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November 17, 2023

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Entertaintment, Film, MCU, Movies

‘Madame Web’ Trailer Hints at a Return to Marvel’s Classic Formula

Sony Pictures has revealed the first look at Madame Web, their upcoming Spider-Man spinoff starring Dakota Johnson as Cassandra Webb, aka Madame Web, a paramedic in Manhattan with some unusual abilities. Like Cassandra in Greek myth, Cassandra Webb finds out she’s clairvoyant, yet those abilities and her complicated past are about to thrust her into a dangerous game.

From the looks of the thrilling trailer we are in for an exciting film that does not just look like it promises to be good, but it looks old school Marvel good, and considering how things have been going ratings wise for MCU movies lately, this film could be just what Marvel needs to spin things around (pun intended).

Madame Web is directed by veteran S.J. Clarkson (The Defenders, Jessica Jones), who is working off her own script. The film will give us Madame Web’s origin story, which finds her abilities directly connected to all the Spider-based superheroes operating in the world. Johnson is joined by Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, Isabela Merced, Tahar Rahim, Mike Epps, Emma Roberts and Adam Scott. This team will be responsible for exapanding the live action spider-verse, considering the failureof Jared Leto’s Morbius, they will have a lot of pressure on their shoulders with this film. As Madame Web will be Sony’s first female led Marvel superhero film. Not to mention Marvel’s first film of 2024.

: First Look at Dakota Johmson as Madame Web courtesy of Sony

: First look at Sydney Sweeney as Julia Carpenter Courtesy of Sony

: First look at Celeste O’Connor as Mattie Franklina

: First Look at Isabela Merced as Anya Corazon courtesy of Sony

The trailer opens by hinting at Cassandra’s formidable skills. She goes into a diner where she’s attacked by a Spider-Man-like figure in a dark super-suit and Spidey abilities. The confrontation goes poorly for Cassandra, but we learn that she was seeing that ahead of time, giving her the foreknowledge of how to approach the situation in reality. Cassandra’s abilities were born after an accident while working as a paramedic (she tumbled off a bridge, in a car, into the river), and from this unhappy accident, she became something more. Later in the trailer, we learn the identity of the masked man who attacked her, Ezekiel Sims (Rahim), a man connected to her past. Cassandra and three new friends (Sweeney’s Julia Carpenter, O’Connor’s Mattie Franklin, and Merced’s Anya Corazon) are connected to each other and Ezekiel Sims in ways they are only beginning to understand.

Check out the trailer below. Madame Web is coming to theaters on February 14, 2024:

Sony Pictures has revealed the first look

Awards

Wes Anderson to Curate Galerie Film Club – IndieWire

Wes Anderson is inviting fellow cinephiles and fans to swap ideas in a new digital film club, with stars like Ethan Hawke and Maggie Gyllenhaal guest-curating.

Anderson’s longtime producing partners at Indian Paintbrush are launching Galerie, an exclusive curated club featuring original videos, considered writing, live screenings, and discussions with leading filmmakers.

Production company Indian Paintbrush was founded in 2006 by Steven Rales, and the company has produced and financed all of Anderson’s films since 2007. Per the official description, Galerie has a mission to “celebrate film conversation and literacy by offering access to film collections curated by industry creators, thoughtful essays, and exclusive live events with today’s most esteemed cinema professionals and cultural minds.”

Subscriptions cost $10 per month. In addition to Anderson, curators include Mike Mills, Taylor Russell, Karyn Kusama, Ethan Hawke, Maggie Gyllenhaal, James Gray, and Ed Lachman. Curators will “guide members as they deepen their journeys through film in a shared place where everyone is invited to exchange ideas and learn,” per the press release, as well as participate in filmed conversations.

Check out a Galerie video below featuring filmmaker Karyn Kusama and actor Taylor Russell, who starred in Luca Guadagnino’s “Bones and All,” praising Guadagnino’s 2009 film “I Am Love.”

Novelists, journalists, filmmakers, cinematographers, editors, composers, and costume designers will also be among those interviewed for the film club in live screenings and discussions. Anderson will further direct an exclusive space within Galerie to present ongoing exhibitions that he has personally curated.

“Amidst the media clutter overwhelming all of us, we are delighted to introduce Galerie as a unique sanctuary for discovering cinema differently,” Indian Paintbrush founder Rales said. “Galerie offers the opportunity to explore the indelible contributions of those more and less visible in the filmmaking endeavor, as well as an avenue to converse and learn about the many attributes of this cherished medium.”

The website is led by Andy Shapiro, SVP Digital Content at Indian Paintbrush, and Julie Huntsinger, Executive Director of the Telluride Film Festival.

“I’ve always envied film lovers of days gone by, when cinema societies and clubs were numerous and the ability to truly connect about and discuss films was natural and easy,” Huntsinger said. “Galerie has found a modern and exciting way to build a framework for this to happen. Cinema has new life with this discovery place, shaped by those who live and breathe film. Galerie allows us to encounter, share, and learn about this most wonderful of art forms.”

In addition to Galerie, Indian Paintbrush is also behind Megan Park’s upcoming film “My Old Ass,” co-produced in partnership with Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap Entertainment. The coming-of-age film stars Aubrey Plaza and Maisy Stella. Indian Paintbrush recently wrapped production on Oscar winner Ed Berger’s religious thriller “Conclave,” his follow-up to the Academy Award-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Kristin Scott Thomas’ directorial debut “North Star,” starring Scarlett Johansson, is also in the works.

Wes Anderson is inviting fellow cinephiles and

Docs

Saudi Fantasy ‘HWJN’ to Open Red Sea Film Festival

Dubai-based Iraqi director Yasir Al-Yasiri’s “HWJN” has been chosen as the opening film of Saudi Arabia’s upcoming Red Sea International Film Festival.

The fest’s third edition is set to run Nov. 30-Dec. 9 in Jeddah, on the Red Sea’s eastern shore, which is also the city where “HWJN” is set. The fantasy is based on the YA novel by Saudi writer Ibraheem Abbas which was a local literary phenomenon due to its pioneering combination of Western sci-fi tropes and Arabic culture and folklore.

Set in modern-day Jeddah, “HWJN” follows the story of a kind-hearted jinn – as invisible creatures in pre-Islamic Arabia and later in Islamic culture and beliefs are known – as he discovers the truth about his royal lineage. The protagonist, named Baraa Alem, goes on an epic journey to reclaim his birthright and maintain his mental balance between the human and supernatural worlds.

“HWJN” is one of the biggest projects spawned by a landmark production partnership launched in 2018 between Emirati outfit Image Nation Abu Dhabi, Saudi-owned MBC Studios and Middle East exhibitor Vox Cinemas’ Vox Studios production arm. They are three of the region’s top entities in the content and entertainment sector.

The Nov. 30 premiere in Jeddah will be introduced by the director and lead cast members Nour Alkhadra, Baraa Alem Naif Aldaferi, Alanoud Saud, Mohsen Mansour and Shaimaa Al Tayeb.

“Opening the festival with a highly anticipated film like ‘HWJN’ is a momentous event,” said Antoine Khalife, the fest’s director of arab programs and film classics in a statement. “With ‘HWJN,’ Saudi cinema proves its capacity to bring together talents from across the Arab world at both the production and artistic levels. Through this choice, the Red Sea not only honors Saudi cinema but also all Arab talents, highlighting the remarkable progress that the Kingdom has witnessed in recent times.”

Dubai-based Iraqi director Yasir Al-Yasiri’s “HWJN” has been

Global

Union, city reach tentative agreement to end Hamilton’s transit strike – Hamilton

A week after transit workers went on strike in Hamilton, Ont., the dispute is over with city negotiators and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 107 coming to an agreement early Thursday.

Statements from both the ATU and Mayor Andrea Horwath said the “last-minute tentative agreement” was reached around 2 a.m.

No details of the agreement have been shared since it still needs to be presented to union members in a soon-to-be-called ratification meeting.

I’m thrilled to announce that we have a tentative agreement with ATU Local 107! My statement below. pic.twitter.com/OkduvKKuVl

— Andrea Horwath (@AndreaHorwath) November 16, 2023

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“Our members must be given a minimum of 48 hours to review the offer before a ratification vote can be held,” said ATU Local 107 president Eric Tuck.

“I am extremely proud of our negotiating team and the rank-and-file membership for staying unified throughout this dispute.”

Horwath thanked the residents for their patience over the past seven days as well as colleagues, a bargaining team and the ATU for “achieving a fair and speedy resolution.”

Although committing to ensuring a “quick return” to full service, it’s not clear when buses will be back on city routes.

More to come

&copy 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Tech

We No Longer Need a Big Carrier’s Wireless Plan. Discount Ones Are the Way.

Americans have long been conditioned to believe that when they buy a cellphone, the next step is to pick a wireless plan from one of the big carriers: Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile. With their plans ranging from $60 to $200 a month for individuals and families, the price of a phone is soon eclipsed by the recurring service bills.

What if I told you that it no longer had to be this way?

Your phone bill could shrink to as little as $25 a month if you picked a wireless plan from a lesser-known service provider known as a discount carrier. The cheaper plans, based on my tests, offer sufficiently fast internet speeds and reliable phone service. It takes some courage and technological know-how to make the switch, but the potential savings outweigh the downsides.

On the surface, these budget carriers, which include Cricket Wireless, Straight Talk, Boost Mobile, Mint Mobile and Visible, lack a cool factor. They do not operate their own cell networks; instead, they lease wireless services from the big carriers and market them toward retirees. The no-frill plans often have trade-offs, including slower download speeds, since Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile subscribers have priority access to faster network performance.

Yet in the past few years, so much has changed that I can now confidently recommend discount phone plans for most people, including white-collar professionals and Instagram-obsessed youths. Here’s why:

Cellular networks have peaked. Newer 5G and 4G cell technology is so fast that even budget carriers can provide very fast download speeds — zippy enough to stream video, load maps and download apps — even if they are somewhat slower than what the Big Three provide.
The shift to hybrid work. Office workers who used to spend more time commuting and had to rely on their cellular network now have their commute time cut in half and are relying more on the Wi-Fi connection at their home or office cubicle for making video calls and sending messages. That means slower cellular performance on a budget carrier may be unnoticeable.

You can try a discount carrier without breaking up with your big carrier. The eSIM, the digital version of the SIM card that carries your phone number, is now common on many modern smartphones. It lets you immediately activate an extra phone line without needing to insert a physical SIM card, which makes experimenting with an off-brand wireless service easier and less intimidating.

Once you have converted to a discount phone plan, the savings add up quickly. A family of four buying new iPhones with a Cricket phone plan would spend $3,762 over two years, $1,311 less than they would spend with Verizon, according to an analysis by WalletHub, a personal finance research firm.

“The negative perception around budget plans is fading,” Cassandra Happe, an analyst for WalletHub, said. “Now they’re seen as a smart choice for everyone. People are realizing you can get a great phone plan without spending a fortune.”

To put discount phone carriers to the test, I activated three services — Visible, Cricket and Straight Talk — on an iPhone. In various locations in California, I ran speed tests, made phone calls and used apps like maps, YouTube and TikTok. For comparisons, I ran the same tests on my Verizon connection.

The discount carriers were, on average, up to 46 percent slower than my Verizon connection. That sounds like a lot, but in real-world tests, I didn’t notice a difference — my apps worked fine, and videos streamed smoothly.

Here’s how the setup and testing process went.

Buying and activating a discount phone plan

Consumers can sign up for discount phone plans by buying a physical SIM card from a website or retail store, though I recommend eSIM as the way. The digital SIM card saves time — and because you can install multiple eSIMs at the same time, you can try a discount carrier and compare it with the performance of your big carrier before deciding on a plan.

The steps for setting up an eSIM vary somewhat from carrier to carrier, but the process is fundamentally consistent: You buy a phone plan through a brand’s website or app and click a button or scan a bar code to activate the service.

Visible charged $25 a month for a plan that included unlimited data; Straight Talk charged $35 a month for a plan with 10 gigabytes of high-speed internet; and Cricket charged $40 — $10 to activate the eSIM and $30 for a monthly plan that included five gigabytes of data.

Visible, which is owned by Verizon, had the smoothest setup. Its mobile app let me buy a phone plan using Apple Pay and tap a few buttons to activate service. With Straight Talk and Cricket, I perused the websites to find their eSIM offerings. I ran into problems with Cricket, which emailed a broken web link to activate my plan; it took me about 20 minutes to find a tool on its website to manually activate my service.

Test, test

My iPhone could hold up to eight eSIMs, so I installed all three plans and toggled among them for each test.

I drove to 10 locations, including hiking trails, shopping centers and wineries, in California. At each location, I used the Speedtest app to test each carrier’s internet speed, and I called my very patient wife and streamed video on apps like TikTok and YouTube.

Broadly speaking, the discount phone services performed fine. They were occasionally sluggish when loading videos on TikTok, but my Verizon connection had similar delays.

Based on the results measured with the Speedtest app, Cricket and Visible had comparable performances, with download speeds of 154 megabits per second, on average. Straight Talk delivered speeds of 279 megabits per second — similar to my Verizon connection, which delivered download speeds of 287 megabits per second.

What do those numbers mean? To stream video through apps like Netflix and Hulu, you need a minimum of 25 megabits per second, according to AT&T. So the budget carriers gave me more than enough speed to handle some of the most data-intensive tasks.

Taking the leap

Among the three discount carriers, my favorite was Visible because of its smooth setup process and consistent network performance. Visible was also more transparent with its billing in emailed receipts. Straight Talk never emailed me a receipt. I was turned off by Cricket’s clunky website and the $10 fee for activating an eSIM, which was not a charge the other two carriers required.

Angie Klein, president of the Verizon Value organization, which oversees Visible, said its budget plans were designed for tech-savvy customers who wanted a single line, and Verizon’s traditional wireless plans were a full-service experience with more perks. Straight Talk and Cricket did not respond to requests for comment.

On the whole, I don’t have a one-size-fits-all recommendation. As with the big carriers, cellular performance for each discount carrier will vary depending on the network’s coverage where you live and work.

But because eSIM technology makes it easy to switch to another network — and the discount phone plans are cheap — it would be foolish to pass on the opportunity to give a budget phone plan a try.

Last year, Robin Phillips, a 54-year-old Seattle resident who works in food distribution, broke up with Verizon to try Visible. He ran into hiccups. The wireless service initially would not activate, and the customer support agents, available only through a chat app, were unhelpful.

But he said he didn’t regret the switch. Visible’s service began working after a day, and he pays $25 a month, down from the $70 that he used to pay for a Verizon plan. His wife also converted.

“Is it worth it?” he said. “We’re saving about $1,000 a year. I’ll deal with the hassle for that.”

Americans have long been conditioned to believe

Video

Kemp Powers, Mike Andrews On Pic’s Editing – Deadline

For co-director Kemp Powers, there were “a lot of MVPs” in the making of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. But if he were to pare down a list of “the MVPs of all the MVPs,” among them would be editor Mike Andrews.

After all, he says, Across the Spider-Verse might as well be titled Troubleshooting on the Fly, and given Andrews’ command of timing, tone and much more, no one was much more integral to the process of getting each story beat and reel across the finish line.

In conversation with Powers on The Process, Andrews recalls a wrap party chat with co-writer-producer Chris Miller, in which he was asked if the Sony Animation sequel was the most challenging film he’s ever tackled. Only Paramount/DreamWorks’ Megamind was harder, he replied, given time constraints that forced him to work with “walking pneumonia.” But Spider-Verse was certainly a “monster” of a project, given its volume of characters, sets and design work, and the amount of cooks in the kitchen behind the scenes.

“There was a lot going on at once, and that was definitely more widespread than I’m used to on movies,” Andrews explains. “I’m used to having it a little more funneled down to my room and a closer-knit group working on everything.” On this production, he says, he felt like “one of those old Johnny Carson guys, running around spinning plates.”

It was given these same factors, Powers says, that Across the Spider-Verse was “one of the most unique filmmaking experiences” of his career.

Co-directed with Joaquim Dos Santos and Justin K. Thompson, the film is the first of two sequels to the 2018 Best Animated Feature Oscar winner Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, starring Shameik Moore and Hailee Steinfeld as Brooklyn’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man, Miles Morales, and his love interest Gwen Stacy, respectively. Scripted by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller and David Callaham, the film picks up with the duo encountering a team of Spider-People charged with protecting the very existence of the multiverse, only for Morales to be catapulted through it. When the heroes clash on how to handle a new threat, Miles finds himself pitted against the other Spiders and must redefine what it means to be a hero so he can save the people he loves most.

Best known for his Oscar-nominated screenplay adaptation of his own play, One Night in Miami…, Powers entered the Spider-Verse after making his directorial debut opposite Pete Docter on Pixar’s Oscar winner Soul, which he also co-wrote. For Andrews, who spent 20 years at DreamWorks, equally challenging to his work on any particular project is the task of explaining what exactly he does.

“People [often] go, ‘What, do you just cut shots together that are already animated? I don’t get it,’” shares Andrews, who relays that the process of editorial in animation is actually much more multifaceted. Whereas editors working in live-action generally board a project in post, animation editors are aboard “from the get-go” for pre-production and production, as well. “Post-production is actually the most minor aspect of our job because it’s only the last couple months as we’re putting the film together,” he says. “Pre-production is the most important aspect of our job because that’s all the story phase, and we’re building the movie from scratch.”

Rather than cutting together completed animated shots, Powers explains, an editor like Andrews starts out by stitching together 2D storyboards and accompanying scratch voice performances. “We’re making versions of the film in 2D storyboard,” says the filmmaker, “and as things are working their way through production, they are dynamically dropping into the edit suite.”

What this often means for a director is that when a new iteration of a shot or sequence comes in, it’s immediately apparent that the overall picture is no longer gelling. “Conceptually, it worked in 2D storyboards,” he explains, “and then we see it in a rough 3D version and go ‘Oh, well, that’s different.’”

Editing a film like Across the Spider-Verse thus requires an extraordinary attention to detail all the way through. Andrews considers himself “lucky” that in the case of this film, he was given more latitude than usual to keep coming back to story as his North Star, workshopping scenes until they actually worked. “Even through production, we could change more things than you normally would,” he says. “Most studios try to lock you down, but I think [writer-producers] Phil [Lord] and Chris [Miller] have a little more power, and that’s how they like to work, and then we have to all kind of roll with that.”

In between countless test screenings of Spider-Verse, Andrews continued to play with elements like sound and music until the film as a whole felt like “a full, rich experience.”

Interestingly, while he was admittedly “blown away” by Into the Spider-Verse and came to the project with a great admiration of the original, it was actually a different set of films from Lord and Miller that sold him on taking the sequel. Those were the Jump Street comedies, starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, which he viewed for the first time while mulling his opportunity with Spider-Verse. After watching those titles, Andrews says, he “got such a great vibe from the Lord Miller experience. I was like, ‘There’s something about these guys’ movies that are different. There’s something very unique.’”

Now the highest-grossing film in the history of Sony Animation, Across the Spider-Verse was produced by Avi Arad, Amy Pascal, Lord, Miller, and Christina Steinberg. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman, Aditya Sood, Rebecca Karch, and Brian Bendis served as EPs. While threequel Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse was originally dated to hit theaters March 29, 2024, the title was temporarily pulled from the schedule given the inability to complete voiceover work amidst the SAG-AFTRA strike, and has not yet set a new date.

In addition to his path into animation editing, Andrews speaks on The Process to the Spidey scene in which he was “the most entrenched from day one,” why “heart’s the most crucial” element to understand for anyone cutting animation, a nerve-wracking data loss experience that resulted in his having to rebuild an entire scene, times throughout his career that he’s felt like “a ghost co-director,” DreamWorks-Pixar competition, and more.

View the full conversation above.

For co-director Kemp Powers, there were “a

Entertaintment

36 Hours in Acadiana, Louisiana: Things to Do and See

Explore Cajun Country, a region where French, Creole, Native American and African traditions come together in a cultural gumbo.

Explore Cajun Country, a region where French,

Movies

‘Best. Christmas. Ever!’ Review: Frenemies Rejoice

Heather Graham and Brandy play old friends who have a surprise reunion.

Heather Graham and Brandy play old friends

WATCH: Drake announces new album ‘Scary Hours 3’ is dropping at midnight

WATCH: Drake announces new album ‘Scary Hours

Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch, Disney Plus

MCU

First Look at Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch Return In Upcoming Phase 5 Show

The MCU’s final Phase 5 project of 2023 put Elizabeth Olsen back into the spotlight as the Scarlet Witch on Disney+.

Elizabeth Olsen has been notably absent from the MCU since her Wanda Maximoff appeared to bite the dust at the end of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, sacrificing herself to save the Multiverse.

However, she’s teased a potential comeback to the role on numerous occasions, almost guaranteeing that her story is not over even after that power move in Doctor Strange 2.

Elizabeth Olsen’s Return as Scarlet Witch on Disney+

Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch made her long-awaited return to the MCU in the first official trailer for Marvel Studios’ What If…? Season 2, the final MCU entry of 2023’s Phase 5 slate.

Marvel Studios

Wanda Maximoff is seen in her full Scarlet Witch costume raising a massive beam of red light from the ground with both Odin and the Watcher nearby as well as an unknown figure on a horse holding Loki’s scepter from The Avengers.

Scarlet Witch, Odin, the Watcher, What If...? — Marvel Studios

While it’s unclear exactly what she’s gotten herself into in this series, this confirms the character’s first appearance in the MCU since her live-action counterpart was the main villain in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Scarlet Witch, What If...? — Marvel Studios

It was also previously confirmed that Olsen will voice the Scarlet Witch in What If…?, even though other major MCU characters have been recast for the animated series.

The full trailer can be seen below:

What Is Scarlet Witch Doing in What If…? Season 2?

Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch is only in frame for a few seconds of this 2-minute-21-second trailer, leaving many fans to wonder exactly what will become of the character.

In Season 1, Wanda was only featured heavily in the zombie-centric Episode 5, with Vision attempting to contain her as she unleashed her power on the Avengers in undead form.

Series director Bryan Andrews previously teased that Season 2 will “get a little bit wackier” for certain characters, which is sure to happen with Wanda Maximoff considering how powerful she is in both live-action and animation.

And with dozens of potential new characters in play, as Olsen finally returns to her fan-favorite role, all bets are on the table for what this dangerous superhero could encounter across space and time.

What If…? Season 2 will begin streaming on Disney+ on December 22.

DCU

Plot Details & Everything We Know

Summary

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is a chance for the character to finally get the justice she deserves after the critical failure of the 1984 movie and a made-for-TV series.
Ana Nogueira’s hiring as the screenwriter for the film supports the idea that her take on Supergirl is promising and unique, especially after the reconfiguration of the DCEU into the DC Universe.
The movie will likely have a more intense and unexpected plot, based on James Gunn’s description of Supergirl as a character who has witnessed death and destruction before coming to Earth, and the potential involvement of Superman adds further intrigue.

After James Gunn became co-CEO of DC Studios with Peter Safran, he made huge moves signaling a more exciting future for DC, which included the announcement of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow for the DC Universe. Ever since 2013’s Man of Steel, the DCEU has faced tonal and behind the scenes issues. Many of the DCEU’s releases couldn’t have been more different, whether it was completely bleak outings like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice or popcorn flicks like Aquaman. But the DC Universe provides a new way forward for the superhero franchise, especially since Gunn seemingly has a clear overarching vision for the franchise, which includes a long-awaited Supergirl film installment among other upcoming DC movies.

Supergirl might not be the most famous DC superhero, but the character has never gotten the justice she deserves, as the 1984 movie was a critical disaster and a box office bomb (via Box Office Mojo). And while she has had a small-screen hit, as the CW series Supergirl lasted for six seasons, that was very much a made-for-TV production. As such, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is a great chance for the hero and her story to come to life, capitalizing on the character’s history to further flesh out the DC Universe’s Chapter 1.

Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow Latest News

November 2023 brings the latest news for Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow, with James Gunn revealing that Ana Nogueira is the screenwriter for the movie, stating that, “Ana is an amazing writer whose screenplay adaptation of Woman of Tomorrow is above and beyond anything I hoped it would be. We’re excited to be moving forward on this unique take on Supergirl in this beautiful, star-spanning tale.” Nogueira originally was set to write a script for a Supergirl movie after the events of The Flash, which introduced Sasha Calle’s iteration of the DC hero. However, this was eventually canceled with the reconfiguration of the DCEU into the DC Universe – which makes Nogueira being hired as the writer for Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow all the more notable, as it certainly supports the idea that the writer’s take on Supergirl is especially promising.

Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow Confirmed

In January 2023, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow was confirmed by James Gunn along with many other DCU movies and shows. The slate will also include Superman: Legacy, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Swamp Thing, and many others, which will be part of DCU Chapter 1: God and Monsters. Gunn’s list might not be in the order of when they enter production, but Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow sits between Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Swamp Thing. That makes it the perfect palette cleanser between two darker releases, as Gunn promises Swamp Thing to be “a horror movie.”

The release date for Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is currently unknown. While nothing official has been confirmed by Warner Bros., estimates for the movie see it expected to come out sometime in 2027 (via Collider), as there are some indicators that point to that year. Not only has he mapped out a 10-year plan, but Gunn will also write and direct Superman: Legacy, which will reboot the superhero. The filmmaker explained that the studio tasked him with an ambitious 2025 release in mind. As there are several DCU movies between Superman: Legacy and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, a two-year gap is a favorable forecast that could hold true should the franchise’s early installments have relatively smooth sailing.

Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow Cast

Supergirl, along with most other upcoming DCU roles, hasn’t been officially cast yet. The Supergirl actor in The Flash is Sasha Calle, who must have impressed executives at Warner Bros. given that she has an instrumental role in the blockbuster movie. Even though The Flash was produced before Gunn was co-CEO of DC Studios, it could make sense to keep Calle as Supergirl, as Gunn is keeping other actors from previous DC movies, and the actor’s role in The Flash was decided short. However, this could also confuse audiences – and tie the DC Universe to the much-lambasted DCEU movie – so there is also a very real chance the new DCU Supergirl will be an entirely new face.

Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow Story Details

supergirl woman of tomorrow coming to the new dcu slate

While Supergirl sounds like a more light-hearted movie compared to Batman: The Brave and the Bold and Swamp Thing, it could be exactly the opposite. Based on James Gunn’s comments about Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow when he confirmed its development, the movie’s story has a real chance of being some of the DCU’s more intense viewing. Gunn explained that audiences will see “Supergirl, raised on a rock, a chip off of Krypton, and who watched everyone around her die and be killed in terrible ways for the first 14 years of her life and then come to Earth.” Gunn added that she’s “not the Supergirl we’re used to.” This raises a lot of potential for the movie, as it suggests the plot could go in directions viewers may not be expecting beforehand.

Gunn also overtly referenced comic book writer Tom King who created the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic book, meaning that the movie will likely be heavily based on the story. The comic book, which was published as recently as 2022, is considered some of the best material about the superhero. It follows Supergirl, who is contacted by an alien girl who had her entire planet destroyed and wants revenge on the people that destroyed it. And as has become typical of Gunn’s movies, the comic book features a cute, supernatural animal, meaning Krypto the dog has a very real chance of featuring in the DCU film.

Though it is unlikely that Supergirl will be in James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy, there’s a small chance that Superman could have some kind of involvement in the events of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. In the same blurb given by Gunn about this movie, the writer/director also mentioned the Man of Steel, noting, “We will see the difference between Superman, who was sent to Earth and raised by loving parents from the time he was an infant, versus Supergirl.” It isn’t clear whether Gunn is simply referring to how the character will be different from Superman or if they’ll actually share the screen, though either avenue holds real potential for both characters and the new world they will inhabit.

Key Release Dates

Summary Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Comics

PlayStation Plus Extra And Premium Games For November Are Here

A new group of games is coming to PlayStation Plus’ Extra and Premium tiers from Tuesday November 21. One new title is already available, and it’s a day-one drop for PlayStation Plus: Teardown, a demolition heist game which is available to Extra and Premium subscribers from November 15.

As a day one title, Teardown is PlayStation’s headline game for the month. The demolition sandbox game launched on PC last year, but is brand new to the PS5, coming to PS Plus Extra and Premium on the same day it launched. Teardown is the only November game that is solely for the PS5.

Both Premium and Extra subscribers will also be getting Superliminal, a clever and surreal puzzle game for the PS4 and PS5. The titles for PS4 players include critically acclaimed RPG Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, and Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition, a remastered version of the original title that includes all previously released DLC.

As always, there’s a handful of classics for Premium subscribers to enjoy. Iconic PS1 RPG Grandia will be added for both PS4 and PS5 players, or for something a little different, quirky PS2 game PaRappa the Rapper 2 will be added for PS4.

Check out the whole list of games that will be added on November 21 below.

November’s free games for PlayStation Plus Essential subscribers were added on November 7, and include Mafia 2 Definitive Edition, Aliens Fireteam Elite, and Dragon Ball: The Breakers.

PlayStation Plus Premium And Extra Games For November 2023

Teardown (PS5)
Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (PS4)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme vs. Maxi Boost On (PS4)
Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition (PS4)
Superliminal (PS4, PS5)
Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising (PS4, PS5)
Nobunaga’s Ambition: Taishi (PS4)
Alternate Jake Hunter: Daedalus The Awakening of Golden Jazz (PS4)
River City Melee Mach!! (PS4)

PlayStation Plus Premium Classics For October 2023

Grandia (PS4, PS5)
Jet Moto (PS4, PS5)
Up (PS4, PS5)
Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series (PS4/PS5)
PaRappa the Rapper 2 (PS4)

The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 11: Martin Scorsese (L) and Francesca Scorsese attend "Fish Out of Water" during Shorts: Misdirection at the 2023 Tribeca Festival at Village East Cinema on June 11, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Rob Kim/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)

Festivals

Martin Scorsese ‘Tricked Into’ Making Viral TikToks With Daughter

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese has recently found himself in the role of a lifetime: starring in TikToks posted by his 24-year-old daughter, Francesca.

The short videos, which have ranged from Scorsese guessing slang words like “simp” and “sneaky link” to his most recent outing ranking films via the app’s movie bracket feature, have taken the internet by storm and endeared the “Killers of the Flower Moon” director to a Gen Z audience. But, in a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Scorsese insisted his TikTok fame has been a happy accident.

“I was tricked into that,” Scorsese said of the movie bracket TikTok, which saw him choose “Birdman” over “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” much to the internet’s entertainment. “That was a trick. I didn’t know those things go viral. They say ‘viral.’ I didn’t know.”

Scorsese went on to explain how filming a TikTok with his daughter usually occurs, saying: “I’m at home doing things and she comes up to me and says, ‘Dad, look over here and tell me this.’ So I’m in my pajamas … She said, ‘Well it’s a thing they’re doing.’ Who’s ‘they?’ She says, ‘Everybody’s doing it. It’s a thing called TikTok.’ ‘All right. All right.’ I mean, the one we did with the dog, that was known.”

Scorsese is referring to a particularly artful TikTok in which he appears to be casting his latest muse, until the camera turns around to reveal his dog on the other side of the lens. But most of the time, Scorsese said he is unaware that these videos are going to be posted.

“That I didn’t know was going to go up,” Scorsese told the L.A. Times of his most recent TikTok. “I was just doing it in the other room with her. I don’t know what they’re going to do. They always have those iPhone cameras in their hands. You’re not aware. I honestly did not know she was going to post it.” He then paused before asking, “They use the words ‘post it,’ right?”

However, Scorsese appreciates Francesca’s vision, adding: “I will say that my daughter has a good eye.”

Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese has recently found

Film

Reelgood shares the streaming stats from Nov. 2-8 and Netflix rules again

Everyone loves to stream on the weekends. It’s just the nature of the beast and Reelgood always has our backs.

Whether you’re looking for something new to stream or want to see what’s trending, the site has the data you’re looking for. This week’s Top 10 is honestly such a mixed bag and I’m so surprised to see some favorites have shifted within the past week.

Before getting into the Top 10, there is one takeaway I’ve realized and it’s that Netflix is at the top of its game right now. There are so many Netflix projects within this list including All The Light We Cannot See. Season 1 of the series is the #1 most-streamed item from this past week.

Moving onto the next few picks, #2 is from Hulu and that’s A Haunting in Venice which is an adaptation of an Agatha Christie work. Even though Halloween is in the rearview for now, a lot of people are still celebrating Halloween, and rightfully so.

See the rest of the top 10 streamed list from Reelgood.

Coming in at the #3 spot is Apple TV’s Lessons in Chemistry. This doesn’t come as any surprise as the series is based on a book and a lot of people loved that. Plus it stars Brie Larson. Then at #4 on the list is Five Nights at Freddy’s which is on Peacock and still remains a much-discussed project.

These next three projects are all from Netflix and that’s crazy to think about. #5 is The Fall of the House of Usher which is another adaptation turned series. Bodies continues its reign at #6 which is a crime mini-series following 4 different timelines. Then at #7, it’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse which is a recent addition to the catalog and one fans have been waiting for.

Rounding out the list are some we’ve seen in the past but worth a mention. At the #8 spot, we have Yellowstone which is on Peacock and #9 is No Hard Feelings which is the raunchcom featuring Jennifer Lawrence on Netflix. Last but not least is Gen V which is obviously on Amazon Prime. Given that The Boys is coming back next year, some fans are getting caught up on Gen V while they have the chance.

Ultimately, this is another week of Netflix absolutely dominating this list. It looks like a majority of people are going to be on Netflix this week. Of course, it’s always fun to look and see which streaming services take the cake each week. This week, it’s Netflix but next week could be an entirely different story.

What will you be streaming this weekend? Make sure to check out Reelgood for some fun suggestions.

Published on 11/12/2023 at 7:00 AM EST
Last updated on 11/12/2023 at 7:00 AM EST

Everyone loves to stream on the

Is Jack Nicholson Retired? James L. Brooks Doesn’t ‘Buy’ It – IndieWire

Thirteen years after last appearing onscreen, and Jack Nicholson might still be open to working.

The Oscar winner most recently starred in 2010 rom-com “How Do You Know,” directed by his “Terms of Endearment” helmer James L. Brooks decades after first collaborating on the 1983 drama. Brooks told The Wrap that despite rumors, Nicholson is not retired.

“I don’t think he’s retired,” Brooks said. “I don’t buy that he’s retired.”

He continued, “I remember there was once a friend of mine who one of these raging, alcoholic-driven arguments [with me] about who was the greatest actor at the time. This was at Dustin Hoffman’s height and everything like that. I’m saying Jack Nicholson. He’s saying Dustin Hoffman. I went with [Nicholson] because I said Jack could play either in ‘The Odd Couple.’”

Brooks called it “miracle casting” that Nicholson starred in “Terms of Endearment,” thanks to actress Debra Winger who gave Nicholson the script. Nicholson won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his turn in the film. Brooks also told IndieWire that in the 40 years since the film’s release, “Terms of Endearment” is now viewed as a drama after first being received in theaters as a comedy.

“As an audience picture, it clocked its laughs,” Brooks said. “Now when people see it at home, it plays much more as a drama because you don’t have that collective audience. It’s a different movie, but not the movie I intended.”

Nicholson is among the most-awarded actors in his profession, landing three wins and 12 nominations at the Academy Awards. In his later years, the “Batman” alum opted for lighter roles in “The Bucket List” and “How Do You Know,” citing post-9/11 fears.

“I’ve been doing this long enough that I can kind of decide like a regular, other kind of artist, ‘This is what I’m going to do,’ and the shock effect on me of 9/11 just made me feel immediately that I didn’t want to do anything too challenging or depressing,” the “Shining” actor told LiveAbout.com on his work post-2001. “I’ve done that. I just felt like I wanted to comedy. I want to uplift not only people, but myself, and once I got started with it, it’s very difficult, comedy. I’m now in the Oscar Wilde school of dying is easy and comedy is difficult.”

Nicholson’s last dramatic role was in Best Picture Oscar-winning “The Departed” in 2006.

“That might be the biggest misconception about me. I’ve always been a romantic,” the “Something’s Gotta Give” actor told LiveAbout.com. “I’m a deep, sentimental romantic.”

As Nicholson retreated from the spotlight after his last most recent film in 2010, his former “Easy Rider” co-star Peter Fonda claimed to Page Six in 2017 that Nicholson was quietly retiring. Nicholson’s son Ray Nicholson, meanwhile, has landed breakout roles in Amazon’s “Panic,” Academy Award-winning “Promising Young Woman,” and the upcoming “Gonzo Girl” adaptation.

Thirteen years after last appearing onscreen, and

What to Watch

Is ‘Best. Christmas. Ever!’ on Netflix? Where to Watch the Movie

Netflix subscription is required to watch on Netflix

Great news! “Best. Christmas. Ever!” is available to watch on Netflix USA!

Date Added: 16th November 2023

Want to keep forever? Try looking for ‘Best. Christmas. Ever!’ on Amazon (paid link)

Description:

After a twist of fate brings their families together for Christmas, Charlotte sets out to prove her old friend Jackie’s life is too good to be true.

Certificate: TV-PG
Parental Guidance suggested

Year: 2023

Duration: 1hr 21m

Audio: German – Audio Description, German, English – Audio Description, English [Original], Spanish (Latin America) – Audio Description, Spanish (Latin America), French – Audio Description, French, Italian – Audio Description, Italian

Subtitles: English, Spanish (Latin America), French, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese

– English Audio Description

Cast and Crew

Director: Mary Lambert

Cast: Heather Graham, Brandy Norwood, Jason Biggs, Matt Cedeño, Wyatt Hunt, Abby Villasmil, Madison Skye Validum

Production & Box Office Details:

“Best. Christmas. Ever!” was originally released in 2023.

RATINGS:

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DISCUSS ON…:
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Available on Netflix USA!

Netflix subscription is required to watch on Netflix

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Want to keep forever? Why not rent or buy ‘Best. Christmas. Ever!’ from one of the online services below?

Alec Baldwin's role in an on-set death on "Rust" highlighted the issue of crew safety.

Awards

Alec Baldwin Seen Firing Prop Guns, Advising on Safety in New ‘Rust’ Video

New footage of Alec Baldwin firing prop guns and advising crew members on firearm safety on the set of “Rust” has been released by NBC News one day before a grand jury is set to consider new involuntary manslaughter charges against the actor in connection to the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

The five videos, which total about seven minutes in length and which you can watch above, show Baldwin rehearsing scenes while firing the guns loaded with blanks and, in two videos, asking some crew members to move for safety reasons. The videos were recorded days before a gun being held by Baldwin fired a live round, killing Hutchins and wounding “Rust” director Joel Souza.

According to NBC News, the videos are just a few of dozens of videos on the “Rust” set that special prosecutors for the Santa Fe District Attorney’s office received last month. On Oct. 17, prosecutors Kari Morrisey and Jason Lewis announced their intent to recharge Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter after dropping the charges this past April. Baldwin could face up to 18 months in prison if convicted.

Baldwin has maintained his innocence since first speaking out about the incident in an ABC News interview in December 2021, arguing that he was told that the gun was not loaded by assistant director Dave Halls and that he did not pull the trigger when it discharged. A forensics analysis of the gun conducted by federal investigators determined that the gun could not have fired without a trigger pull.

Halls pleaded no contest in March to a misdemeanor charge of negligent use of a deadly weapon and will serve six months of unsupervised probation. The production’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is also facing charges of involuntary manslaughter to which she has pleaded not guilty. Gutierrez-Reed’s trial is set to begin on Feb. 21.

hannah gutierrez reed rust alec baldwin halyna hutchins

New footage of Alec Baldwin firing prop

Music

‘The Stones and Brian Jones’ Review: Sympathy for a Founding Rocker

There’s a particular indignity to being dropped from the band you founded.

In the annals of tragic pop mythology, Brian Jones’s ejection from the Rolling Stones has continued to reverberate long past his exit; Jones died at home in England just one month later, at age 27, in July 1969. Nick Broomfield’s latest documentary, “The Stones and Brian Jones,” looks back at Jones’s rise and fall, lingering on the intra-band power plays and fast living that helped bring him down.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards today enjoy rock immortality, but Broomfield underlines Jones’s crucial strand in the Stones’ DNA. Jones’s love for blues set a fire burning in the band’s soul, even as it shifted gears musically. The Stones bassist Bill Wyman is on hand to praise (and sweetly act out) his bandmate’s inspired instrumental touch, from slide guitar work to his fluttering recorder on “Ruby Tuesday.”

But the interviews (many audio-only) lean decisively into Jones’s personal instability. His rebellious streak led his family to throw him out; later, he fathered children by multiple women. The tender twist to this film is that some of his exes — who included Anita Pallenberg and Zouzou, the French actress — help narrate much of his drug-aided decline, most with fondness. Zouzou Gallically muses that Jones pursued women who resembled him though he disliked himself.

Despite Broomfield’s having made investigative docs about Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, and Biggie and Tupac, he doesn’t reopen the case of Jones’s drowning. His announcer-like voice-over and sometimes dishy interviews might evoke a “Behind the Music” exposé, but he seems most like a fan with a rueful sympathy for his devil of a subject.

The Stones and Brian Jones
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.

There’s a particular indignity to being dropped

Docs

Hanging Gardens (Janain mualaqa) Featured, Reviews Film Threat

Hanging Gardens (Janain mualaqa) is the feature-length debut of writer-director Ahmed Yassin Aldaradji. The drama, set in Baghdad’s dumps, was co-written with Margaret Glover. These trash dunes, locally referred to as the hanging gardens, play home to the poverty-stricken who eke out a living sifting through the rubbish to sell to others.

Such is the life of 12-year-old As’ad (Hussain Muhammad Jalil) and his 20-something brother Taha (Wissam Diyaa). As the two dredge the piles upon piles of refuse, they locate anything that can be reused and take it to a less-than-reputable businessman. One day, instead of finding the usual bits of magazines or jewelry, As’ad comes across a fair-skinned, blonde sex doll. Taha hates it, but his sibling is entranced. Responding to an ultimatum, As’ad converts an abandoned tank into his new home, where he proceeds to take care of the sex doll by cleaning it.

Then As’ad, with prodding from a friend, sets up a brothel to make money. In short order, there’s a line of men paying for time with the sex doll, which the young man treats with much reverence. However, he lives in a country known for strict moral stances, which jeopardizes this makeshift business as soon as it begins. Why is As’ad so drawn to the doll? What will having it do to him and his family?

“…As’ad comes across a fair-skinned, blonde sex doll.”

Hanging Gardens is filled with stunning imagery juxtaposing the filth of the leads’ lives and the beauty of their hometown. Duraid Munajim’s camera gracefully moves through the mountains of garbage to highlight what’s special about these people and this place. The underbelly of repression has rarely looked so appealing, even though trash is a major part of the film. When As’ad begs a bystander to help him pick up and take away the doll, the lighting perfectly captures the mood as the camera zooms in to show how the main character’s world is forever changing.

Jalil showcases a wide range of emotions throughout the 97-minute runtime (note: all sources, including IMDb and the submission page, list this at 117 minutes. However, those final 20 minutes are just a black screen, not even credits, just a blank, black screen). The tender way he bathes the doll highlights a sweet disposition that makes As’ad an excellent lead. Diyaa’s desperation is evident from his first scene to his last.

Suad Bushnaq’s score is excellent. When the squeeze becomes too tight, the music plays into the confusion and frustration As’ad feels. By the time Hanging Gardens reaches its inevitable and tragic conclusion, the viewers begin to believe the sex doll is real. That is proof the film hits every intended mark.

Hanging Gardens (Janain mualaqa) is the feature-length debut

Global

How to Say No | TIME

There’s a common malfunction that occurs when well-intentioned people open their mouths to say no: The word “yes” tumbles out instead.

We’ve all been there, says Vanessa Bohns, department chair and professor of organizational behavior at Cornell University. No is a deceptively short, simple word that can trigger several layers of anxiety for the person trying to say it. For starters: What does it reveal about our character? “We worry that we’re essentially communicating that we’re not a helpful person; we’re not a nice, kind person; we’re not a team player,” Bohns says. “We’re too lazy to take something on, or we don’t want to work hard.”

At the same time, she adds, we’re likely stressing over how that “no” might offend the other person, and what it conveys about our relationship with them. As Bohns puts it, you might think “it’s telling the person, ‘Your standing with me is not what you thought it was. We’re not actually that close.’” In reality, however, such concerns are often overblown.

In fact, there’s an array of benefits associated with learning to say no. “If you’re saying yes to everything, people are more likely to ask you again and again,” says Bohns, who’s the author of You Have More Influence Than You Think. “You wind up being the person who gets all the asks, and that can lead to burnout, problems with work-life balance, feeling like you’re being taken advantage of, and a loss of autonomy.” Plus, an inability to say no could cause priorities such as hobbies, relationships, or projects to suffer. “Each time we say yes to something, we’re implicitly saying no to something else,” Bohns points out.

Saying no with conviction begins with having a clear sense of what is and isn’t worth your time. That can become fuzzy, especially given social pressure and the weight of obligation. Gain clarity by utilizing a simple cost-benefit framework, suggests Vanessa Patrick, associate dean for research at the Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, and author of The Power of Saying No. Essentially, you’ll weigh the costs of saying yes for you against the benefits for the other person, and then make a judgment.

Some requests, for example, will be easy for you to do and confer great benefit to the asker. Writing letters of recommendation falls into this category for Patrick. “As a professor, it’s relatively easy to do—but the benefit to my students is huge. They could get into the college of their dreams,” she says. Others will require a lot of work on your end, and not mean a great deal to the people on the other side. “I call these ‘bake your famous lasagna’ asks,” she says. Imagine you’re invited to a dinner party, and someone asks you to make a fancy dish that calls for hours of preparation. “Yes, it might be delicious, and it might be something you’re famous for, but it’s going to be on the table with everybody else’s store-bought cookies,” she says. It’s not worth the time—so say no with oomph.

If that still makes you shudder with dread, remember that practice helps. Experts say these strategies can help you get better at saying no.

Be intentional about what you communicate.

You might have heard the tip that “no” is a complete sentence. Sure—but as Bohns points out, leaving it at that is often pretty uncomfortable. Instead, she advises communicating three things: “It’s not because of me, it’s not because of you, and it’s not because of us.”

One way to do that is by thanking people for thinking of you—which reassures them that they didn’t do anything wrong by asking. Then, follow-up with a short explanation: “I wish I could, but I just don’t have the time right now.” That helps make it clear that your “no” isn’t a poor reflection of your own character (you would do it); it’s not the other person (you appreciate the ask); and it’s not an indictment of the relationship (it’s simply circumstantial), Bohns says.

Have a planned phrase for more casual encounters.

Not every situation, of course, calls for such a thoughtful approach. Think through times when you’ve gotten stressed over delivering a quick “no,” and then brainstorm phrases you could use in the future. Bohns, for example, is often asked to donate to some cause or another as she checks out at the grocery store. She now has a go-to response: “I already donated this year.” “It’s true, and it’s a way of saying, essentially, that I’m still a good person,” she says. Having a planned phrase in mind makes these potentially awkward scenarios much more comfortable.

Buy time.

If you tend to accidentally say yes whenever you’re put on the spot, find ways to buy time. You might say, for example: “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you,” Bohns suggests. Or: “Let me check and I’ll respond by email.” That way, you can spend time privately processing the request, making a mindful decision, and if necessary, declining in whatever format is most palatable, whether that’s electronically or in person.

Be matter of fact.

Delivery is everything when you’re saying no. Aim to be matter of fact, advises Ellen Hendriksen, a clinical psychologist and author of How to Be Yourself. That means not over-apologizing or otherwise acting as though you’re doing something wrong. “If we signal that this is no big deal, and we’d like to help but can’t, that sets the tone for a more neutral interaction,” she says. One way to do that: “I counsel students to ask difficult questions in the same tone of voice they would use to order a sandwich,” she says. That strategy can be applied to saying no, too. You can’t help your sister-in-law’s second cousin move into her new apartment? Treat it like you’re ordering a tuna sub, hold the mayo.

Adopt the broken-record technique.

There’s always that one guy who won’t take no for an answer. If someone is applying undue pressure, utilize what Hendriksen describes as the broken-record technique. “It’s sticking to your answer—giving the same answer again and again,” she says. “You don’t have to be soulless about it; you can empathize and be polite. But it’s important not to let your no evolve into a ‘maybe’ or an ‘OK, just this once.’” Occasionally, the asker will get irritated, she adds—but usually after two or three times repeating yourself, even the most persistent people will get the message.

Reinforce your message with body language.

It’s important to align your body language with what you’re saying verbally. That could mean smiling, leaning forward, or parting with a hug to make it clear that your no is about you and not a rejection of the other person, Patrick says. “It will help you come across much more persuasively in your refusal,” she says. Meanwhile, aim to avoid body language that indicates you’re nervous or vulnerable; for example, by averting eye contact.

Carry a visual reminder of why your “no” matters.

If you say yes to that committee at work, or to bringing two dozen cupcakes to book club, what will you miss out on? Bohns suggests carrying an inspirational photo that serves as a reminder. “It could be your dog; it could be your kid,” she says. “It could be some hobby that you love.” Put it near your computer or phone, and when you really don’t want to do something—but feel obligated to say yes—it will give you strength. Pick it up and remember: “If I say yes to this, I’m basically saying no to when my daughter asks me if we have some free time to read a book later.”

Ask people questions in a way that allows them to say no.

As you fine-tune your “no” skills, consider making it easier for other people to decline your requests, too. It benefits both parties, Bohns points out: Most of us would prefer to receive one final no than to have someone say yes—only to bail at the last minute. Because it’s difficult for people to say no when they’re put on the spot, especially in face-to-face situations, word your request in a way that allows them time to think about it. When discussing a project with her grad students, for example, she often says: “I think you might like this project, but I don’t want you to feel pressure. Sleep on it, and then shoot me an email.”

Bohns’ unpublished research suggests that when making a request, we often say, “You can totally say no.” But the people we’re talking to know that—the problem is they can’t figure out how to say it. One solution, then, is to give them the words to do so. For example, you might put it like this: “If you don’t want to do it, just say you can’t right now.” “Basically give them a phrase that’s acceptable to say back to you,” Bohns says. “Like, ‘Here’s some words I will accept as a no.’ We’ve found that makes people more comfortable.”

There’s a common malfunction that occurs when

YouTube AI Dream Track - Demi Lovato, John Legend, Charlie Puth

Trending

AI Music Generator Mimics Singers for Shorts

Is it real — or is it YouTube‘s robot singer copying a pop star’s vocal stylings?

YouTube announced new AI music experiments it has been developing with Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence lab. The most interesting (and possibly most disorienting) of YouTube’s AI tests is Dream Track in YouTube Shorts. Here’s how it works: A user types an idea into the creation prompt and selects a participating artist, then voilà — it produces an original song snippet up to 30 seconds in length featuring the AI-generated voice of that artist.

YouTube is working with nine artists who have agreed to collaborate on the Dream Track experiment: Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain and Troye Sivan.

“The development of AI technology is rapidly changing the way we navigate the landscape and I believe as artists we need to be a part of shaping what that future looks like,” Lovato said. “My career has been about pushing boundaries of and creating the most interesting music for my fans. I am open minded and hopeful that this experiment with Google and YouTube will be a positive and enlightening experience.”

Dream Track is powered by Lyria, Google DeepMind’s “most advanced music-generation model to date,” according to the video platform. Currently, Dream Track and YouTube’s other early AI music tools are “only available to a small group of artists and creators,” YouTube said, adding that it’s encouraging “feedback to inform future products and tools.”

“At this initial phase, the experiment is designed to help explore how the technology could be used to create deeper connections between artists and creators, and ultimately, their fans,” YouTube head of music Lyor Cohen and Toni Reid, VP of emerging experiences and community products, wrote in a blog post Thursday.

Here’s an example YouTube released of a “Charlie Puth” melodic phrase generated based on the prompt, “A ballad about how opposites attract, upbeat acoustic”:

And here’s the snippet that Dream Track created for T-Pain, based on the text input “A sunny morning in Florida, R&B”:

In a statement provided by YouTube, Puth said: “I’m extremely excited and inspired… YouTube has been a great partner in outlining their approach to AI and understands the need to work together to develop this technology responsibly, ensuring it will accelerate creativity instead of replacing it.”

For his part, T-Pain was quoted as saying: “I have always been about pushing the boundaries of technology and harnessing it to make the most interesting music for my fans. Who knows what the future holds but joining hands with YouTube + Google to help shape that future feels like a great first step.”

The use of AI to mimic artists’ voices and styles has been fraught: Earlier this year, Universal Music Group filed copyright-infringement claims to remove an AI-generated song from YouTube and other platforms called “Heart on My Sleeve” that sounded like a collaboration between Drake and the Weeknd — neither of whom was involved with the song.

In a video about the new AI experiments, Cohen (who is the former head of Warner Music Group) called out another tool — one that lets you sing a few bars of melody to create a horn section.

“The potential of AI is incredibly exciting,” Cohen said. “But with any new technology, we have to approach it responsibly and that’s not lost on us. It starts by recognizing that artificial intelligence is meant to amplify human creativity — not replace it.” He cited YouTube’s recently released statement of principles in working with the music industry on AI.

On the guardrails front, this week YouTube announced new policies requiring creators to indicate when they’ve uploaded AI-generated content and said it will introduce new ways to request the removal of content on YouTube that “simulates an identifiable individual” or “mimics an artist’s unique singing or rapping voice” without permission.

Watch YouTube’s sizzle reel on AI tools for music:

Pictured above (l. to r.): Demi Lovato, John Legend, Charlie Puth

Is it real — or is it

Tech

Strong Box Office Helps Alibaba’s Film, Music Units Cut Losses

Alibaba, China’s e-commerce and entertainment giant, revealed a 9% revenue improvement and a return to profits in the three months to the end of September, the second quarter of its financial year.

The group, which is in the process of breaking itself up into six separate businesses, had revenue of RMB225 billion ($30.8 billion). Net income of RMB26.7 billion ($3.66 billion) compared with a net loss of RMB22.5 billion in the same period last year. But the group explained that this bottom-line swing largely reflected revaluation of its investment assets – down a year ago, and up again in the July-September quarter.

Using Alibaba’s preferred analysis of profitability, non-GAAP net income, the group recorded a 19% improvement in profits. Non-GAAP net income rose from RMB33.8 billion a year ago to RMB40.1 billion ($5.51 billion) this time around. And it is confident enough to announce a maiden 2023 dividend.

Revenue at the digital media and entertainment segment was RMB5.779 billion ($792 million) in the quarter, an increase of 11% compared to RMB5,228 million in the same quarter of 2022. This was primarily driven by the strong revenue growth of offline entertainment businesses of Damai and Alibaba Pictures.

Streaming service Youku enjoyed an increase in Youku’s subscription revenue, but this was partly offset by the decrease in Youku’s advertising revenue. The group does not disclose Youku’s subscription numbers, but analysts consider it to be the third largest of China’s premium video streamers, behind Tencent Video and iQiyi.

The segment saw “adjusted EBITA” losses reduce in the quarter, to RMB201 million ($28 million), compared to a loss of RMB362 million in the same quarter of 2022.

The entertainment segment benefitted from the recovery of offline entertainment market and strong demand in the summer. Ticket sales business Damai improved its profitability year-over-year. In August, Damai and Youku jointly sold tickets for pop group TFBoys’ 10th anniversary concert, for offline performance and online broadcasting, respectively. The online broadcast attracted more than 1.68 million viewers and 100 million interactions.

China’s box office surged during the summer. Alibaba Pictures was involved as co-producer of hit live action films “No More Bets” and “Lost in the Stars.” It was also a co-producer and distributor on the year’s biggest animation film “Chang’an.”

While there was no word on a possible re-organization of the digital entertainment and media group (parts of which lie outside the Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed Alibaba Pictures), Alibaba said that it had abandoned plans to spin off its cloud intelligence group.

It explained that the new U.S. restrictions on advanced computer chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment, announced in October, will dent the unit’s ability to fulfil existing cloud computing contracts. Additionally, “these new restrictions may also affect our businesses more generally by limiting our ability to upgrade our technological capabilities,” the group said in a regulatory filing.

Alibaba, China’s e-commerce and entertainment giant, revealed

Video

Watch Trailer For South African Drama ‘Trompoppie’ – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s an exclusive trailer for Trompoppie, the latest Afrikaans language drama from African streamer Showmax.

The series, which premieres on December 7, follows Luna, a talented gymnast, who is awarded a bursary to a prestigious private school she could never afford, and thrust into the cut-throat world of an elite group of drum majorettes, aka ‘trompoppies.’ After a hazing ritual goes badly wrong, cheerleaders start turning up dead and the seemingly perfect facade of the community begins to crumble.

In the trailer, we see Luna (Melissa Myburgh) agreeing to spend a year on the drum team, with things quickly going from bad to worse as people begin turning up dead, with threatening letters revealing a series killer is on the loose.

Trompoppie is the first Showmax Original from South African Film and Television Award and Silwerskerm-winning writer and director Etienne Fourie (Stiekyt, Die Windpomp, Tydelik Terminaal) and Homebrew Films, the maker of 2023 Silwerskerm winner Magda Louw, is producing. MultiChoice has international sales rights.

Stian Bam (The Story of Racheltjie de Beer, Donkerbos) appears alongside Mybirgh as Luna’s widowed father. Marion Holm (Suidooster) plays an ageing soap star who discovers Luna, arranges her bursary and takes her under her wing. Albert Maritz (Alles Malan) plays her husband and Celeste Loots (One Piece) and teenage newcomer Luca Human play their children. Frank Opperman (G.I.L., Nêrens, Noord-Kaap), Braeden Buys (Spinners), Daneel van der Walt (Recipes for Love and Murder, Nêrens, Noord-Kaap), Armand Aucamp (One Piece), Cantona James, Jane de Wet (The Girl From St. Agnes, Griekwastad, Spoorloos), Elzet Nel (Vaselinetjie, Magda Louw) and Zandelle Meyer (Binnelanders) also appear.

“It’s a wild ride but it’s entertainment, pure and simple, a whodunnit made to keep you on the edge of your seat, to get you excited to be the first to know what’s going to happen next before your friends and colleagues,” said Fourie, who designed Trompoppie to appeal to a wider audience than his Tallin Black Nights Film Festival arthouse project Stiekyt. “I wanted my mother to be able to watch it, my sisters, my friends: anyone should be able to watch it and be surprised and entertained.”

Siekyt is among his films on Showmax.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s an exclusive trailer for Trompoppie,

Entertaintment

‘Gossip Girl’ (2021) Season 1, Episode 7: “Once Upon a Time in the Upper West” | Decider

By Angela Tricarico

Where some shows make a tradition out of Christmas or Halloween episodes, Gossip Girl‘s Thanksgiving episodes were always the standouts — full of over-the-top drama, secrets coming to light, and more than a few brutal revelations — and the 2021 reboot was no exception. “Once Upon a Time in the Upper West” is the reboot’s one and only Thanksgiving episode, but it left an impression. Like the best Thanksgiving episodes of OG, “Once Upon a Time in the Upper West” reaches a point where nearly everybody, including Gossip Girl herself, are sitting around the same dinner table despite all the interpersonal drama going on: Julien and Obie have just hooked up again despite their breakup, Max is parent-trapping his separated dads into getting back together, Julien’s dad is keeping a few secrets of his own, and Aki is dealing with the aftermath of being outed by his dad on TV. Dinner — and a heaping side of drama — is served, and that’s when, in perfect GG fashion, all hell breaks loose. The result is a chaotic ten minute long scene where friendships are tested, threesomes are revealed in front of everyone’s parents, tensions between sisters in a love triangle come to a head, and a few pivotal secrets are finally let out. It’s a Thanksgiving to remember, in a way only Gossip Girl can provide.

Photo: Karolina Wojtasik/HBO Max

By Angela Tricarico Where some shows make a tradition

Movies

We're Forcing You To Choose Only ONE "Koffee With Karan" Episode For Each Of These Actors

It’s time to Klear your Konscience!

View Entire Post ›

It's time to Klear your Konscience!View Entire

Why has Christopher Nolan not yet won an Oscar?

Christopher Nolan, the early directing Oscar favorite for “Oppenheimer,” has been somewhat overlooked by the film academy, given his esteemed status in the industry.

1

Of Nolan’s five Oscar nominations, two were for best picture (“Inception,” “Dunkirk”), two for writing (“Memento,” “Inception”) and just one for directing (“Dunkirk”), despite …

4

… Directors Guild of America film nominations (“Memento,” “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” “Dunkirk”)

11

Nolan has not won an Oscar, but his movies have snagged almost a dozen, including Heath Ledger’s posthumous supporting award for “The Dark Knight,” the first acting win for a comic-book film.

2009

Nolan is snubbed in the directing and picture categories for “Dark Knight.” The ensuing backlash prompted the academy to widen the best picture field to …

10

… movies.

2013

“The Dark Knight Rises,” Nolan’s conclusion to his Batman trilogy, failed to score a single nomination.

2018

Nolan receives directing and picture nominations for his first history-inspired epic, “Dunkirk.” This bodes well for “Oppenheimer.”

5

Oscar nominations received by Martin Scorsese by age 53—Nolan’s current age. He has drawn nine more and a directing Oscar (”The Departed,” 2007) since, and at …

80

… is still fierce competition for 53-year-old Nolan, with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” indicating that the younger filmmaker still has ample opportunity to add an Oscar, more nominations and half an hour to his movies’ 3-hour run times.

Christopher Nolan, the early directing Oscar

MCU

Nia DaCosta Talks ‘The Marvels’ and “Choosing the Side of Light”

Kamala Khan meets her hero in The Marvels

While The Marvels may not be the box office success that many were hoping for, the release of the film did officially make NIa DaCosta the youngest filmmaker to direct a Marvel Studios film.

DaCosta, who rose to fame after the success of 2021’s Candyman has shattered more than a few glass ceilings in her day. Still, The Marvels represented her assendtion into a new stratosphere. So, how does it feel to be a trailblazer?

Photo: Deadline

“Most people seeing the movie aren’t going to know or care about that,” she says. “For other young Black women who want to be filmmakers, I think it’s important to be an example.”

A Dream Come True

When pitching The Marvels, DaCosta wanted to make a film that was “fun, funny, and full of heart”.

Whatever's up there probably isn't good.

Image: Marvel

“What I like about Marvel films is that they have a consistent energy,” she says, “but they can feel really different depending on what the vibe is or who the filmmaker is.”

As a self-proclaimed comic book nerd, DaCosta was especially excited about getting to tell Kamala Khan’s story. As it turns out, she had been a longtime fan of the Ms. Marvel character, who had debuted during her teens.

Kamala Khan does her homework moments before saving the day in The Marvels

Image: Marvel

“Usually I’m not like, ‘I like this person because I see myself — a tri-state area nerd who loves superhero and comic stuff and writes fan fiction,’” DaCosta says. “But she’s a great street-level hero, an heir to Spider-Man.”

A Story With A Lot of Heart

DaCosta was also intrigued by the emotional relationship between the three main characters. “These three women are basically like sisters: Carol’s the oldest, Kamala’s the youngest and Monica is in the middle,” she notes.

Monica Rambeau's eyes are glowing, which is bad news for everyone else in The Marvels

Image: Marvel

In the film, Monica Rambou is wrestling with the grief of losing her mother, and the feeling that Carol abandoned them.

Kamala meanwhile learns the dangers of meeting your idols. Finally, Carol has to learn to let some things go.

Carol Danvers wonders whether she needs a restraining order in The Marvels

Image: Marvel

“Because Carol has been on her own for so long, it was important to show what it is actually like, for this woman to live a life where she thinks she’s the only thing holding everything together. Which is a story that a lot of women can relate to,” DaCosta explains.

The director particularly enjoyed her time with Marvel head Kevin Feige.

Carol Danvers remembers that time she whupped Thanos in The Marvels

Image: Marvel

“I wanted so much more of his time. I was like, ‘Can we please be best friends? Here are all my ideas.’ I pitched him so many movies over sushi,” she adds, laughing. “He’s just a very good guy who just really loves what he does, and that’s all you could ask for in a boss and a collaborator.”

Choosing To See the Light

While The Marvels has received criticism from particular corners for “going woke”, DaCosta is choosing not to let it get under her skin.

Nick Fury seems to have misplaced his Skrull wife in The Marvels

Image: Marvel

“There are pockets where you go because you’re like, ‘I’m a super fan. I want to exist in the space of just adoration — which includes civilized critique,” she explains. “Then there are pockets that are really virulent and violent and racist — and sexist and homophobic and all those awful things. And I choose the side of the light. That’s the part of fandom I’m most attracted to.”

Brie Larson returns as Carol Danvers in The Marvels

Image: Marvel

The Marvels is in theaters now.

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DCU

Jacob Elordi Explains Why He Rejected Auditioning for Superman: Legacy

Summary

Jacob Elordi, star of Euphoria, rejected the opportunity to audition for the role of Superman in Superman: Legacy because he felt it was “too dark” for him.
Elordi’s versatility and talent have been showcased in projects like Priscilla, where he plays Elvis Presley.
While Elordi grew up admiring some comic book movie performances, such as Heath Ledger’s The Joker, he admits that he is not particularly interested in the superhero genre and prefers to make movies that he would personally watch.

Euphoria star Jacob Elordi was one of the fan-favorite candidates to become the new Man of Steel for Superman: Legacy, and the actor was even given the opportunity to try out for the iconic role. But, the Priscilla actor rejected the offer of auditioning for the DCU project because it was “too dark” for him. The Australian actor, who made his debut just five years ago in The Kissing Booth, has become one of Hollywood’s greatest promises. Although at first it seemed like he would simply be a romantic comedy teen idol, his debut in the HBO drama Euphoria and his intense portrayal of Nate Jacobs catapulted him into other types of projects. With Priscilla, Sofia Coppola’s new film where he plays Elvis Presley, Elordi demonstrates his versatility and talent. But it seems that he wants to continue growing closer to independent cinema and away from the big franchises.

In the months leading up to the announcement that David Corenswet was the new Clark Kent, many actors were mentioned by insiders as possible candidates for the coveted role, and Elordi was one of them. However, rumors indicated that the actor had rejected the audition. And now he himself confirms it.

In an interview with GQ, he confessed that he was offered to audition for Superman: Legacy, but passed on it:

“They asked me to read for Superman. That was immediately, ‘No, thank you.’ That’s too much. That’s too dark for me.”

Ultimately, Corenswet was chosen for the role, but there is no doubt that Elordi would also have been a very good choice, especially with the popularity he has gained in recent years.

Jacob Elordi Is Not Interested in the Superhero Genre

A24

Although he grew up admiring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger for their portrayals of Batman and the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Elordi admits that he’s not sure the superhero genre is for him:

“Not particularly, no. I’ve always been told to say a rounded answer or my agent will get mad at me. ‘Anything can happen! And obviously anything can happen, but at this stage in my life, I don’t see myself having any interest in that. I like to make what I would watch, and I get very restless watching those movies. And then I’m supposed to finish it with: ‘Never say never!”

Superman is not the only role in the world of comic books which the actor has been linked to. Recently, there were also many fans requesting him for Nightwing, a very popular character within the Batman universe that fans have been waiting to see on the big screen for a long time.

As for Elordi’s future, the actor is still awaiting the release of He Went That Way, a film directed by Jeffrey Darling in which he stars alongside Zachary Quinto. In addition, he has two other movies in post-production, Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses and Paul Schrader’s Oh, Canada, and will return for the third season of Euphoria, which currently has no release date. This year, in addition to Priscilla, he was part of the cast of Sean Price’s The Sweet East and Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn.

Superman: Legacy is due for release on July 11, 2025.

Summary Jacob Elordi, star of

Comics

The lifestyle sim/RPG “Life Makeover” is now available for PC at no cost

“The N.Y-based (the US) indie games developer Archosaur Games (the makers of “Dragon Raja”) are today very happy and excited to announce that their anime-styled lifestyle sim/RPG “Life Makeover”, is now available for PC (via Steam and EGS) at no cost.” – Jonas Ek, TGG.

"The N.Y-based (the US) indie games developer

Festivals

The 14 Best Websites To Download Movie and TV Scripts

Today I want to go over the 5 biggest pieces of terrible screenwriting advice I’ve heard, debunk each of them, and give you the proper lessons to take away from each of them.

Ready? Let’s go…

Terrible Writing Advice Tip #1: Write What You Know

I know I have told this to someone. So right off the bat, let’s start with the advice I am guilty of handing out. When I tell someone I think they should “write what they know” chances are I’m searching for a personal connection that I just don’t find in their pages.

Akin to that, they might have an under-researched idea that makes reading their pages a slog or hard. When I was an assistant I got to work closely with Michael Werwie, who wrote Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile.

Michael was so much fun to learn from because he epitomized the best part of “write what you know” – a screenwriter who is confident and knowledgeable about the subject she’s tackled. Michael was not a serial killer (I hope) but he was an expert on Ted Bundy. So he was able to write Ted with authenticity and breathe new life into a case most Americans thought they knew and understood.

When we gave Michael story notes, he was able to hear them and craft them in a way that aligned with the facts.

So the next time someone says write what you know, don’t limit yourself to general knowledge, just make sure you’re an expert on whatever you write. Be it serial killers, long haul truckers, or apartheid. Seek out the information, synthesize it, and make us believe it’s a part of you.

Terrible Writing Advice Tip #2: Create Likable Characters

This one inherently bugs me all the time. When we talked about character development and character arcs, we covered the idea that no one cares if your protagonist is likable.

We care if they’re interesting.

Film and television is built on characters we want to follow every week. That means while rooting for them is great, we mostly want to be invested in what they’re doing.

One of the best examples of this is Mavis in Young Adult.

Mavis returns to her childhood home to steal back her ex from his with and their new child. What she does along the way is reprehensible. But we watch because this kind of cringe comedy is undeniably entertaining.

So when you’re sitting to write, don’t ask if we like them, ask why we care? What’s new?

What makes your characters interesting?

Terrible Writing Advice Tip #3: Don’t Write Screen Direction

This one always come back time and time again. And I feel like we keep debunking this stuff but bad writers keep coming back and saying it. Look, I will concede that some people tend to over-direct on the page. But don’t be afriad to write things like CLOSE ON: or PAN TO:

Remember, screenplays, while being literary artifacts, are blueprints for films and tv shows. You’re allowed to direct the audience’s eye, let studio execs in on how the information will be dispersed, and make a connection with the person who will eventually direct your movie.

They’re definitely not necessary, and I always think it’s better to tell the story in a way that alludes to the shot without perfectly defining it, but you can totally have screen direction on your page.

Terrible Writing Advice Tip #4: Keep Your Ideas Small (and Makable)

One of the “hot take” tips from bad writers or well-meaning individuals is that your foray into specs and TV should be small ideas that are easily made at an indie or studio level. While this is sweet and nice advice, a great screenplay, no matter the size, is all that matters.

Repeat after me… A GREAT SCREENPLAY, NO MATTER THE SIZE, IS ALL THAT MATTERS!

Bad writing is advice is so easy to dispense and hard to clean up. Sure, if you’re writing a spec script studios, in general, are looking for movies that cost under 20 million ao they have a better chance and recuperating the money put into the budget.

But they’re also looking for their next franchise like Pacific Rim or a little spec called STAR WARS.

If you have an idea you’re passionate about, write that screenplay. In the end, most of your spec work won’t sell anyway. The idea is to get reps, get in a room, and pitch on projects the studios have already purchased.

Terrible Writing Advice Tip #5: You must adhere to Three-Act Structure

Look, there’s a whole Reddit forum on movies that don’t use three-act structure, so read there if you want a ton of examples. Movies like Boyhood, 8 1/2, Mo’ Better Blues, and Born on the 4th of July all have diverse and interesting act structures. And that only gets us into movies that have “B” titles.

(Graphic by StoryboardThat.com) StoryboardThat.com

The reason this act structure is emphasized is that it fits most Hollywood movies. But not having it is not a killer. There are lots of examples of movies that thrive without them. The point is, if you’re telling a good story people won’t be looking for the midpoint or other Blake Snyder beats.

Don’t be afraid to look into things like five-act structure, which is how every episode of Breaking Bad is formatted. Or seven-act structure, which covers many procedurals.

(Graphic by StoryboardThat.com) StoryboardThat.com

Even Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo uses five-act structure. Don’t be afraid to push back and tell us a story that makes us rethink the way we see time on screen.

Screenwriting is hard. But to become a filmmaker, you need to learn script writing to master storytelling. We’ll give you free lessons.

Many people come to No Film School because they want to get information about cameras, gear, and screenwriting. We’re aware that the luxury of attending film school is not available to most of the world, so we do our best to keep you all up to date on what’s out there and how you can shoot and create with your utmost potential when filmmaking.

Click the link to learn more!

Today I want to go over the

Film

Dakota Johnson Plays With Proportions in a Super-Oversized Blazer

Johnson was honored at the event with the Hope Award for Depression Advocacy and spoke about a somewhat unexpected sartorial symptom she’d recently experienced during her acceptance speech.

“A few weeks ago I was having a low day. My partner said to me so kindly, ‘Are you really struggling?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Baby, you’re wearing a Cats T-shirt.’ Like Cats, the musical. It turns out I was really struggling,” she recounted, per the Daily Mail. She continued, “I think most of the time I speak about depression or anxiety in a very self-deprecating way. Perhaps it is easier to look it in the eyes if I wear the mask of comedy. Covering my pain or anxiety in comedy is a lifelong tool, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing. It works. It helps me because sometimes if I don’»t laugh, I’ll cry…. The biggest thing I’ve learnt about depression is learning to become okay with there never really being an immediate answer, never really being an immediate end.”

Dakota Johnson has long been open about her experiences with depression and anxiety, which she says have affected her since she was a teenager. Thankfully, she has no shortage of coping skills, including exercise, meditation and therapy. “I’ve learned to find it beautiful because I feel the world,” she told Marie Claire in 2020. “I guess I have a lot of complexities, but they don’t pour out of me. I don’t make it anyone else’s problem.”

Johnson was honored at the event with

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, Kate Middleton, and Prince William: A Timeline of Their Royal Drama

The source adds that Markle “just wants to focus on their kids and their life in Montecito.”

August 8, 2023: Prince Harry’s title, HRH (His Royal Highness), was quietly removed from the official royal family website, Express reported on August 8.

The news comes several days after the same outlet reported that the HRH title was still there, along with some other outdated titles (it appeared that the website had not been updated since the death of Queen Elizabeth II last year). “Now, nowhere on the page is Harry called HRH,” the report said. The outlet also noted that Prince Harry’s profile page (which appears alongside Markle’s) had been moved to the bottom of the website, after employees of the Firm and followed only by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Princess Alexandra and the disgraced Prince Andrew.

The Sussexes ceased using their HRH titles when they stepped away from royal family duties in 2020. A statement from January 2020 read, “The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family.” Harry’s title has since been replaced with “the Duke” or “the Duke of Sussex,” a title he acquired in 2018 when he married Markle.

November 15, 2023: Writer Omid Scobie, who has broken many a royals news story, reveals in his book Endgame that the relationship between the brothers is “beyond repair.”

“These are probably sad realizations that will be had far too late in the journey,” Scobie told People of what he found while researching the book. “In the eyes of some within the institution, Harry is a threat to the crown. His freedom to exert his own thinking outside of the confines of the institution has made him the enemy…there’s no going back.”

This post will be updated.

The source adds that Markle “just wants

What to Watch

Is ‘The Crown’ on Netflix UK? Where to Watch the Series

Great news! “The Crown” is available to watch on Netflix UK!

Date Added: 4th November 2016

Known expiry dates are shown above as well as on the Last Chance page.

Want to keep forever? Try looking for ‘The Crown’ on Amazon (paid link)

History:

04/11/2016: 1 Season (2016)

08/12/2017: 2 Seasons (2017)

17/11/2019: 3 Seasons (2019)

15/11/2020: 4 Seasons (2020)

09/11/2022: 5 Seasons (2022)

16/11/2023: 6 Seasons (2023)

Watch Part 1 of Final Season Now, Part 2 on 14 Dec.

Description:

Inspired by real events, this fictional dramatization tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II and the political and personal events that shaped her reign.

Certificate: Suitable for ages 15 and up

Year: 2023

Duration: 6 Seasons

Available Seasons: Season 1 (10 Ep), Season 2 (10 Ep), Season 3 (10 Ep), Season 4 (10 Ep), Season 5 (10 Ep)

Audio: English – Audio Description, English [Original], French, Hindi, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Ukrainian

Subtitles: Arabic, English, French, Polish, Ukrainian, Traditional Chinese

Episode Length: 57min

English Audio Description Available – English Audio Description

Cast and Crew

Cast: Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce, Lesley Manville, Olivia Colman, Helena Bonham Carter, Tobias Menzies, Claire Foy, Matt Smith, Vanessa Kirby, Dominic West, Elizabeth Debicki, Josh O’Connor, Emma Corrin, John Lithgow, Gillian Anderson, Olivia Williams, Bertie Carvel, Jonny Lee Miller, Claudia Harrison, Marion Bailey, Emerald Fennell

Production & Season Details:

Status: Returning Series”The Crown” is a TV show produced by Left Bank Pictures and Sony Pictures Television Studios. The show was originally broadcast on Netflix and premiered on November 4th 2016. So far there have been 6 seasons (comprising of 60 episodes) of “The Crown”. The most recent episode aired on November 9th 2022 and more seasons are expected in the future.

Watch the trailer for “The Crown”

RATINGS:

IMDB rating 8.6/10

The Movie Database rating 82%

Average Rating Average rating 84%

LISTS:

DISCUSS ON…:

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This title is available on Netflix UK

Where else can you watch ‘The Crown’ on Netflix?

Want to keep forever? Why not rent or buy ‘The Crown’ from one of the online services below?

Awards

Prince Harry To Watch Princess Diana’s Final Moments – Deadline

SPOILER ALERT: This news story features details from Season 6 of The Crown

Prince Harry is reportedly set to watch his mother’s final moments in The Crown after he has previously revealed that royal drama appears in his Netflix viewing history.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday that the Duke of Sussex will stream the final season of Peter Morgan’s show — and will fact-check the storyline as it unfolds. Prince William is unlikely to watch, however.

The Telegraph’s royal editor Victoria Ward reported that a friend of Prince Harry’s may pre-view The Crown to save him any unnecessary trauma, but that the duke is ultimately likely to tune in.

Prince Harry has admitted to watching the series in the past, most recently on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, when he joked that he fact-checks with a pen and paper.

In 2021, he told James Corden on The Late Late Show that The Crown gives a sense of “putting duty and service above family and everything else.”

He added: “I am way more comfortable with The Crown than I am seeing stories written about my family or my wife. That [The Crown] is obviously fiction, take it how you will.”

The drama is unlikely to be an easy watch for Prince Harry given it depicts the final weeks of Princess Diana‘s life and her tumultuous relationship with the press.

The Crown shows Prince William and Harry’s final call with Diana, which ends with mother and sons declaring their love for each other.

In reality, Prince Harry has said that the conversation, which took place when he was aged 12, weighs “heavily” on his mind because he was in a “desperate rush to say goodbye.”

In a 2017 BBC documentary, he said: “If I’d known now obviously what was going to happen I wouldn’t have been so blase about it and everything else.”

Other moments that might prove difficult for Prince Harry include a reference to Diana’s ghost, which has enraged TV critics in the UK, and scenes in which she is playful with the paparazzi.

The Duke of Sussex blames the press for his mother’s death and does little to disguise his disdain for the intrusive tactics of photographers and journalists.

“Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back,” he has said about his mother’s death.

Deadline has contacted Prince Harry’s spokesperson for comment.

SPOILER ALERT: This news story features details

Music

10 Best Heatless Curlers 2023, According to Hair Stylists & Reviews

If you have super long hair, we don’t blame you for being nervous about trying out heatless curls. That said, you probably have the most to gain, too, because it can take forever to curl using a hot tool. Enter this velvet curling headband, which shopper Stevie Jones swears by. “My hair is long and thick, so it takes forever to dry, and my hair just stays wet in those silkier hair rods,” she says. “I feel like this fabric kinda soaks up some of the dampness from my hair, so it curls and dries my hair at the same time,” The velvety fabric also grips hair a bit better, so it’s a great option if you have more fine strands. As a bonus, it even comes with an empty spray bottle for water or your fave hair product.

Pros: Good for long or thick hair, affordable
Cons: Not ideal for frizzy hair

Material: Velour / Included Pieces: Headband, two hair ties, hair clip, spray bottle, claw clip

Save on the best heatless curlers with these Amazon promo codes.

If you have super long hair, we

Docs

Hemisphere Featured, Reviews Film Threat

I have to say that what’s great about Chris Maes’ sci-fi thriller, Hemisphere, is that sci-fi is firmly in the hands of independent filmmakers. We find ourselves in the far distant future in a space station on the dark side of Mercury. The four-person crew of the Altra Mira has come up missing. No communication and no sign of life.

On Earth, Sandra (Paige Rion), a forensic investigator, is hired by her husband’s firm, which runs the station, to go there and find out what happened to its crew. Sandra reluctantly agrees and instantly finds that corporate bureaucracy is already impeding her investigation.

Relegated to a small unrestricted area, Sandra finds evidence of a hijacking, the remains of one of the crew members and the ship’s AI Computer (known as AVERI) with the last several days of logs have suddenly disappeared.

One of the crew members, Phoebe (Julie Kashmanian), is hiding within the ducts. She confirms that hijackers attacked the ship and helps Sandra piece the story together, but, of course, something isn’t right, and Sandra is not entirely sure she can trust Phoebe.

What I admire most about Hemisphere is filmmaker Maes’ attempt to create a futuristic space station out of nothing and on an indie budget. The space exteriors are created entirely with CG special effects, beautifully compositing a starfield with Mercury off in the distance, a fully realized space station, and finally, a shuttle carrying our protagonist, Sandra. It’s not quite Star Wars-level animation, but it’s good nonetheless.

“The four-person crew of the Altra Mira has come up missing. No communication and no sign of life.”

The build of the interior is just as impressive…for a low-budget indie. It’s essentially an open office with a space station overlay. Hemisphere put just enough space stuff to look like a space station. All great use of CG to blend the real with the fantastical.

As a story, we are placed in the shoes of our investigator, Sandra. In the first act, Sandra is alone, and we’re right there, searching carefully at every turn of the corner, yet this is a space crime procedural…so we follow the evidence.

The second act adds Phoebe to the mix, and now it’s a bit of interrogation and a bit of who-do-you-trust. Here, clues are discovered, and a few are dropped, leading to uncovering the mystery.

Without spoilers, there’s always the mystery within the mystery. The other revelation plays out well, thanks to Chris Maes’ screenplay. It relies more on drama than it does the actual mystery. In other words, I wish there had been more clues leading up to this point that would have pointed to the conclusion of both the first and second mysteries. I’m being intentionally vague here. I hope you get the point.

Lastly, Hemisphere may not look like a multi-million dollar sci-fi tale, but damn if I wasn’t reminded a lot of the early days of Dr. Who when I was a wee lad in the 70s. It’s a low-budget sci-fi thriller with a lot of heart.

For more information about Hemisphere, visit the Trujillo Creek Films website.

I have to say that what’s great

Huge cracks across the main road in Grindavik, southwestern Iceland, have opened up

Global

‘Time’s finally up’: Iceland’s impending volcanic blast ‘marks the start of centuries of eruptions’ as one region is hit by 1,100 new quakes that have split houses apart and created gaping chasms

Iceland’s looming volcano blast is just the beginning of a new era of volcanic eruptions that will last for centuries, with the build-up of magma beneath the coastal town of Grindavik signalling that more is to come, scientists have warned.

The Fagradalsfjall volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula is threatening to erupt, with Iceland’s Met Office saying that the ‘likelihood of a volcanic eruption is high’ and could happen at anytime in the coming days.

After 800 years of inactivity, a 2021 eruption marked the start of a new cycle of volcanic activity, and now Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, says that blast may have kicked off ‘a new eruptive phase’ which could last centuries.

‘Time’s finally up,’ Edward W. Marshall, a researcher at the University of Iceland’s Nordic Volcanological Center told Live Science. ‘We can get ready for another few hundred years of eruptions on the Reykjanes.’

The region has been rattled by around 1,100 new earthquakes since midnight, with experts warning that magma is rising ever closer to the earth’s surface fueling fears of an imminent volcanic eruption.

Huge cracks across the main road in Grindavik, southwestern Iceland, have opened up

Homes have been ripped from their foundations by ongoing seismic activity around Grindavik

Mother-of-four Magga Huld AfaÖmmudóttir said her family was left homeless after terrifying earthquakes completely wrecked their house

Lava flows on active volcano Mount Fagradalsfjall, Iceland (file image from 2021)

Thousands of quakes over the past few days have turned the fishing community of Grindavik into a ‘ghost town’, with 4,000 residents forced to evacuate.

Those who were allowed to return to their properties with emergency services to collect belongings were ordered to evacuate yesterday after the Icelandic Met Office said its meters had detected increased levels of sulphur dioxide – a possible indicator of an eruption.

Videos have shown apocalyptic scenes in the deserted town, with homes torn apart and gaping chasms opening up in roads.

Mother-of-four Magga Huld AfaÖmmudóttir, who was only given seven minutes to gather things from her house on Monday, said her family was left homeless after terrifying earthquakes completely wrecked their property.

‘Friday was terrible, the earthquakes did not stop for many hours, but we left our house Friday night at 9pm with clothes for two days and two boxes of photo albums, then just planned to come the next day to pick up more,’ Magga told MailOnline.

‘I feel ok, but get scared and jump at the slightest sound, and then we are homeless in one minute – I’ve got all kinds of emotions going on,’ said the 50-year-old.

‘We got to go inside the house on Monday. We had seven minutes to pick up what we wanted to save, but the emphasis was on personal things from my family – my mother, grandmother and grandfather – and clothes.’

Sharing the video from inside her home, Magga described her devastation at losing the house she and her husband worked years to buy.

Footage shows how her home was ripped from its foundations by the force of relentless quakes, forcing the family to flee on Friday taking just a few belongings.

Around 4,000 residents were evacuated from Grindavik on Saturday morning, hours after Iceland declared a state of emergency.

The southwestern Reykjanes Peninsula has been shaken by thousands of quakes since a seismic swarm hit on October 25, with Iceland ‘on edge’ as it anticipates Fagradalsfjall, just a few kilometres from Grindavik, will erupt.

Mother-of-four Magga Huld AfaÖmmudóttir said her family was left homeless after terrifying earthquakes completely wrecked their property

Grindavik resident Magga was only given seven minutes to gather things from her house on Monday

Pictures show how her home was ripped from its foundations by the force of relentless quakes

Hundreds of small quakes and tremors were registered around Grindavik

A huge nine-mile long magma intrusion, just northwest of Grindavik, has formed and is growing, according to experts, with magma thought to be as close as 500 metres from the surface.

Just a few days ago, experts were saying that magma was accumulating three miles below ground, but it has now risen much closer, if estimates are correct.

‘At this stage, it is not possible to determine exactly whether and where magma might reach the surface,’ the Meteorological Office said.

The Icelandic Met Office informed police on Tuesday that their new meters had detected increased levels of sulphur dioxide, prompting the police chief to evacuate Grindavik.

Benedikt Ófeigsson, a geophysicist at the met office, said that while the amount of SO2 detected is not high, the increase points to magma coming closer to the surface.

A ‘seismic swarm’ hit Iceland on October 25, with a huge leap in the number of earthquakes recorded

A member of search and rescue team walks past the cracks in a road in the fishing town of Grindavik today

A police officer and a member of search and rescue team stand by steam rising from the crack in a road

Two police officers look down a whole created in the middle of the road in fishing town of Grindavik

Steam rises from the many cracks emerging in Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity

‘SO2 is not released from magma until very close to the surface. It just means the top kilometre,’ he said.

The last measurements, from this weekend, had measured magma at a depth of about 800 metres, but Mr Ófeigsson now expects it is even shallower.

‘We are talking about maybe 500 metres. It’s unclear, it’s so high pressure, it’s pressure dependent when it comes up. So it’s not possible to tell the depth directly, but it [the magma] must be very shallow for us to see SO2 ‘.

Mr Ofeigsson yesterday told Icelandic broadcaster RUV that there was no indications on other devices that an eruption was starting, but that they still did not want to rule it out, explaining that SO2 does not appear in this way unless magma is very high in the earth’s crust.

Sulphur dioxide is a toxic gas released by magma as it rises to the surface, and high exposure is deadly to humans. If detected at a non-erupting volcano, it could be a sign that it will erupt soon.

While the number of quakes has reduced and tremors are less violent than in previous days, experts have said that this could indicate that magma is closer to the surface and indicate an eruption might be imminent.

Roads near Grindavik have been completely torn open amid the volcanic activity, with a digger seen making repairs today

Video shows cars lining up to briefly re-enter Grindavik so residents can collect their belongings. They had to drive over huge gaps in the road which have appeared amid the seismic and volcanic activity

Local residents wait in their cars to get access to their homes in the fishing town of Grindavik

The fishing town was evacuated due to volcanic activity and residents (pictured waiting above) hoped to go back to collect their belongings

A member of search and rescue team jumps over the crack in a road in Grindavik

The cracks evolved into massive craters, like here in the middle of the road in Grindavik

‘Less seismic activity typically precedes an eruption, because you have come so close to the surface that you cannot build up a lot of tension to trigger large earthquakes,’ said Rikke Pedersen, who heads the Nordic Volcanological Centre based in Reykjavik.

‘It should never be taken as a sign that an outbreak is not on the way,’ she said.

In case the worst happens, authorities are preparing to build defence walls around a nearby geothermal power plant which they desperately hope will protect it from lava flows.

Iceland’s justice minister Gudrun Hafsteinsdottir told RUV on Tuesday that a large dike has been designed to protect the Svartsengi geothermal power plant, located just over six kilometres from Grindavik.

Equipment and materials that could fill 20,000 trucks were being moved to the plant, she said, and construction is awaiting formal approval from the government.

The plant produces hot and cold water, and electricity for the entire country and a spokesperson for its operator, HS Orka, said disruption would not impact power supply to the capital Reykjavik.

A member of the emergency services walking near a crack cutting across the main road in Grindavik

A member of search and rescue team takes pictures of a steam rising from the crack in a road

An aerial view of the town of Grindavik, which was evacuated due to volcanic activity and has many cracks in roads and buildings

Massive cracks cut through roads and buildings in Grindavik

Matthew James Roberts, director of the service and research division at Iceland’s meteorological office said: ‘We believe that this intrusion is literally hovering, sitting in equilibrium now just below the earth’s surface.

‘We have this tremendous uncertainty now. Will there be an eruption and if so, what sort of damage will occur?’

Fears have also been mounting that an eruption could see a repeat of the chaos caused by the 2010 Eyjafjallajokull eruption, however volcanologists have said that Fagradalsfjall would not produce as huge an ash cloud if it blows.

The eruption 13 years ago prompted the biggest shutdown of global aviation since the Second World War, with 50,000 flights cancelled and eight million passengers affected.

Discussing the differences between a potential eruption of Fagradalsfjall and Eyjafjallajokull, Mr Roberts said an eruption could see lava spew over the town, but was less likely to cause the same ash blast.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday: ‘First of all there isn’t an ice cap on top and it’s not a stratovolcano so wouldn’t be an explosive blast of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.

The Blue Lagoon geothermal spa, which has been closed to tourists due to the volcanic activity, with the Svartsengi geothermal power station in the background (file image)

Cracks have been worsening amid ongoing volcanic and seismic activity around Grindavik. Picture taken on November 13

Large cracks appear on a road amid volcanic activity near Grindavik in Iceland on November 11

‘This would be a lava-producing volcanic eruption along a series of fissures and that would be the main hazard.’

He added that an eruption ‘that persists for weeks’ is possible, meaning roads and other infrastructure could be ‘in harm’s way’.

Located between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates, among the largest on the planet, Iceland is a seismic and volcanic hot spot as the two plates move in opposite directions.

In March 2021, lava fountains erupted spectacularly from a fissure in the ground measuring between 500-750 metres long in the region’s Fagradalsfjall volcanic system.

Volcanic activity in the area continued for six months that year, prompting thousands of Icelanders and tourists to visit the scene.

In August 2022, a three-week eruption happened in the same area, followed by another in July of this year.

Iceland's looming volcano blast is just the

Trending

Kylie Jenner Talks Jordyn Woods Relationship and Scandal Fallout – Hollywood Life

Image Credit: Mediapunch/Shutterstock

Tristan Thompson stops by Kylie Jenner’s house to have a candid conversation about the mistakes he’s made in the past, mainly his cheating scandal that included Jordyn Woods. Kylie, 26, previously said that Tristan, 32, cheating on Khloé Kardashian was “unforgivable.” However, when Tristan reaches out, she’s willing to hear what he has to say.

“It really bothers me because like we’ve always had such a dope relationship, and I feel like everyone got affected differently, but I think you were affected the most by a situation with losing a sister basically. You lost Jordyn, who was a big part of your life,” Tristan tells Kylie.

The NBA player goes on to apologize for kissing Jordyn, 26, in 2019 and the subsequent drama that followed. He acknowledges his “poor decisions” and admits he was a “f**king idiot.”

Kylie Jenner and Jordyn Woods at Coachella. (Hagop Kalaidjian/BFA/Shutterstock)

Kylie responds, “I think I was so co-dependent with Jordyn that I could have never imagined my life without her. We would have probably still been like living together, and I think she needed to grow without me. I needed to grow without her, but you know, Jordyn and I are cool. We still talk and catch up. We’re good.”

Tristan asks Kylie to apologize to Jordyn on his behalf. “She went through a lot during that time too and [it] probably gave her a lot of flack,” he says. Tristan adds that he’s “the reason why that relationship went a different direction.”

The makeup mogul tells Tristan that he has a “good heart and good energy.” Tristan admits that his bad decisions were a result of being “selfish and not really like understanding the value of good people.”

Even though Kylie has moved on from the Jordyn aspect of the scandal, she reveals that it’s “just hard to forgive” Tristan for hurting her big sister. Tristan just wants to gain everyone’s trust back, and he’s been working hard to make amends. New episodes of The Kardashians premiere Thursdays on Hulu.

Image Credit: Mediapunch/Shutterstock Tristan Thompson stops by Kylie

Tech

Antisemitic and Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Surges Across the Internet

Some of the antisemitic and anti-Islam posts have been shared and liked hundreds of thousands of times, even though they appear to violate the rules of social media platforms, many of which ban hate speech.

The content has been most prominent on X, according to the Anti-Defamation League and other researchers. In an analysis by the Anti-Defamation League of 162,958 posts on X and 15,476 posts on Facebook from Sept. 30 to Oct. 13, the surge in antisemitic content on X far exceeded that of Facebook. Nearly two million posts with the hashtag #IsraeliNewNazism appeared on X in that period, and another 40,000 posts featured the hashtag #ZionistsAreEvil or #ZionistsAreNazis.

More than 46,000 posts with the hashtag #HitlerWasRight also appeared over the last month on X, according to Memetica, a digital investigations firm. In previous months, the hashtag appeared fewer than 5,000 times a month. Two other hashtags — #DeathtotheJews and #DeathtoJews — showed up more than 51,000 times in the last month, compared with 2,000 the month before.

The hashtag #LevelGaza appeared nearly 3,000 times on X in the week after the Oct. 7 attacks, up from fewer than a dozen in September, Memetica also found. There were also thousands of posts on the platform with the hashtags #MuslimPig and #KillMuslims.

Other sites, including TikTok and Facebook, have also experienced surges in hate speech but have removed the content that was flagged to them, researchers said. The hate speech that remained was often more veiled, such as a TikTok trend of using “Austrian painter” as code for Adolf Hitler.

A TikTok spokeswoman said that the “Austrian painter” videos violated the app’s policies and that videos with the hashtag were removed after The Times brought them to the company’s attention. From Oct. 7 to Oct. 13, she added, TikTok took down 730,000 videos for violating hate speech rules.

X did not respond to a request for comment. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, referred to a blog post on how the company is enforcing its policies against hate speech.

Messaging apps such as Telegram have also been used to seed hate speech in the conflict. On Oct. 7, a Hamas-linked Telegram channel shared an image of a paraglider descending with a Palestinian flag and the words “I stand with Palestine.” The image referred to the Hamas gunmen who used paragliders to enter the Nova music festival in Israel, where more than 260 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attacks.

Within 24 hours, the image was shared thousands of times on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, according to ActiveFence, a cybersecurity company that advises social media platforms. Underneath some of the posts on Facebook and Instagram were comments such as “they should have killed more” and “kill more Jews.”

By Oct. 9, a group called NatSoc Florida had created a T-shirt with the image, according to ActiveFence. The image soon spread to 4chan and later appeared in variations with Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character that has been appropriated by white supremacists.

The meme quickly spread through organizations that were primed to embrace antisemitic or racist causes, including those not directly involved in the conflict between Israel and Gaza, said Noam Schwartz, ActiveFence’s chief executive.

“The meme is very, very good,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s recognizable, like an icon.”

Telegram did not respond to a request for comment.

On several far-right Telegram channels and on 4chan, some users have recently discussed the war as an opportunity to spread antisemitic sentiment to people who are normally ideological opposites. One Telegram channel included instructions for far-right users who espouse antisemitism to post sympathetically about the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza to draw in left-wing activists.

“Once you get them there, blame the Jews,” one person wrote.

Adi Cohen, the chief operating officer of Memetica, said the rise in antisemitic posts reflected a convergence of goals by far-right and far-left activists.

“Some of them explicitly say this is an opportunity to gloat and celebrate the killing of Jews online,” he said. “They are trying to lure an audience to their content, and this is a huge growth moment for them.”

Some of the antisemitic and anti-Islam posts

Video

YouTube teases AI tool that clones famous singers — with their permission

Google is testing new generative AI features for YouTube that’ll let people create music tracks using just a text prompt or a simple hummed tune. The first, Dream Track, already seeded to a few creators on the platform, is designed to auto-generate short 30-second music tracks in the style of famous artists. The feature can imitate nine different artists, who’ve chosen to collaborate with YouTube on its development. YouTube is also showing off new tools that can generate music tracks from a hum.

YouTube says its Dream Track feature is currently being tested with a “small group of select US creators,” and can produce tracks in the style of nine artists; Alec Benjamin, Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Papoose, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan. In a pair of video demonstrations, we’re shown how the prompt “A ballad about how opposites attract, upbeat acoustic” can create a track in the style of Charlie Puth, or “A sunny morning in Florida, R&B” can be used to make a T-Pain song. The software can generate lyrics, a backing track, and an AI-generated voice in the style of the artist.

The idea is for these tracks to be used with YouTube’s TikTok-style Shorts service. That’s also where YouTube announced a new AI feature called Dream Screen in September, which can generate videos and photos to use as backgrounds.

An example user interface for YouTube’s Music AI tools.

Image: Google

YouTube says participants in its Music AI incubator will be able to test these tools later this year.

These new AI tools are powered by a music generation model called Lyria from Google’s DeepMind. In an accompanying blog post from DeepMind, the Google subsidiary says tracks created using Lyria will carry a SynthID watermark that’s inaudible to the naked ear and can be preserved when a track is modified. So even if someone adds more noise to a track, compresses it into an MP3 file, or speeds it up, it should theoretically still be possible to tell that it contains AI-generated audio from Lyria.

Rent or buy it on major platforms.

Google is testing new generative AI features

Entertaintment

Five Horror Movies to Stream Now

‘Lockdown Tower’

Stream it on Shudder.

Oh man, how to describe Guillaume Nicloux’s profoundly despairing film. “The Mist” meets “Yellowjackets”? Close, but not sinister enough. I’ll just say this: The movie crushed me.

The premise is sinister and simple: One night, the mostly working-class and immigrant residents of a Paris high-rise discover that it’s not just dark outside. There is no longer an outside outside. And the void they see from their windows is lethal: When two men fall into it, what’s left is only part of a leg cut clean at the shin. Nicloux uses the threat of this horrifying abyss in what gets my vote for the most barbaric scene of the year.

As time passes — the film monstrously skips through years, not days — residents divide themselves on floors by race. (“The whites banded together long ago,” one character says.) Food, sex, an apartment: Almost everything is negotiated for survival. You don’t need me to tell you that once tribalism takes over, the downward spiral quickens. There are allegories here, to Covid and to economic inequality. There’s also a bedtime story that offers, just maybe, a crumb of hope.

Franck Khalfoun’s single location survival thriller, based on David R. Losada’s Spanish-language “Night of the Rat,” is a throat-grabbing and gruesome exploration of toxic masculinity and American violence.

Alice (Camille Rowe) has an early morning flight to meet her husband. The couple’s friend John (Jeremy Scippio), with whom she’s having an affair, stops at a gas station on the way to take her to the airport. Inside the store, Alice notices there’s no cashier but blood is splattered on the wall. As she rushes for the door, an unseen gunman shoots her in the arm, disabling her and trapping her there. That’s just the first 15 minutes.

As the gunman kills unsuspecting customers who show up at the gas station, Alice learns her assailant is a veteran aggrieved over “fake news and forced mandates.” A church billboard across from the gas station that says simply GODISNOWHERE — a message of hope or hopelessness, depending on how you parse it. An indictment as much as it is a sniper drama, the film feels ripped from America’s ugliest headlines.

‘Mercy Road’

“The following is taken from only the first 30 minutes of ‘Mercy Road.’”

That’s the tease in the trailer for John Curran’s thriller, as if the 1950s schlock-horror impresario William Castle were in charge of its marketing campaign. But Curran’s propulsive film — set one night almost entirely inside a vehicle — is no joke. It’s a rush that never lets up.

The action kicks off as Tom (a commanding Luke Bracey) jumps into his truck and calls his 12-year-old daughter, Ruby. “Please, don’t go home,” he pleads in a voice message. As he speeds down a darkened road somewhere in Australia, he gets calls from a mysterious stranger who says he has kidnapped Ruby from the man whose blood is splattered across Tom’s work shirt. Curran puts cameras on the driver’s seat, floor and windshield, providing a 360-degree view of Tom’s race to save both Ruby and his sanity, a quest that culminates in an emotional (and paranormal) finish.

Curran sustains a high-energy momentum — think “Speed” + “Phone Booth” + “Locke” — with incredible precision, like a world-class conductor cruising through a tricky symphony. Curran’s score of tinkling piano (did I hear the 1010 WINS news cue?) and rat-a-tat percussion make the film as thrilling to listen to as it is to watch.

‘Cobweb’

Stream it on Hulu.

If there’s one movie that has divided horror fans this year, it’s Samuel Bodin’s haunted house fairy tale. It’s about a bullied young boy (Woody Norman) who strikes up a friendship with a creepy voice from behind his bedroom walls who tells him that his parents (Lizzy Caplan and Antony Starr) are evil secret-keepers up to no good.

I almost gave up on it. The acting felt mannered, and the unreliable ghost narrator stuff was conveyed with a hammer. “All those scary things, they’re just in your head,” mom says to Peter before banishing him to the basement.

But about halfway through, the film takes an uncomfortably dark yet surprisingly moving turn in which the sinister goings-on are revealed to be less about a spirit driving the living nuts and more about how blood ties can bind and strangle. Bodin builds suspense with restraint; his still, cinematic tableaus disorient and please the eye in equal measure. I want Debra Wilson, who’s exceptional as the voice of the stuff-of-nightmares monster, to read me everything.

‘HeBGB TV’

Stream it on Screambox.

I don’t think I’ve had more fun this year than with this low-budget horror-comedy oddity from the writer-directors Adam Lenhart, Eric Griffin, and Jake McClellan.

It’s about HeBGB TV, a cable box that looks like an exposed brain. It mysteriously shows up at your door, and when you plug it into your television, the Purple Guy, who looks like the spawn of Randy Rainbow and Nosferatu, guides you through weird videos with ketchup-puking monsters, singing candy corn and boob jokes.

Told in a “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” meets “Videodrome”-like newsmagazine style, the film incorporates puppetry, animation, live action and musical numbers that are delightfully juvenile and subversively queer. There are even commercials; I would totally eat Fang’s Breakfast Bites, a cereal with chopped-up thumbs as prizes.

My favorite section was the call-in sex hotline show hosted by the foxy Monster Girl, played by the radiantly glam-freak performer Knucklehead, who also plays the Purple Guy. When the “bonely” borscht belt skeleton-comedian Rib Tickla (Michael Garland) calls in to impress her with a joke using the word coccyx. I thought: Now that’s humerus.

‘Lockdown Tower’Stream it on Shudder.Oh man, how

Movies

Farhan Akhtar, Shibani Dandekar Join David Beckham For Pics At Sonam Kapoor’s Welcome Bash

Farhan Akhtar and Shibani Dandekar with David Beckham at Sonam Kapoor, Anand Ahuja’s welcome bash.

Joining the other celebs, Shibani Dandekar shared pictures from last night with her hubby Farhan Akhtar and David Beckham.

Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja hosted a star-studded grand welcome party for former English footballer David Beckham on November 15. David Beckham is presently in India for work commitments as a Global Ambassador for UNICEF. Several photos and videos capturing the glamorous night are currently circulating on the internet. One such album was shared by Farhan Akhtar’s wife Shibani Dandekar and it went viral in no time.

On Thursday, Shibani Akhtar Dandekar took to her Instagram handle, where she posted a bunch of pictures featuring her and her husband Farhan Akhtar posing with David Beckham. The album also consisted of several photographs showing Farhan Akhtar and Shibani Dandekar talking to David Beckham along with Sonam Kapoor. There was also a group picture that showed David Beckham standing with Sanjay Kapoor, Maheep Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Malaika Arora, Shanaya Kapoor, Karisma Kapoor, Farhan Akhtar, Shibani Akhtar Dandekar and others.

She shared the pictures with the caption, “@davidbeckham It was an honour to meet a legend in person that was so patient, kind and warm! You were so lovely thank you! Hope to see you again real soon ❤️ Thank you to @sonamkapoor and @anandahuja who are such gracious hosts and made it such a special night for everyone. No one does it like you guys ❤️.”

Before heading to the party, Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja welcomed David Beckham at their building’s gate, striking a pose for the cameras alongside him. The guest list included Bollywood celebrities such as Anil Kapoor, Sanjay Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor, Mira Rajput, Karisma Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Malaika Arora, Farhan Akhtar and more. The star-studded event also saw the presence of Shibani Dandekar, Farhan Akhtar, and other notable personalities from the entertainment industry.

David Beckham attended the India vs New Zealand semi-final and met Sachin Tendulkar. He was also seen seated alongside the Bollywood couple Sidharth Malhotra and Kiara Advani. One picture shows the trio standing, clapping, and cheering enthusiastically for Team India.

Yatamanyu Narain

Yatamanyu is a multi-disciplinary Journalist & Photographer who dabbles in Films, Poetry, Music, Politics, Pop-Culture and everything in between. …Read More

Farhan Akhtar and Shibani Dandekar with David

Black Coffee’s reign continues as GQ Men of the Year and DJ Mag honour him

Black Coffee’s reign continues as GQ Men

MCU

Marvel Studios Just Confirmed When Thanos Will Return

Marvel Studios confirmed Thanos will officially be brought back into the MCU while also showing fans where they will be able to see him.

Loki Season 2 officially came to an end on Disney+, and it proved more than perhaps any other recent project that Thanos and the days of the Infinity Saga are now in the rearview mirror for the MCU.

The Mad Titan was featured in the final trailer for The Marvels, which was released just before the film officially premiered in theaters worldwide, but he didn’t make an on-screen appearance in the movie.

With the MCU seemingly moving forward with the Multiverse Saga, many fans were under the impression that Thanos may never be seen in the franchise ever again.

Thanos’ Return to the MCU

Marvel Studios recently shared the official trailer for Season 2 of the animated What If…? series, which will be released on Disney+ on December 22.

The footage teased certain elements that will come with Season 2, but it also confirmed that the Mad Titan himself, Thanos, will be present in the show’s upcoming season.

Marvel Studios

One sequence teased that Thanos (with at least some of the Infinity Stones) will go toe-to-toe with Captain Carter and Marvel Studios’ new hero, Kahhori.

Thanos in What If...? Season 2 — Marvel Studios

One particular shot featured the Mad Titan’s menacing face while holding onto the top of Captain Carter’s shield.

Another moment from the teaser showcased Thanos in what appears to be the Battle of Wakanda from Avengers: Infinity War.

Steve Rogers and Thanos in What If...? Season 2 — Marvel Studios

A frame from this sequence of the trailer also features Steve Rogers’ version of Captain America with his Wakandan shield, and it also looks as though Thanos could be using the Time Stone.

Along with the trailer, Marvel Studios also revealed the official poster for Season 2 of What If…?, which is notably Christmas-themed with The Watcher front and center sporting a Santa Claus hat.

However, Thanos is also featured in two different points on the poster.

Thanos on What If...? Season 2's Poster — Marvel Studios

On one side, the Mad Titan’s grimace is on full display.

Elsewhere on the poster, a shirtless and muscular Thanos is featured, and he looks as scary as ever.

What Will Thanos’ What If…? Episodes Be About?

It is unclear based on the trailer if Thanos will only be in one of the upcoming nine episodes of What If…? Season 2, or if he will make multiple appearances.

Seeing as how Kahhori (an original MCU hero) and Captain Carter are fighting Thanos at one point in the trailer and then Steve Rogers is with Thanos in Wakanda during another sequence, the Mad Titan could be featured in two episodes.

It is unknown exactly what will transpire in the episode that Kahhori is in, but the trailer did confirm that she and Captain Carter will be together. Perhaps the two will be leading an Avengers team of their own against Thanos and his quest for the Infinity Stones.

On the other hand, Thanos could be seen in the trailer fighting Steve Rogers in Wakanda. Many fans will remember this sequence happened in MCU canon in Avengers: Infinity War, so the What If…? angle of that story is yet to be seen.

Thanos may end up killing Steve and the rest of the Avengers in that episode, which would then showcase what would have happened if he had never been stopped at all.

The good news is fans won’t have to wait long at all to see what will happen in What If…? Season 2, as it is set to premiere on Disney+ on December 22, with a new episode releasing every single day.

DCU

Ezra Miller’s Flash Makes Unexpected Return for 1 Final DCEU Crossover In Comic

After many fans thought The Flash would serve as Ezra Miller’s last appearance in the DCEU, the actor’s character recently made a return one last time.

Ezra Miller played a major role in the DCEU, being credited for six total projects from Batman v Superman to their solo film, The Flash.

In the recent past, Miller was the center of off-screen drama which ultimately resulted in them being arrested on multiple occasions, leaving many fans to believe that the world of DC and Warner Bros. would part ways with the actor.

It was recently reported DC Studios would move away from all of its major actors that appeared in the DCEU, so fans can expect not to see Miller’s version of Flash on-screen anymore.

The Flash’s Final DCEU Appearance

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Special #1

In a newly released comic titled Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Special #1, which is a canon tie-in story to the upcoming Aquaman 2 film, Ezra Miller’s DCEU version of Flash made a surprising appearance.

In the comic, Ezra Miller’s Flash shows up to help Jason Momoa’s Aquaman with a “Meta Bomb.” In one panel, Flash gives Aquaman some intel on the bomb and how it works.

In another panel, Miller’s Flash tells Aquaman that he can take the bomb down to Antarctica so that it won’t harm anyone.

The illustrations of Flash in the comic also make the character’s face on the page look nearly identical to Miller’s on-screen.

Another panel features dialogue from Flash that sounds as though it came straight from Miller’s mouth.

The character got to fight side-by-side with Michael Keaton’s Batman in The Flash, but in the Aquaman comic, which will likely be the very last time Miller’s version will be seen in the DCEU, he was beside Aquaman and Wonder Woman.

Will The Flash Be in Aquaman 2?

The Aquaman comic that featured Ezra Miller’s Flash is a direct tie-in to the upcoming Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom film that will be released in theaters on December 22.

Since Miller’s Flash played such a prominent role in the tie-in comic, some fans may be inclined to believe that the character will appear in the upcoming movie, which will also be the final installment of the DCEU.

Fans may also think that it would only make sense for Miller to show up in Aquaman 2 since Momoa’s Arthur Curry popped up in the post-credits scene of The Flash.

However, although it is a bit confusing, it seems as though that post-credits scene took place in the Clooneyverse (the universe in which George Clooney’s Batman resided) since that is the universe The Flash ended in.

If that is the case, then Barry would have to travel across the Multiverse once again to show up in Aquaman 2, and considering all that transpired in The Flash, it would seem cheap for Barry to just jump from universe to universe.

With that being said, it is highly unlikely that Ezra Miller will be credited in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (although not entirely impossible), which means that his character’s last official appearance will be in the recently released comic.

Comics

Dragon’s Dogma 2 has been rated, suggesting release isn’t far off

Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 has been rated in Saudi Arabia, suggesting that a release date for the RPG sequel might not be too far in the future.

Officially, the Japanese publisher has not said when Dragon’s Dogma 2 will be released. However, recent hands-on demos at events such as Tokyo Game Show suggest that the game is fairly far along.

Capcom also recently published an investor Q&A in English claiming that an “undisclosed” title would be released by the end of its fiscal year, ending in March 2024.

This was initially translated from the Japanese Q&A as “unannounced”, suggesting a previously unrevealed title, but the official English language could cover Dragon’s Dogma 2, which is currently Capcom’s only significant announced title.

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Dragon’s Dogma 2 was announced last year during a live stream celebrating the original game’s 10th anniversary.

In a recent hands-on Dragon’s Dogma 2 preview, VGC said the sequel “feels a lot like the first game, and that’s a good thing”.

“So far, Dragon’s Dogma 2 certainly feels a lot like the game that has come before it, though we have to bear in mind it’s still the first playable build at a relatively early part of the game,” our writer said.

“As long as it remains weird for all the reasons its most hardcore fans have championed it all these years, that’s no bad thing at all.”

Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma 2 has been rated

Festivals

First Look At Kaley Cuoco & David Oyelowo In Prime Video’s Comedic Spy Thriller – Deadline

Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo star in Prime Video‘s Role Play, a comedic action spy thriller that is set to drop on the streamer on January 12, 2024.

The Big Bang Theory’s Cuoco plays the role of Emma, a woman who is seemingly living the perfect life alongside her loving husband and two kids in the suburbs of New Jersey. When the couple decides to spice up their love life by doing a little role-playing, things go haywire when her husband David finds out his wife leads a secret life as an assassin for hire.

Thomas Vincent directed the film written by Seth Owen. Studiocanal is fully financing the Picture Company production, to which Amazon Prime Video took rights for the U.S. and many offshore territories. The pic is based on an original idea from Brillstein Entertainment Partners’ George Heller.

The Picture Company partners Alex Heineman and Andrew Rona are producing through their long-term deal at Studiocanal. Cuoco is producing through her Yes Norman Productions.

Bill Nighy and Connie Nielsen also star in the film which was mainly filmed in Berlin, Germany.

Watch the trailer in the video posted above.

Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo star in

Film

Will Tom Hiddleston Retire After That Season 2 Ending – The Hollywood Reporter

[This story contains spoilers for season two, episode six, “Glorious Purpose.”]

Now that Loki season two has closed the TVA Handbook on Loki’s story, the question remains as to whether Tom Hiddleston has bid adieu to the MCU. It’s hard to imagine a better ending for the former God of Mischief, and since Loki‘s potential series finale aired last week, Hiddleston even referred to the episode as the “conclusion” of his 14-year journey with Loki. However, when pressed further on the subject this week, he then created a little bit of wiggle room for himself to return someday.

For Loki executive producer Kevin R. Wright, Hiddleston’s finale performance felt like a goodbye of sorts.

“I think his approach to that performance certainly was [a send-off], and I think we all felt that on set,” Wright tells The Hollywood Reporter.

But similar to his lead actor, Wright is quick to issue his own caveats.

“We wanted this to feel like a proper ending for our show, but that does not mean that there won’t be more Loki or stories within this world,” Wright adds. “We just wanted to give this a proper ending in a way that we often don’t get to do in the MCU.”

Wright, who originated much of the series’ foundational elements through his own pitch years ago, says that he’s still making the case for more TVA stories in the MCU.

“I would love to keep telling TVA stories. Internally, people pitch everything, and I’m actively like, ‘I want to do more TVA!’” Wright shares. “It will just end up being about where it makes sense for them to come in, in the future, but we all look at that corner of the MCU and go, ‘God, we’re just scratching the surface.’”

Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Wright also addresses a couple Mobius fan theories and how he’s looking forward to developing future TV series in a more traditional fashion.

So, in the end, instead of killing Sylvie to save time itself, Loki makes the ultimate sacrifice for the good of everyone else, and in doing so, he tasks himself with literally holding the fabric of existence together. And to me, that’s both a tragic and triumphant end. Why was this the right note to end the series on?

I’m glad those are the two feelings, because that’s what we were going for. (Laughs.) I don’t know if I can answer that beyond what you just said; it’s just the right ending to the story. We always knew the show was going to end with Loki on a throne, even in season one, and it was never about where he was going. It was always about the feeling we wanted audiences to feel when he got there, and it was about building the story that led to that feeling. Ultimately, because I don’t want to get too into the weeds on the last ten minutes of the show, we all feel like the answers and the intentions are there on screen.

But what I can say, generally, is that we are all really bored by the binary of hero-villain, good guy-bad guy, good choice-bad choice. In the real world, choices are really complicated. Real heroism often goes completely unrewarded. It often involves people who are making really tough decisions and will never benefit from the sacrifices that they’re having to make. And if you can build a superhero comic-book story that dives into the weeds of a more complicated heroism, then that was a challenge that was worth it to us to try. And Loki is the best character to do that with in many ways.

Tom Hiddleston as Loki in Marvel Studios’ Loki

Technically, did Loki become the God of Stories, or a personified version of Yggdrasil, the Norse Tree of Life?

Are those mutually exclusive? It all comes back to questions of free will. Is he writing stories, or is he allowing stories to continue to be told? Is he weaving them together? It’s an interpretation of what exactly he did there at the end, but I think both can potentially be true.

Of course, anything is possible within the comic book genre, but this finale feels like a send-off for Tom Hiddleston as this character. Do you think we’ve seen the last of Tom’s Loki for at least a long while?

I think his approach to that performance certainly was [a send-off], and I think we all felt that on set. We wanted this to feel like a proper ending for our show, but that does not mean that there won’t be more Loki or stories within this world. We just wanted to give this a proper ending in a way that we often don’t get to do in the MCU. But also, in Marvel comics and the history of comics, the end of a comic run doesn’t mean the end of that character or those stories. And if there’s another story to be told or further stories to be told with what we’re doing here — and it’s with the right filmmakers and the right writers and the right team — then we would love to continue to see Tom. I also said this in season one, but I honestly think Tom will play Loki until he’s Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki. It’s about the right thing and when we’re doing it, and being really careful about how we build those stories.

The TVA still has some unfinished business, as they have to track Kang variants. So will the TVA appear in the MCU again at some point?

I would love to keep telling TVA stories. Internally, people pitch everything, and I’m actively like, “I want to do more TVA!” It will just end up being about where it makes sense for them to come in, in the future, but we all look at that corner of the MCU and go, “God, we’re just scratching the surface.”

Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely in Marvel Studios' LOKI, Season 2 — (L-R): Tom Hiddleston as Loki and Jonathan Majors as Victor Timely in Marvel Studios’ *Loki*

360 sets. You begged and pleaded for them, and they were worth their weight in gold. Kasra Farahani also sounded optimistic that this approach might become more common on other MCU projects. So do you think you’ve successfully made your case to the crested blazers of the Marvel Studios Parliament?

We’ll see. It comes down to the speed at which we make streaming shows, and that’s natural for TV. That’s not a Marvel speed. You’re shooting a lot in small schedules, and it’s benefited by having sets and not having to do a ton of VFX in every shot. It makes good practical sense, and there’s a reason why people did it for a hundred years of moviemaking. It’s about when it makes sense for our stories, certainly, but we’re also telling comic book stories, and sometimes, things have to be more fantastical than what you can build. So it’s about being smart and how you do it. I love it, and I know our team loves it. When we were shooting Loki, we had a number of filmmakers who visited set, and their reactions were like, “They let you build all this?” And it’s like, “Yeah! Wait, you’re not? You should be doing this, too.” (Laughs.) So, long answer short, yeah, I think people have seen what we did and they see that it’s an option now, and will hopefully embrace it.

Fan theories can be both a blessing and a curse, as your friends on WandaVision know, but have you lost any sleep over not making the McDonald’s kid a young Mobius (Owen Wilson)?

No, but I love that theory. I also saw that maybe Mobius is an Odin variant, and that was really imaginative and cool, too. So it was never discussed and I never lost sleep over it, although I read all that stuff and I love it. Partially why Loki feels more densely layered than some other projects is we know that people are looking at it in that way and are digging into everything. So everybody on the team really embraces that and goes, “If it’s in frame, it has to hold up the scrutiny.” We’re either subliminally hiding things in there, or we’re putting things in there to misdirect so that we can better impact people with something more surprising. But I love that people engage with it that way, and I hope that they see that we are engaging back with them in how we build the show.

And what about a medium shot of Loki and Mobius on the tandem bicycle? Do you regret that you won’t see that meme for the rest of your life?

No, because I can go online and I can see it in all of the amazing fan art. It’s out there. We knew you just had to handle that with a very light touch, and the audience will fill in the blanks. And they beautifully have.

Marvel made a bunch of release date moves recently, and we’re not going to see much of you in 2024. Are you a bit relieved since Marvel Studios’ own temporal loom won’t be overloaded?

What’s exciting to me — and this is something [head of streaming at Marvel] Brad Winderbaum has talked about — is what I personally will get to be making next. We’ll really be able to have the time to slowly build it, find the right team for it, find the right people to develop it, build a pilot and build things on a more traditional schedule. It’s a little bit like the sets. It’s good, it’s practical, it’s smart, and when things are done right with the right team, these projects can be really, really good. And I think Loki is really, really good. So, if we give the development and production cycle the right amount of attention and build a calendar in a way that allows us to really do this correctly, you will get to see more projects that are of this caliber. It’s just about giving the creatives the space and the resources to do things properly. So, ultimately, this is a really good thing. I know people want more, but I also know that if we take time with it, they will appreciate what they get.

Well, the ultimate compliment I can pay all of you is that I didn’t care much for Loki prior to this series, and not because he was a bad guy or anything like that. This show fulfilled the original promise of these Marvel Disney+ series by deepening this character in a way that the movies don’t have time for, and I have nothing but fondness for Loki now. So Loki should be the case study for how valuable Disney+ can be for Marvel.

One, thank you. Two, I agree. I know that our writers, Justin [Benson], Aaron [Moorhead], Kate [Herron] and everybody would also agree, and that was the most appealing part of this. You can slowly take your time and build a really fulfilling story. We have very little action this season. (Laughs.) There’s a lot of thrills and there’s a lot of big stuff, but it was about really taking our time to build a character story that can feel truly fulfilling. So I look forward to being able to do more stories this way.

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Loki is now streaming on Disney+. This interview was edited for length and clarity.