, surrealism and social realism, Rarely is always unforgettable.
Where to Watch: Max Go, Freevee, SVOD rental
PLAN B (2021)
Director: Natalie Morales
Writers: Joshua Levy, Prathiksha Srinivasan
Starring: Kuhoo Verma, Victoria Moroles
Producers: Ryan Bennett, Jeremy Garelick, Josh Heald, Dina Hillier, Jon Hurwitz, Mickey Liddell, Matt Lottman, Will Phelps, Hayden Schlossberg, Pete Shilaimon
Why It’s Important: Set in conservative South Dakota, newly sexually active honors student Sunny (Verma) faces down a pregnancy scare courtesy of a sloppy encounter with class nerd Kyle (Mason Cook) in the bathroom during a rare party appearance. Too scared of her mother’s to seek the parental blessing required to purchase the morning after pill locally, Sunny and outspoken queer BFF Victoria (Moroles) set out on an impromptu road trip to procure the pill more quietly. But the results are anything but stealth, as Sunny and Victoria run into a Harold & Kumar-ish succession of property (and penis!) destroying misadventures en route to their ultimate goal. Though Booksmart-funny, the film is nevertheless an indictment of the artificial impediments foisted upon many young women simply looking to be proactive about their own healthcare.
Where to Watch: Hulu
HAPPENING (2021)
Director: Audrey Diwan
Writers: Marcia Romano, Audrey Diwan, Alice Girard, Anne Berest
Starring: Anamaria Vartolomei, Kacey Mottet Klein, Luàna Bajrami, Louise Orry-Diquéro
Producers: Alice Girard, Edouard Weil
Why It’s Important: France, 1963. Studios middle class go-getter Anne suddenly finds her ambitions for the future in peril after an unwanted pregnancy seizes control of her careful routine. Watching her options dwindle in real time, she contemplates the shame—and myriad risks—of an illegal abortion. Currently rating “100% Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, KPCC film reviewer Claudia Puig said of Happening: “It feels like it was made for this moment… it’s eerily prescient.” Of the film (out now) and its powerful lead performance, RogerEbert.com’s Tommris Laffly writes: “Vartolomei masters the art of silence, somehow managing to react, consider, and protest, often without saying a single word.”
Where to Watch: Theaters, SVOD
UNPREGNANT (2020)
Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg
Writers: Rachel Lee Goldenberg, Ted Caplan, Jenni Hendriks, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, William Parker
Starring: Haley Lu Richardson, Barbie Ferreira
Producers: Greg Berlanti, Erik Feig, Sarah Schechter
Why It’s Important: If you’ve already seen Plan B—see earlier in this list—you may experience a bit of déjà vu tucking into Rachel Lee Goldenberg’s super-fun road trip comedy Unpregnant. The two films share more than a few elements: two teenage pals—one queer, one under threat of an unwanted pregnancy—hitting the road together in search of basic medical care, in the face of increasingly absurd obstacles. And also like Plan B, Unpregnant is funny and engaging, full of great performances, grand comic set pieces and lots and lots of heart. Frankly, the fact that there’s an entire microgenre of films springing up centered on this same basic premise should tell you all you need to know about what young women in America are feeling anxious about, right about now.
Where to Watch: HBO Max
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Changing rules to allow new no-confidence vote in PM within 12 months would be ‘grossly unfair’, says Javid
Good morning. And sorry for the late start.
Today we’ve got the first PMQs since the no-confidence vote on Boris Johnson. PMQs is often seen as a pointless pantomime, but it does function as a test of a leader’s authority with their parliamentary colleagues. Mostly it ends in a “draw” (Tory supporters think Johnson “won”, Labour supporters think the same about Keir Starmer), but sometimes a leader can put in a performance so memorable that it does shift preconceptions, at least a bit. Today we should get a better sense of quite how much Johnson has been hamstrung by having 148 of his MPs vote against him.
Johnson said yesterday that he hoped the no-confidence vote would draw a line under the leadership crisis, but it is already obvious that this is not happening. Some Tory MPs are already speculating about the possibility of changing the leadership election rules, which currently say that after winning a no-confidence vote a Conservative leader should not have to face another for another 12 months. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, was on the interview circuit this morning, and he claimed changing the rules in this way would be “grossly unfair”. He told Times Radio:
I think most people would think if you changed the rules it would be grossly unfair, it would be the wrong thing to do. So I wouldn’t support that.
We have very clear, transparent rules and that’s important, that they’re clear and transparent.
And if anyone wants to exercise the current rules, which they did, that’s totally their right and I respect my colleagues for that, but the decision has been made.
And I think what everyone wants to now see is that you end this sort of speculation and we just get on with the job.
After 12.30pm: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is expected to make a Commons statement on a review of health and social care leadership.
After 1.30pm: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, opens the debate on the levelling up and regeneration bill.
2.30pm: David Neal, independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.
4.10pm: Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, gives evidence to a Lords committee on the Northern Ireland protocol.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
Unilaterally abandonding Northern Ireland protocol would be ‘historic low point’ for UK, says Irish PM
Micheál Martin, the taoiseach (Irish PM), has said that if Britain decides to unilaterally abandon the Northern Ireland protocol, that will mark a “historic low point”.
I have said many times that there are solutions to practical problems under the protocol if there is a political will to find them. But that requires partnership. It requires the UK government to engage with good faith, seriousness, and commitment.
Unilateral action to set aside a solemn agreement would be deeply damaging.
It would mark a historic low point, signalling a disregard for essential principles of laws which are the foundation of international relations. And it would, quite literally, be to the benefit of absolutely no-one.
Without a spirit of partnership, there would have been no peace process in Northern Ireland.
Without trust, without engagement, without a willingness to see things from the point of view of others, there would have been no Good Friday agreement, no quarter-century of peace in Northern Ireland in which young people have been able to grow and to flourish as themselves.
All of us in positions of leadership owe it to them not to treat lightly what was so hard-won.
Micheál Martin addressing the European parliament in Strasbourg this morning. Photograph: Julien Warnand/EPA
Javid joins calls for tax cuts after revolt against Johnson
Sajid Javid also used his morning interviews to say he wanted the government to go further on tax cuts. My colleague Rowena Mason has the story here.
NHS needs to modernise, says Javid, as he defends Blockbuster/Netflix analogy
Yesterday, in a presentation to cabinet on the need for NHS reform, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, said the UK had “a Blockbuster healthcare system in the age of Netflix”. In an interview with BBC News this morning, Javid stressed that his reference to moving to a Netflix model did not mean he favoured charging for NHS services. Asked if he meant people need to pay a Netflix-style subscription for the NHS, he replied:
Not at all. I’m very proud of that we’ve got an NHS that is free at the point of use, paid out of our general taxation, there for all of us when we need it.
But what I mean by that particular comment is it needs to modernise. We need to make sure that we keep modernising that we have a NHS that is looking out towards the 2048, not one that was designed for 1948.
And the Blockbuster analogy is that, for those those that remember Blockbuster, is that it failed to modernise, it failed to adapt to changing trends in markets, and therefore it wasn’t able to serve its customers and did not survive.
No-one wants to see that kind of thing happen to something as important as the NHS.
And that means making sure that the NHS is is looking at the latest demographics, our ageing population, the changes in the burden of disease use – for example, we have more dementia and certain types of cancer today than ever before – and also medicines and the latest technology.
Javid urges RMT to ‘act like adults’ and find ‘sensible solution’ to avert need for rail strike
As my colleague Gwyn Topham reports, rail workers are to strike for three days in late June, in a move that is likely to halt much of the national rail network across Britain for a week.
Asked about the proposed strike in his morning interviews, Sajid Javid, the health secretary, urged union leaders to “act like adults”. He told the Today programme:
When it comes to these strikes, it is very disappointing what the unions have said, because it’s not just going to cause misery for the travellers, but it’s actually, I think, the wrong outcome for the workers as well.
Because anyone working in this industry, any industry for that matter, you want it to be sustainable for the long term. It’s not possible to keep giving it the same level of support it got during the pandemic.
Javid said the government would be looking at “options” it could use to use legislation to limit the impact of strikes on passengers. But he went on:
But the most important thing right now would be for the union leaders to get around the table with the industry leaders and just basically act like adults and just to come to a sensible solution.
According to PA Media, talks between Network Rail (NR) and the RMT rail union in the hope of averting the strike are expected to be held in the next few days.
Changing rules to allow new no-confidence vote in PM within 12 months would be ‘grossly unfair’, says Javid
Good morning. And sorry for the late start.
Today we’ve got the first PMQs since the no-confidence vote on Boris Johnson. PMQs is often seen as a pointless pantomime, but it does function as a test of a leader’s authority with their parliamentary colleagues. Mostly it ends in a “draw” (Tory supporters think Johnson “won”, Labour supporters think the same about Keir Starmer), but sometimes a leader can put in a performance so memorable that it does shift preconceptions, at least a bit. Today we should get a better sense of quite how much Johnson has been hamstrung by having 148 of his MPs vote against him.
Johnson said yesterday that he hoped the no-confidence vote would draw a line under the leadership crisis, but it is already obvious that this is not happening. Some Tory MPs are already speculating about the possibility of changing the leadership election rules, which currently say that after winning a no-confidence vote a Conservative leader should not have to face another for another 12 months. Sajid Javid, the health secretary, was on the interview circuit this morning, and he claimed changing the rules in this way would be “grossly unfair”. He told Times Radio:
I think most people would think if you changed the rules it would be grossly unfair, it would be the wrong thing to do. So I wouldn’t support that.
We have very clear, transparent rules and that’s important, that they’re clear and transparent.
And if anyone wants to exercise the current rules, which they did, that’s totally their right and I respect my colleagues for that, but the decision has been made.
And I think what everyone wants to now see is that you end this sort of speculation and we just get on with the job.
After 12.30pm: Sajid Javid, the health secretary, is expected to make a Commons statement on a review of health and social care leadership.
After 1.30pm: Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, opens the debate on the levelling up and regeneration bill.
2.30pm: David Neal, independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, gives evidence to the Commons home affairs committee.
4.10pm: Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP leader, gives evidence to a Lords committee on the Northern Ireland protocol.
I try to monitor the comments below the line (BTL) but it is impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and reply above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise to do this for everyone.
If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter. I’m on @AndrewSparrow.
King and his writers’ room have only recently embarked on working on the second season of the “Sex and the City” revival. During an interview at his office on the Warner Bros. lot, though he was hesitant to share much about Season 2, King was happy to answer that question definitively. After all, the texting back-and-forth was the show’s inventive way of keeping Samantha on the show after Kim Cattrall has said she no longer wants to play Samantha.
King also indulged a question about what Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Samantha (formerly portrayed by Kim Cattrall) would have talked about during the finale when they saw each other off-screen during the finale, having made a plan after Carrie had lovingly dispensed with Big’s ashes into the Seine.
“It’s very funny, because every single one of the writers has a different version of what happened during that conversation,” King said. “So, I think there was some Champagne. I think there was a grownup back and forth, and a love affair that they realized that something’s more important than being afraid to heal. I’m sure they had a great night. To me, they had a great night and things became resolved. Once Carrie let go of an old, old love, one of her current loves came back in.”
During the conversation, part of Variety’s Showrunners Sitdown with Kate Aurthur presented by FX, King said “And Just Like That” will start production in October, with the aim of streaming on HBO Max in summer 2023. As always, the show will use New York as a backdrop, and King detailed some of the difficulties of hiding pivotal first-season plot points from obsessed fans and paparazzi — especially when it came to keeping it secret that Carrie’s husband Big (Chris Noth) was going to die in the first episode.
“The big miracle is that we got the show on the air before anyone knew that Mr. Big died,” King said. “I mean, that’s Herculean.”
He described going as far as having Noth appear at his own funeral, and writing fake eulogies to perform in front of the extras — until the actors told him they needed something real to react to during the funeral.
So King had a choice to make. He sent half the extras home, and kept 75 of them there.
“I took Sarah Jessica by the hand, and we stood up and said, ‘OK, I kept 75 of you because we want you to keep our secret. And this is Mr. Big’s funeral, and we’ve done everything we can to keep it a secret. And it’s very important to the show and we would love it.’ And then on December the 13th, the day after it airs, you can tell everybody you were there and you knew.’
“And they did!” King continued. “And I think that’s respect out of love for Carrie. I really think it’s about, ‘Why would we ruin Carrie’s show?’ I feel like they it’s their show too.”
King answered all our questions, from what he made of the outsized reaction to Che Diaz (Sara Ramírez), to whether Ivan Hernandez, who played Carrie’s new love interest Franklin, will be in Season 2. He also played a rapid-fire game about his favorite “Sex and the City” moments, and about why Aidan, Berger, and Aleksandr Petrovsky were wrong for Carrie, and whether we could expect to see any of those actors on the show.
And as for whether King is a Carrie, a Charlotte, a Miranda or a Samantha?
“Margaret Cho says you get two: you get a primary Zodiac ‘Sex and the City,’ and then you get one rising,” King said. “So, I’m Carrie and a Miranda.”
The European Union will require all new smartphones and tablets sold within its borders to have a common charging port by the fall of 2024 — and laptops by 2026 — under a new provisional agreement, pushing technology companies such as Apple to fall in line with other smartphone makers that have widely adopted a universal port in recent years.
European Parliament and Council negotiators agreed on the law Tuesday, saying in a statement that the move is intended to “make products in the EU more sustainable, to reduce electronic waste, and make consumers’ lives easier.”
The law, which still needs to be formally approved, requires all new smartphones, tablets, e-readers and portable speakers — among a long list of other small electronic devices — sold in the E.U. to use the USB-C type charging port. The requirement for laptops will take effect in early 2026.
The small, pill-shaped port is already used in many smartphones and laptops, as well as Apple’s latest iPads and some of its previous-generation MacBook laptops.
But the mandate puts Apple in a difficult position, as it has clung to its proprietary “Lightning” port on its iPhones and the charging cases for its AirPods in-ear headphones. The Verge, a technology news site, called the European law “a major blow to Apple’s Lightning port.”
Much like how California’s environmental and safety standards often lead to changes across the United States because of the logistical difficulty and financial impracticality of creating different products for different states, the European charging-port law could have a widespread impact for handheld consumer electronics across the world.
In Germany, the European Union’s largest economy, the top three most-popular smartphones are all iPhones, according to consumer research site Counterpoint, with the fourth and fifth being Samsung Galaxy phones that use USB-C ports. In France, the bloc’s second-largest economy, iPhones hold the top four spots in the smartphone market, Counterpoint calculates.
Apple also recently brought back its proprietary “MagSafe” magnetic charger to its MacBook Pro, and announced Monday it would do the same with its thinner MacBook Air laptops.
Apple has apparently been preparing for the crackdown, however: Bloomberg News reported last month that amid the looming possibility of the European law, the company has tested iPhone models that use USB-C instead of its proprietary port.
Technology critics have for years bemoaned Apple’s persistence in maintaining its proprietary ports, noting that while many device-makers have conformed to the USB-C port, Apple’s unique charging medium leaves consumers stuck with a tangle of various cables.
But the E.U.’s move could stifle efforts to innovate toward the abolishment of charging ports altogether, such as the use of magnetic-contact chargers instead of ports to allow for extremely thin devices, said Benedict Evans, an industry analyst. He wrote on Twitter that it was “hard to see any meaningful consumer benefit” from the law, which he said outlawed “some ideas” such as the sole use of magnetic chargers.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday evening. When the European law was proposed in September, the company said in a statement: “We remain concerned that strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, which in turn will harm consumers in Europe and around the world.”
When Apple stopped providing wired headphones and wall plugs with its iPhones in 2020, it said the cutback was for environmental reasons, although some pointed out it was better for the company’s bottom line.
The FX series, which is based on the true-crime novel of the same name by Jon Krakauer, follows the aftermath of the 1984 brutal murders of Brenda and her 15-month-old daughter Erica at the hands of her brothers-in-law.
The first similarities Black noticed between Brenda and his mother were their bravery and curiosity, which led them to question things not often questioned in the Mormon faith, or in general. “Meeting the book’s version of Brenda reminded me so much of my own home,” Black tells The Hollywood Reporter, now that the limited series has concluded.”It felt true, and it also helps me understand that it’s sadly not unique to my mother, or Brenda, that there are countless women in the Mormon church and other Christian faiths who are treated as less than whole human beings just because of their gender.”
On the surface, Under the Banner of Heaven may seem like a story about fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, but Black says it goes beyond that. Brenda’s story, he explains, felt like a “cautionary tale” for the steps back America’s taking as a country. “I’m absolutely right now and with this series calling out a United States Supreme Court that has taken dangerous steps back into a history when we did not know better,” he says. “It is a fool’s journey, that we’re watching our court take right now. It’s the journey these brothers took, and it ended in bloodshed.”
In a recent conversation with THR, Black opens up about his decision to include Andrew Garfield’s fictional investigator Jeb Pyre in the screen adaptation, speaking to Brenda’s family and why this story was so important for him to tell.
Jeb (Andrew Garfield) was a character that you added to the story. Why did you decide to include him and how did you figure out how you wanted him portrayed?
That was a long road. He certainly was not in the feature film versions that I was trying to write a decade ago, and that was part of the problem — needing the space to be able to weave together both the history of the crime itself, from 1979 to 1984, and the Brenda Wright story, the Lafferty story, with the history of the church’s pertinence to that case, so you can understand where it comes from. The book has an author in Jon Krakauer, who you feel like you’re walking beside as you step into this world that’s very foreign to most people, and in that way, it reads like an investigation. Jon Krakauer demands that the reader is engaged and participating, and so that was what was missing from those feature screenplays without it.
One big thing happened, in these 10 years, which is the reemergence of the limited series as this legitimate form for a drama like this, and that gave me the space. Then, I had the room to tell the Lafferty story, that Brenda story, the history, and then I needed to figure out how to create that feeling of an investigation, so that the show is engaging, so that it feels like a true-crime thriller, not just a history lesson. Once I’ve laid it out like that, it’s not a huge leap to say, “Let’s have an investigator, have an investigation. Let’s unpick this story from that point of view.” The real investigators we contacted from the time in place helped with research but did not want to be depicted themselves, which in a way, was a gift.
I was able to create characters who enter this investigation with eyes that I think help tell the story. So, you have one who’s from within the faith, mainstream Mormon, devout Mormon, unquestioning Mormon, and we have Bill Taba, who’s from outside the faith, though arguably his family and his people have lived in this area much longer than Mormons. I feel like anyone who comes to this series now has a set of eyes they can identify with. So, if you’re Mormon or very faithful, you can enter the series through Jeb Pyre, and if you’ve never encountered anything like this, you have Bill Taba, and that’s where I began to play. From then, it just took an incredible amount of research and work because if you’re going to depict fictional people side by side with heavily researched real people, it has to feel as authentic and as detailed. You really can’t fall back on some of the I think fun and wonderful, true-crime thriller tropes because it’s not going to ring true enough. So, then it became just a tremendous amount of writing and rewriting and messing it up and trying to fix things.
Andrew Garfield as Jeb Pyre
Courtesy of Michelle Faye/FX
Aside from the investigators, what other parts of the story did you decide to fictionalize?
The book has in it, the Elizabeth smart case. I felt like that case had received national attention already, I believe there had been television movies, at least one about it already, so I set that aside and felt like it had been done. The Lafferty story which, at the heart of it, for me, is a step into fundamentalism, meaning going from being very mainstream to following fundamentalist legal texts, like the U.S. Constitution, and then originalist fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible and Book of Mormon, that felt incredibly current when I started re-breaking it three years ago.
You only have to look at the U.S. Supreme Court to see that we’re headed back into an originalist fundamentalist time in the United States, and, so, in that way, the Lafferty story/Brenda Wright Lafferty story felt instructive. It felt like a cautionary tale. It felt like it was talking about today and tomorrow, it wasn’t this nostalgic. These are the things I tell my friends and students to pay attention to if they’re doing something from the past. How is it forward-looking? How is it going to crack something open that needs to be broken today? So, that felt very important. Once I knew that story was what I should focus on, the elements of the Mormon history that help illuminate that story, help it make sense why these brothers were able to rationalize their heinous behavior based on ancient texts, then I knew exactly what pieces of LDS history to draw on. So then, that’s what I would include from there.
Then, this very, perhaps unique, challenge of saying, “Well, now I need to take that and create an investigation story that is going to be dramatized, is going to be fictionalized; it follows the bones and the chronology of the case, but it takes liberties. Now I need to crack that in a way to feel like compelling television so that this isn’t just like going to school, this has a heartbeat. You feel the blood in it.” It was like braiding in a way. It was really understanding what each story skein was, and how each could benefit the other in terms of understanding but also creating a pulse. That was terrifying and fun, which is what I think good writing should be; walking that razor’s edge.
What was it like emerging yourself in such a tragic story?
It’s come at a cost. I grew up in this faith. I grew up Mormon. Most of my family is still in the faith, many of my friends are. This isn’t a faith that looks kindly upon having its history laid bare or even questioned. So, there’s been pushback, which I anticipated, but you can never be fully prepared — from the church, I should say. Historians seem to be embracing it in wonderful ways and acknowledging the research put into it, but the church itself is going to challenge it, and that’s tough, particularly when I still do have some fond feelings about having grown up in the faith and family members in it, and it is dark, and these are real lives. I spent a great deal of time with Brenda’s family, and there’s a responsibility there to try and do your best to at least honor the spirit of her courage to be curious, to ask questions, to challenge the status quo in 1984 in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a woman. That was not nothing.
I always care for the family members of the surviving folks who knew the real people. So, personally, it’s been really challenging, and it’s taken its toll. It’s physically taken its toll on me. So, it’ll take a little while to heal, but I think that’s not unique to me. I think there are a lot of people, not just in the Mormon faith, who are watching it, and it challenges things that many didn’t even know needed to be challenged, and it breaks things open that people didn’t know needed to be broken up. It shakes foundations. It shook mine, and I think the good news is, it’s shaking others, and I think that’s, I think that’s valuable. I think it’s necessary. I think it’s about damn time, frankly.
I got to spend time with the family, which already helps you understand who that real person might have been. I never got to meet Brenda, obviously, so it’ll never be Brenda. It’s always going to be something adjacent to Brenda. But because I was able to meet with them and spend time with them, they shared her journals and her letters. I felt closer to her when I was reading them. I got to a fuller picture of who she was than just what was in the book, which was very good, but I needed more. Of course, I shared all of that with Daisy, and with the wardrobe department and the set department, so that we were always anchored in the truth. Though we can’t, and no filmmaker can bring someone back to life, I hope that there’s something in the portrayal that feels truthful, that feels authentic, and I do think that Daisy was dedicated to trying to do the same.
Daisy Edgar-Jones as Brenda Lafferty.
Courtesy of Michelle Faye/FX
Has Brenda’s family seen the show?
I know at least one of the sisters has seen some of the show. I do know it’s very hard on them. I was surprised, if I’m being honest, that they watched it. I had conversations with at least one of her family members, who’d been the most helpful, and she asked if she should watch it, and I suggested she probably didn’t need to, mainly because she would see a version of her sister murdered again, or at least the aftermath of that. But she has, and we’ve continued to talk, so that’s not nothing, but it’s a very challenging position for any family member to be put in, and this isn’t my first go at this. I think her family is mourning all over again in certain ways, and as good a job as I think we did and as Daisy did, it’s still not their sister, it’s still not their daughter, and so I think their hearts break again. I’m grateful to them, but I do feel a responsibility to them.
What made you want to bring this story to life?
Brenda is at the core of it. I think it’s a connection between who she was, the choices she made, the courage she showed. Having grown up in a single-parent home with a mother who showed similar courage, curiosity and also experienced some violence that the church did not, in my opinion, step up and protect her in ways they should have. In fact, in some ways, they blamed her. So, I think meeting the book’s version of Brenda reminded me so much of my own home, not obviously not in as extreme a way, but in similar ways, it hit home. It felt true, and it also helps me understand that it’s sadly not unique to my mother, or Brenda, that there are countless women in the Mormon church and other Christian faiths who are treated as less than whole human beings just because of their gender.
I’m a mama’s boy. I wrote that book, and I have never understood why we teach our children to pray to a misogynist God. I think it’s high time we asked that question, “What are we teaching little boys and little girls about who they are and what their potential is if we ask them to pray to gods that have these faiths built on Earth that make it very clear that this God sees men and women as inequal?” I think that teaches little boys to treat women poorly. I think that teaches little girls that says to them loud and clear, “Hey, you’re not as good you’re not as capable. You can’t go as far.” All of this is untrue. These are all lies. This is the danger of following texts written exclusively by men that are thousands of years old, hundreds of years old. I’m talking about the U.S. Constitution. I’m talking about the Bible. They are dusty. They are outdated. We know better than those white heterosexual men did back then. So, we ought to do better than they spelled out back then.
There are things that are valuable in some of those texts. I’m sure those men meant well, but we know so much more now. So, it makes absolutely no sense to continue to follow every rule in those documents. Take what’s good, take what still serves us and leave the trash behind. That’s what I’ve learned in my journey of faith. Being a cafeteria Christian or a cafeteria religious person, just taking the things that work still today, that’s not a bad thing. That shows that you’re a thinker, and it shows courage, and it means you can start to rebuild a better system. If the Mormon faith claims to be ever-changing, then change it. If the founders of the U.S. Constitution said it was an ever-changing, evolving document, then let it change and evolve. I’m absolutely right now and with this series, calling out a United States Supreme Court that has taken dangerous steps back into a history when we did not know better. It is a fool’s journey, that we’re watching our court take right now. It’s the journey these brothers took, and it ended in bloodshed.
Wyatt Russel as Dan Lafferty.
Courtesy of Michelle Faye/FX
Now that it’s concluded and out in the world, what are your hopes for the impact of this series?
Anytime you do something creative, you hope people want to watch it. That’s not easy with a subject matter like this. That’s a difficult needle to thread, and it doesn’t always work. People are tuning in, and even though it certainly is going to trigger some things in people that that’s compelling, and people are are are willing to go there. That’s very meaningful to me. I hope it’s a thrilling, at times terrifying, show to watch. That is the genre that I placed it in. If it makes people start to question the status quo, then, good, because I do not believe we’ve reached the pinnacle of human existence. We can do so much better than where we are now. This cautionary tale is critical right now. The world’s facing difficult times. It seems like human nature that people step back into the past to look for safety to look for a foundation, and this show says loud and clear the foundation is not in the past. If you want to feel safer and more stable again after difficult times, you gotta pour a new foundation, not look to ancestors from a very different time with very different challenges and far less understanding.
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