A police officer in Sydney, Australia has pleaded guilty to “carrying a firearm with disregard” for a colleague’s safety after he threatened to shoot another police officer who said he would reveal spoilers from Tom Cruise’s blockbuster sequel “Top Gun: Maverick,” the Australian Broadcasting Company reports. According to court documents, 30-year-old cop Dominic Gaynor took out his gun and pointed it “in the vicinity” of fellow officer Morgan Royston after Royston threatened to spoil the film. Royston had seen “Top Gun: Maverick” the day prior.
The court documents reveal that Royston told Gaynor, “I’ll spoil it for you.” Gaynor responded by telling Royston, “Don’t spoil the movie” and “I’ll shoot you.” He proceeded to take his glock out of his holster and “held it stationary for five seconds” while pointing it at Royston. Gaynor was allegedly laughing during the incident, and his “finger was on the receiver and not the trigger.” His lawyer described the incident as “a case where the skylarking and tomfoolery in an employment context has gone awry.”
The Australian Broadcasting Company reports that Royston revealed in court on Nov. 9 that he fell into a depression following the incident. He said that while it was common for police officers to “share jokes and tease each other,” this incident was on a different level and left him with an “overwhelming shock and fear” feeling.
“I have completely lost the trust I had and my admiration for the NSW Police Force,” he said. “When I see a police officer now, I feel compelled to watch them and check their hand is not on their firearm.”
Gaynor’s lawyer said his client made an awful mistake and that a conviction would “definitely see him removed from the police force.” The lawyer added, “This is going to cost him dearly.” Gaynor was given a community correction order for two years, 100 hours of community service and a recorded conviction.
“Top Gun: Maverick,” sequel to the 1986 movie “Top Gun,” opened in theaters in May 2022 and became a box office powerhouse with $1.4 billion in worldwide ticket sales. The movie ranks as the 11th highest-grossing movie in box office history (unadjusted for inflation). It earned six Academy Award nominations, including best picture.
At first, Jaime Guevara’s version of “Hey There Delilah” sounds like just another cover of the Plain White T’s original. But some seconds in, an accordion enters the mix. Then, Guevara shifts his crooning from English to Spanish.
“¿Qué tal, Delilah?” he sings, interpreting the lyrics and feeling of the song that for a new audience. “Aquí estoy si te sientes sola.”
Suddenly, the song that was a hit in the mid- to late aughts has become a norteña, a ballad from a regional Mexican genre that relies heavily on accordions and other acoustic instruments.
Guevara, a Houston musician, and his EZ Band have created more than a dozen covers in norteña form, such as “Creep” by Radiohead and “Easy on Me” by Adele — and they’ve taken off.
The EZ Band’s rendition of “Hey There Delilah” has been played more than 1.5 million times on Spotify, and at least two million times on TikTok. The band’s version of “Santeria,” originally by Sublime, even drew notice from a fan account. And most recently, the band ventured into Swiftie land with a remake of Blank Space, from the “1989” album by Taylor Swift.
“It has kind of changed a lot of my life,” Guevara, 33, said in an interview, referring to the recent rising interest in the EZ Band and its album “Make it Norteño Vol. 1.” (Either norteña or norteño are used to describe artists, songs, music and awards in the genre, because nouns and adjectives have a gender in Spanish; the Grammy Awards, for instance, name a category for Best Norteño Album.)
Covers of different genres are not a new concept, of course. There have been Beatles songs made into polka music, and “Hotel California” has gotten the ukulele treatment. But the EZ Band’s songs are growing in popularity at a time when norteña music, and other regional Mexican genres like tumbados, are becoming more popular.
These blends of once-Top 40 and norteña music offer first- and second-generation Americans a way to connect with a musical heritage that they don’t always know or may have left behind. They also expose new audiences in the United States to the unique norteño sound.
The sound of norteña music has influences that date back to the 1840s, when Germans began settling in what is now southern Texas, according to Celestino Fernández, a retired sociology professor and consultant for the University of Arizona.
“They brought with them their music, and the accordion was a foundational instrument for the waltz and polka,” Dr. Fernández said. “Then the mexicanos, with the 12-string guitar, basically created música norteña.”
Guevara, who was born in Monterrey, Mexico, said his covers were the product of his background: He grew up listening to norteñas thanks to his father, who Guevara said played music on buses for tips in Mexico. When he moved to Houston with his family, at age 9, he was exposed to new genres of music in a new language. Later, Guevara’s wife, who is from Minnesota, introduced him to more new music from the wide range of American pop.
“Me, growing up, it’s the generation that grew up here listening to all the music in English, but also have family that listen to norteño,” Guevara said. “I get a lot of comments where people say, ‘You’re putting my two worlds together.’”
For decades, norteña music has mostly been popular in the regions where it originated: northern Mexico, the U.S. Southwest and California. But in recent years, the genre has gained a newfound recognition thanks, in part, to the prominence of other Latino acts like Bad Bunny and Peso Pluma. Both have collaborated with norteña bands.
Since Peso Pluma collaborated earlier this year with the regional Mexican band Eslabon Armado on “Ella Baila Sola” (“She Dances Alone”), the song has reached No. 4 on the Hot 100, Billboard’s mainstream pop chart, and it has been played more than 380 million times on YouTube.
“I didn’t think it would ever reach the level it has gotten to,” Guevara said of the current interest in norteña music. “It is a little surprising to see it blow up as much as it has.”
Dr. Fernández said some of norteña’s rise could be attributed to the growth of the Latino population in the United States.
“I think what we’re seeing is there are more and more Mexican immigrants in the United States, particularly the Southwest, and people bring their culture with them,” he said. “Some of them have heard that music when they were kids in their homes, and maybe now they’re reconnecting to it.”
Catherine Ragland, a professor of ethnomusicology at University of North Texas, said she had noticed the interest in her own neighborhood. Teens who were once playing rap and reggaeton from their cars, she said, are now blasting regional Mexican music.
For immigrants who moved to the United States recently or at a young age, listening to more traditional music can be a way to connect to their culture, Dr. Ragland said.
“This is a way to feel more authentically Mexican and really connect with that,” Dr. Ragland said. “The more they go back to these older styles, the more you feel like you’re truly connected to something.”
But perhaps a more simple explanation for norteña music’s new popularity is that it’s catchy and easy to move to.
“Norteña music is dance music,” Dr. Fernández said. “When you have events, people like to dance — and Mexicans and Mexican Americans have a lot of events around.”
Across Mexico and parts of the United States, norteña bands are often hired to play at celebrations for baptisms, first communions, weddings and even funerals, Dr. Fernández said. In Houston, the EZ Band has played at bars, parties and, recently, a halftime show at a Major League Soccer match.
After discovering the EZ Band on social media, Juan Loya, director of multicultural marketing for the Houston Dynamo, reached out to the band and invited it to perform.
Mr. Loya, 45, grew up in Houston and said that the band’s music resonated with him because his parents came from Mexico, and he used to listen to norteña music at parties and other events. Mr. Loya said that he thought the largely Hispanic Dynamo fan base would enjoy it, too.
“Hearing it in a different lens or in a different flavor,” Mr. Loya said of the EZ Band’s norteña sound, “it’s definitely really impactful to me, and I think I’m not alone in that.”
Adriana Torres, 38, of Maryland, said that she learned about the EZ Band while scrolling through social media, and she was hooked to the sound.
“It immediately took me back years,” Ms. Torres said, adding that she grew up listening to norteñas and other Mexican genres.
“It really touches people like me who are Mexican Americans, but also everyone,” she said. “It exposes our music in that style.”
About: Intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of poetry take us on a journey through the dreamscape of legendary poet Nikki Giovanni as she reflects on her life and legacy.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | Photo by Angela Gzowski
Director: Lin Alluna
About: Renowned Inuit lawyer Aaju Peter has long fought for the rights of her people. When her son suddenly dies, Aaju embarks on a journey to reclaim her language and culture after a lifetime of whitewashing and forced assimilation. But can she both change the world and mend her own wounds?
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Jeff Hutchens, courtesy of SHOWTIME
Director: Razelle Benally, Matthew Galkin
About: The deaths of a group of Native American women in rural Montana are the focus as Native families, journalists, and local law enforcement reveal a violent crisis set in motion almost 200 years ago.
About: An aspiring hospital chaplain begins a yearlong residency in spiritual care, only to discover that to successfully tend to her patients, she must look deep within herself.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Bobby Moser
Director: Tracy Droz Tragos
About: A hidden grassroots organization doggedly fights to expand access to abortion pills across the United States keeping hope alive during a global pandemic and the fall of Roe v Wade.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Iris Brosch
Director: Nicole Newnham
About: Shere Hite’s 1976 bestselling book, The Hite Report, liberated the female orgasm by revealing the most private experiences of thousands of anonymous survey respondents. Her findings rocked the American establishment and presaged current conversations about gender, sexuality, and bodily autonomy. So how did Shere Hite disappear?
About: In the darkness of a smoke sauna, women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences, washing off the shame trapped in their bodies and regaining their strength through a sense of communion.
About: Two friends, both Indigenous fishermen, are driven to desperation by a dying sea. Their friendship begins to fracture as they take very different paths to provide for their struggling families.
Courtesy of Sundance Institute | AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov
Director: Mstyslav Chernov
About: As the Russian invasion begins, a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol struggle to continue their work documenting the war’s atrocities.
Israel agreed to pause military operations for a few hours daily to allow civilians in Gaza to evacuate the northern part of the strip, the White House announced.
After six months of strikes, the primetime cupboard is pretty bare. But after a fall filled with repeats, unscripted series and a smattering of stockpiled scripted episodes, the broadcast networks are racing to salvage the rest of the TV season — and that means a scramble to get episodes in place by the start of 2024.
It’s not as easy as flipping a light switch, of course. But now that the SAG-AFTRA strike is over, allowing for cameras to start rolling again, audiences may have some burning questions on what it all means. Here, Variety tackles some of them.
How long until film and TV shows get back up and running?
Now that actors can go back to work, there is nonetheless prep time that comes with getting a project back up and running. Sets need to be built, or rebuilt. Crew members, some of whom likely moved away during the lengthy production hiatus, now need to be recalled (or replacements found). Schedules need to be ironed out, as actors and artisans are these days often working on multiple projects at once: Harrison Ford on both “1923” and “Shrinking,” for example, or Tim Minear co-showrunning ABC’s “9-1-1” and Fox’s “9-1-1: Lone Star.” Which project winds up in first position for those stars at the top of the call sheet, and what does that mean for everyone else below them? (In the case of the “9-1-1” shows, the plan is for the ABC series to be in first position — after all, Disney’s 20th TV produces them both.)
Then there’s the issue of studio space and what might be available. As for scripts, presumably many of them have been in the works already — either prior to the WGA strike, or after it was resolved last month. But if a show opts to save money by block shooting — meaning it shoots every scene at a location for the entire series at once — they’ll need to wait until all those scripts are in. Broadcast series, which rely on fast-paced, shorter-length shoots in order to fulfill hefty episodic orders, are expected to be first up. In general, the first scripted shows to produce completed episodes will be multi-camera comedies like NBC’s “Night Court,” which are shot and edited quickly. Some series already have completed scripts and were just waiting for a SAG-AFTRA deal in order to resume filming; others were in the middle of the writing process and likely were able to complete those scripts by the time the actors were ready.
When will we start to see programs that went back into production post-strike?
The rule of thumb is around three months for network TV series to be written, shot and edited. “If you think about it, shows usually go back with writers in July, and then they go into production in August and then the shows start airing at the end of September,” one network exec said. “So, you can use that as your calendar of how things are going to work.” Of course, the holidays will complicate matters, as time off is mandated by union contracts.
According to insiders, this will all depend on when cameras start rolling: If shows can get back into production by late November or early December, a February date is still possible. For shows that wait until January to start filming, March will be more likely. (Ironically, that’s normally the time of year where shows often go into repeats as they parse out the season’s final episodes, and await word on whether they’ll be renewed for a following year.)
Waiting until then is necessary so that networks have several episodes in the can before moving forward. It’s not a good idea to premiere a show, air a handful of episodes — and then go dark, killing any momentum. A good example is CBS’ new series “Tracker,” starring Justin Hartley, which currently has the plum post-Super Bowl time slot on Feb. 11. The studio behind “Tracker,” 20th Television, will now do everything in its power to make sure there are enough episodes ready so that CBS can keep “Tracker” on the air for a long period of time after that and hopefully benefit from that Super Bowl exposure.
How many episodes will my favorite TV show have this season?
Even the broadcast networks have been moving away from the old standard of 22- to 24-episode seasons, as the economics of the business have changed. But nonetheless, that tally is still the norm for most of primetime’s top-rated dramas and comedies. Not this year. Now the networks are looking at truncated seasons, between 10 and 13 episodes. (Which, funny enough, is still a larger number than most streaming and cable series seasons, which these days are more in the 6-to-8 range than even 10 or 13).
Of course, ambitious shows might be ready to do more. The question there is whether the networks and studios will want to spend the extra production costs to do it. If a show starts in February, and then continues through March, April and May, that’s four months, or 16 weeks. (Granted, that doesn’t build in any time for production hiatuses.) “The question is, can you do [that many] episodes and get them on by the end of May?” one exec said. “We don’t want to push production too far; it messes up next year. There’s got to be a cut off.”
How will the end of the strikes impact awards season?
The Oscar campaign is about to undergo a shakeup. Now that actors on films can hit the red carpets, do interviews with press and go on the late night talk shows, the competition is about to ratchet up a notch. (Before now, only performers in films that had been given waivers by SAG-AFTRA were allowed to discuss their projects). This also means that the directors, writers, producers and artisans who had been pushed into the limelight to promote their wares will now have to step aside a bit as stars once again take the limelight. And it didn’t take long: By 12:01 a.m. Thursday morning, studios were already revising talent lists for upcoming premieres, adding actors to the roster.
So far, only the WGA has moved its winter 2024 awards date, moving it to April 14 in order to extend its submissions window. Other awards shows are holding on to their dates, at least for now. But with the resolution of the SAG-AFTRA strike, the shows are now aiming to secure hosts for upcoming ceremonies.
That includes the Primetime Emmys, delayed from September and now scheduled to take place on Jan. 15. Meanwhile, the kudocast that has been postponed the longest – the Daytime Emmys — can now also move forward. Although no date has officially been announced, it’s expected that the Daytime Emmys will take place the same time as the Children’s & Family Emmys (the weekend of Dec. 15-17). Already the Daytime Creative Arts & Lifestyle Emmys are set for Dec. 16.
What does the deal mean for actors and artificial intelligence?
AI was a key sticking point in the negotiations between SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP. According to Variety, key wins for the guild included a requirement that if a synthetic character included recognizable features of real-life actors, studios must get permission from those actors. Also, the union also won a consent requirement for the use of dead actors’ images. And SAG-AFTRA also sought to limit AI consents to a single project. Under the final agreement, an AI consent can cover more than one project, but those projects must be spelled out in the contract.
What are streaming residuals now post-strike?
SAG-AFTRA did not get one of its top priorities: a share of revenue from each streaming platform. But as Variety reported, “They ended up with a streaming bonus that is modeled on terms obtained by the Writers Guild of America. Under the WGA deal, writers on successful streaming shows will get a 50% bonus on their standard residual. A ‘successful’ show is one that attracts views amounting to the equivalent of 20% of a platform’s subscriber base in the first 90 days.”
SAG-AFTRA says that bonus will ultimately be worth around $40 million. The bonus will be worth 100% of an actor’s residual, with some going to actors on those shows, and the remainder to a fund jointly administered by the employers and the union. “That money will then be distributed more broadly to actors on a range of streaming shows — not just the most popular ones,” Gene Maddaus reported. Actors’ residuals on made-for-streaming shows are capped at $2,000 in the first year of reuse for hour-long episodes.
The Umbrella Academy‘s main cast has teased what fans can expect from the popular Netflix series’ final season.
In an interview-style featurette released as part of Netflix’s Geeked Week 2023 celebrations, the show’s eight primary actors offered vague hints at what’s to come in The Umbrella Academy season 4. Unfortunately, most of what was said was pretty standard from a tease perspective, with words and phrases including “excitement”, “the best season yet”, “bittersweet”, and “wacky” used to try and whet fans’ appetite for the show’s next installment.
There were, though, a couple of intriguing hints from some of the Netflix series’ cast. Tom Hopper, who plays Luther Hargreeves, claimed it’ll “hit the ground running” and “put the [Hargreeves] siblings through the usual amount of mayhem”, which suggests we won’t be waiting around for season 4 to get going.
In our review of The Umbrella Academy season 3, we pointed out its frustrating pacing issues, so fingers crossed that its successor rectifies that error by allowing the Hargreeves family to get straight into the thick of season 4’s mystery and action.
Elsewhere, Emmy Raver-Lampman teased a new cohort of antagonists for the Hargreeves family to deal with, saying “there’s some unbelievable new characters and new villains, who are super exciting”. Considering that the primary antagonists in The Umbrella Academy have largely been a) the tiresome, cliched world-ending apocalypse and b) their own father, aka Sir Reginald Hargreeves, it’s high time one of the best Netflix shows branched out and gave us some compelling villains to love to hate, even if it’s in the series’ final season.
That’s not the only news to emerge out of Geeked Week concerning The Umbrella Academy season 4. Netflix also unveiled the first teaser art for its last hurrah, which you can watch below.
Get ready for the final timeline. The Umbrella Academy Season 4 is coming 2024. #GeekedWeek pic.twitter.com/2bVEgmFfBLNovember 9, 2023
YouTube is debuting a new For You section for creators’ channels, personalized to whoever opens the page. It will start showing up on November 20th, according to a post from YouTube’s support account, which says the section will recommend “a mix of content from your channel to viewers based on their watch history.”
Creators can turn the feature on or off in the customization menu under channel settings. Alternatively, clicking “more settings” under the “recommendations for your viewers” section pops up more controls for the new section. Creators can then decide if they want only shorts, livestreams, or full videos there — or all of those or a mix of two. There are also options to include all content or just recent material.
The feature has been in testing for months; a video posted to the Creator Insider channel previewed it six months ago, and YouTube updated its test features and experiments page on August 8th discussing the test. The documentation says the feature was mandatory initially, but when it rolls out to everyone, creators can then opt out. (I was able to turn it off, so it seems as though that’s true now.)
Harry Styles is swapping out his sexy locks for a shaved head, instead … and debuted the new look while checking out U2’s Las Vegas Sphere concert with his boo, Taylor Russell.
The singer and the actress were jamming out to U2 hits, and looking all coupley while they were at it. Harry had his arm around Taylor … so, if you weren’t sure they’re really an item, this should seal the deal.
TMZ.com
Witnesses tell us they were cuddled up all night long during last week’s show … with a lot of little kisses and selfies shared between them during U2’s engagement.
They were hanging with a big group of friends, and everyone was having a great time — even dancing in a circle toward the end of the night.
Girlfriend aside, the haircut is probably what’s more jarring for Harry’s adoring fans … whether you’re used to the One Direction era or his successful solo career, one thing that was alwaysthere was his long, luscious hair.
No more, apparently.
As we reported, Taylor and Harry have been linked together since July, when she got some VIP treatment at his Vienna concert. They’ve been spotted out together since — sharing some more PDA moments at the press night of her London play, “The Effect.”
It’s been said Harry’s hair is what makes him beautiful, but fans — and Harry — will have to grow into his new look.
In France, a robust appetite is a virtue if not a heroic trait.
Eating gratifies all the senses: We take in the aroma of a handsome dish, delight at the sound of a sizzling steak or crave the crunch of a crusty baguette. So to fully appreciate the various sensory dimensions of a fine French meal is, essentially, to express a sophisticated artistic judgment.
“The Taste of Things,” by the director Tran Anh Hung, is a 19th-century French romance powered by this understanding of food’s transcendence. The feature opened in theaters Wednesday in France and will play on screens at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on Nov. 10 before its Oscar-qualifying run in mid-December.
The movie is about a distinguished gourmand, Dodin (Benoît Magimel), and his preternaturally gifted chef, Eugénie (Juliette Binoche). They live together in the French countryside and together concoct lavish meals for themselves and Dodin’s coterie of foodie friends. Their lives entirely revolve around the cultivation and creation of these dishes, which Hung emphasizes through long, elaborate cooking scenes.
When I first watched “The Taste of Things” at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, I was surrounded by a delightfully vocal audience. The oohing and ahhing was ubiquitous and, apparently, a visceral response, similar to what is elicited by beholding Monet’s water lilies or being wrapped in the velvety textures of Whitney Houston’s voice. Savoring a tasty meal (or even just watching one come together on a big screen) brings a kind of joy that can’t be explained by logic or reason.
Reviews of the film in France have been mixed. Le Monde’s Clarisse Fabre found its blissful atmosphere and near-absence of dramatic tension perplexing and boring. Olivier Lamm of Libération wrote that there’s much more to the film than its food-porn attractions — it’s also about the assault of junk food and globalization on French standards.
The country’s rich gastronomic tradition — and its long history of federally regulating the quality and authenticity of its wines and produce — is a particular point of national pride, and French film industry leaders have embraced the gourmand label. This year, “The Taste of Things” was selected as the French submission for the Oscar’s best international film category over Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner, “Anatomy of a Fall.”
The decision was met with objections from French critics, who said Triet was punished for the political charge of her acceptance speech at Cannes. However, the selection of Hung’s film isn’t all that surprising given the selection committee’s evident partiality to films commenting on the country’s national identity — or, from a more cynical standpoint, films that offer Oscar voters a tourist-friendly idea of France.
The French devotion to the culinary arts is a bit of an onscreen cliché, and Hollywood films like “Ratatouille” and “Chocolat” (the latter, also starring Binoche, made big money in the United States, but fared far less well in France) have relied on stereotypically French settings, like a rustic village and a Parisian bistro, to communicate lessons about food’s revolutionary and unifying powers.
More rewarding — and complex — is the 1956 French classic “La Traversée de Paris,” starring the Frenchest of all Frenchmen, Jean Gabin, as an artist-turned-black market courier in Nazi-occupied Paris. This black dramedy stars Gabin and the comedian Bourvil, who play a bickering duo who must transport four suitcases of contraband pork across the city while evading the authorities and a horde of hungry hounds.
Political instability not only cuts off access to revered foodstuffs, it drains the very spirit of those committed to the art of eating. In the 1987 Danish film “Babette’s Feast,” Babette (Stéphane Audran), a French chef, is forced to flee from her Parisian neighborhood when the Paris Commune, an insurrectionist government, seizes power in 1871.
Seeking refuge in the Danish countryside, Babette moves into a spartan Protestant household manned by two Protestant sisters accustomed to eating the same brown fish stew, which has a mudlike consistency. Fourteen years into her employment with the sisters, Babette miraculously wins the French lottery and, rather than fund her return to France, spends all her winnings on a multicourse dinner for the townspeople.
The feast — a turtle soup, stuffed quail, rum sponge cake and more — breaks the guests’ brains, while Babette, in the final scene, emerges as an emissary of the sublime. Her culinary gifts, her cooking’s ability to disrupt the very foundations of what her Danish friends perceived to be reality, make her angelic.
At the same time, isn’t fine dining — like certain kinds of music, literature and art — rather bourgeois? Nothing screams upper middle class like the prim and proper dinner scene. This is delightful in films by, say, Éric Rohmer, who was fond of depicting the natural choreography of mealtime, the mess of wine glasses and plates of fruit and cheese floating between guests in the middle of a meandering conversation.
In other films, dinnertime can seem ridiculous. Consider Luis Buñuel’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” in which three couples try over and over to enjoy a white tablecloth feast, but do not actually eat. Over the course of the film, their polite mannerisms and refined gestures become increasingly absurd.
Marco Ferreri’s “La Grande Bouffe” plays like a glutton’s version of “Salo,” linking the pleasure of eating to consumerist society and the gross hedonism of the leisure class. In the film, four friends literally feed themselves to death, feasting on an endless parade of shrimp, turkey, pot roast and sausage while reading excerpts from canonical works of literature and, notably, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s gastronomical bible, “The Physiology of Taste.”
“La Grande Bouffe” is a nauseating showcase and a welcome retort to the glorification of tunnel-vision foodies like Brillat-Savarin. Ferreri was also a gourmand, and he reportedly had difficulties keeping himself from binge eating. His film points a finger at himself as well as society at large.
“The Taste of Things” is an adaptation of the 1961 novel “The Passionate Epicure” by Marcel Rouff, which was itself inspired by none other than Brillat-Savarin. “The Physiology of Taste” is supposed to be about the science of eating, but it often veers off into discussions about sex, love and sensuality.
Brillat-Savarin’s passion for food is not unlike the passion he might develop for another person, a dynamic that Hung’s film depicts with a hypnotic warmth. When I see Binoche’s Eugénie, laboring away on a buttery risotto or a vegetable omelet, I’m overcome by the sense memory of something deliciously intimate, like being held tight or a loved one’s scent.In that moment, nothing else seems to matter.
The world’s biggest hero makes his way to Netflix in “Ultraman: Rising.” The streamer has released the first teaser for the CG-animated feature film, which is slated to premiere in 2024.
Based on characters from Eiji Tsuburaya, known for co-creating the “Godzilla” franchise, “Ultraman: Rising” will follow baseball star Ken Sato, who returns home to Japan to carry the mantle of Ultraman. Things take an unexpected turn when a newborn kaiju monster thinks he is her parent. Now, Sato must raise the offspring of his greatest enemy as his own child, on top of grappling with his own estranged relationship with his father and the schemes of the Kaiju Defense Force
Netflix has partnered with Tsuburaya Productions for the film, which the streamer also partners with on its “Ultraman” animated series. “Ultraman: Rising” is directed by Shannon Tindle, known for his animation work on “Coraline” and “Kubo and the Two Strings,” and co-directed by John Aoshima, known for “Kubo” and “Gravity Falls.” The screenplay is from Tindle and Marc Haimes, who wrote “Kubo” as well. Tom Knott will produce, and Lisa Poole will co-produce.
“Making this film is a dream come true,” Tindle said in a statement. “What began as an original story inspired by my love for Eiji Tsuburaya’s Ultraman somehow became an actual Ultraman film thanks to the incredible trust of the team at Tsuburaya Productions, and the support of the folks at Netflix Animation. We’ve assembled an all-star team and I can’t wait to share our unique take on Ultraman with the rest of the world.”
Here is a brief look at the cast of The Marvels,with more details below on the characters and their respective actors:
Brie Larson – Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel
Teyonah Parris – Monica Rambeau
Iman Vellani – Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel
Samuel L. Jackson – Nick Fury
Zawe Ashton – Dar-Benn
Gary Lewis – Emperor Droge
Seo-Jun Park – Prince Yan
Zenobia Shroff – Muneeba Khan
Mohan Kapur – Yusuf Khan
Saagar Shaikh – Aamir Khan
Leila Farzad – Talia
Abraham Popoola – Dag
Daniel Ings – Ty-Rone
Alex Hughes – Kree Announcer
Shardiah Ssagala – Skrull Young Adult
Cecily Cleeve – Skrull Young Girl
Remi Dabiri-McQuaid – Skull Child
Ffion Jolly – Skrull Woman
Kenedy McCallam-Martin – Little Monica
Savannah Skinner-Henry – Aladnean Child
Rachel John – Joyous Aladnean
Daniel Monteiro – Royal Attaché
Kya Garwood – Awed Kree Soldier
Fikayo Ifarajimi – Hala Citizen
Shereen Walker – Kree With Mask
Hansen Buron – Kree With Mask Comrade
Brie Larson – Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel
Marvel Studios
Taking center stage once again is Brie Larson as Carol Danvers. Her origin film, Captain Marvel, was a massive commercial success in 2019, and her hero quickly became one of the most powerful in the MCU.
This time, Captain Marvel will lead a galactic team in what could be a lead-up to her prominent role in the next Avengers film.
Teyonah Parris – Monica Rambeau
Marvel Studios
Returning for the first time since getting her superpowers in WandaVision is Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris). The character was originally introduced as “Lieutenant Trouble” in Captain Marvel and, she is Maria Rambeau’s daughter.
Her and Carol’s complicated relationship 30 years later is sure to be explored between during the events of The Marvels.
Iman Vellani – Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel
Marvel Studios
One of Marvel’s brightest new stars is Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel. Since joining the MCU, Kamala Khan has been looking into how young fans view the Avengers, specifically Captain Marvel.
Getting to further explore how Ms. Marvel fits into the greater MCU will be interesting to see, especially as a young street-level hero who was revealed to be a mutant at the end of her series.
Samuel L. Jackson – Nick Fury
Marvel Studios
Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury has been the main through-line of the whole MCU. This is his 15th live-action appearance and has made his presence felt since the beginning.
Following his character’s journey in Secret Invasion, Fury is back as the director of SABER. The Marvels will give fans a chance to see how Agent Fury is navigating the protection of Earth following the Blip.
Zawe Ashton – Dar-Benn
Marvel Studios
The latest galactic villain of the MCU is Dar-Benn, a Kree who has risen to power following the footsteps of Ronan the Accuser.
Zawe Ashton takes on the antagonist role, similar to her partner Tom Hiddleston (Loki). Ashton is best known for her roles in the comedy-dramas Fresh Meat and Not Safe for Work.
Gary Lewis – Emperor Droge
Gary Lewis
Rather than looking to take over Earth as seen in Secret Invasion, led by Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Gary Lewis takes on the role of leading Skrull Emperor Droge.
In an effort similar to what’s seen in Captain Marvel, this group of Skrulls is seeking a new home following a conflict with the Kree.
Lewis is known for roles in films such as Billy Elliot, Gangs of New York, and Eragon.
Park Seo-joon – Prince Yan
Marvel Studios
Park Seo-joon is a South Korean actor taking on the role of Prince Yan, a love interest of Carol Danvers.
He is best known for his starring roles in the Korean TV television series Kill Me, Heal Me, Fight for My Way, What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim, and Itaewon Class. He also had a cameo role in the Academy Award-winning film Parasite.
Zenobia Shroff – Muneeba Khan
Marvel Studios
Kamala’s mom returns in The Marvels. Zenobia Shroff is known for her role in The Big Sick and as Muneeba Khan in Ms. Marvel.
After hesitantly supporting Kamala being a neighborhood superhero, it’s unlikely she’ll be thrilled to hear her daughter is joining Captain Marvel in an effort to save the galaxy.
Mohan Kapur – Yusuf Khan
Marvel Studios
Mohan Kapur returns as Kamala’s father, Yusuf. Mohan Kapur gained fame through his show Saanp Seedi, which was the inaugural satellite series in the Asia-Pacific region from 1992 to 1994.
In the MCU, Yusuf Khan plays the concerned (and sometimes oblivious) father of Kamala. He’s set to go on an unexpected journey in The Marvels with the hope that his daughter remains out of harm’s way.
Saagar Shaikh – Aamir Khan
Marvel Studios
Aamir Khan’s wedding in Ms. Marvel played a crucial part in Episode 3 when the Clandestines confront Kamala at the event, leading to a massive fight.
Saagar Shaikh is mainly known for his role in Ms. Marvel but also stars in Unfair and Ugly, a dramedy series that revolves around a South Asian Muslim family as they navigate the challenges of maintaining their unity.
Leila Farzad – Talia
Leila Farzad
Talia has the stressful job of working under Nick Fury on the SABER spaceship.
Leila Farzad gained recognition for her portrayal of Naomi Jones in I Hate Suzie, leading to a nomination for a British Academy Television Award. She recently appeared in the “Joan Is Awful” episode of Black Mirror as Mona Javadi.
Abraham Popoola – Dag
Abraham Popoola
With a history of working on recent Disney projects, Abraham Popoola played roles in Star Wars’ Andor and Cruella alongside Emma Stone.
Dag works with Talia throughout The Marvels as a SABER agent or scientist, trying to help defeat Dar-Benn and stay safe.
Daniel Ings – Ty-Rone
Daniel Ings
Playing alongside Zawe Ashton is Daniel Ings as Ty-Rone, a Kree counsel for Dar-Benn during the events of The Marvels.
Ings is best known for his role as Luke in the Netflix romantic comedy Lovesick and has also gained recognition for his roles in various TV series, including Pete Versus Life and The Crown.
The Marvels begins playing in theaters on Friday, November 10.
Christopher Nolan doesn’t want to talk about superhero movies because it would overshadow everything else he discusses in his interview.
The director is brutally honest about his lack of interest in discussing the upcoming DC film, The Batman.
Nolan’s focus on comic book movies would distract attention from other important aspects of film that he discusses.
The Dark Knight trilogy director Christopher Nolan gets brutally honest about why he doesn’t have any interest in talking about superhero movies when asked about the DC film, The Batman. Matt Reeves’ The Batman became the latest incarnation of the Caped Crusader in 2022, with Robert Pattinson as a younger Dark Knight. As it became a commercial and critical success, The Batman – Part II is in the works, as Reeves is planning to flesh out his Elseworlds-based universe.
Given his massive success with The Dark Knight trilogy, the world is obviously curious about what Nolan thinks about the later incarnations of Batman in live-action. In a new Variety cover story, Nolan was asked if he had seen Reeves’ The Batman, and what he thought about it. However, the British filmmaker got candid as he shared the following as to why he didn’t really want to answer that specific question:
“If I start talking about comic book movies, that would be the only thing anybody pays any attention to in the article.”
Why The Batman Is Compared To Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy So Much
The Dark Knight trilogy became a defining block in the superhero movie genre, as Nolan’s film series kicked off during a time when studios were still not ready to fully invest in comic book properties. With The Dark Knight still being one of the top-rated comic book movies of all time, whenever new DC films come out, they are almost always compared to Nolan’s 2008 installment. In the case of Reeves’ The Batman, there are a few key factors why it gets put in the same conversation as The Dark Knight trilogy.
One of the huge elements that both movies share in common is the sense of a grounded Batman world, as neither film was connected to any larger DC Universe, allowing them to focus on being as close to a gritty real-life rendition as the source material would allow. The Batman, very much like The Dark Knight movies, took a deeper dive into Bruce both in and out of the cowl and exploring his layers. Ultimately, it is not a bad thing for comparisons to be made between The Dark Knight trilogy and The Batman, as the former is what made the latter possible nearly ten years after The Dark Knight Rises ending concluded the previous series.
Prior to landing the gig in The Batman, Pattinson actually starred in Nolan’s Tenet in 2020.
Even though they have things in common, The Batman was also able to tap into new territory for the Caped Crusader’s movie legacy. Time will tell what other similarities The Batman – Part II will have to Nolan’s The Dark Knight films as Warner Bros. Discovery gets ready to resume work on the highly anticipated sequel. Until The Batman – Part II comes out, the world can relive The Batman through streaming and on Blu-Ray/DVD, as well as Nolan’s entire The Dark Knight trilogy.
That’s cool that there is more storage but Sony going non-proprietary is the best thing. You get better storage for half the price on PS5 and you have so many options for top end to low end depending what you want to spend. Plus, PS has great compression for many games .
The string of division reorganizations at NBCUniversal that started this past summer with the leadership transition following CEO Jeff Shell’s exit continues.
Today, Peacock‘s marketing team was realigned by Shannon Willett who joined the company last year as Chief Marketing Officer. It follows yesterday’s shakeup at NBCUniversal’s ad sales division.
A number of positions, said to be less than 50, have been eliminated as a result of the two reorgs, sources tell Deadline. More than 20 new positions are being created to fit into the new structure and direction.
In a company memo (You can read it below), Willett laid out the new Peacock marketing organizational structure, divided into five areas: Brand Creative and Marketing; Title Creative and Marketing; Strategy, Planning, Analysis and Performance Media led by Nic Julich; Growth and Lifecycle Marketing led by Anna Frost; and Publicity, Events and Talent Engagement led by Shannon Buck.
In the email, Willett also acknowledged the ongoing layoffs.
In addition to the Peacock marketing and NBCU ad sales, NBCU’s Research and Decision Sciences operation also recently underwent a restructuring, resulting into staff reductions.
Here is Willett’s email:
Hi Everyone,
I’m reaching out today to share an update on the Peacock Marketing organization. Given Peacock’s growth trajectory and the shifting landscape around us, we’ve spent a lot of time over the past year thinking about what we can do as a team to better support the business. Through that process, we recognized an opportunity to reimagine the way we work to drive the next phase of Peacock’s growth. Today we’re announcing an evolved Marketing structure that will enable us to work smarter, bringing more expertise and strategy in-house, and move faster by breaking down silos and deepening collaboration across our team and with our key partners.
Our new organization will be focused on five core pillars, each with a direct impact on business strategy: Brand Creative and Marketing; Title Creative and Marketing; Marketing Strategy, Planning, Analysis and Performance Media; Growth and Lifecycle Marketing; and Publicity, Events and Talent Engagement. We heard from many of you as well as our partners that our structure was complex, and are confident that this streamlined approach will help us simplify our processes, accelerate decision making and expose us to a deeper array of marketing skillsets to learn and grow in our careers.
Here is an overview of our new structure and the five business areas reporting into me: · Brand Creative and Marketing: This new pillar will be responsible for brand positioning, strategy, and design identity, led by the EVP of Brand Creative and Marketing, a new leadership role for which we are hiring. · Title Creative and Marketing: This new team will oversee planning and execution for our Peacock scripted, unscripted and film single-title campaigns and will be led by the SVP of Title Creative and Marketing, a new leadership role for which we’re hiring. · Strategy, Planning, Analysis and Performance Media: Nic Julich will continue to lead this team with a broader scope, focusing on data-informed decisions and testing across the marketing organization, as well as performance media. · Growth and Lifecycle Marketing: Anna Frost will continue to lead this expanded team, which will serve as the main hub for our ongoing marketing efforts focused on subscriber acquisition, engagement and retention. · Publicity, Events and Talent Engagement: This team will continue to be led by Shannon Buck, and encompasses series and film publicity, events and talent engagement, all of which remain key drivers of our overall brand and business.
As you may have heard, we have some colleagues leaving the company as a result of this restructure and we have held discussions with these team members today. Additionally, we will also be hiring for key new roles, including at senior levels, to support the newly aligned team.
As we move through this transition, we will continue to share as much as we can about what is changing, how it impacts you and the opportunities we have ahead.
A sequel to the original classic, Saw Xhas now been playing in theaters since September 29, and the film only recently fell out of the Top 10 on the domestic box office charts.
Here in the United States, Saw X has scared up $52.7 million to date, while the tenth installment’s worldwide total has officially reached the $100 million milestone this week.
The film’s worldwide total is now$100,653,457. That makes it the eighth film in the franchise to pass $100 million, with only Saw VI and Spiral failing to reach those heights.
With a production budget of just $13 million, Saw X is now hugely profitable for Lionsgate. And we can only assume it won’t be long before Jigsaw returns to the screen.
Meanwhile, Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s continues to top the domestic box office charts, even with the film available to stream on Peacock the same day it hit theaters.
The video game adaptation was unleashed on October 27, and to date the domestic total stands at $116 million. Worldwide, Five Nights at Freddy’s has now made $220 million.
Made on a production budget of just $20 million, Five Nights at Freddy’s is proving to be a big time moneymaker for the studio, and a sequel is all but guaranteed at this point.
Stay tuned for more on the future of the Five Nights film franchise.
Robert De NiroPhoto: Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival
The jury in the civil suit involving Robert De Niro and his longtime personal assistant Graham Chase Robinson has determined that the actor is not liable for gender discrimination against Robinson, but Deadline is reporting that his production company still must pay her $1.26 million in damages. In a statement, Robinson’s attorney said that the jury “completely vindicated” her.
Robert De Niro just keeps procreating
De Niro had initially sued Robinson for allegedly misusing resources from his Canal Productions label before she quit her position as its Director Of Production And Finance, saying she had transferred millions of the company’s frequent-flier miles to her personal account and had regularly used company money on personal errands.
But Robinson responded with a suit of her own, accusing her former boss of treating her like his “office wife” and subjecting her to “gratuitous unwanted physical contact,” “sexually-charged comments,” and stereotypically gendered duties like housework, in addition to allegedly asking her to “scratch his back, button his shirts, fix his collars, tie his ties, and prod him awake when he was in bed” (tasks that she called “creepy” while on the stand). Robinson’s side also argued that nobody at Canal had questioned her financial decisions until she quit, at which point the company supposedly started looking for a problem.
Earlier in the course of the trial, while on the stand, De Niro shouted comments like “shame on you” and “give me a break with this stuff” at Robinson, saying she was making it sound like she was “out in front of the building on he knees scrubbing the floor.” One questioned that seemed to frustrate him was whether or not he had ever talked to her on the phone while he “audibly urinated in the bathroom.”
The third installment in the Agatha Christie movies takes a chilling turn in ‘A Haunting in Venice’. Actor and director Kenneth Branagh returns to helm the film and reprise his role of the famed mustache detective, Hercule Poirot.
The movie is based on Christie’s novel ‘Hallowe’en Party’ and will be available on streaming and digital just in time for Halloween. While these murder mystery novels are often accompanied by a sense of suspense and horror, ‘A Haunting In Venice’ leans straight into the horror theme by placing the murder inside a haunted palazzo.
Releasing on Halloween means the film will just make the Huluween line-up at the end of its celebration. Additionally, ‘A Haunting In Venice’ will also be available to rent or purchase on digital on the same day.
Branagh teams up once again with cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos (‘Death on the Nile’, ‘The Orient Express’). In an interview with Collider, the British cinematographer expands on why they made the switch from filming on 70 millimeter to digital, “There were a lot of photographic characteristics that we wanted to maintain in the Poirot films. One was a certain kind of clarity, the other is a sense of depth of field.” he explains.
“One of the things that I think makes the intimacy of the portraiture that we have used on previous Poirot films is that we work at a slightly higher depth of field than most films, T4. Not ‘Citizen Kane‘ levels, but just enough that a face and its features are all in focus. So, we wanted to shoot with a large format lens camera system that was in the highest sensitivity to light, and that was the Sony Venice 2. Those photographic elements were more important than the analog versus digital – that we were able to shoot at low-light levels but with our preferred depth of field. Those were the choices behind shooting this with a digital camera.”
‘A Haunting In Venice’ held its world premiere at the Odeon Luxe Leicester Square at the West End London on September 11th. It was released domestically on September 15, 2023, and is still available in theaters if you want to experiment it in standard format or in IMAX. ‘A Haunting In Venice’ has a total runtime of 1 hour and 44 minutes.
Watch the official trailers for ‘A Haunting In Venice’ below:
The movie will be available on digital on October 31 on major platforms such as Prime Video, Apple TV, Vudu, YouTube, and Google Play for rent or purchase.
The official synopsis for ‘A Haunting In Venice’ is below:
Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) has retired from detective work and has moved to Italy to live a quiet life. His peace is interrupted when old friend and novelist Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey) stops by and insists he attends a séance on Halloween in order to expose a psychic named Joyce Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh). However, when a murder occurs, Poirot vows to catch the killer within the haunted palazzo.
If you thought “Batgirl” was the end of it, think again. Warner Bros. has shelved and will take a tax write-off on another completed film, this time a Looney Tunes live-action and animated movie called “Coyote vs. Acme” starring John Cena, IndieWire has confirmed. THR first reported the news.
Principal photography on “Coyote vs. Acme” was completed in New Mexico last year, and the film originally intended for streaming has a budget in the $70 million range. But Warner Bros. is deciding to not move forward with the movie and has already realized the tax savings in its Q3 earnings, which were reported yesterday.
Warner Bros. had no comment on the exact method by which the film is being shelved and written off or how much the studio stands to recoup, but Deadline is reporting that it is taking an estimated $30 million write-down, which the studio believes is more than the cost of theatrically releasing and marketing the film would be worth.
Dave Green directed “Coyote vs. Acme,” which was based on a 1990 short story in the New Yorker about the life inside the Acme warehouse that supplies all the mechanisms Wile E. Coyote uses to trap the Roadrunner. James Gunn, the co-head of DC Studios, was even a producer and is credited on the screen story for the film.
It’s a bad look considering “Batgirl” and the outcry it started from the creative community. That movie didn’t test well and was deemed “not releasable” by the powers that be. This time though, a source says the filmmakers were at least informed of the decision to shelve the movie in advance of it hitting the press.
“With the re-launch of Warner Bros. Pictures Animation in June, the studio has shifted its global strategy to focus on theatrical releases. With this new direction, we have made the difficult decision not to move forward with ‘Coyote vs Acme.’ We have tremendous respect for the filmmakers, casts, and crew, and are grateful for their contributions to the film,” a Warner Bros. Motion Pictures Group spokesperson told IndieWire in a statement. “This was a tough decision, and we recognize and deeply appreciate the effort and time that goes into making a movie.”
“Coyote vs. Acme” is the third such completed film project greenlit under the former regime at the studio and intended for streaming. The company under David Zaslav had a change of heart about expensive projects made specifically for streaming. And while some of those movies like the “House Party” reboot ended up going to theaters, “Batgirl,” “Scoob Holiday Haunt,” and now “Coyote vs. Acme” will forever sit on the shelf. WBD this time last year said it intended to write off an additional $2 billion in content as Zaslav continues to try and get out from under debt.
As the statement says, the studio now wants theatrical releases, not streaming movies, and that applies to Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. The new film didn’t fit within that creative direction.
It’s also a shame considering the many holes on the 2024 theatrical slate in the wake of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, the latter of which was finally called off just after midnight this morning. Who knows how this would’ve performed, but even “Space Jam: A New Legacy” brought in $163 million worldwide.
The studio does have another project in development with director Dave Green at New Line. Warner’s animation arm is now developing movies for a theatrical crowd and is targeting two film releases for 2026. Currently in development are features based on “Cat in the Hat” and “Oh, The Places You’ll Go!,” as well as a partnership with Locksmith Animation on “Bad Fairies” and “The Lunar Chronicles.”
The 24-year-old Euphoria star is currently promoting her latest role in The Hunger Games prequel film, and she’s not wasting a single opportunity to make a statement on the red carpet. Just a few days after attending the Berlin premiere in Schiaparelli couture, Schafer partnered with Prada for a head-to-toe golden look that seems to pay homage to Katniss Everdeen’s iconic mockingjay pin.
Of course, this wasn’t just any golden red carpet gown (which are typically reserved for Oscar night shoe-ins). Schafer’s molten Prada look combined the exposed bra trend with elegant structural elements, combining a floor length gold skirt with a unique bustier halter top with an attached shawl. Schafer topped off the look with a pair of simple pearl earrings, otherwise limiting the accessories and pulling her hair back into a sleek bun.
Hunter Schafer attends “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” London premiere November 09, 2023.
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Similarly, Schafer kept her makeup look minimal and glowing, though not as glowing as her artfully crumpled ensemble.
Starz is going back to gladiator school, with the network greelighting the new series “Spartacus: House of Ashur.”
The series will see Nick Tarabay return as Ashur, while original “Spartacus” series creator Steven S. DeKnight onboard as executive producer and showrunner. The show was first reported to be in development back in February.
The official description states, “The series poses the question: what if Ashur hadn’t died on Mount Vesuvius at the end of ‘Spartacus: Vengeance?’ And what if he had been gifted the gladiator school once owned by Batiatus in return for aiding the Romans in killing Spartacus and putting an end to the slave rebellion?”
“A decade ago the groundbreaking original ‘Spartacus’ captivated viewers worldwide and we’re excited to deliver more enthralling, high-octane drama that our fervent fans have been anticipating,” said Kathryn Busby, president of original programming at Starz. “It is an honor to team up with Steven again as he expands upon the storytelling within this thrilling, action-packed universe.”
Lionsgate Television will produce the show. Karen Bailey will oversee the series on behalf of Starz. Jocelyn Sabo will oversee for Lionsgate TV.
“Spartacus” originally debuted on Starz in 2010, with the first season officially titled “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.” It was followed by the prequel series “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” in 2011 and the subsequent seasons ““Spartacus: Vengeance” in 2012 and “Spartacus: War of the Damned” in 2013.
“To be afforded the opportunity to return a decade later to a series you loved is such a rare, wonderful opportunity,” said DeKnight. “I could not be more excited to craft this next chapter in the Spartacus saga with Starz, Lionsgate, and the incomparable Nick Tarabay.”
Western nations stress need for peace as Israel agrees four-hour humanitarian daily pauses
Western and Arab nations, international agencies and non-governmental groups stressed the urgent need for aid for Gaza civilians at a Paris conference on Thursday.
The gathering ended a few hours before the White House said Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in Gaza, starting today.
The French presidency said the participants’ pledges reached over 1 billion euros (£870 million) in additional funding, stressing that the global amount still remained to be finalised.
Scores of international aid charities call for ceasefire
Aid organisations said today that a full ceasefire is needed between Israel and Hamas to meaningfully help civilians in Gaza, with one announcing the death of a doctor in the fighting.
Maysara Rayyes, a 28-year-old emergency doctor with Medecins du Monde (Doctors Without Borders), was killed with his family on Sunday when their Gaza apartment building was bombed, the French group said.
Scores of aid workers are among thousands killed in the conflict since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7.
About 10 non-governmental organisations told a press conference on the sidelines of a humanitarian summit hosted by France that a simple pause in the fighting would not alleviate what they called a humanitarian “catastrophe”.
Israel military: ‘No ceasefires in Gaza, just brief local pauses’
Israel has not agreed to any ceasefires during its military campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but will continue to allow brief, localised pauses to let in humanitarian aid, the Israeli military said today.
‘There’s no ceasefire, I repeat there’s no ceasefire. What we are doing, that four-hour window, these are tactical, local pauses for humanitarian aid,’ army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said.
Earlier, the White House said Israel would begin daily four-hour pauses in the northern Gaza Strip to enable Palestinians to flee hostilities in the coastal enclave.
Drone hits school in southern Israel
A unidentified drone has hit an elementary school in the southern Israeli resort city of Eilat, causing damage and panic, the Israeli military said.
No one was physically hurt in the explosion but paramedics were treating seven people for shock, said an army spokeswoman at the scene, details that were separately confirmed by emergency services.
Local residents clustered around the school complex, which was cordoned off by dozens of soldiers and police officers, an AFP reporter saw.
The Israeli military did not confirm the origin of the drone and no group has so far claimed responsibility.
White House says daily pauses are ‘significant first steps’
As we previously reported, the White House said Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its assault on Hamas in northern Gaza starting on Thursday.
White House security spokesperson John Kirby said: ‘We’ve been told by the Israelis that there will be no military operations in these areas over the duration of the pause and that this process is starting today.
‘We understand that Israel will begin to implement four-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza with an announcement to come three hours in advance.’
Kirby described the news as ‘significant first steps’ and that the US would ‘want to see them continued for as long as they are needed’.
WATCH: IDF destroy Hezbollah post where terrorists were launching bombs from in Lebanon
White House: Israel to begin daily four-hour pauses in northern Gaza
The White House said Israel has agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its assault on Hamas in northern Gaza starting on Thursday, as the Biden administration said it has secured a second pathway for civilians to flee fighting.
President Joe Biden had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to institute the daily pauses during a Monday call.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said that the first humanitarian pause would be announced Thursday and that the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance.
Biden also told reporters that he had asked the Israelis for a ‘pause longer than three days’ during negotiations over the release of some hostages held by Hamas, though he ruled out the chances of a general cease-fire.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had warned Israel last week that it risked destroying an eventual possibility for peace unless it acted swiftly to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza for Palestinian civilians as it intensifies its war against Hamas.
In a blunt call for Israel to pause military operations in the territory to allow for the immediate and increased delivery of assistance, Blinken said the situation would drive Palestinians toward further radicalism and effectively end prospects for any eventual resumption of peace talks to end the conflict.
Breaking: Biden says ‘no possibility’ of Gaza ceasefire
US President Joe Biden said on Thursday there was currently ‘no possibility’ of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
‘None. No possibility,’ Biden told reporters as he left the White House for a trip to Illinois when asked about the chances of a ceasefire.
This is a breaking news update, more to follow…
Cyprus outlines plan for maritime corridor to get aid to Gaza
The president of Cyprus outlined a proposal on Thursday to open a maritime corridor to help deliver more aid to Gaza, a plan which he said could be operational quickly but which diplomats said faced challenges.
Under the plan presented by President Nikos Christodoulides at a humanitarian conference in Paris, aid would be sent by sea to Gaza from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, the closet European Union member state about 370 km (230 miles) away.
‘We hope immediately to implement it,’ he said of the 25-page proposal.
The plan is aimed at expanding capacity for humanitarian relief to the Gaza Strip beyond limited deliveries being made through the Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Palestinian enclave since Israel began it air and ground offensive in Gaza.
Diplomats cautioned that the plan faced logistical, political and also security challenges.
Palestinians killed in West Bank today rises to 10, Palestinian health ministry says
Ten Palestinians were killed Thursday in an Israeli raid on Jenin in the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said, up from six reported earlier.
AFP journalists in the West Bank reported intense fighting.
They saw black smoke rising over Jenin and heard multiple explosions and gunfire.
A statement from the Palestinian health ministry said the current death toll in Jenin stood at 10, with more than 20 others wounded.
The Israeli army said its forces were operating in the northern West Bank city, but did not provide further details.
Breaking: Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll hits 10,812
At least 10,812 Palestinians, including 4,412 children, have been killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza since October 7, the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said on Thursday.
Breaking: Meeting hosted in Qatar to discuss deal that could see hostages exchanged for pause in fighting
A meeting has been hosted by Qatar to agree the parameters and sequencing of a deal that would see Hamas release some hostages in exchange for Israel pausing its attacks on Gaza, according to a source briefed on the meetings.
The trilateral meeting was held in Doha on Thursday between CIA and Mossad chiefs and the Qatari prime, according to Reuters source.
The advantage of the trilateral meeting was to bring all three parties together at one table in real time to speed up the process, the source told Reuters. The talks also included a discussion over allowing humanitarian imports of fuel into Gaza.
The outcome of the talks was unclear.
Starmer reiterates call for ‘humanitarian pause’
In the UK, opposition party Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has reiterated his call for a ‘humanitarian pause’ to allow medicines and food into Gaza, describing it as the only realistic option in the face of a desperate situation.
Speaking after a Q&A session with students and members of the public at the offices of the Express and Star newspaper in Wolverhampton, Sir Keir said:
Across the Labour Party we are united in condemning the terrorist attack by Hamas, in being clear about Israel’s right to self-defence. There is a division on whether we should call for a humanitarian pause, which is my position as I have set out very, very clearly, and some who think we should have a ceasefire. What people are yearning for is a reduction of the terrible events that we are seeing, the innocent deaths we are seeing in Gaza. That’s why a humanitarian pause is so important. That is the only realistic, credible way now to get the food, the water, the medicines, and yes the fuel that is desperately needed, into Gaza. I think it’s so important now that we put our shoulder to the wheel to make sure that that humanitarian pause comes about just as fast as humanly possible. It’s getting desperate now.
NATO chief supports humanitarian pauses, calls for international law to be respected
NATO allies support humanitarian pauses in the war between Israel and Hamas to allow aid to reach Gaza, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said.
International law must be respected and civilians be protected in the conflict, he told reporters in Berlin as he addressed the media before a meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
‘The war in Gaza must not turn into a major regional conflict. Iran and Hezbollah must stay out of this fight,’ he added.
No10 did NOT sign off Suella Braverman’s bombshell article slamming Met chief for ‘playing favourites’ by allowing pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day – as she faces probe over defying Rishi Sunak with Tories at war on whether she should be sacked
No10 today dramatically confirmed it did not sign off a bombshell article by Suella Braverman accusing police of ‘playing favourites’ by allowing a pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day.
Downing Street has launched a probe after the Home Secretary suggested Scotland Yard commissioner Mark Rowley would be tougher if the protests were in a different cause.
In a piece for the The Times, she also risked enraging the DUP by comparing the situation to protestant marches in Northern Ireland, saying the Gaza ceasefire demo included ‘Islamists’ who were ‘asserting primacy’ and could be linked to terrorism.
A Home Secretary publicly attacking operational decisions by the Met chief is extremely rare, and a former inspector of constabulary warned it ‘crossed the line’.
Read the full report by clicking on the link below.
Hamas terrorists gang-raped an Israeli woman before one shot her in the back of the head as he was still having sex with her, according to horrifying witness testimony to the Palestinian group’s attack on October 7.
Israel ‘s Lahav 433, a crime-fighting umbrella organisation known as the ‘Israeli FBI ‘, has been working to gather evidence of sexual assaults during the incursion.
Investigations are part of the force’s effort to prosecute Hamas terrorists who were captured during the attack, which left more than 1,400 people in Israel dead.
Click the link below to read the full story…
Egypt condemns ‘international silence on violations of the law’ by Israel
Egypt on Thursday condemned ‘international silence on violations of international humanitarian law committed by Israel’ at a Paris conference on humanitarian aid for Gaza, under bombardment by Israel since the October 7 attack by Hamas.
‘What the Israeli government is doing far exceeds the right to self-defence,’ Egypt’s foreign minister Sameh Shoukry told the conference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron, complaining of an ‘imbalance’ in ‘the international conscience’.
IN PICTURES: Smoke rises above the Gaza Strip as Israel’s aerial bombardment continues
Reuters and AP news agencies deny report suggesting they had prior knowledge of October 7 attack
International news organisations Reuters and Associated Press have denied any suggestion they had prior knowledge of the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians and soldiers, in a statement responding to a report by media group HonestReporting.
In a statement released over the wires, Reuters said:
We are aware of a report by HonestReporting and accusations made against two freelance photographers who contributed to Reuters coverage of the Oct. 7 attack. Reuters categorically denies that it had prior knowledge of the attack or that we embedded journalists with Hamas on Oct 7. Reuters acquired photographs from two Gaza-based freelance photographers who were at the border on the morning of Oct. 7, with whom it did not have a prior relationship. The photographs published by Reuters were taken two hours after Hamas fired rockets across southern Israel and more than 45 minutes after Israel said gunmen had crossed the border. Reuters staff journalists were not on the ground at the locations referred to in the HonestReporting article.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for AP said:
The Associated Press had no knowledge of the October 7 attacks before they happened.
HonestReporting’s article was titled: ‘AP (Associated Press) & Reuters Pictures of Hamas Atrocities Raise Ethical Questions.’
The article suggested photojournalists hired by the news agencies could have had advanced knowledge of the 7 October incursion by Israel.
The organisation says it ‘monitors the media for bias against Israel’ and has been described in the past by other news organisations as a ‘pro-Israel media watchdog group’.
Chancellor Scholz vows to protect Germany’s Jews
Chancellor Olaf Scholz pledged today to protect Germany’s Jews against a ‘shameful’ upsurge in anti-Semitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, on the anniversary of the Nazi pogrom that began the Holocaust.
Speaking in a Berlin synagogue that assailants targeted with two Molotov cocktails last month, Scholz intoned: ‘Essentially this is about keeping the promise given again and again in the decades since 1945… the promise “never again”.’
Six killed in Israeli raid on West Bank, Palestinian health ministry says
Six Palestinians have been killed today during an Israeli raid on Jenin in the north of the West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said.
A statement from the ministry said the current death toll in Jenin stood at six, up from five announced in a previous statement. The Israeli army said its forces were operating in Jenin but did not provide further details.
Since the beginning of the war triggered by attacks on October 7 by Gaza-based Hamas militants, which Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people, more than 150 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Israeli forces have arrested more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank in that time, the army said, most of them affiliated with Hamas.
Clashes have often erupted during such operations.
WHO warns of ‘worrying trends’ in disease spread in Gaza
The Gaza Strip faces an increased risk of disease spreading due to Israeli air bombardments that have disrupted the health system, access to clean water and caused people to crowd in shelters, the World Health Organization warned on Wednesday.
‘As deaths and injuries in Gaza continue to rise due to intensified hostilities, intense overcrowding and disrupted health, water, and sanitation systems pose an added danger: the rapid spread of infectious diseases,’ WHO said. ‘Some worrying trends are already emerging.’
It said that the lack of fuel in the densely populated enclave had caused desalination plants to shut down, which increased the risk of bacterial infections like diarrhoea spreading.
While there have been extremely limited deliveries of food, water and medicine to Gaza, Israel has refused to let fuel in due to concerns about its possible diversion by Hamas despite calls from the United Nations and humanitarian aid groups.
WHO said that more than 33,551 cases of diarrhoea had been reported since mid-October, the bulk of which among children under five.
It said the number of children affected marked a significant increase compared to an average of 2,000 cases monthly in that age group throughout 2021 and 2022.
Top US general cautions over risks of a long Gaza war
A faster resolution to the fighting in Gaza could help limit civilian strife that might spur people to join the ranks of Palestinian militants, US President Joe Biden’s top military adviser said.
General Charles Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Israel’s stated aim for its military campaign in Gaza – the complete destruction of the Hamas terrorist group that runs the territory – was ‘a pretty large order’.
But he also said Israel was focused on targeting the senior leadership of Hamas, which might be achieved more quickly.
‘I think the longer this goes, the harder it can become,’ Brown told reporters before arriving in Japan on Thursday, in his first detailed remarks on the month-old conflict.
Asked whether he was concerned a high Palestinian civilian death toll could push people to join the ranks of the militants, Brown said: ‘Yes, very much so. And I think that’s something we have to pay attention to.’
WATCH: Israeli airstrikes kill Hamas head of anti-tank missile system
The IDF said its airstrikes ‘eliminated’ the terrorist Ibrahim Abu Ma’zib, head of the anti-tank missile system of the Central Camps Brigade of Hamas.
‘As part of his role, he directed and carried out many anti-tank attacks Towards the citizens of Israel and the IDF forces,’ the Israeli military said.
Aid groups call for immediate ceasefire in Gaza, say there are no safe zones
Jan Egeland, the Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told a conference in Paris on Thursday that an immediate ceasefire in Gaza was an absolute necessity.
‘We cannot wait a minute more for a humanitarian ceasefire or lifting of siege which is collective punishment,’ he said.
‘Without a ceasefire, lifting of the siege and indiscriminate bombarding and warfare, the haemorrhage of human lives will continue.’
Medecins Sans Frontieres chief Isabelle Defourny called southern Gaza safe-zones ‘fake zones’.
IDF official claims there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza as UN calls for more aid
An Israeli military official has claimed there is ‘no humanitarian crisis in Gaza,’ according to France’s AFP news agency, even as he acknowledged the Palestinian territory faces several challenges amid the ongoing war.
‘We know the civil situation in the Gaza Strip is not an easy one,’ said Colonel Moshe Tetro, head of coordination and liason at COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body handling civil affairs in Gaza.
‘But I can say that there is no humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip,’ he told reporters.
Tetro said the Israeli military was facilitating aid transfer to Gaza in sectors such as ‘water, food, medical supplies and humanitarian aid for shelters’.
The official’s comments came after UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini said there was need for a meaningful continuous humanitarian aid to Gaza including fuel.
He said aid coming in through Rafah was inadequate for Gaza’s 2.3 million people, adding that all crossings into Gaza should be opened.
Lazzarini also said he was concerned about the spillover risk of the situation in Gaza, adding that the West Bank ‘is boiling’.
The UN and other aid agencies have been warning of a deepening humanitarian crisis since the Israel-Gaza conflict began on October 7.
They say tens of thousands of people have been forces to flee their homes, and vital supplies are either running dangerously low or have run out entirely.
Health officials in Hamas-run Gaza say more than 10,500 people have been killed in the coastal strip since the outbreak of the war. Israel says more than 1,400 people were killed in the October 7 attack.
Breaking: Macron calls for ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza
France’s president Emmanuel Macron has called for a ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza.
He said this morning that there must be a humanitarian pause very quickly in the coastal strip and that countries must also work for a ceasefire.
‘Civilians must be protected, that’s indispensable and non negotiable and is an immediate necessity,’ Macron said at the start of a humanitarian conference on Gaza that is being held today in Paris.
‘In the immediate term, we need to work on protecting civilians. To do that, we need a humanitarian pause very quickly and we must work towards a ceasefire,’ Macron told delegates in Paris.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said there will be no fuel delivered to Gaza and no ceasefire with Hamas unless the hostages are freed.
Macron spoke to Netanyahu on Tuesday and the pair will talk again once Thursday’s aid conference is over, the Elysee Palace said.
Defective drone strike on US airbase may have prevented escalation
A defective drone in Iraq may have helped keep America from being dragged deeper into a widening Middle East conflict, Reuters reports.
The drone was was launched at the Erbil air base by an Iranian-backed militia on October 26, according to the news agency, citing official familiar with the matter.
They say it then penetrated US air defences and crashed into the second floor of the barracks housing American troops at about 5am.
But the device laden with explosives failed to detonate and in the end only one service member suffered a concussion from the impact, said the officials, who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely about the attack. The US had got lucky, they added, as the drone could have caused carnage had it exploded.
The incident was among at least 40 separate drone and rocket attacks that have been launched at US forces by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria over the past three weeks, in response to America’s support of Israel.
David Schenker, a former US assistant secretary of state at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, cautioned that while neither Iran and its allied groups nor the US appeared to want a direct confrontation, the risks were growing.
The possibility of a major strike that draws America into a conflict is ‘a very realistic concern,’ he told Reuters.
Family of Palestinian activist arrested over online post say her account was hacked
The family of Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi insists she didn’t write the words for which she now sits in an Israeli jail, AP reports
Israeli authorities burst into the Tamimi home in the occupied West Bank on Monday and arrested the 22-year old for ‘inciting terrorism’ on her Instagram account.
Tamimi gained worldwide fame in 2017 after a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral on social media. She later said the soldiers had shot her cousin in the head just before the video was taken. After being released from prison, she wrote a book and crisscrossed Europe and the Middle East on tour.
Tamimi’s recent arrest has prompted criticism of an Israeli crackdown on Palestinian online speech in the wake of the Hamas attack October 7. Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli authorities, fired by Israeli employers and expelled from Israeli schools for online speech deemed incendiary, rights groups say.
The Israeli military alleges Tamimi posted a statement reading ‘we are waiting for you in all the West Bank cities from Hebron to Jenin – we will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke, we will drink your blood and eat your skulls, come on, we are waiting for you.’
But Nariman Tamimi, Ahed’s mother, says the account was hacked – a common occurrence for the fiery and divisive activist.
Videos showed fights between protestors outside the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, where actress Gal Gadot organized a screening of footage of the brutal Hamas terror attack atrocities committed during the October 7 invasion of Israel.
The 47-minute video, provided by the Israeli Defence forces, was aired to a select audience of celebrities and influential personalities in LA and New York last night.
About 200 people attended the screening, though Gadot was not in attendance, nor were any major Hollywood stars, according to the LA Times.
To read the full story, click the link below:
Israel opens evacuation corridor
The IDF has announced it has again opened the north-south evacuation corridor in Gaza. It will remain open from 10am to 4pm local time (0800GMT-1400GMT).
Avijaa Adraei, the IDF’s Arab media spokesperson, said 50,000 people fled from northern Gaza to the south yesterday. Tuesday saw 15,000 flee, Monday say 5,000 and Sunday 2,000, showing that the pace is picking up.
Israel has now for weeks urged Palestinians in northern Gaza to move south, which is considered slightly safer.
However, aid groups have said many in the north are unable to make the journey.
Western and Arab officials are gathering in Paris to find ways to provide aid to civilians in Gaza
Officials from Western and Arab nations, the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations are gathering Thursday in Paris for a conference on how to provide aid to civilians in the Gaza Strip during Israel’s war with Hamas, including proposals for a humanitarian maritime corridor and floating field hospitals.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who has called for a ‘humanitarian pause’ in the war, wants the conference to address the besieged Palestinian enclave’s growing needs including food, water, health supplies, electricity and fuel.
Over 50 nations are expected to attend, including several European countries, the United States and regional powers such as Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf countries, the French presidency said. Also attending is Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.
Israeli authorities won’t participate in Thursday’s conference, the Elysee said.
The head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, the U.N.’s top aid official and the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross are expected to provide details about urgent needs in the Gaza Strip.
Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides will present his plan for a humanitarian sea corridor to Gaza which he has said aims for a “sustained, secure high-volume flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza in the immediate, medium and long term.” Ships would deliver the aid from Cyprus’ main port of Limassol, about 255 miles away.
French officials said they are also considering evacuating injured people to hospital ships in the Mediterranean off the Gaza coast. Paris sent a helicopter carrier off the Cyprus coast and is preparing another with medical capacities on board for that purpose.
Thursday’s discussions will also include financial support and other ways to help Gaza’s civilians.
IN PICTURES: Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip
IDF says Israeli soldiers uncover stockpile of drones and weapons belonging to Hamas in north Gaza strip
The IDF said Israeli troops uncovered a site for the production and storage of drones and weapons belonging to Hamas in the heart of the Sheik Radwan residential neighbourhood in the north of the Gaza Strip and near schools.
UN human rights chief accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes
The UN human rights chief has said collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians and their forced evacuation amount to war crimes.
He also said atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7 and their continued holding of hostages were also war crimes.
Volker Türk, standing in front of Egypt’s Rafah border crossing into Gaza, told reporters Wednesday: ‘These are the gates to a living nightmare.’
‘We have fallen off a precipice. This cannot continue,’ he said later in Cairo.
Türk said international human rights and humanitarian law must be respected to help protect civilians and allow desperately needed aid to reach Gaza’s beleaguered population of some 2.3 million people.
He said the UN rights office received reports in recent days about an unspecified orphanage in northern Gaza with 300 children who need urgent help.
However, he said communications were down and access was impassable and unsafe, so ‘we cannot get to them.’
‘I feel, in my innermost being, the pain, the immense suffering of every person whose loved one has been killed in a kibbutz, in a Palestinian refugee camp, hiding in a building or as they were fleeing,’ Türk said.
‘We all must feel this shared pain – and end this nightmare.’
IDF claims capture of key Hamas stronghold in Gaza City after 10-hour battle
The IDF has claimed it has captured a key Hamas stronghold after a 10-hour battle in Jabalia, Gaza City.
Israel’s military said it took ’10 hours of fighting, during which they eliminated terrorists, captured many weapons, uncovered terrorist tunnel shafts, including a shaft located near a kindergarten and leading to an extensive underground route’.
The IDF shared footage on social media, saying: ‘The fighters of the Nahal Brigade’s combat team completed an operation to take over Outpost 17, a military stronghold of the terrorist organization Hamas in western Jabaliya’.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reporters earlier that Israeli war planes had bombed and destroyed a house in Jabalia refugee camp.
MailOnline was exclusively invited to join IDF forces taking the fight to Hamas. Read the full story by clicking the link below:
Israel-Hamas war day 34: Here’s what you need to know
Good morning and welcome to MailOnline’s live blog covering the on-going war between Israel and Hamas, which today enters its 34th day.
After more than a month of intense bombardment, hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in a ‘dire humanitarian situation’ in battle zones without enough food and water, the United Nations has said.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said yesterday that his forces were ‘tightening the stranglehold’ around Gaza City, as they pressed an offensive launched in response to the Hamas attacks on October 7 that killed 1,400 people in Israel. More than 240 people were also taken hostage, among them babies and elderly people.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel retaliated with a relentless bombardment and ground invasion that the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says has killed more than 10,500 people, many of them children.
But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected a ceasefire unless the hostages Hamas holds in Gaza are released.
Today, here’s what you need to know:
Israeli forces have been operating in the very heart of Gaza City, fighting Hamas terrorists and clearing the extensive tunnel network.
According to a source close to Hamas, talks are underway for the release of 12 hostages, including six Americans, in return for a three-day ceasefire.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said US has ‘a way to communicate with Hamas’, but giving details could jeopardise process.
The US has backed Israel’s rejection of a ceasefire, and G7 foreign ministers in Japan said Wednesday they supported ‘humanitarian pauses and corridors’.
Discussions on the possible future of Gaza once conflict ends have grown, after Netanyahu said Israel would assume ‘overall security’ of the territory.
Kirby said Wednesday that it was plausible that ‘for at least some period of time’ Israeli forces would remain in Gaza in a transition period.
The Israeli army said 50,000 people had fled their homes in the main battle zone of northern Gaza on Wednesday, a sharp increase in numbers.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) confirmed the figure, and warned that conditions were ‘dire’ in battle zones north of the central Wadi Gaza district. OCHA said ‘hundreds of thousands’ remain.
UN rights chief Volker Turk – on a visit to the region – condemned Israel over its bombardment and its orders for Gazans to flee.
‘The collective punishment by Israel of Palestinian civilians amounts also to a war crime, as does the unlawful forcible evacuation of civilians,’ he told reporters in Egypt. He also accused Hamas war war crimes.
Efforts continue to resume the crossing into Egypt of wounded Palestinians and dual nationals after departures were stalled Wednesday.
More than 100 trucks carrying aid crossed into Gaza from Egypt yesterday, OCHA said, taking the total to 756 since fighting began last month, fewer than what would normally have entered Gaza in two days before the war.
Key Updates
Biden says ‘no possibility’ of Gaza ceasefire
Health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says war death toll hits 10,812
WHO warns of ‘worrying trends’ in disease spread in Gaza
Top US general cautions over risks of a long Gaza war
Macron calls for ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza
Israel opens evacuation corridor
IN PICTURES: Palestinians search for casualties at the site of Israeli strikes on houses in Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip
UN human rights chief accuses Israel and Hamas of war crimes
IDF claims capture of key Hamas stronghold in Gaza City after 10-hour battle
Israel-Hamas war day 34: Here’s what you need to know
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Israel-Hamas LIVE: President Biden says there is ‘no possibility’ of a ceasefire as Israel agrees to four-hour daily pauses to let Gaza civilians flee
Late-night has had plenty of superstars appearing since the end of the writers strike.
But the end of the actors strike is another story.
Stars will now be able to promote films and series that were previously struck, opening the door to a slew of new bookings across The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Daily Show.
A case in point: NBC has adjusted its guests for tomorrow night’s The Tonight Show with Marvel stars Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson being added at the last minute.
The Loki star and The Marvels star are joining Eric Idle and musical guests Rick Ross and Meek Mill for the Friday show.
The pair will be able to promote their Marvel wares now with Loki’s second season finale airing tonight and The Marvels, where Larson plays Carol Danvers otherwise known as Captain Marvel, coming out in theaters this weekend.
Watch out for some more big names joining the late-night party next week and onwards.
Having said that, the late-night shows have managed to consistently book actors to either talk about non-struck work such as Brian Cox promoting Amazon reality series 007: Road To A Million or Yellowstone star Luke Grimes promoting his music on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
In fact, Jared Leto is appearing on The Tonight Show this evening, albeit likely to talk about his band 30 Seconds to Mars and him scaling the Empire State Building to announce a new tour.
Elsewhere, this evening, good timing for Hilary Duff on Late Night with Seth Meyers, who can now talk about that ending of How I Met Your Father in addition to her new book My Sweet Little Boy.
The television industry won’t waste any time when it comes to getting back to work following the end of the SAG-AFTRA strike. With a focus on broadcast shows, prep and pre-production are well underway.
However, anxious viewers shouldn’t get too excited about their favorite scripted series coming back, as it could take more time than expected. When the writers strike ended at the end of September, the rooms opened up the following week, but that doesn’t mean that the actors can do the same.
Dick Wolf’s writers (for the “FBI,” “Law & Order” and “Chicago” franchises) went back into their respective rooms Oct. 4, so filming could begin as early as the week after Thanksgiving, kicking off on Nov. 27. Prep could start next week, with filming underway eight or nine days later. With that schedule, a 10- to 13-episode season would be ready to debut in mid-February or March.
However — there’s a good chance some shows won’t begin this month. Most of the industry closes down for December due to the holidays, so series may not want to start back up just to pause again.
“9-1-1,” which has moved from Fox to ABC for its seventh season, will be a priority for studio 20th Television (which shares Disney as a parent company with ABC) over the fifth season of spinoff, “9-1-1: Lone Star.” Sources tell Variety “9-1-1” will likely go back into production in either December or January, which means a premiere date wouldn’t be until March, but talks for a timeline on “Lone Star” production haven’t started yet.
Additionally, new Justin Hartley drama “Tracker” remains in the post-Super Bowl slot on Feb. 11 at CBS, though filming has not started. At Max, “The Penguin,” “Welcome to Derry” and “Hacks” top their priority list to get back to work, with several episodes already in the can for the first two shows, and the goal is to resume by the end of November.
In order to stay within the traditional end of the TV season, wrapping up in May (which will also keep them within the Emmy eligibility window), many broadcast shows are eyeing shorter seasons consisting of 10-13 episodes, as mentioned above, instead of the usual 22-24.
The little voices inside your head know you inside and out — and they’ve returned.
Here is the 90-second first teaser for Inside Out 2, Disney and Pixar’s sequel to their 2015 toon that was a global smash. Have a look above, and see the new key art poster below.
The scene is set as alarms shatter a quiet morning in Riley’s head: It’s “demo day” in there — complete with wrecking ball, deconstruction crew (crüe?) and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” blaring. Seems our hero is turning 13, an a new emotion has arrived: Anxiety. Carrying baggage, of course.
The original Inside Out followed Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), a young girl who is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco, with her emotions – Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) – then coming into conflict as to how to best navigate a new city, house, and school.
Maya Hawke voices Anxiety, joining Inside Out veterans Poehler, Smith, Black. Franchise newcomers Tony Hale and Liza Lapira take over the respective roles of Fear and Disgust.
Inside Out premiered Out of Competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival, grossing nearly $859M worldwide upon its June 2015 release. Pete Docter and Ronnie Del Carmen directed that pic, which they scripted with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley later went on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, also landing a nom for Best Original Screenplay. It also won the top prize at the Annie Awards.
Docter initially pushed back on the idea of a sequel to the pic, reaffirming his commitment to making original films. But the three-time Oscar winner relented, and Inside Out 2 was confirmed at Disney’s D23 event last year. Pixar veteran and first-time helmer Kelsey Mann takes over the directing reins, and the pic’s exclusive theatrical run launches June 14.
Starz is bringing one of its foundational original series — along with one of its characters — back to life.
The premium cabler has given a series order to Spartacus: House of Ashur, a continuation of the franchise that last aired a new episode in 2013. The pickup comes nine months after Starz announced it was developing a revival/sequel — and a day after actors union SAG-AFTRA announced a tentative agreement with studios and streamers, ending a four-month strike.
Series creator Steven S. DeKnight will serve as showrunner, and Nick Tarabay will reprise his role of Ashur from the former series.
“A decade ago the groundbreaking original Spartacus captivated viewers worldwide and we’re excited to deliver more enthralling, high-octane drama that our fervent fans have been anticipating,” said Kathryn Busby, president original programming at Starz. “It is an honor to team up with Steven again as he expands upon the storytelling within this thrilling, action-packed universe.”
The description for House of Ashur reads as follows: “The series poses the question: What if Ashur hadn’t died on Mount Vesuvius at the end of Spartacus: Vengeance? And what if he had been gifted the gladiator school once owned by Batiatus in return for aiding the Romans in killing Spartacus and putting an end to the slave rebellion?”
“To be afforded the opportunity to return a decade later to a series you loved is such a rare, wonderful opportunity,” said DeKnight. “I could not be more excited to craft this next chapter in the Spartacus saga with Starz, Lionsgate, and the incomparable Nick Tarabay.”
Spartacus: Blood and Sand premiered in January 2010 and was a breakout series for Starz, setting ratings marks that would stand for several years (shows like Outlander and Power eventually surpassed it). Blood and Sand starred Andy Whitfield as the title character, the Thracian gladiator who led a slave uprising against the Roman empire.
After Whitfield was diagnosed with stage four non-Hodgkin lymphoma following the first season, Starz filmed a prequel miniseries, Gods of the Arena, featuring some characters from the main series. After Whitfield’s death in 2011, Liam McIntyre took over the role of Spartacus for the final two seasons, subtitled Vengeance and War of the Damned.
Starz parent Lionsgate Television is producing Spartacus: House of Ashur. DeKnight is executive producer and showrunner.
Fifteen years after the film’s release, 2008’s The Incredible Hulk remains the strangest chapter in the history of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008).
Released just months after Iron Man changed the superhero genre, The Incredible Hulk starred Edward Norton as Bruce Banner/The Hulk. Following the disappointing critical and box office results of the film, Norton and Marvel contentiously parted ways.
Photo: Disney+
While Mark Ruffalo would assume the role of The Hulk in the Avengers films, the character would not get another stand-alone entry in the MCU.
In a recent interview on the new “Watchalong” podcast, The Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier dove into the drama surrounding the film. While admitting that Norton and Marvel clashed during filming, it was apparently The Incredible Hulk’s tone that was the biggest point of contention.
Source: Universal Studios
“The whole way, everybody was in lockstep. It just got tense at the end,” the director remembered. “The end, it was very tense about the tone and the level of humor. Although Edward is very funny, all his friends are comedians and he is an extremely funny guy, he was very right in defending the seriousness of the movie. You have to remember, the mid-2010s…’The Dark Knight’ had such an impact on superhero movies.”
Photo: Warner Bros.
While Marvel would eventually reach the box office stratosphere with its combination of action and humor, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was lauded for its grounded approach to the superhero drama. Norton it seems, wanted to make a film more in the latter’s vein.
Battling Willaim Hurt
As it turns out, Norton wasn’t the only cantankerous actor that Leterrier had to deal with on set. The director also butted heads with William Hurt, who starred as Thaddeus Ross.
“William Hurt didn’t want the mustache to act him out. The size of the mustache was a discussion,” Leterrier said. “But sometimes he and I clashed. You have two types of actors. You got your partners, your best friends that you have to cajole all day, and then the people who like to have these arguments. They feed off that. That’s how he worked.”
In the end, however, the director and actor developed a healthy respect for each other.
“One day he was screaming at me, ‘You don’t know anything about actors!’” the director continued. “Too bad for him he was in the giant helicopter at the end and I was at the control. He was like, ‘You have to find the button to the nuclear plant…’ I took the joystick and shook him and he fell and looked at me and was like, ‘I like you!’ That was it. He just wanted to have a little bit of a fight.”
Photo: Time
The Incredible Hulk is now streaming on Disney+.
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Dinah and Co. make it onto Themiscyra and find Sin, though not without some help from Oliver Queen back in America who tries to delay Wonder Woman’s arrival on the island.
Positives
Leonardo Romero continues to be the bright spot for this series. Romero has a fun style that lends itself to the tone of the book. While the script for Birds of Prey #3 doesn’t have the action sequences we’ve seen in the previous two issues, Oliver Queen’s “distraction” allows Romero to show what he can do. The weathered look on the cover is a cool touch. There’s no reason to think this issue is old and beaten up. It’s not an homage cover or throwback to classic Birds of Prey, but it is still a nice effect.
Negatives
If we were to pretend that this comic was Harley and Friends #3, then we could skip this first section of the review. However, this comic is Birds of Prey #3, and a comic with that title should be significantly different than what we get. Even if we take the premise that Dinah had to use a team made up of these characters it could still feel like Birds of Prey. However, Thompson seems to be revealing that her real interest is not Birds of Prey, but rather Harley Quinn and change suspicious readers’ minds that Harley is just the best thing. Now, that’s great stuff for a Harley Quinn comic. I mean that’s MAIN STREET. But for a comic whose core concept has absolutely nothing to do with Harley Quinn, then it’s quite bad. It doesn’t matter what the cover says, the substance of this comic is Harley Quinn and Tenuous Alliances.
Harley’s influence on the tone can be seen almost from the very beginning as they have to ride inside the belly of a megalodon in order to get to Themiscyra. It’s silly, it’s weird and definitely feel like Harley. It does not have the same grounded feel that Birds of Prey is known for with clandestine, undercover, espionage vibes. This trick Harley pulls off with King Shark’s help also gives her a chance to get compliments from Dinah and the others on how great an idea she had to get on Themiscyra undetected. This sequence feel out of place like the magic bits from Birds of Prey #2 with John Constantine.
Negatives Cont’d
We see “how great” Harley is near the end of the issue when Dinah thinks to herself that Harley wouldn’t be a bad role model for Sin…let’s see: crazy, former sidekick of the Joker, mentally, physically and emotionally traumatized by him, groomed to act like him and despite claiming to have “moved on” she still dresses and acts like he developed her to be…sounds healthy to me! Thompson is bending the logical to the ridiculous to push Harley. It’s fine if you want to do that, but don’t do it at the expense of other characters and concepts. Harley doesn’t belong here and it’s frustrating to see her pushed so hard. It’s all Harley all the time! The tone that she brings is diametrically opposed to what has made Birds of Prey comics great in the past. The decision to include Harley at all and exclude Barbara Gordon demonstrates that Thompson doesn’t really understand the core concept of Birds of Prey. For her it seems like her definition is that Birds of Prey is simply a group of female characters. This is a massive dilution of the concept. This couldn’t be further from the truth, but it’s how Birds of Prey has been rebranded since the horrific Birds of Prey (And the Fabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) film from 2020.
For the longest time the “team” never referenced themselves because they weren’t that kind of team. They were what Barbara Gordon did as Oracle, Birds of Prey was the manifestation of overcoming her own mental, emotional and physical trauma and getting back her agency. She not only healed, but reinvented herself. Birds of Prey was the title of the comic…but, they group never referred to themselves as such. In this current issue, twice it’s used as a team name for Harley and Friends.
Negatives Cont’d
So, even if you’re enjoying this series and you like Harley and Friends and you think Harley is the greatest, there’s a plot point that just doesn’t make a bit of sense. And, it’s not something ridiculous like riding in the belly of a megalodon. It’s something that seems to be at the crux of the plot itself. Since issue #1, it’s been suggested that Dinah couldn’t contact Wonder Woman for help in rescuing Sin because of the events going on in her own book. The understanding has been that Diana is too tied up in those events and would be unavailable to help Dinah. However, this issue presents something altogether different.
Apparently, they were worried about Diana interfering with Sin’s extraction. This comes off like Thompson forgot what she had already written. Would it make any sense at all that Diana under any circumstances wouldn’t help Dinah? If that’s the conflict then that’s the real story and we’ve wasted three issues on mostly Harliness to get to the point where Diana escapes Oliver Queen’s distraction and teleports? (yes it’s that fast) to Themiscyra to confront Dinah and Co. That’s a huge story if that’s the play…Diana is apart of what’s going on. There’s no way, no matter what’s going on with Diana that she wouldn’t help Dinah in some way, even if she couldn’t physically be a part of it. Yet, she’s willing and able to get to Themiscyra to apparently help stop Dinah and Co. From what we’ve seen so far, this doesn’t make any sense either plot wise or in the characterization of Diana.
Negatives Cont’d
This isn’t the only characterization problem in Birds of Prey #3 either. We’ve already seen Dinah’s lack of judgement in considering Harley a role model for Sin, but for whatever reason Thompson doubles down on this idea that Zealot believes Dinah wants her to kill Amazons. The question isn’t really answered satisfactorily in a manner that demonstrates whether it’s Thompson or Zealot that doesn’t understand Black Canary’s character. Dinah’s not a killer. Sure seems like Zealot is though, and she almost makes my wish come true when she runs Harley through with her sword. However, it’s not all it seems.
This could be a “positive” for this issue, but the neat aspect of it is undermined by that Harely-tone that is pervading the series. Zealot performs a ritual when they arrive on Themiscyra that prevents her from being killed OR killing. It helps her stay alive but it also prevents her from killing anyone for Dinah. (That’s such a strange take on Dinah). In order to show that this ritual is in play she runs Harley through, YAY! Alas, she doesn’t die. This could be a really cool element to develop, a character who has killed, but now doesn’t want to. That’s pretty cool and interesting, but by stabbing Harley and making a joke out of it the deeper psychological aspect is overwhelmed by the tone that permeatesthe book with Harley’s inclusion. Harley Quinn ruins everything.
Verdict
Birds of Prey #3 is not a good Birds of Prey comic, however, it is a pretty good Harley Quinn comic. If you’re here for Harley and how great she is then you will flip that score around, probably. If you’re a fan of the Birds of Prey, this isn’t it. Whith each successive issue this title feels less and less like a Birds of Prey comic. Additionally, the issue with Wonder Woman throws the whole thing off. Tonally it flips back and forth between serious and silly and it just doesn’t seem like it knows what it wants to be besides an argument for how great Harley Quinn is- which she’s not. It feels like Thompson is auditioning to write the Harley Quinn animated series on MAX. Romero’s art can only do so much to make this book enjoyable.
The film will be produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, representative director and fellow of Nintendo, and veteran Hollywood producer Avi Arad, the former chief creative officer of Marvel Entertainment.
It will be co-produced by Nintendo and Arad Productions, and will be directed by Wes Ball, the director behind the Maze Runner trilogy and next year’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
During its latest earnings report on Tuesday, Nintendo announced that the Switch has now cleared 132.46 million lifetime sales.
During the three months until September 30, Nintendo reported operating profit of ¥94.5 billion and revenue of ¥334.9 billion, which were both up on analysts’ expectations.
Nintendo kept its hardware sales forecast the same at 15 million but said it was raising its software sales outlook by 5 million units to 185 million.
Switch has to sell just over 21 million units more if it’s to become Nintendo’s best-selling hardware ever, beating Nintendo DS‘s 154 million.
Nia DaCosta survived the roller coaster of making “The Marvels,” but London’s rush hour traffic threatens to make her sick.
It’s late October, weeks from the Nov. 10 release of the $250 million superhero movie, and DaCosta is conducting a Zoom interview from the back seat of a car as it inches toward her home. “I apologize for the motion,” she says.
The setting is apropos for how DaCosta’s life has played out over the past seven years — racing from one project to the next. DaCosta was 28 when her debut feature, “Little Woods,” starring Tessa Thompson and Lily James, won the Nora Ephron Award for female filmmakers at the Tribeca Film Festival. Then, with 2021’s “Candyman,” she became the first Black female director to hit No. 1 at the box office on opening weekend. When that milestone was announced, she was already on set for “The Marvels.” At 31, DaCosta became the youngest person — and the first Black woman — to helm a Marvel Studios picture.
“Kamala Harris tweeted about it before it was officially announced, and I couldn’t respond,” DaCosta recalls, laughing. “I feel like it really ruined my moment to connect with her.”
She’s got the vice president talking, but how does DaCosta feel about shattering so many glass ceilings?
“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.”
“The Marvels” centers on three heroes: Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel (Oscar winner Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Kamala Khan, aka Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani). It’s a direct sequel to 2019’s “Captain Marvel,” which introduced Carol and her “niece” Monica (played by Akira Akbar), but also picks up threads from the Disney+ shows “WandaVision,” where Monica is all grown up and gets her superpowers, and “Ms. Marvel,” which chronicles Kamala’s superhero origin story.
The all-female team-up movie makes good on the promise of “Avengers: Endgame” and its six-second sequence in the fight against Thanos where all the MCU’s super-women rally behind Captain Marvel. With “The Marvels,” DaCosta gives fans an hour and 45 minutes of that same energy as the trio join forces to face a new villain — also a woman (Dar-Benn, played by Zawe Ashton).
DaCosta’s pitch was punctuated by a few big ideas: First, she wanted to make a movie that was “fun, funny and full of heart.” “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.”
She also wanted to satisfy the Blerd (Black nerd) in her, who’d grown up absorbed in comic book culture. The Brooklyn-born filmmaker was especially keen to tell Kamala’s story because she was a huge fan of the Ms. Marvel comics, which debuted when she was in her teens. “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.”
Nia DaCosta on the set of “The Marvels” with Iman Vellani.
The director was also intrigued by the complicated dynamics between the characters — who are physically entangled due to their light-based superpowers, but also have emotional ties, which grounds the high-flying film.
“These three women are basically like sisters: Carol’s the oldest, Kamala’s the youngest and Monica is in the middle,” she notes.
Monica is wrestling with the grief of losing her mother Maria (Lashana Lynch) and feeling like Carol abandoned them, while Kamala must learn that her idol is just another person. Carol’s journey is about learning that the fate of the world doesn’t rest wholly on her shoulders. “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.”
Isn’t that a lot like directing? “Directing is incredibly lonely,” DaCosta admits, recalling that she’d once heard Mira Nair say the same thing, but didn’t understand the sentiment until she had a few projects under her belt.
But when she first signed on at Marvel, longtime executive Victoria Alonso (who’s since exited the company) called to let her know she wasn’t going to shoulder the big-budget burden alone. “She was like, ‘This is going to be like the hardest thing you’ve ever done; it’s also going to be the most fulfilling. We’ve got your back.’”
While DaCosta found the Marvel team to be incredibly supportive, working within their machine was an exercise in learning to “Trust the process.” Early in the production, Larson — who’s appearing in her fifth Marvel title — encouraged the filmmaker to brace for change, advising her not to hold on too tightly to anything.
“I was like cool, but here’s what I can tell you. Yes, set pieces will change and script pages will change, but the reason why they wanted to make this movie in the first place, and why I’m invested in this emotionally, are these things. … As the script changed and evolved, the specifics of that emotionality was always the same.”
But that doesn’t mean transitioning from working as an indie director to a Marvel moviemaker is easy. “There is an adjustment that has to be made in channeling your filmmaking through that system,” DaCosta says of the company’s unique process — which she found endlessly fascinating. “They’ve built something that’s never existed in cinema before.”
She particularly relished watching Kevin Feige come up with ideas using a scene she’d shot for “The Marvels” as a tag to “Ms. Marvel.” That’s the kind of stuff she geeked out over. “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.”
Fan theories also come with the Marvel territory. As a fan herself, DaCosta loves an Easter egg hunt, especially when they’re elaborate. But now she’s been in Marvel’s inner sanctum, DaCosta can authoritatively say that “sometimes stuff is just a coincidence.”
When it comes to speculation around this film, there’s no chance of DaCosta spilling secrets. Oh, the Bifrost bridge featured in the film’s teasers has made fans think either Thor (Chris Hemsworth) or Valkyrie (Thompson) could appear? “It’s so interesting that you’d say that,” DaCosta replies elusively. “I won’t squash any dreams. The dreams can be squashed or fulfilled when they go see the movie.” (Of course, Marvel spoiled that bit for her earlier this week by revealing Thompson’s cameo and teasing yet another.)
Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan, Teyonah Parris as Captain Monica Rambeau, Brie Larson as Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, and Zawe Ashton as Dar-Benn in Marvel Studios’ “The Marvels”
But she will address another theory: the film’s first trailer was scored with the Beastie Boys hit “Intergalactic” and beyond its obvious cosmic connection to the movie’s space setting, fans interpreted the song choice — which DaCosta credits to her editor Catrin Hedström — as a little bit of trolling. The lyrics, “Well, now, don’t you tell me to smile,” seemed especially pointed, evoking an early scene from the first “Captain Marvel” where Carol is approached by a smarmy biker who revs his motorcycle engine to get her attention and says, “You got a smile for me?” When Carol doesn’t react, he calls her a “freak” under his breath and heads into a store at an L.A. strip mall. Her revenge: stealing the jerk’s bike.
With that context in mind, choosing “Intergalactic” felt like a middle finger to all the haters of the “Captain Marvel” franchise (of which there are alarmingly many). But, for DaCosta, it wasn’t that deep.
“That’s the first time I’ve realized that those lines are in the song,” she says, responding to what I thought was an obvious question. “I cannot say that that was on purpose on my part. Sorry to be disappointing.”
Of course, there’s the slightest chance DaCosta’s playing politics instead of further enraging a particularly dark corner of the internet. Like other IP-based movies that star women and people of color, the impending release of 2019’s “Captain Marvel” met with such malignance that Rotten Tomatoes changed its policy to bar audience reviews on unreleased titles. In 2022, “Ms. Marvel” faced the same level of internet hate. And now, any post about “The Marvels” is flooded with comments criticizing Disney for “going woke” and rooting for the film to flop.
DaCosta is familiar with the negative side of fandom — after all, she’s been a “big ol’ fan of nerdy shit for a long time” — but she’s not letting it get under her skin.
“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.”
“The Marvels” — the MCU’s 33rd movie — premieres two days after the director’s 34th birthday. “This birthday is sort of like ending this chapter of my life,” DaCosta says. “I did these three films back-to-back. They were each so unique and so special and so different. And with each film, I was able to grow as a filmmaker, and rise to different heights in my career and in the industry. It’s nice to have a ‘What’s next?’ moment after doing a Marvel film.”
Nia DaCosta attends “The Marvels” special screening in Las Vegas, Nevada.
It’s hard to build much intrigue into whether a love-struck teen with a seemingly gentle heart and firm moral compass will betray those who trust him and cross over to the dark side when his name is Coriolanus Snow and we know from four previous films that he will grow up to be an evil overlord played with chilling authority by Donald Sutherland. Even less so once he joins the fascistic “Peacekeeper” ranks and trades his floppy blond locks for a Hitler Youth buzz cut.
That’s just one of the limitations of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, a lumbering prequel to the blockbuster battle royale series based on Suzanne Collins’ YA novels, the global grosses for which are nearing $3 billion.
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
The Bottom Line
A grinding dystopian dirge set to Appalachian folk tunes.
Release date: Friday, Nov. 17 Cast: Tom Blyth, Rachel Zegler, Peter Dinklage, Jason Schwartzman, Hunter Schafer, Josh Andrés Rivera, Viola Davis, Fionnula Flanagan Director: Francis Lawrence Screenwriters: Michael Lesslie, Michael Arndt, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins
Rated PG-13,
2 hours 37 minutes
Beyond the fact that Collins penned a 2020 follow-up set 64 years before the events of the original book trilogy, and of course the market reality that Hollywood never met a dystopian cash cow it couldn’t milk to death, there are few compelling reasons for the new installment to exist.
Certainly not the grisly but unimaginative death-match arena action in which dutifully diverse but thinly drawn characters identifiable chiefly by their disabilities or degrees of brutality meet their makers in front of a live TV audience. And definitely not Viola Davis devouring the coldly futuristic scenery as a malevolent doctor with a fright wig, one piercing ice-blue eye and Drag Race-strength makeup, cooking up increasingly cruel torments to unleash on the games’ hapless contestants. As an archvillain, she’s too campy to be disturbing but not sufficiently so to be fun.
The main takeaway from The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is the realization that a critical element of what made the four previous Hunger Games films enjoyable — even the concluding entry, unrewardingly stretched over two parts — was the natural pluck and charisma of Jennifer Lawrence. Her Katniss Everdeen was someone to root for, not to mention something of a rarity at the time in terms of resourceful female action heroes whose battle smarts never crush their humanity.
An underdog from District 12, the impoverished coal-mining sector of fictional North American autocracy Panem, Katniss brought formidable archery skills honed while hunting to put food on the family table. But she became just as notable for her compassion, conveyed in the first film by her alliance with Amandla Stenberg’s preteen Rue and her grief over the latter’s death. There’s arguably been no more affecting moment in the series than Katniss showing her love and respect by spreading flowers over the dead girl’s body. If only this bloated prequel had a scene or two with even a fraction of that emotional power.
As Lucy Gray Baird, Katniss’ District 12 counterpart in the 10th annual Hunger Games, West Side Story discovery Rachel Zegler is feisty and appealing, pointedly summoning echoes of Katniss with a defiant curtsy at The Reaping, the ceremony during which two involuntary “Tributes” are chosen from each district to compete in the games by the oppressive Capitol that rules Panem.
Her chewy Appalachian accent can be distracting, but the stirring folk songs and foot-stomping jigs she performs — Lucy Gray is a member of the Covey, a community of itinerant musicians forcibly assigned to a district by the regime — at least lend the character vitality and help make her more than a rote reprint struck from the Katniss template. But unlike Katniss, who was very much the beating heart of the earlier films, Lucy Gray has to compete for narrative primacy with the young Coriolanus (Tom Blyth). And the longer the movie trudges on, the more she loses.
Like other students from well-heeled families in the Capitol, Coriolanus is required to mentor a Tribute through the training and promotion period and then the contest itself, where viewer sponsorship determines the amount of survival provisions that can be sent via drones to the mentees.
But unlike most of his mentor colleagues, Coriolanus has a lot at stake. His once-elevated family has fallen on hard times since the death of his father in the long war sparked by the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. As the sole remaining breadwinner, he needs the Plinth Prize cash awarded to the winning mentor in order to keep his Grandma’am (Fionnula Flanagan) and his cousin, the future Hunger Games stylist Tigris (Hunter Schafer), above the poverty line.
The 10th games are also a turning point in the gladiatorial event overseen by the heartless Dr. Volumnia Gaul (Davis). Audience interest has been waning, so Dr. Gaul has figured out ways to up the stakes and increase involvement, including the use of mutant creatures bred in her lab, notably a massive canister of venomous iridescent snakes. The parallels between this sci-fi version of sensationalized entertainment and contemporary ratings battles are emphasized in Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt’s adapted screenplay.
A more ambiguous figure than the cruel doctor is the Capitol University’s Dean Highbottom (Peter Dinklage); his morphine addiction is gradually revealed to be the result of his guilt over setting the original games in motion, which is also the root of his hostility toward the young Snow.
Then there’s Lucky Flickerman (Jason Schwartzman), a family forebear of Stanley Tucci’s Caesar Flickerman from the previous entries, tasked with hard-selling the gruesome event to home viewers — and injecting some strained comedy into the mostly humorless film. That includes coming up with catchy nicknames as the most vicious frontrunners emerge — Cunning Coral (Mackenzie Lansing), Merciless Mizzan (Cooper Dillon), Treacherous Treech (Hiroki Berrecloth) — much like Trump mocking political opponents at a rally.
On the unequivocally good side is Sejanus Plinth (Josh Andrés Rivera), idealistic scion of one of the Capitol’s wealthiest families and a classmate who views Coriolanus as an ally. When Dr. Gaul insists on forging ahead after a rebel “terrorist” bombing on the eve of the games kills a handful of contestants and all but destroys the arena, Sejanus’ loyalty to the Capitol is tested. His stomach for the barbarous games is also challenged when he finds himself mentoring a former school friend, Marcus (Jerome Lance).
Divided into three chapters — “The Mentor,” “The Prize,” “The Peacekeeper” — Lesslie and Arndt’s script is less interested in the gladiatorial action than in the moral formation, or disassembly, of Coriolanus. Will he act in solidarity with the principled Sejanus? Will he ramp up his efforts on Lucy Gray’s behalf to make her not just a survivor but a winner? And will he remain true to her once love blooms out of their shared experience in the Hunger Games spotlight?
Given that Snow’s persona in the earlier films leaves little doubt about the answer to those questions, a lot is riding on Blyth’s performance to keep us engaged as the young Coriolanus weighs personal loyalties against his instinct for self-preservation and ambitious advancement.
Blyth, who played the title character in the Epix/MGM+ series Billy the Kid, balances sensitivity with growing steeliness effectively enough. But Coriolanus is no substitute for Katniss as a protagonist and his inevitable betrayal of Lucy Gray is too clumsily mapped to be anything but preordained script mechanics. There’s no poignancy because we’re never terribly invested in their romance in the first place. I mean, the dude has the word “anus” in his name, for God’s sake.
Francis Lawrence, who has directed all but the 2012 feature that kicked off the series, handles the arena action with the required energy, putting DP Jo Willems’ cameras through their paces with lots of frenetic movement. But the games prove less suspenseful and visually interesting in their confined bunker-like setting than under the sprawling biodome of the chapters that come later in the chronology. More than that, the contestants just lack dimension. And Lawrence’s journeyman handling of the more character-driven drama provides sputtering momentum at best.
The film’s design elements are polished, including atmospheric physical settings by Uli Hanisch — his imposing re-creations of Weimar Germany were a key element of Tom Tykwer’s neo-noir series Babylon Berlin — convincingly blended with CG; and stylish, character-enhancing costumes by Trish Summerville. The burgundy unisex Capitol student uniforms, with pleated skirts over trousers, look like something Thom Browne whipped up for the Starship Enterprise crew.
The orchestral thunder of James Newton Howard’s score marries well with Lucy Gray’s songs, in which executive music producer Dave Cobb crafts rousing tunes around Collins’ lyrics, adding fire to the heroine’s rebel spirit.
If only there were something truly new and innovative about this chapter to fully justify resurrecting the Hunger Games franchise eight years after Mockingjay — Part 2. The intention to illuminate the political machinations of the Capitol and the importance of the games in maintaining the divide between the ruling class and the powerless plebs yields little beyond turgid gloom.
The points about savagery as one of humanity’s base instincts are hammered by Snow in emphatic dialogue that leaves no subtext unstated: “The whole world is an arena and we need the Hunger Games every year to remind us who we truly are.” Gory sacrifices, in this equation, are simply “the price people are willing to pay for a good show.” If only.
Disney’s combined Disney Plus and Hulu streaming app is on the way. As part of its fourth quarter earnings results, Disney announced it’s going to launch the new app in beta for bundle subscribers in December, with the official launch coming in early spring 2024.
“We remain on track to roll out a more unified one-app experience domestically, making extensive general entertainment content available to bundle subscribers via Disney Plus,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. “We expect that Hulu and Disney Plus will result in increased engagement, greater advertising opportunities, lower churn, and reduce customer acquisition costs.”
Even as Disney implemented price hikes across its streaming services in October, Disney Plus surpassed 150 million global subscribers this quarter, with streaming losses shrinking to $387 million. Disney still hasn’t forgotten about its planned password-sharing crackdown, either. It’s still not clear when it will happen, but Iger noted that its “planned rollout” won’t have a “meaningful impact” on its streaming business until 2025.
The earnings mark just about one year since Iger took over for Bob Chapek as CEO, but Iger mentioned during an earnings call on Wednesday that he still has some cleaning up to do. “As I reflect on our achievement this past year, I’m mindful of the fact that a lot of time and effort was spent on fixing… certain decisions made in the recent past and addressing the numerous challenges brought on by disruption and the pandemic,” Iger said.
Disney has had a lot going on over the past few months. Earlier this month, Disney announced that it’s going to buy Comcast’s 33 percent stake in Hulu for more than $8 billion, giving Disney full ownership of the streamer. It also cut a deal with Charter, allowing the cable company to bundle Disney Plus subscriptions with its Spectrum TV packages, while also paving the way for similar agreements.
Roughly two years after its premiere, “Arcane” has a premiere date for Season 2. The animated series set in the “League of Legends” universe will return to Netflix in the fall of 2024, the company revealed during its annual Geeked Week.
Just like in Season 1, Riot Games will be the studio behind the season, and Fortiche Productions will handle the animation of the series. Christian Linke and Alex Yee will return as its creators. Additionally, Linke, Marc Merrill and Brandon Beck will executive produce.
Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Prunell and Katie Leung will reprise their roles as Vi, Jinx and Caitlyn Kiramman, respectively. No more information is known at this time.
From the same studio responsible for the massively successful online battle arena video game “League of Legends,” “Arcane” first premiered in November of 2021. The animated steampunk action-adventure series follows two sisters, Vi and Jinx, who find themselves on different sides of a brewing conflict that has the potential to permanently change the world as they know it. The series debuted to nearly universal acclaim and was praised for its world-building, voice acting, action, music, emotional depth and action sequences. Season 1 still has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
The series was also an awards darling. “Arcane” became the first streaming show ever to take home the Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program, an honor shows like “Big Mouth” and “BoJack Horseman” were nominated for but never won. Its first installment also won the Annie Award for Best General Audience Animated Television Broadcast Production.
The series has also been hailed as one of the best video game adaptations that’s ever been made. It’s commonly included in the same conversations as adaptations such as “The Last of Us,” “Castlevania,” “Detective Pikachu,” “Sonic the Hedgehog” and the “Resident Evil” movies.
Dreams rarely appear in crisp outlines. They waft through the mind, leaving smudges of color and scent, maybe the abstract contour of a face. This loose, limitless state is rendered vibrantly in the hands of composer and multi-instrumentalist Julia Holter, whose chamber pop and ambient works often feel coaxed from the subconscious. On her new single “Sun Girl,” Holter parts with the brassy, baroque melodrama of her 2018 album Aviary, and offers a swirling piece of psychedelia that smears the boundary between illusion and reality.
Holter evokes a sense of childlike play on “Sun Girl,” her sing-song verses looping like a nursery rhyme. “Dream day/Guess game/Neuron/Take me,” Holter sings, her voice sheer and weightless. But it’s the peripheral instrumentation that prods “Sun Girl” to life, making it glint like a beveled jewel. Bright key plinks disrupt whirring Mellotron, birdsong piccolo, and lap steel that melts like one of Dalí’s clocks. Even as Holter unspools the same circular melody, the arrangement bubbles around the edges; in the middle, craggy drum machine, screeching tenor sax, and the whine of a bagpipe jostle Holter’s placid delivery. It’s as if she’s slowly waking to the clamor of the outside world.
Entering the world of filmmaking is exciting. However, anyone who has been in the industry for a while knows that the world of moviemaking can be a tough nut to crack.
Navigate the trials that new filmmakers face by adopting a resilient, persistent mindset. This will serve you well during setbacks and help you retain your creative vision when met with rejection.
A resilient mindset will serve you well when filming, too. This is helpful when working with challenging stakeholders or when filming on the road.
Fundraising
Raising funds is one of the biggest challenges facing independent filmmakers today. Movie makers around the globe have been impacted by budget cuts that have slashed funding for the arts. This is a real issue as a new filmmaker, as you’re more likely to be reliant on public funding than established pros.
Some filmmakers have negotiated the new landscape of funding by setting up crowdfunding pages. These crowdfunding pages are all about capturing the attention and interest of prospective audiences before your film is even made.
You can raise tens of thousands of dollars online and fund your first film by offering investors special perks or gifts. Consider, for example, inviting folks who support your vision an opportunity to attend premières and run a series of exclusive Q&A sessions for folks who support you.
Filming on the Road
As a new filmmaker, you may be surprised by how much time you’ll spend away from home. Most shoots occur far away from your home address and will require you to get comfortable living in hotels and temporary lodging, so you’ll want to learn everything you can about working from the road.
Maximize your chances of success by embracing the digital nomad lifestyle. As a digital nomad, you’ll always be connected to the web no matter where that day’s shoot is located. This is key if you’re working with demanding stakeholders who want regular progress updates.
Alleviate the emotional strain of filming on the road by setting a clear routine for your day. A clear routine can improve your mental health and give you more time to review your progress. This is particularly important as a new filmmaker, as you’re likely to experience a fair dose of anxiety and stress while working. Take some time for yourself and encourage others to keep their work-life balance in check.
Working with Employees
Successful filmmaking is an exercise in leadership. As a filmmaker, you have to get everyone on board to ensure that your creative vision potential is fulfilled.
Even experienced filmmakers, like Jordan Peele, put an emphasis on effective communication on set. Peele explains that he “relies on some amazing storyboard artists,” who “help me figure out what I want it to look like.” This gives his films a sense of purpose and helps him communicate classic ideas of good filmmaking like “less is more”.
You may find yourself working with tricky actors on set as a new filmmaker. Many actors have type-A personalities and are extremely driven to do a good job while working on set. This can cause conflict if you don’t see eye-to-eye. Maximize your chances of getting on by creating a calm, confidence-building environment on set. Get to know your actors and give them space to work.
You may need to adapt your approach to filmmaking if you’re working with child actors. Prepare to work with children by adopting a patient, enthusiastic mindset whenever you’re on set with young actors. This will bring the best out of them and help you create a fun-filled environment. You’ll also need to be aware of state-by-state child entertainment laws to ensure that your shoot isn’t derailed by legalities.
Distribution
In an ideal world, you won’t have to worry about distributing your film. Instead, executives will do the heavy lifting for you meaning you can focus on the creative side. However, if you’re self-funded, you may need to do all the distribution work yourself.
Consider sending your first films to competitions and festivals. Success at filmmaking competitions will get you noticed and raise your profile amongst professionals. Getting your film recognized by groups like Raindance will look great on your CV, too.
Some festivals and competitions can help you network and meet folks who will want to distribute your film. Film schools and festivals like Raindance boast an impressive alumni of directors like Sasha Baron Cohen, Guy Ritchie, and Sadie Frost. Connecting with the world of film will help you build a buzz around future projects and may help you find funding and distribution opportunities that raise your profile quickly.
Conclusion
The world of filmmaking can seem imposing from the outside. However, with enough effort and persistence, you’re sure to get the break that you deserve. Start the process by securing funding for your project. This is key, as you’ll need enough capital to pay actors and distribute your film. After you wrap, consider entering competitions and festivals. These can raise your profile in the filmmaking world and help you connect with folks who want to support new filmmakers.
Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter.
On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks with the voices behind TikTok’s text-to-speech feature. She learns about the journey to finding the voice that is now known and loved by millions.
TikTok is one of the most popular social media applications with more than 1 billion people around the world using it each month.
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In 2020, Bev Standing was surprised when she heard her voice circulating on TikTok.
“Everyone in my family and friends were going, ‘Hey, that’s you.’,” Standing said. “And I went, ‘this is cool, I’m the text-to-speech voice.’ ”
Standing originally provided her voice for a translation app, which TikTok then used for transcription purposes. Standing said TikTok wasn’t her client, and therefore, wasn’t licensed to use her voice.
In Spring 2021, Standing took legal action against TikTok.
“Either make me your client or take my voice down, was kind of where my head went,” she said. “The bottom line is you can’t use my voice.”
By the end of that year, Standing’s voice was removed from the app. It was quickly replaced with a new voice, dubbed “Jessie,” belonging to former radio host Kat Callaghan.
Callaghan’s voice was quickly recognized after she revealed her identity on TikTok.
“I had a good mish-mash of people who knew me that jumped on it right away because it came up on their feed, too,” Callaghan said. “I realized, I have to do a follow-up video because this is getting insane.”
Emily Dreyfuss, journalist and co-lead of the Harvard Shorenstein Center News Leaders Program, said TikTok’s feature improves accessibility and allows for consistency between videos.
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“There’s a universalization in some way, because actually, we’re so different, but we sound the same,” Dreyfuss said. “Remove some of the bias that listeners and readers approach people with, when they are very aware of their gender or their race or their ethnicity.”
Callaghan said the role has created opportunities she never thought were possible.
“I never thought that I’d be on Ryan Seacrest interviews, and I still have some interviews lined up,” Callaghan said. “I’ve done some really cool things, so it’s changed my life.”
On this episode of What happened to…? Erica Vella speaks to Bev Standing, the original voice behind TikTok’s text-to-speech feature. She also speaks with Kat Callaghan, the woman behind TikTok’s current text-to-speech character “Jessie.” She learns about the adoption and evolution of the feature, and how it changed the way users create and interpret TikTok videos.
Paramount has released the first look at the long awaited adaption of “Mean Girls.” Based on the 2004 comedy and adapted from the 2018 Tony-nominated musical of the same name. This will be a big screen remake of the “Mean Girls“ musical from Broadway (which closed in 2020).
In this new twist on the teenage cult classic, Tina Fey, who wrote both the 2004 movie and the stage musical, returns as screenwriter and producer with Lorne Michaels producing alongside her.
The brand new cast includes a group of talented young actors who will be bringing the same characters as the original film to life. Reneé Rapp (“The Sex Lives of College Girls”) will play the infamous Regina George, reprising her role on Broadway. Joining the cast are Angourie Rice as Cady Heron, (“Mare of Easttown”), Auli’i Cravalho (“Moana”) as Janis ‘Imi’ike, Christopher Briney (“The Summer I Turned Pretty”) and Aaron Samuels, Jaquel Spivey (“A Strange Loop”) as Damian Hubbard, Avantika as Karen Shetty and Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners.
Tina Fey who played Ms. Norbury and Tim Meadows who played Mr Duvall who starred in the first movie will return in their original roles as well. They will be joined by Jenna Fischer (“The Office”), Busy Philipps, Avantika, Mahi Alam, Bebe Wood, Ashley Park (“Emily in Paris), Connor Ratliff and Jon Hamm (“Mad Men”).
Since it is adapted from the musical, you can expect this version to include quite a bit of music. So dont be surprised if Regina George burst out into song. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, Fey teased the songs in the movie will be a lot more “pop” than the original musical. “In Broadway, everything has to play to the back of the house, and in movies, everything can come back in and things can play really intimately,” she said. “We have a very cool directing team, a very cool choreographer. It’s going to be great.”
From the comedic mind of Tina Fey comes a new twist on the modern classic. The key plot points of the story will remain similar to the original film, but this movie will be made for a whole new generation. Rice will portray Cady Heron, the new girl at school who is taken in by Janis and Damian, played by Cravalho and Spivey, respectively. Janis and Damian instruct Cady to infiltrate the by the elite group of popular girls called “The Plastics”. When Cady is welcomed into the top of the social food chain by the elite group, ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George played by Reneé Rapp and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika), Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), she finds herself prey in Regina’s crosshairs. As Cady sets to take down the group’s apex predator with the help of her outcast friends, she must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school.
Watch the trailer below:
Executive produced by Jeff Richmond, Nell Benjamin, Eric Gurian, Erin David, Pamela Thur and directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.
Check out the Exclusive stills from the movie below.
Courtesy of Paramount
Courtesy of Paramount
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Courtesy of Paramount
“Mean Girls” will premiere in theaters on January 12, 2024.
Taylor Swift, 33, is taking her Eras Tourto Argentina and her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, 34, is reportedly joining her! The Kansas City Chiefs football star is set to jet off and see the Grammy winner live in South America over the weekend, a source confirmed to Page Sixon November 8. Taylor is set to perform in Buenos Aires from November 9 through November 11.
Taylor Swift arriving in Argentina for the Eras Tour.
Despite making time to see his leading lady perform, Travis is committed to his NFL duties. “He has to be back on Sunday for practice on Monday,” the insider explained. The 34-year-old’s trip to South America fits in perfectly with his schedule, as he is not set to play again until November 20. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S. Travis will face off against his brother, Jason Kelce’s team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
The same day, Travis seemingly hinted that he would be traveling soon during his New Heightspodcast. “My skin’s getting real pale. I gotta go somewhere sunny,” he told his brother during the episode. “Somewhere south … Closer to the equator.” Although he didn’t specify where he would be, Taylor’s tour will be taking place in South America from November 9 through November 26.
Elsewhere that day, Swifties spotted what appeared to be the “Anti-Hero” songstress arriving in Argentina via a private plane. In a video shared via X (Twitter), Taylor seemingly stepped out of the plane in an all-black outfit and sneakers. She took cover with a black umbrella and dodged the cameras before she stepped into her vehicle. It’s unclear if her beau was with her upon her arrival, however, due to Travis’ comments it could be likely.
Hannah Waddingham is fully in the holiday spirit in the trailer for her first Christmas special.
The Ted Lasso star and multiple Emmy and Olivier Award nominee sings “What Christmas Means to Me” in the trailer for Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas, which is set to premiere Nov. 22 on Apple TV+. The clip promises an old-fashioned kind of special filled with music, dancing and a bunch of special guests.
Waddingham’s Ted Lasso co-star Phil Dunster is also set to appear in the special, as are Luke Evans, Leslie Odom Jr. and singer Sam Ryder. Juno Temple also (literally) pops up momentarily in the trailer, exclaiming “I’m your Christmas miracle!” as Waddingham screams.
The show will also feature the English National Opera, the London Gay Men’s Chorus, The Fabulous Lounge Swingers and an 18-piece band. Apple will also make the special’s soundtrack available on Nov. 22.
Done + Dusted (Apple’s Mariah Carey’s Magical Christmas Special, ABC’s Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration) is producing Home for Christmas; Hamish Hamilton directed the special, filmed at London’s Coliseum Theatre. Waddingham executive produces with Katy Mullan, Moira Ross, Raj Kapoor and Nick Todisco.
“Past Lives,” might have one of the most emotional endings this year. Cinematographer Shabier Kirchner expressed that he and writer-director Celine Song wanted to “capture that feeling of time” and its “fleetingness” through the cinematography.
“I’m a big fan of the power of, and the beauty of, a combination of images as opposed to a single image. And so trying to build the language of the film through camera movement, and light and direction of camera movement, and repetition of character against architecture and space, was something that we did quite a lot,” said Kirchner. “All to say that it needed to build up to that final scene … we really, hopefully, on the subconscious level [wanted] the screen direction and the length of the screen direction [to] really be sort of indicative of what the characters were going through and where they’ve been and where they’re going.”
Kirchner was speaking as part of Variety’s “10 Artisans to Watch.” Alongside Kirchner, honorees this year at SCAD 10 Artisans to Watch included Dominique Dawson, costume designer for Ava DuVernay’s “Origin;” Melissa Forney, “Rustin” hair department head; Nick Houy, editor of “Barbie;” James Price, “Poor Things” production designer; Carol Rasheed, makeup department head for “The Color Purple;” James Shirley, sound editor-designer for “Moonage Daydream;” Anthony Willis, “Saltburn” composer; Kaitlyn Yang, VFX supervisor of “American Born Chinese;” and Matt Yocum, sound-editor designer for “American Fiction.”
Variety Senior Artisans Editor Jazz Tangcay discussed their respective projects.
Rasheed spoke about the depiction of time in the generational storyline of the upcoming “The Color Purple” based on the Tony-Award winning musical.
“[‘The Color Purple’] spans about 40 years … one of the things that [director Blitz Bazawule] stressed is that he wanted to show us how we really age, in terms of people of color, throughout the process,” Rasheed said. “Being able to create another life in the adaptation of the musical was something that was quite incredible in terms of trying to make sure everybody had their own look, their own feeling and also gradually aging them as time went on.”
With large shifts across time may come drastic shifts in tone. Speaking about the combination of both in editing, Houy joked about the whiplash he got from editing “Barbie,” a genre-blending film.
“Cutting those scenes was a real challenge. You’d have a scene that was a real hilarious, Tati-esque, Marx Brothers chase with Will Ferrell and then you’d have to have a pretty serious scene about mortality and then you’d have to go back to a scene that was a crazy car chase,” said Houy.
Research was central to everyone’s creative process, as both Dawson and Forney noted for “Origin” and “Rustin,” respectively.
“The main thing was a deep dive into research. I was in costume libraries, in online libraries, and any place I could get any visuals or insight. I created a big, huge 300-page deck. We called it the Deep Dive. And that was really our bible for everything,” recounted Dawson.
In addition to costumes, hair is a large aspect of how the character looks on screen, and it often needs to take into account the actors themselves — something that Forney, as hair department head for “Rustin,” was very familiar with.
“We just did research on everybody that was a part of [‘Rustin’],” Forney reflected. “Jeffrey Wright, he wore a wig also. [Colman Domingo’s] companion in the movie that played the priest, he was bald. We had to put a wig on him.”
There’s designing the visual appearances of the talent, but there’s also designing the sets. Price explained the intricate production design behind Yorgos Lanthimos’ bold “Poor Things:” “We did miniatures and a lot of small techniques, viewpoints, where we did real-size sets. Then beyond that we did scale models and single cutouts after, so there was a spectrum [of practices].”
Also based on carefully thinking through visuals, the fourth episode of “American Born Chinese” features Chinese folkloric characters who attend a Met Gala-esque banquet. Yang defined visual effects as the “icing” on top of everything else that goes on behind the scenes of a production.
“What I think of visual effects is adding the cherry on top: the most luscious, buttercream icing right on top of amazing production design, dreamy costumes, the hair and makeup,” Yang said. “It was just all so ornate and elaborate, and it really played into the fantasy of what would be a Met Gala in heaven … we hand-painted a lot of the clouds just to give that eighties, 2D, 2-and-a-half-D, not really computer-generated, not really a simulation [look], and kind of play along with really the rhythm of the dialogue.”
“Rhythm” might be an aspect of dialogue, but there’s no bigger part it plays than in music, which was brought up in the conversation as another major factor in storytelling.
Shirley described his music work on 2023’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” saying, “From a musical perspective, all these people are shooting using the music as a guide … People on set are listening to the dialogue and listening to the music and timing all their movements.”
Written, directed and produced by Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), “Saltburn” follows Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), as he enters Oxford and becomes immersed in the world of the wealthy when he goes to Saltburn, the estate of aristocratic schoolmate Felix Carton (Jacob Elordi).
“The idea was classical music is the root of opulence,” Willis said about his thought process in composing the score for the film. “Throughout the film and the score, there’s a lot of classical language like that that Oliver is trying to control.”
“For a movie like ‘American Fiction,’ it’s a drama, it’s a comedy, there’s so much emotion there,” said Yocum of designing the sound for satirical drama-comedy “American Fiction.” “My job as the sound designer on a film like this is all in the subtle details and about crafting the world … in this case, it’s building the city of Boston and what does the Boston train sound like? Because it’s not the same as the Chicago ‘L’ train or a subway in New York. What does a northeastern beach house town sound like? So building that New England environment.”
Tangcay then transitioned to a discussion of advice about dealing with rejection in an industry full of it. Throughout it all, a common, shared sentiment was the idea of building from others, both intellectually and emotionally.
“What I always say is, I think my mom told me, ‘always aim to be the stupidest person in the room. And then you’ll end up doing well because you’re always learning,” Houy said. “And if you’re ever the smartest person in the room, then there’s no room to grow.”
Kirchner characterized his friendships as his support system: “I’m fortunate enough to have worked with a lot of my friends for most of my career, and that was just really encouraging when I got a lot of nos. So it was really important to have that community around.”
“You have to have a team. You can’t do it by yourself,” Forney added. “And that’s where I am today.”
EXCLUSIVE: Jingle Jangle and Almost Christmas director/writer/producer David E. Talbert is launching HBCU Next, a fellowship program that will bring aspiring filmmakers from Historically Black Colleges and Universities to the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) Summer Program.
Talbert conceived and funded HBCU Next alongside his wife and producing partner Lyn Sisson-Talbert as an opportunity to enrich the educational experience for students of Color. Within this program, participants will gain essential career insights and the creative skills required to develop more authentic portrayals of Black experiences and culture within screenwriting, filmmaking, and the evolving media landscape.
Talbert says, “Our overall objective is to foster an environment for students from HBCUs and USC to engage in cultural exchange, learning from one another’s experiences and backgrounds, and to provide access to an education conducive to giving Black storytellers a pipeline to the entertainment industry.”
“The industry gets to benefit from the uniqueness and authenticity of stories that that they might not be privy to,” adds the filmmaker.
He adds, “Having graduated from an HBCU, and working in the business for over 30 years, I understand it’s never the artistry or intellect, but the access, that keeps people of Color from finding their way in. HBCU Next was created to bridge that gap. Our Next is now.”
As part of the program, Talbert be will be mentoring students in directing and screenwriting. Students will have access to courses in advanced screenwriting, advanced directing, animation, producing editing and gaming.
Talbert is also planning on a roster of HBCU graduates to speak at HBCU Next including but not limited to Forest Whitaker, Tim Story, Ruth Carter, J.B. Smoove and Anika Noni Rose.
Added Elizabeth Daley, Dean of USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA), “As we embark on this transformative journey, guided by the expertise of our esteemed SCA faculty and Mr. Talbert, we are committed to fostering and amplifying the diverse voices and rich cultural narratives these talented HBCU students will bring to USC, and eventually to the industry. Without a doubt, they are the next generation of trailblazers.”
The program’s first two participants, Directing/Producing Fellow Sha-Shonna Rogers and Screenwriting Fellow Imani Mullings, are current students at Morgan State University, Talbert’s alma mater. Both fellows received round-trip airfare, full tuition, and housing, to attend the 2023 Summer Program at the USC School of Cinematic Arts campus in Los Angeles.
As the Directing/Producing Fellow, Rogers enrolled in Filmmaking Intensive which introduces students to the basic technical and aesthetic concepts underlying motion picture production. In this course, students collaborate with their fellow filmmakers in various core roles (director, producer, and cinematographer) on three digital short films.
Mullings took Advanced Screenwriting: Writing the First Draft Feature Screenplay, a class where students work with their instructors and peers in a “writers’ room” setting to complete the first draft of a three-act, full-length feature screenplay in under six weeks.
“HBCU Next was a once in a lifetime opportunity that gave us HBCU students a chance to shine,” says Mullings. “It enabled me to hone my skills as a writer, express myself through my storytelling, and made me feel even more excited for my future as a Black storyteller!”
Said David Weitzner, Director of the SCA Summer Program: “Programs like this can help us find the future leaders that will impact our industry. Sha-Shonna and Imani are model examples of the remarkably talented storytellers that are waiting to be discovered at HBCUs. The work they created this summer was simply extraordinary. We are so grateful to David and Lyn for their vision and generosity in establishing the HBCU Next program. We hope other industry partners will join us in awarding HBCU Next fellowships in the years to come.”
Talbert’s feature filmmaking credits also include First Sunday starring Ice Cube, Katt Williams and Tracy Morgan, and Baggage Claim starring Paula Patton, Taye Diggs, Jill Scott and Djimon Hounsou.
Zara Patel is the original woman in Rashmika Mandanna’s deepfake video. Sam Bahadur released on December 1.
A day after Rashmika Mandanna’s deepfake video went viral, the woman from the original video reacted to the morphed clip. For the unversed, the woman in the original video is Zara Patel. She is a British influencer. The original video, which was later morphed with Rashmika Mandanna’s face, was shared on October 9. Reacting to the deepfake video, Zara said she is disturbed by the turn of events and urged everyone to not believe everything they see on the internet.
Vicky Kaushal is all set to take on the role of India’s first Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw In Meghna Gulzar’s Sam Bahadur. The teaser was launched in a grand event in Mumbai on Friday, October 13. And now, the team took over the national capital, Delhi, for the trailer launch, presided over by the Chief of Army Staff, Manoj Pande, at the prestigious Manekshaw Centre.
Who is Orry? Everyone on the internet has been asking this question for months now. Orry, formally known as Orhan Awatramani, is everywhere. And we mean every single Bollywood spot. From Shah Rukh Khan’s birthday bash to Manish Malhotra’s Diwali party, Orry treats the internet with inside photos and videos from Bollywood’s biggest events. But no one truly knows who he is and what does he do. But Sara Ali Khan has finally shared details about it.
Salman Khan-Katrina Kaif starrer Tiger 3 has received a phenomenal response from the audiences with over 60,000 tickets sold on the first day of the advance booking, according to exhibitors and trade experts. The Yash Raj Films project, directed by Maneesh Sharma, is a sequel to the 2017 film Tiger Zinda Hai and releases on November 12, the day of Diwali. The advance booking for Tiger 3 opened on Sunday.
YouTuber and Bigg Boss OTT 2 winner Elvish Yadav has been making headlines in connection to the snake venom case. It all started after politician and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi accused the YouTuber of supplying snake venom to rave parties in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Amid all this, it has now been reported that the popular YouTuber is likely to be summoned by cops once again.
According to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, Ellingson was found dead in the bedroom of a Fontana residence at about 11:30 a.m. Sunday.
San Bernardino police said there were no obvious signs of foul play. A cause of death has not yet been determined, and an autopsy was scheduled for Monday. An investigation by law enforcement is ongoing.
According to TMZ, which first reported the news, Ellingson’s father said the former child star had battled substance abuse disorder and died in the sober living home where he was staying. His father told the outlet that Ellingson had been doing much better and that his death came as a shock to the family.
Born July 1, 1988, Ellingson grew up in La Verne with his three brothers. He was discovered at 10 years old at a skate park and invited to skate for the Vans PeeWee team and star in a commercial for the shoe company. Ellingson then landed guest spots on “Mad TV” and went on to work in television. He was a series regular on the 2000 Fox sitcom “Titus” and, in 2004, portrayed Kyle Savage in the ABC sitcom “Complete Savages” alongside Keith Carradine and Erik von Detten.
In 2007, he starred as Josh Bauer in “24” alongside Kiefer Sutherland, and from 2007 to 2010 he played Kyle Harmon, the son of David Caruso’s character, Lt. Horatio “H” Caine, on “CSI: Miami.”
In 2009, Ellingson starred alongside Cameron Diaz, Alec Baldwin and Abigail Breslin in the dramatic film “My Sister’s Keeper.” In 2005, he was nominated for a Young Artist Award for best performance in a TV series for “Complete Savages.” He had 20 acting credits but hadn’t appeared onscreen for more than 10 years.
In 2021, the former actor found refuge at the River’s Edge Ranch, where he sought recovery for substance abuse. “Life before the drugs was kinda just fun. I’ve always been kind of a [people] person,” he said in a testimonial posted to the ranch’s YouTube. “I would say around 19 is when I got into the heavy drugs.
“My rock bottom was when I was 19. My older brother Austin, he died from a heroin overdose, and when he died … it sent me over the edge,” the former actor continued.
“Once my brother passed away, I just kind of realized that there was much more to life, and how important people were. I would have given everything that I had to be able to get my brother back, and I knew I couldn’t. And so it sent me on this downhill spiral where everything just got really dark and scary and things weren’t fun anymore. … It became more of a deep bondage that I couldn’t get out of.
“There’s a lot of things that God has shown me since I’ve been here at the ranch. I’m starting to see why things were happening the way they were and what God was doing. … God has restored my mind. I have peace now again, I have hope. … I’m super excited about life. I know that there’s hope for me, and now I just want to let other people know that there’s hope.”
Let’s talk about Loki episode 2-5, the one after everyone died.
TVA Code 1229
Image: Marvel
You gotta hand it to Loki’s producers. They hid their intentions in plain sight.
During the promotional phase of Loki season two, Marvel emphasized the visual gag of Loki “Time Slipping” around the TVA.
With the benefit of hindsight, that wasn’t a joke. It was a spoiler.
Image: Marvel
Yes, at the end of episode four, everyone on Loki ostensibly died due to the collapse of the Time Variance Authority and Sacred Timeline.
How, then, can Loki remain? And that answer comes from Time Slipping.
Image: Marvel
We start this episode with Loki crying a single tear as all timelines collapse.
Perhaps Loki’s fate is that he will always fail…but maybe not.
Image: Marvel
In the blink of an eye, Loki discovers that he remains at the TVA in the same place where the multiverse had just exploded.
Now, the Time Loom appears okay. Something has happened to reset the order of things.
Perhaps Loki has time traveled, or maybe someone like He Who Remains had accounted for everything that happened.
Image: Marvel
We don’t get the answer yet.
Instead, we watch a dazed and confused Loki roam through the empty TVA, even entering the Automat briefly since Key Lime Pie Is Life this season.
Image: Marvel
A female automated voice, perhaps a precursor to Miss Minutes, suggests that TVA code 1229 has been activated.
According to the disembodied voice, “Fail Safe Mode” has been initiated. Also, the voice thanks the TVA employees (or Loki directly) for their service.
Time Still Keeps on Slipping
Image: Marvel
We then skip straight to the Doctor Who timey-wimey stuff when Loki notices himself reading on the other side of a familiar room.
Loki says hello to his more literate self before he Time Slips. At this point, he finds himself in the same room, which is now empty.
Loki approaches a console and proceeds to read a copy of the TVA Handbook. At this point, he realizes he’s not alone.
Image: Marvel
The Loki he’d been a moment ago says hello to him. Then, Loki notices a spaghetti effect that consumes the room.
That’s a connection I’d failed to make in the aftermath of last week’s events.
Image: Marvel
The spaghettification of Victor Timely looks unmistakably similar to the spread of the threads of the Sacred Timeline as they spin out of control.
Folks, I hate to break it to you, but the entire multiverse is in danger of Archer’s worst fear, spaghettification.
We’re barely five minutes into this episode, and Marvel has already blown my mind.
We’re all Victor Timely unless someone like, say, Loki or Sylvie saves the day.
Image: Marvel
Speaking of Loki, we cut to a prison cell. No, Loki isn’t in it for a change.
Instead, someone who looks like Casey is making a Shawshank Redemption-esque escape.
The year turns out to be 1962, and the setting is Alcatraz. The trio of escapees are doing extraordinarily well until the impossible happens.
Image: Marvel
Loki Time Slips into Casey’s vicinity and addresses him by name. This confuses the three prisoners, as the guy’s name isn’t Casey. He’s Frank.
Get used to this, as it’s about to happen a lot.
Through force of will or science or fiction or whatever, Loki keeps Time Slipping to his friends.
Loki Gets the Band Back Together
Image: Marvel
Throughout the episode, Loki struggles to control the Time Slipping, which we later learn is at least theoretically possible.
The God of Mischief unwillingly teleports to Piranha Powersports and a 1982 McDonald’s before landing in a TVA Time Theater (#25 if you’re keeping score – I have no idea what’s significant at this point).
Image: Marvel
The one connection I notice is that each time Loki Time Slips, he lands in a year ending in a 2, except with O.B., who is a 4, which is two squared.
Image: Marvel
Does that mean anything? Again, I have no idea, but I’m putting it out there in case it gets your synapses firing.
Loki encounters a lovely variant of Hunter B-15 in New York City in 2012.
She’s demonstrating exemplary bedside manner as she treats a child with a broken arm.
Image: Marvel
B-15 had previously indicated that she’d seen herself in the Sacred Timeline and that she’d looked happy. We see why now. This person is wonderful.
Loki cannot even speak to her before he Time Slips, though. She watches in confusion as she watches him spaghetti-fy in front of her.
That’s also what Time Slipping looks like. In hindsight, I missed some obvious visual clues in the earlier episodes.
Image: Marvel
Each Loki character resides on the “Branched Timeline.” We find Mobius in Cleveland, Ohio, in 2022. He’s a single father who sells jet skis.
Loki engages with Mobius but Time Slips before they can advance the conversation.
The Wisdom of Ouroboros
Image: Marvel
Finally, we meet the most significant character for this episode, Ouroboros. He’s a struggling science-fiction writer in 1994.
Also, O.B. is a theoretical physics professor Cal Tech. You can guess which of these skills is more valuable at the moment. Oddly, both kinda help, though.
As a bored Sci-fi writer, O.B. is open to ideas. As a theoretical physicist, he understands at least some of the underlying temporal mechanics.
Image: Marvel
Notably, O.B. remains consistent with the concept of the snake devouring its own tail as well.
The author sneaks his own books on the shelves of a local bookstore. Then, he tries to buy them.
An author buying their own books is a metaphor for the ouroboros. It’s a self-defeating practice…and I say that as someone who has done it. (Don’t judge! It was a gift for mom!)
Image: Marvel
O.B. has thoughts on how time travel works as well as what Loki has experienced.
Specifically, Loki has traveled to a place that doesn’t exist, which is impossible. Now, he wants to return, which is also impossible.
Image: Marvel
The concluding thought is, “Therefore, it’s something you might be able to do.”
I suspect this logic would only make sense if I were at Burning Man.
Image: Marvel
Anyway, the two remaining members of the TVA – I’m ceding Loki honorary status – determine a tactic.
Loki will attempt to reunite the other members who were present when the world ended.
Image: Marvel
A theme in this episode involves Loki’s motivation in attempting to save the TVA, a point that O.B. and Sylvie drive home.
As part of the process, Loki attempts to control his Time Slipping. Not coincidentally, the first person he encounters is Mobius.
Friends of Loki
Image: Marvel
After some failed attempts, Loki teleports to Cleveland at a location conveniently beside Mobius’ backyard.
Loki explains who he is and the plight he faces. Mobius is perfectly willing to call the cops…until Ouroboros exits from a time portal.
Mobius had asked O.B. to build a TemPad in 1994. Even with a copy of the TVA Handbook, it apparently took the physicist 18 or 19 months.
Image: Marvel
Also, O.B.’s wife left him. I’m gonna tell myself this is an Everything Everywhere All at Once reference. I don’t care whether it’s true or not.
Anyway, Mobius cannot argue the point once he watches someone use a time portal. So, the former TVA agent (eventually) agrees to follow Loki.
Soon afterward, Hunter B-15 and Casey join Loki, although the latter gentleman appears to have an ulterior motive. He is an escaped convict, after all.
Image: Marvel
Loki realizes that he has compiled a nearly complete set of his friends.
So, he teleports to 1982 Oklahoma and plans to explain everything to Sylvie.
Nobody else has any idea what’s going on…but Sylvie is a Loki variant. She has a total recollection of the Sacred Timeline explanation.
Image: Marvel
Sylvie recognizes from the Time Slipping that Loki is having a bit of a day. She takes him to a bar and buys him a drink.
Once again, the two debate their natures, with Sylvie pressing Loki on why he needs the TVA to return.
Image: Marvel
Ultimately, Loki realizes it’s as simple as wanting his friends back. But Sylvie doesn’t need friends. At least, that’s what she says.
The two go their separate ways, with Loki believing he has failed.
Have You Watched Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation?
Image: Marvel
For her part, Sylvie heads to what’s apparently her favorite hangout when she’s not at McDonald’s. It’s a local record store.
The kindly shop owner recommends an album for her, which she proceeds to play.
As a Mission Impossible superfan, I quickly deduce what’s about to happen.
Image: Marvel
In Rogue Nation, the protagonist watches helplessly as a record store employee dies.
Sure enough, the spaghettification of all timelines chooses this moment to come to Sylvie’s beloved 1982 Oklahoma.
Image: Marvel
To the record store owner’s credit, his only thought as he recognizes their peril is to run to and hopefully save Sylvie. He doesn’t make it.
Still, no matter what she says, Sylvie has made at least two friends in Oklahoma.
Image: Marvel
She’s just like Loki in that she has a need for personal connections.
I really love how deftly the show handles this particular subplot. It’s wholly understated and moving.
That dude playing the record store owner is on the show for like 90 seconds, but he makes an impact.
Image: Marvel
After her friend turns to Chef-Boyardee, Sylvie watches the spaghetti in amazement as her universe fades to black.
Then, the Loki variant calmly triggers her TemPad and exits via a portal.
Moments later, the TVA band is back together.
Every New Beginning Comes from Some Other Beginning’s End
Image: Marvel
Two new problems arise, though. First, Loki is missing the TemPad he needs to reset the TVA and the Sacred Timeline.
All eyes glare at Casey, who denies he’s the thief. And that brings us to Problem #2. Casey turns to spaghetti.
So do O.B., Hunter B-15, and Mobius. As a reminder, Loki is at its core a show about two variants.
Image: Marvel
In this moment, we’re watching a variant on the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. Rather than turning to dust, they become spaghetti.
Only Sylvie and Loki remain. No, wait. Sylvie winds up in a Chef Boyardee can, too.
We hear voices that call back to previous moments of dialogue from the season.
Image: Marvel
O.B. says, “It was a fiction problem,” which were also his dying words.
Sylvie ponders, “Do you think what makes a Loki a Loki is the fact that we’re destined to lose?”
Image: Marvel
That’s a brutal assessment at this moment because Loki is losing in the most horrifying way imaginable.
He’s just realized the importance of his friends and then immediately watched them die horribly.
The Beginning of the End
Image: Marvel
As Loki screams in frustration, he accidentally unlocks the key to his Time Slipping power.
First, he rewinds to just before Sylvie died. Then, he cycles backward to when Sylvie joined them moments earlier.
Finally, Loki identifies the key to fixing everything. He confidently states, “I can rewrite the story.”
Image: Marvel
Then, Loki willingly Time Slips to the TVA at a moment before the Sacred Timeline had collapsed. He’s standing beside O.B. when the episode ends.
I dunno what’s gonna happen next, but the dude who once called human beings ants is now willing to sacrifice everything to save all humanity.
Image: Marvel
Next week, we’ll find out what that entails, and it’ll presumably tie directly into The Marvels, which debuts in theaters the following day.
This season of Loki has been spectacular, and while I found some of the O.B./Loki discussion in episode five a bit ridiculous, it provided brilliant storytelling.
PS: Mobius finally got to sit on a jet ski. That’s reason enough to love episode five.
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Writer: Dan Slott Artists: Christopher Jones & Matthew Dow Smith, Mike Collins Color Artists: Charlie Kirchoff & Mariane Gusmão Letterer: Richard Starkings / Comicraft
Doctor Who: Once Upon A Timelord was originally announced as a fall release for 2022. While the year-long wait has been agonizing, after reading it I’m glad that Titan Comics waited until the Doctor’s 60th Anniversary month and year to release it. Why? The answers are many and varied.
Positives
The decision to release this comic at a time when David Tennant’s returning to our TV screens, as the new 14th Doctor, is a stroke of genius. Not only is he one of the most beloved actors to play the character, there can be no denying that his adventures, and the entire Doctor Who era under the stewardship of Russell T. Davies, re-invigorated the franchise and, as such, is now seen as one of the greatest DW runs of all time.
Now I have to talk about about Dan Slott. While fandom remains divided about his 10-plus-year run on Spider-Man (and he’s back, folks) I’ve been a huge fan of his work since Batman Adventures Vol. 2 (2003-2004), and Batman: Arkham Asylum: Living Hell (2003). Slott is the writer whose work brought me back to the web-slinger (after the pointless and completely unnecessary horrors Marvel inflicted upon Peter and Mary Jane). Yes, I actually stopped reading the adventures of my second favorite comic book character (after Batman/the Bat Family) until Dan took over as writer.
Reading interviews with Mr. Slott, leading up to this fantastic comic, it turns out that he fell in love with Doctor Who at the same time (and with the same Doctor and companions) as I did; Tom Baker, Lis Sladen, and Ian Marter (the fourth Doctor, Sarah-Jane Smith, and Harry Sullivan). His love for the Doctor Who universe (Whoniverse?) shines from every line in this story.
Like the wonderful Jody Houser, Slott has an ear for dialogue and the beats of how a character speaks, which really resonates. His Martha Jones, Rose Tyler, Ninth and Tenth Doctors, to me, “sound” exactly like Freema Agyeman, Billie Piper, Christopher Eccleston, and David Tennant. That’s not an easy thing to do, and many other writers haven’t been able manage it.
I’m a lifelong Doctor Who super-fan, I own DVDs of all the existing episodes (right back to 1963) all the ones that have been recreated in animation, and all of “NuWho”, too. This show’s in my DNA and I love it completely and unapologetically. Doctor Who: Once Upon A Timelord reads like the Tenth Doctor’s greatest hits, and feels like a 60th-anniversary special all of its own.
The truth is, this comic features a ton of characters from the RTD/10th Doctor era, including a few surprise ones used in clever and unexpected ways. The second story, “Rhyme Or Reason”, even brings back some Fifth Doctor villains! This comic is thrilling, funny, scary, clever, and super entertaining… just like the TV show it’s inspired by. Dan Slott loves Doctor Who, and this wonderful comic proves it.
Christopher Jones is one of those artists whose work I’ll buy whenever I see his name on the cover. He’s working with Matthew Dow on the first story in the book, “Firelight”. The tale begins and ends in the “Real World”, in the vintage, clean, sharp, gorgeous Jones style, while the central story, Martha’s tale, is edgy, scratchy, and mysterious. The overall effect really works. As always, Jones is also a master at capturing actors’ likenesses, smiles, and quirks. The different visuals used to tell Martha’s story to the new (and absolutely awesome) villains, the Pyromeths, really sets the two sides of the tale apart. This book looks fabulous.
Color artists, Charlie Kirchoff and Mariane Gusmão, also deliver the goods. The effects surrounding the ever-burning villains are very effective, and the space and story time colors are cosmic and ethereal, while the real world parts of the tale are grounded and feel very natural. Great work, team!
The second offering in the issue, “Rhyme Or Reason”, gives us a previously untold story featuring the Ninth Doctor and Rose. It’s drawn by Doctor Who (and comics in general, if we’re being honest) veteran, Mike Collins. I love Mike’s art, and own a veritable ton of it; going all the way back to his work in Marvel UK’s Captain Britain and his earliest strips for Doctor Who Magazine. When it comes to the Doctor (whatever he/she/they look like this year) and all his companions, Mike can do no wrong (in my humble opinion).
Finally, we come to the reigning King of Letterers, (as well as an amazing writer and editor in his own right) and his unparalleled studio, Comicraft. Richard Starkings is the maestro, a legend, and in a league of his own. Plus, he’s one of the nicest people on this planet or any other. If you buy any comic or graphic novel that has his name on it or is lettered by him, or any of the fine talents at Comicraft, you can be 100% certain that you’re picking up an item of true quality.
Negatives
I’ve been waiting a year for this… but it was SO worth it.
Verdict
Doctor Who: Once Upon A Timelord deserves its place on every Whovians bookshelf. It’s a fast-paced powerhouse of a tale that’s beautifully illustrated and incredibly well written. The twists and turns, Slott’s love of the English language (and his ability to poke fun at it), his brilliant takes on the TARDIS’ translation circuits, the clever twist at the end of “Firelight” and the way he even clearly tells readers where this comic fits in the Doctor Who timeline, are all impeccably handled.
Not only will I be buying a physical copy when this book comes out, but I may have to get all three covers. Yes indeed, this comic’s a winner.
Warning: This article has some slight spoilers for the later portions of Alan Wake 2, although we tried to keep them to a minimum. It also contains spoilers for Quantum Break and Control.
If you google the term “multiverse fatigue,” you’ll find a whole slate of articles, social media posts, and forum discussions in which people complain about how much the idea of a “multiverse” has permeated popular culture. With superhero stories and their cinematic universes dominating movies and spreading to TV, the once-fringe, science fictional idea of multiple connected universes and alternate dimensions has become mainstream, and with its ubiquity, kind of dull.
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Now Playing: Alan Wake 2 And The 13 Year Journey To Make It
It’s into this climate that Remedy Entertainment has released Alan Wake 2, the studio’s second game since it started talking about its “Remedy Connected Universe” and narratively linked the Alan Wake games to 2019’s Control. And the RCU isn’t just bringing Remedy’s current and future games into the same world so they can overlap with one another like TV show crossover events. Control is largely about the idea of a multiverse as something to be explored, studies, and defended against, and makes a lot of gestures in the direction that Remedy’s past games could be among those additional dimensions.
If you were already annoyed with the prevalence of sprawling multi-story universes and strange multiverses, you might find yourself even more frustrated with Remedy and Alan Wake 2, which goes beyond Control’s Easter eggs to make text from the subtext.
But Remedy’s approach to the multiverse manages to stand apart from that of other media, because for Remedy, the multiverse isn’t just a way to cash in on well-liked characters or to draw fanbases together. In the RCU, the multiverse is an oppressive force that now looms over all these stories. It spawns dark forces and corrupts and twists people, or pulls them out of their lives and traps them in nightmarish new realities. For Remedy, the multiverse isn’t a setting or a gimmick–it’s a villain.
Though Alan himself is trying to fight his way out of a dark alternate dimension in all the Alan Wake games, there’s another character who perfectly personifies a growing sense of the uncanny in Remedy’s games: Warlin Door. First mentioned in dialogue and notes in Control, Door shows up a lot in Alan Wake 2, mostly serving a comedic role in Alan’s dream-like trips through the reality-bending alternate dimension, the Dark Place. Door plays a talk show host when you first encounter him, and he seems more a goofy personification of the weirder effects of the Dark Place than an actual character.
That all changes when, as you explore the Dark Place, you come across another person seemingly stranded in Alan’s nightmare. Sheriff Tim Breaker was just a regular guy in Bright Falls, someone who met with the game’s other playable character, FBI Agent Saga Anderson, early in the game–and then he suddenly vanished in the middle of a conversation with Anderson. When playing as Alan, it’s possible to come across Tim, stranded in the Dark Place, trying to find his own way out.
Talking with Tim adds a different sense of dread to Alan Wake 2. He tells you about searching for Door, who Tim believes transported him to the Dark Place to start with, although he doesn’t know why. Tim also talks about strange feelings he has, as if he’s been here before but forgotten; about things and people he sees in dreams; about a sense of being someone else and knowing people almost from another life.
What it appears Tim is referring to is a multiversal tie to time-travel story Quantum Break, another Remedy game. Tim is portrayed by actor Shawn Ashmore, who played protagonist Jack Joyce in Quantum Break. Some of the things Tim talks about and writes on the white board he uses to track his memories and investigation of Door sound like references to Jack’s life in Quantum Break. He also mentions a “red-haired woman” he keeps seeing and feels like he knows. In Quantum Break, Jack meets and works with Beth Wilder, a red-haired woman, who’s played by actor Courtney Hope–who plays protagonist Jesse Faden in Control. Even Tim’s name sounds like a Quantum Break reference, since Tim Breaker is remarkably close to “time breaker,” which describes Jack Joyce in Quantum Break.
It’s less important that Alan Wake 2 is implied to have ties to Quantum Break than it is to look at how this conception of the multiverse is affecting the story’s characters. Tim isn’t just a guy traversing through the multiverse, he’s someone who’s afflicted by it. He’s been attacked by some unknown power, altogether different from the Dark Presence that Alan is battling. The multiverse is pressing in on him, invading his dreams and altering his perception. He has lost control of his very existence, the fundamental elements of his identity, and he has no idea why.
Later, Alan has an interaction with Door in which the mask is dropped. Door tells Alan that he’s been content to play a part in Alan’s story and to help him, but that Alan’s meddling through the Dark Place is potentially affecting Door’s agenda.
Control provides even more context about Door. The brother of protagonist Jesse Faden, Dylan, talks about seeing a “Mr. Door” in his dreams, who explains the multiverse to Dylan and says that he exists in all the worlds, “endlessly shifting between them.” Door doesn’t seem like a malevolent entity from Dylan’s description–Door pointedly doesn’t help him spread the Hiss, Control’s Dark Presence-like antagonistic force, to other dimensions–but there’s clearly more going on with him than we know.
It’s worth noting that Quantum Break also has a semi-villainous character who, by the end, seems to be manipulating events to help Jack, but for his own ends. That character’s name is Martin Hatch–and side by side, Warlin Door look suspiciously like the Wario-ization of that name. Of course, Remedy doesn’t own the rights to Quantum Break, so these connections are left ambiguous.
But again, it’s not the connections themselves that are important. It’s the way Remedy is using these connections to do more than drop some fan service. Alan Wake 2 and Control suggest not only a larger landscape of stories, but influences between them, forces traversing them, and agendas executed through them. Who and what the hell is Warlin Door, and what does he want? For that matter, who or what the hell is Ahti, the janitor who appears repeatedly in Alan Wake 2 to help out the protagonists, and plays the same role in Control?
And that’s to say nothing of the focus of either Alan Wake 2 itself, which is about a dark alternate dimension and a viciously powerful creature released from within it. The Dark Place and the Dark Presence are nightmares that don’t belong in Alan’s world and yet are loosed within it, rewriting the rules of reality.
Remedy isn’t just creating a scary tale about a story that comes to life in Alan Wake 2–it’s seeding the tendrils of a growing cosmic horror story that spreads throughout all its games. There are unknowable intelligences at play in these worlds, they are unseen but constantly present, and they are after something. They corrupt, manipulate, and kill the people in their paths. They are engaged in some sort of struggle beyond our understanding.
In the RCU, the multiverse is less a series of parallel dimensions and more a bunch of self-contained bubbles slamming together, combining, overlapping, and consuming one another. And the very nature of these overlapping stories isn’t just bringing characters together, it may well be driving them mad. The universe itself can get into your mind in the RCU. It can invade you and change you, alter your very essence, and make you question who you are.
If you’re looking for a better way to do multiverse stories, Remedy has a pretty good idea. Don’t just set your stories in a multiverse: Make the multiverse something to contend with. The multiverse itself is something terrifying in Alan Wake 2, and that approach is turning the RCU into something much more than a bunch of games that happen to mention each other.
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Filmmakers have many remarkable superpowers. The ability to create kaleidoscope fractals of terrifying credit card debt. The ability to turn any friendship into a stark transactional binary. The ability to blot out the very sun itself with the G&E crew’s interlocking vape exhalations.
Mostimpressively, filmmakers have the ability to take some abstract, internal element of the human experience and physicalize it into something photographable and dramatic. Sure: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But sometimes in movies, a cigar is actually the memory of your dead father, a metaphor for America’s self-immolation, or—occasionally—a penis.
Of course, a reliable way to transmute emotions and anxieties into something tangible, visible and narratively propulsive is to lean on metaphysics and the supernatural. Just look at the prestige horror boom of the last 15 years, which has turned grief and despair into ghosts and haunted houses so often it’s become cliche. But the three projects below—out November 2023 Fiscal Spotlight picks—are anything but cliche.
Each project features a female protagonist from an ethnic or mixed-race background struggling with their identity, those struggles represented through surreal cinematic tropes.
These three projects are all currently being supported by Film Independent’s Fiscal Sponsorship program, which enables filmmakers to solicit tax-deductible donations and organizational grants in partnership with Film Independent. Here’s how:
This month’s Fiscal Spotlight projects are No Escape, Chatter and Lucia & The Invisible Wife. Learn more about each project—and how to lend them your support—below:
NO ESCAPE
Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Post Production
Writer/Director/Producer/Lead: Leena Kurishingal
Producer: Timothy Farrell
About the project: Nisha and Jim brave the spookiness of the woods and harrowing storm to finally enjoy the highlight of their new relationship—a weekend away together in an awesome cabin. But one omen after the next makes Nisha worry something weird this way comes… Between trying to get it on with Jim and intense paranoia, Nisha discovers that her worst nightmare has followed her into the wilderness (complete with whacking ladle and sensible shoes). The couple tries to evade this cultural specter. In the end, Nisha must face her fate all—well, not quite alone. No Escape uses classic film noir imagery and campy horror tropes, reimagined to include a new audience in the conversation. In what has typically been a white male-dominated genre, we center on Indian-American Nisha, who is at odds with her identity(ies). Chaos ensues with her conflicted Caucasian boyfriend, conservative monster mother, ghost dad and elderly AirBnB owner who just wants to make sure they have enough TP. This project is an expansion of a staged sketch celebrating India’s Independence Day in 2019, exploring the concept of what it means to be Indian, in all its varied history and embodiments.
Meet the filmmaker: To learn more about No Escape including how to support the project, click here. Leena is a SAG-AFTRA performer of 17 years appearing on stage, screen and more, with a film degree from Columbia College Chicago. She crossed into writing thanks to a diversity scholarship from the Upright Citizens Brigade LA, where she studied improv, sketch and characters. This led to collaboration with the all-WOC sketch group, Soul Sista Comedy. She also wrote, directed and produced a one-hour sketch variety show pondering Indian identity for stage called “India & You: And Me. And Everybody.” She has since received the UCLA Phyllis Gebauer Scholarship for TV Writing, pitched short form content for Bite-Size Horror under FOX Digital, and become a WAVE Grant recipient for emerging female directors.
CHATTER
Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Development
Writer/Director: Jessica Sherif
Producer: Jessica Carlson
About the project: Sparks fly when Samia meets Charlie. But their anxieties—who are somehow able to communicate with each other—aren’t sold on this coupling just yet. Unemployed photojournalist Samia is in a bit of a rut. Like all of us, her inner monologue won’t fail to remind that she doesn’t feel so great about herself. To complicate matters, Samia is an Arab-American who grew up in France, which means that her inner chatter is split between her blue-eyed blonde all-American anxiety (Phoebe), her poised French logic (Victoire) and her compassionate Arabic courage (Yumma). When she meets Charlie, his straightforwardness and humor lights a genuine and immediate spark in her. Phoebe, however, isn’t as taken by Charlie. She’s even more shocked to discover that Charlie’s inner voices Thomas, Brody and Ning, can hear and see her, Victoire and Yumma. As these two attractive, earnest and loquacious millennials wander around Central Park, they flirt, joke, bicker and confess their way into a startling yet tender romantic epiphany.
Meet the filmmaker: To learn more about Chatter including how to support the project, click here. Jessica Sherif is an Algerian and French-Canadian writer/director who was born and raised in Spain and who channels her multi-cultural background to tell engaging and impactful character-based stories that resonate across different perspectives and cultures. Jessica’s latest project, the Netflix documentary series about the Women’s World Cup—which she co-created and executive produced—will premiere in November. Before that, she co-created, directed and executive produced the A&E Network documentary series Right to Offend. Jessica’s narrative feature screenplay Third Culture Kids was also selected to be a part of the Tribeca Creators Market. She has directed many short films that have screened at over forty film festivals combined, and won awards at Hollyshorts, Tallgrass and more.
LUCIA & THE INVISIBLE WIFE
Project type: Fiction Short
Project status: Development
Writer/Director: Karine Benzaria
Producers: Julia Kennelly
About the project: Lucia & The Invisible Wife is a quirky dark comedy that explores what happens to a woman (Isabel) and her family when she inexplicably becomes invisible. Overwhelmed by grief and trapped by the emotional limitations to express it, her husband (Tonio) resorts to replacing her with a new bride (Lucia). What no one foresees is that the woman brought in to replace his missing wife is the only person who can see her. The film explores how Isabel and Lucia connect, differ and evolve. Tonally, it aims to explore the oft sacred and complicated relationships between women, using magical surrealism and dark humor. Influential films include Like Water for Chocolates, Volver and The Lobster.
Meet the filmmaker: To learn more about Lucia & The Invisible Wife including how to support the project, click here. Filmmaker Karine Benzaria’s production experience includes Apple TV’s Hello Tomorrow, Amazon’s Jack Ryan and Netflix’s The OA. As a producer, most recently the 2023 SXSW-nominated film “Breaking Fast” with a Coca-Cola and 2022 SXSW nominee, Clare. In 2017, she co-founded production company Dream City with Julia Kennelly and Daisy Zhou. There, she produced Marcy Learns Something New, the winner of 2020’s Vimeo Staff Pick’s “Best of the Year” Award. She is a 2023 Film Independent Project InvolveProducing Fellow and recently won a 2023 Wavelength Grant.
Learn more about Fiscal Sponsorship, including its benefits and eligibility requirements, by visiting our website. Check out our Sponsored Projects page to see the projects that are currently being supported.
Celebrating 30 years, Film Independent Artist Development promotes unique independent voices by helping filmmakers create and advance new work. Become a Member of Film Independent today. Support us with a donation here.
“The Real Housewives of Potomac” ladies are back for Season 8, and while there’s a new housewife in Nneka Ihim, Karen Huger maintains there’s still only one Grande Dame.
The ladies of Potomac will kick everything off for an eighth time on Sunday, bringing back the full cast Karen Huger, Wendy Osefo, Robyn Dixon, Candiace Dillard Bassett, Gizelle Bryant, Mia Thornton, Ashley Darby and new housewife Nneka Ihim.
In the Season 8 opener, fans will see Bryant’s new bae, “Winter House” star Jason Cameron, an update on Thornton’s The Joint business meltdown, Ashley Darby’s new home and the aftermath of Dixon’s husband Juan’s cheating scandal. In an interview with TheWrap, Huger and Bryant shared what fans can anticipate this the season.
Gizelle Bryant supported Robyn Dixon during Juan Dixon’s cheating scandal, but said there were moments she felt she wasn’t being a “good friend”to Dixon
Robyn Dixon, Juan Dixon (Photo credit: Getty Images)
During Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon’s podcast “Reasonably Shady,” Dixon addressed the infidelity rumors surrounding her husband Juan Dixon, and admitted he “was an idiot” for communicating inappropriately with another woman online. Afterward, Dixon was met with criticism for withholding the details from airing on the show, and ultimately dealt with people’s opinions about the her marriage. Bryant shared she wanted Dixon to put herself first amid the drama. The Season 8 premiere features a moment with the couple discussing the controversy.
“There was nothing in me that felt like I needed to give [Robyn Dixon] space,” Bryant told TheWrap. “Robyn and I, we have “Potomac,” we have [our podcast] ‘Reasonably Shady,’ I’m with her all the time. I see Juan all the time. I’m at their house. That’s where we record ‘Reasonably Shady,’ so we’re going to talk this through. I need to make sure my girl is okay. There were there were days where I’m just like, ‘Do you want me just come over, we can just hang out.’ I was feeling overwhelmed by it, so I can only imagine it was probably 100 times worse for her because this is actually her life and her husband. It wasn’t good times. It was some dark, dark days.”
She continued: “I don’t want to say it’s like this now, but in the moment, I felt like [Robyn] wasn’t putting herself first. She was just putting [Juan] first, and as women, we have a tendency to do that sometimes. I’m the queen of ‘I put me first’ all day long, and if you don’t understand it, then get to steppin’. So I just needed for her to have a little bit of that. As a friend, I’ve got to support my girl. So if all she needs is for me to support her, then that is what I’m going to do, regardless of whether or not I agree with it. It is not my life. It’s hers. So I was just here to support her. And I felt there were some days where I wasn’t a good friend. I wasn’t being supportive. I was just kind of being an a–hole and kind of being like, ‘You know, let’s cut and run.’ But I had to check myself. It really it was like a Gizelle self realization: this is not my life. This is hers, and all I want for her to do is to live her best life.”
Karen Huger “really” likes new housewife Nneka Ihim, but maintains there’s only one Grande Dame
Karen Huger, Nneka Ihim (Bravo)
In the Season 8 trailer of “The Real Housewives of Potomac” Gizelle Bryant is seen crowning new housewife Nneka Ihim as the “new Grande Dame of Potomac.” Huger said that there are specific requirements one must attain and a curriculum one must undergo in order to be given the title.
“The Grande Dame title can’t be taken, I have to give it. Stayed tuned, darling, Season 8. Don’t let the teaser trick you,” Huger said with a smile while giving Ihim her flowers. “I really like Nneka. Nneka’s a great addition to the show. She’s very ambitious, obviously. I will open a school for those who would like to be the Grande Dame. They have to enroll in a class, but I have a daughter that’s in line for my title. I’m honored that [Nneka] would like to do that, but she’s got to pay her dues, and we’ll see if she has what it takes. Stay tuned.”
As far as what it takes to be a Grande Dame…
“First of all, you have to be tough as nails. You have to have an internal switch to know when to turn it on and when to turn it off. You have to be grounded at all times, and you have to have wisdom. That takes time. And that means, triple 20. The right person is the Grande Dame, for now,” Huger said.
Gizelle Bryant welcomes new boo Jason Cameron from “Winter House” onto Season 8 of “RHOP”
Jason Cameron, Gizelle Bryant (Photo credit: Bravo)
In the Season 8 premiere of “The Real Housewives of Potomac” Gizelle Bryant shows off her new guy Jason Cameron, who is also a star on Bravo’s “Winter house.”
“He’s somebody that’s in my life. We started dating. We’ve been great. I’m super happy he’s in my life. I feel like he’s just a breath of fresh air, and we have fun. He makes me laugh, and my kids love him,” Bryant said.
When it came to having him on the show, Bryant said Cameron isn’t camera-shy, and that he understands her life as a TV personality because he’s a reality star as well.
“He gets it, he gets it, and he’s not afraid of the cameras. There’s no intimidation factor there. He understands it. Of course, that would make it a lot easier,” Bryant said, mentioning that he was totally fine coming onto the show is she was comfortable having him.
“He was like, ‘I’ll do whatever you want. If you want me to be on if I can. He totally took my lead, but I didn’t have an expectation. As I started dating him, I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I expect you to be on my show. Absolutely not. But it was nice to have him around for sure.”
Gizelle Bryant and Karen Huger address the colorism conversation that took place at the Season 7 reunion.
“The Real Housewives of Potomac” Season 7 (Photo credit: Bravo)
During the Season 7 reunion for “The Real Housewives of Potomac” the cast opened up about the issue of colorism after viewers expressed they felt housewives Wendy Osefo and Cadiace Dillard Bassett were were treated unfairly and/or received discriminatory treatment because of their darker complexions. The colorism conversation, in general, is an issue that even “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Kenya Moore has highlighted, and one that Karen Huger addressed as a “real problem.”
“Colorism is a real topic. It’s a real problem. Of course [the cast] talk[s] about it, and we work on it daily. We are a work in progress. I’m so proud of the work we’re doing on ‘RHOP’ to address it,” Huger said. “One day at a time. We will dismantle it. Where we are now is, working. We’re all working toward the good and the betterment, better understanding of colorism and the damage that it can do to a Black woman, a Black man, a Black baby. It’s not okay. So certainly we are hoping for the absolute best.
Gizelle Bryant, Robyn Dixon and Ashley Darby have previously addressed the topic, and Bryant said she believes colorism exists, but doesn’t feel it’s an issue within the group.
“There’s been no conversations with me beyond the reunion. There are no colorists amongst the ladies. Does colorism exist? Abso-freaking-lutely. Am I colorist? Absolutely not,” Bryant said. “Do I feel like if it’s not happening within the show, is this conversation that we should continue to talk about over and over again. No, because I think at some point, we’re not CNN. We’re not a news show. We’re not to fix colorism in America. We are a reality show, and we’re entertainment.”
Bryant continued: “I was happy to hear that no one felt like there was colorism in this show because that would be very bothersome. The whole situation has been bad. It’s unfortunate I’ve had to live live through death threats, I had to live through things that my cast mates have put out in social media that aren’t true which has caused there to be attacks against me, attacks against Rob [Robyn Dixon] and attacks against Ashley [Darby] that are not warranted. So that has been unfortunate. And it’s really things that are hard to get past, to be honest with you.”
Karen Huger and Gizelle Bryant are in a ‘good place’ this season, despite their on-again, off-again relationship
Karen Huger and Gizelle Bryant (Photo credit: Getty Images)
Despite the two’s hot and cold relationship over the past years, both Karen Huger and Gizelle Bryant confirmed they are in a better place this season.
“Let me tell you something. We were hanging out last night (Oct. 23). We were in this restaurant last night. We shut that thing down. Okay, that’s No. 1., No. 2. is, she’s crazy. She is certified crazy. Anybody that walks by, she’s just like, ‘Oh, Gizelle, so what do you think about them?’ I’m like, ‘The waiter? I don’t think anything about the waiter, like, what are you talking about? Like it? We had a ball.”
From Huger’s end…
“We’re in a good place right now, and I’m grateful for that. No one knows better than I and Gizelle that our relationship is on again off again. So when it’s on, we truly, truly enjoy each other. Yes, we had a wonderful, fun girl dinner. No cameras, no pictures were taken. We didn’t share a moment with anyone but us. I had [my husband Raymond Huger] Ray Ray come, join us later, and it was a good thing. It was a good feeling. We hadn’t done it in years so. It’s a good place right now.
“The Real Housewives of Potomac” heads back to Bravo screens on Nov. 5, with new episodes set to run every Sunday.
