Megan Thee Stallion and her former label reached a settlement this week in the rapper’s year-long lawsuit with both sides agreeing to part ways.
Attorneys for 1501 Certified Entertainment confirmed the deal to The Times on Friday but declined to comment further. They referred to a statement posted on the label’s Instagram page that read, “Megan Thee Stallion and 1501 Certified are pleased to announce that they have mutually reached a confidential settlement to resolve their legal differences.
“As part of the arrangement, both parties have agreed to amicably part ways,” the statement continued. “Both Megan and 1501 are pleased to put this matter behind them and move forward with the next chapter of their respective businesses.”
The label’s founder, former MLB star and Dodgers player Carl Crawford, added in the statement, “All of us at 1501 wish Megan the very best in her life and career.”
Representatives for Megan Thee Stallion, whose legal name is Megan Pete, did not immediately respond to The Times’ requests for comments on Friday afternoon.
In a series of lawsuits against 1501, filed throughout 2022 in Harris County, Texas, Pete has tried to get out of the label deal she signed in 2018 with Crawford. The lawsuits called the contract “one-sided” and “unconscionable.” Pete alleged in her complaints that the label owed her more than $1 million in unpaid royalties, had failed to promote her music or allow her to record new music with other artists, and signed her to a deal that was below industry standards.
The label, Pete further alleged, purposely didn’t categorize her 2021 release “Something for Thee Hotties” as an album, in an effort to “tie” her down and force her “to release more albums under the contract to the financial benefit of 1501.”
Attorneys for 1501 and Crawford countersued, saying Pete is the one who owes it money. The label said Pete needed to pay it more than $10 million in earnings and royalties from touring, merchandise sales and her sponsorships, endorsements and commercial work with other brands.
The label also said in court documents that Pete had “consistently refused to comply with the [contract] provisions she does not like.” And because the label said “Something for Thee Hotties” was not a full-length album, they alleged that Pete still owed them another full-length release.
Last week, Megan Thee Stallion teased an upcoming project in a series of Instagram posts, revealing images of her posing with vampire-esque fangs, accompanied by images of snakes and the title “Act One.” In a caption that ran over two of the posts, she wrote, “Let’s begin.”
She followed up the posts by appearing on an Instagram live broadcast with her music producer, LilJuMadeDaBeat, where she said she planned to release new music independently, without a label.
“I have no label right now,” she said in the broadcast. “The next s— y’all ‘bout to see ‘bout to be straight from Megan Thee Stallion’s brain, Megan Thee Stallion’s wallets.”
On Friday, she posted another series of photos, featuring more snakes, and asked her followers to “tune in Monday.”
The “Thot S—” performer hasn’t released new music since the end of the Tory Lanez criminal case. In December, a jury convicted Lanez of shooting her in the feet during an alcohol-fueled argument after a July 2020 Hollywood Hills party. Lanez, whose legal name is Daystar Peterson, is serving a 10-year sentence in the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi, north of Lancaster, according to state prison records.
If you enjoyed the Marvel Disney100 variant covers, I have great news!
Disney has released a line of shirts featuring the variant covers, and they are available now at Walt Disney World! Let’s take a closer look.
Disney100 Avengers Shirt
First up, we have this red Disney100 Avengers shirt.
The front of the shirt features the iconic first Avengers issue reimagined with Mickey and friends!
Here, Goofy wears Iron Man’s armor, Mickey is Captain America, Minnie plays The Wasp, Donald gets to be Thor, and Pluto fills in for Ant-Man!
If you look closely, you can see that the original cover is faded behind the new Disney100 variant. What a great look!
Mickey Iron Man Shirt
The next Marvel Disney100 shirt asks, “What If… Mickey was the Invincible Iron Man?”
This shirt recreates one of Iron Man’s iconic covers, with Mickey posing as the titular hero.
Based on the art, you can tell that this shirt is based on a later comic. Mickey looks great!
Mickey Spider-Man Shirt
If you like the idea of a Mickey Marvel shirt, but always envisioned the mouse as a different hero, have no fear.
Disney is also selling a shirt that speculates what would happen if Mickey Mouse was bitten by a radioactive spider.
Here Mickey assumes the role of Spider-Man, joyfully swinging high above town.
This shirt not only features a recreation of The Amazing Spider-Man cover, but it also features a pattern of Disney100 logos!
Marvel Disney100 Covers Shirt
Last but not least, we have a shirt that brings all of the Marvel Disney100 covers together.
The front of this black tee has a pocket that simply has the Marvel Disney100 logo on it.
The back of the shirt, however, features the entire Disney100 Marvel collection.
In addition to some of the covers featured on other shirts, you have reimagined versions of The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and even a Secret Wars variant.
If you are a fan of Marvel history, this shirt is really a treat!
Where To Get Them
All four of these Marvel Disney100 shirts can be found at Disney Traders at EPCOT. They are available now for $39.99!
Photo: WDW Kingdom
With the Disney100 celebration heading toward its close, there is no telling how long these shirts will remain available. So, act quickly!
Happy shopping!
Thanks for visiting MickeyBlog.com! Want to go to Disney? For a FREE quote on your next Disney vacation, please fill out the form below and one of the agents from MickeyTravels, a Diamond-Level Authorized Disney Vacation Planner, will be in touch soon! Also, thanks for reading!
Exorcisms have a deep-rooted history not just in films, but in the real world. Even though the Catholic Church’s views on exorcism have changed over the decades, that nevertheless alters the truth of how seriously the church took exorcisms throughout its history. When a fear is so deeply connected to something in the real world, that fear can be a tool for filmmakers when trying to elicit reactions from moviegoers to their films. Let’s take a look at some of the best movies involving exorcisms.
Updated on October 20th, 2023, by Amira Abdel-Fadil: This article has been updated with additional content to keep the discussion fresh and relevant with even more information.
10 The Cleansing Hour
MiLa Media
The Cleansing Hour is a refreshing and underrated exorcism low-budget film to check out. In this piece of entertainment, things go wrong when a fake exorcism that was intended to only be for live-streaming views turns into something real.
With a real possession taking place, not only is the crew trying to save the actress, but the demon that possessed her is playing dirty games on them and is setting them up against each other. With solid acting and an effective premise, The Cleansing Hour is great fun.
James Franco, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson
Rating
R
Genres
Comedy, Action, Fantasy
Exorcisms have been parodied in films for decades, taking something as horrifying as demonic possession and turning it on its head for comedic purposes. 2013’s This is the End, an apocalyptic film starring some of the funniest actors of all time playing themselves, takes the concept of an exorcism, and dials it up to eleven. During the events of the film, Jonah Hill is possessed by a demon one night.
To rid him of his demonic intruder, his friends Jay Baruchel, Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Craig Robinson, attempt an impromptu exorcism. As one can imagine, things do not go according to plan, as during the ritual Hill is set on fire, causing a hilarious chain reaction of events leading to the main characters having to flee their home that is now engulfed in flames. This is the End is a hilarious film using an exorcism in top-tier comedic fashion.
Patrick Fabian, Ashley Bell, Iris Bahr, Louis Herthum, Caleb Landry Jones, Tony Bentley
Rating
PG-13
Genres
Drama, Documentary, Horror, Thriller
When a plot involving an exorcism is so broadly used, it is important to find new and interesting ways to tell a story. The Last Exorcism delivers on this by utilizing the found footage approach that helped make such movies like The Blair Witch Project, and Paranormal Activity so successful. The movie tells the story of Reverend Cotton Marcus, a man whose mission is to delegitimize exorcisms, he does so by performing fake rituals on “possessed” individuals.
Cotton’s situation becomes all too real when he is contacted by a farming family claiming their daughter to be possessed. This leads Cotton down a road of twists and turns involving lies, deceit, and occult rituals. The Last Exorcism is not for the faint of heart, and its graphic depictions of demonic possession push the boundaries of what we have seen in exorcism films prior, making it one of the best of the subgenre.
Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Campbell Scott, Jennifer Carpenter, Colm Feore, Joshua Close
Rating
PG-13
Main Genre
Crime
The Exorcism of Emily Rose is another exorcism tale that uses a unique approach to storytelling and is widely considered to be one of the best religious horror movies of all time. The movie is loosely based on true events and primarily takes place in the aftermath of the exorcism of a 19-year-old girl named Emily Rose, who tragically died during the ritual.
Emily’s tale is told through flashbacks of storytelling by Father Richard Moore, the man being charged with the negligent death of Emily. The movie calls into question the legitimacy of the exorcism performed on Rose by Father Moore. Blending horror and mystery, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a true demonic classic.
Set in Thailand, The Medium follows a Shamaness, Nim, who is a local healer and who believes she embodies the spirit of a goddess. She catches the attention of a filming crew. Meanwhile, her family member, Mink, begins showing what Nim believes to be a divine awakening.
As a result, Nim comes to believe that Mink will be the new person to embody the goddess that Nim has been hosting. However, Mink starts displaying disturbing behavior which causes Nim and the community to believe that there is something much more alarming at play. Has she become possessed by an evil force? The Medium is creepy with stellar cinematography. Its use of traditions, and cultural and religious folklore add flavor to the engrossing story.
The Wailingis an exorcism tale unlike others on this list, as it takes place in South Korea under different circumstances than some of our other entries that involve a member of the Catholic Church as the exorcist.
The film tells the story of a policeman working to solve a string of mysterious murders said to be perpetrated by a ghost or demon. What makes The Wailing such an interesting and acclaimed movie is its perfect spin of Korean folklore onto the exorcism genre.
Vera Farmiga, Patrick Wilson, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston, Shanley Caswell, Hayley McFarland
Rating
R
Main Genre
Horror
The horror genre saw a resurgence starting in the 2010s and a big contributor to that was James Wan’s The Conjuring. The movie tells the story of Ed and Lorraine Warren, two paranormal investigators, who come to the aid of the Perron family who have begun experiencing disturbing goings-on in their newly purchased farmhouse.
The mother of the family, Carolyn Perron, is possessed by the spirit of Bathsheba Sherman, a witch who sacrificed her child to the devil himself in 1863 before taking her own life. Carolyn is ultimately freed from her possession by Ed Warren and Bathsheba is cast out. The Conjuring found great success upon its release and has spawned countless sequels and spin-offs, creating a Conjuring Universe.
Anthony Hopkins, Colin O’Donoghue, Alice Braga, Ciarán Hinds, Toby Jones, Rutger Hauer
Rating
PG-13
Genres
Drama, Documentary, Horror, Thriller
There can’t be a list of the best exorcism films without mentioning The Rite. In this interesting story about faith, a supposedly Christian man, Micheal (Colin O’Donaghue) grows skeptical towards religion and especially exorcism rituals. As his faith gets more and more shaken, he is encouraged by those around him to take an exorcism course in Italy and witness things for himself.
It is only until he witnesses the course of Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins) that he begins to witness stronger and stronger evidence that demonic possessions might be true after all. With a girl becoming in dire need of both Trevant and Micheal’s help, Micheal has to decide if he is willing to help in a non-conventional way. Swedish director Mikael Håfström attended exorcisms as part of his research. Although he wasn’t allowed to see them, he was allowed to hear them from behind the door.
Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Djimon Hounsou, Max Baker, Pruitt Taylor Vince
Rating
R
Genres
Fantasy, Documentary, Horror
Constantine is where fantasy meets horror. In this bone-chilling tale, John Constantine is a demon hunter who gets to solve a mysterious case. When a devout catholic woman dies by suicide, her sister refuses to believe that this is the case.
With the help of Constantine, they begin to unravel a darker truth behind her death. Meanwhile, Constantine has a past that burdens him, and this new reality that unfolds in front of his eyes becomes haunting. The captivating film has a gloomy atmosphere, and it has the right touch of visual effects to complement it. Keanu Reeves also plays the perfect modern-day exorcist.
Ellen Burstyn, Max Von Sydow, Linda Blair, Lee J. Cobb
Rating
R
Genres
Horror
Here it is, the Grandfather of all the exorcism films that followed it. It is hard to explain what a stir The Exorcist caused when it was released in 1973. Before it had even screened in a single movie theater, the film was garnering attention both good and bad and even had one of its trailers banned.
The Exorcist is still the gold standard when it comes to exorcism films and is widely considered to still be the scariest horror movie ever made. It inspired a number of sequels and even a modern continuation, though none of them managed to capture the horror of the original.
Nintendo has reiterated that it plans to use its Nintendo Account system to help smooth the transition from Switch to its next, unannounced gaming platform.
According to VGC sources, the company has dispatched Switch 2 development kits to key partners, with a launch planned for the second half of 2024.
Nintendo of America president Doug Bowser refused to comment on these reports during an Inverse interview published on Friday, in which he was also asked how the company might help Switch owners move to its next platform by allowing them to take some of their previously purchased content with them.
“Well, first I can’t comment — or I won’t comment, I should say — on the rumors that are out there,” Bowser said. “But one thing we’ve done with the Switch to help with that communication and transition is the formation of the Nintendo Account.
“In the past, every device we transitioned to had a whole new account system. Creating the Nintendo Account will allow us to communicate with our players if and when we make a transition to a new platform, to help ease that process or transition.
“Our goal is to minimize the dip you typically see in the last year of one cycle and the beginning of another,” he continued. “I can’t speak to the possible features of a new platform, but the Nintendo Account is a strong basis for having that communication as we make the transition.”
3DS and Wii U games bought through Nintendo eShop can’t be transferred to Switch, but many fans are hopeful that the current-gen console’s successor will be backwards compatible with previously purchased games.
Nintendo Accounts were introduced a year before Switch’s March 2017 launch as a means of unifying the user experience between the company’s mobile games, online stores and consoles. Players on mobile can receive rewards for completing challenges in console games and share a friends list.
During a quarterly financial results briefing in August, Nintendo said Switch’s global lifetime sales stood at 129.53 million units by the mid-point of 2023.
Nintendo expects to sell 15 million Switch consoles during the current fiscal year ending in March 2024, which would represent a 16.5% year-over-year decline. It has also said it will continue to support Switch with new games next fiscal year.
I grew up watching genre movies and was a big fan of directors Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg, James Cameron, and Richard Donner. Some of my favorites were Jaws, Back to the Future, The Goonies, Terminator 2, and Blade Runner.
With Camp Hideout, I had the extraordinary opportunity to work with one of my childhood heroes, Christopher Lloyd (Emmett “Doc” Brown from Back to the Future). When making the film, I drew upon my own experiences as an enthusiastic summer camp enthusiast to craft a delightful family comedy that pays homage to the films I cherished while growing up—movies in which children were the driving force behind the storytelling.
Camp Hideout | Official Trailer | In Theaters September 15www.youtube.com
In terms of tone, Camp Hideout aims to evoke nostalgia and provide enjoyment for all ages, all while addressing themes of forgiveness and friendship in an accessible manner.
Before stepping into the director’s chair, I honed my skills as an editor, working on more than 25 features, including standout projects like the Sundance Film How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer featuring America Ferrera, Wyatt Earp’s Revenge with Val Kilmer, and Hallmark’s most-watched premiere, Christmas Under Wraps starring Candace Cameron Bure.
My journey also took me into the realm of unscripted film editing, where I delved into projects related to true crime, candid moments captured on camera, and pure entertainment. This experience significantly sharpened my storytelling abilities.
Being in the editing room has allowed me to be a better director because as an editor you invariably come to the realization of the coverage you wish you had. When I’m directing I’m identifying superfluous shots, pinpointing missing transition shots, and unearthing plot holes that would require attention during post-production.
‘Camp Hideout’Credit: Roadside Flix
In my latest endeavor, the family film Camp Hideout, I put these skills to the test. The project posed unique challenges, including a substantial cast, action-packed sequences, and a demanding shooting schedule.
I can’t emphasize enough how vital it is for filmmakers to craft a shot list. A shot list compels you to visualize the core elements of each scene, contemplate transition shots, and meticulously plan the cinematic ebb and flow.
Camp Hideout represents my third collaboration with cinematographer Isaac Alongi. Our prior projects, the sci-fi family films F.R.E.D.I. and Max Winslow and the House of Secrets, prepared us well for the intricacies of working with young actors.
Given the expansive cast, some scenes featured up to 11 cast members, necessitating careful planning.
At times, it was infeasible to film the entire scene with each cast member individually, so we paired them up whenever possible. So, what’s the solution when you have a cast member in nearly every scene but can only utilize them for part of your day?
Precision planning becomes paramount.
Camp Hideout on set: Christopher Lloyd (Falco), Sean Olson (director), Corbin Bleu (Jake)Credit: Mark Levine
In scenes involving younger actors, we prioritized capturing their performances first and then shifted our focus to the older cast members, occasionally deploying doubles for the kids in those scenes.
During the pre-production phase, we meticulously designed several moving masters to inject dynamism while optimizing time efficiency. We anticipated the need for multiple angles during our stunt sequences. Collaborating closely with our steadicam operator, Larkin McLaughlin, proved instrumental in achieving the desired effects.
Additionally, we frequently employed two, and sometimes three cameras for specific sequences to provide an abundance of options during the editing process.
The invaluable contributions of gaffer Ben Edwards were evident in the incorporation of numerous creative transitions, including those designed to introduce two central characters, Noah and Falco. Portrayed by Ethan Drew, Noah’s initial scene was brimming with action.
When he made his entrance, he sprinted right up to the camera lens, holding the frame just long enough to establish an emotional connection with the audience. On the other hand, for Christopher Lloyd’s character, Falco, I aimed for a more enigmatic introduction, orchestrating a walk into silhouette to evoke an air of mystery.
A common oversight I’ve noticed among filmmakers, drawing from my experience as an editor, is the tendency to cut immediately after the final line. It’s paramount to allow your actors at least 5 seconds after the last line to capture that transitional moment. As an audience, we yearn to feel these moments resonate, and by holding them, we gain valuable insight into the character’s emotions.
Let’s not forget the significance of sound. Anything you capture on set almost always sounds better than automated dialogue replacement (ADR). There’s a certain magic in those original sounds that’s challenging to recreate once filming is complete. Sometimes, simple fixes are available on set.
For instance, when an actor places an object down on a line of dialogue or a door slam during their lines, give the actors adjustments. Actors appreciate these adjustments to avoid the need for re-recording in post-production.
‘Camp Hideout’ cast and crew Credit: Mark Levine
Looking ahead, my next project on the horizon is the creature-featureParalyze, produced through my company, Trash Panda Entertainment, which includes producers Christian Beckman, Andrea Nelson, and my wife Kat Olson.
This venture builds upon the success of our sci-fi robot adventure, F.R.E.D.I., and utilizes our sister company, Quantum Creation FX, to design and bring our creature to life. We’re excited to continue delivering fresh, genre-bending entertainment for both the big and small screens.
Glamour: I need to know: During the pickleball date, did you fall on accident or on purpose? You were fine, and the “injury” was for show, but what exactly happened?
April: Well, as a woman who is wise and likes to win her man, desperate times call for desperate measures. So I had to rely on my senses and fake a fall, and that’s what I did. But the truth is, I got hurt after that. I have no idea how. I got home and my ankle was cracked up. I went to my chiropractor and he has to push it back in. I don’t know what happened. So I did really kind of have a small injury. But it was well worth it because I got to have a moment with him, and obviously it didn’t work. I got kicked off anyhow. But I did my gig. I gave it the old college try.
You sure did. Let’s talk about playing Never Have I Ever with the ladies. Was there anything that was too racy to make it on air?
I think what I said was racy enough. They did stop at the right time for me. No, I’m really a nice girl except when it comes to my heart. My heart is my compass, and if I fall in love with somebody, I want them. I just go dumb. That is true, though. Psychologically, when you fall in love, the front cortex of your brain stops working. And so mine really goes numb and I just want him. Gerry and I didn’t have an intense connection, so if he would’ve been somebody that I loved, it would’ve been like all tackle city. I would’ve ripped off my panties, put on a sundress, and I would’ve run over women. So my family’s happy that didn’t happen.
When you asked if anybody had been with a woman sexually and Susan took a spoonful of ice cream, the next camera shot showed you also eating your ice cream. So was that your way of also…
No, I’ve never been with a woman. But [based on the camera shot and editing] I wondered it, too, and so did my daughter and my son. And I was like, no, no, no. You know all the stuff I do with the bad boys in town, because I love bad boys. But I like to tame them. It doesn’t usually always work. But yeah, I never did. But I was shocked. I think I gawked.
Each Day, at 4pm GMT, the daily ratings post will automatically go live. Afterwards, and as early as 4pm GMT, the early overnight Total Viewers and 18-49 Demo numbers will be added into the table below. Please see the “About the Daily Ratings” section at the end of this article for more details.
Cable numbers will be posted after 9pm-10pm GMT.
Each day (except Sunday) during the main TV Season we post the TV Ratings for the previous nights primetime shows for the major broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, CW, FOX, NBC).
Select Cable Network ratings will be added to the Ratings Database.
When the final adjusted ratings numbers are released, these are then posted in the Ratings Database as well as the above
tables.
The Final Adjusted numbers are what we use for all our Renew/Cancellation Tables, Full Season Tables, Ratings Scorecards etc . Final Adjusted numbers will be posted each night around 9pm-10pm UK apart from the weekend.
Note: During the UK/USA Clock Changes, the above times will change by 1 hour.
Numbers are often delayed by Nielsen.
Ratings Provided by Nielsen.
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Bob George, who served as a producer on the dramas Newness, Zoe and Endings, Beginnings, died Tuesday from injuries suffered in a bicycle accident in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles.
George was hit by a car immediately after the door of a parked car opened into the bike lane, according to writer-actor Ben York Jones.
Born in Peoria, Illinois, George was a production accountant on Armageddon (1998), Pearl Harbor (2001), The Sum of All Fears (2002), three Pirates of the Caribbean films and The Lone Ranger (2013).
“We lost beloved and sweet and virtuous Bob George this week,” wrote York Jones on Instagram. “Bob was a friend and collaborator. He produced NEWNESS and projects that had yet to be realized. His smile was undeniable and his demeanor was reverent. He was quietly kooky and eager to laugh. I loved Bob. He passed suddenly in a bicycle accident on Tuesday. He rode his bike everywhere. He rides on in our hearts, which break for his partner Yasmine, his family, and the loss of our friend.”
His film resume includes acting as a production consultant on Divergent (2014) before producing his first feature, Newness (2017). The film premiered at Sundance and was acquired by Netflix.
There followed Zoe (2018), which debuted at Tribeca, then Endings, Beginnings (2019) which was acquired by Samuel Goldwyn Films.
George and Jones were at work on another Doremus film, Aurora, from CJ Entertainment, at the time of his death. He also served as a production consultant on the upcoming action thriller, Tin Soldier.
Survivors include his spouse, artist Yasmine Nasser Diaz, and his sister, Jennifer.
If you love casinos and you love the movies there are quite a few amazing films that include blackjack, poker, the slots, and the casino life. We’ve put together a list of some of the best blackjack and casino themed movies out there for you to watch. You’ll have probably heard of most of them, but they are all worth revisiting.
Why do Dutch people love blackjack themed movies?
There are so many different types of movie genres to watch and explore that it is no surprise that casinos and blackjack have been hit upon successfully within the world of film over the years. A good casino film gives you the platform for tension and those great scenes where you’re not sure what’s going to happen next. That’s whypeople love a casino theme within a movie.
Characters in these types of films are often gamblers and crooks with a desire to lead a glamorous life and win one big pot of money before walking away. Other casino themes involve heists and all the glamour of the casino floor. With so many chances to provide a dramatic climax to a movie plot, a blackjack or casino movie is often a high adrenaline rush for the viewer and that’s one of the reasons they are so popular with film buffs and gamblers.
Can you learn anything from a casino movie?
You might think that you can watch a blackjack set-piece in a movie and learn some tricks. After all, the movie producers, director, writer, and actors, will all have done their research into the film, casinos and how everything works. They might know some tricks of the trade, right? One thing that the vast majority of casino and blackjack themed movies hits home is that the house almost always wins in the end.
For those of you who like to play it safe and just have some fun with your blackjack and gambling, these movies are a bit of fun and show you the glitz and glamour, the hard luck stories, and the drama of the casino floor. If you love these movies and like to play a game of chance, live online casinos is the place to be. They replicate the ambience and atmosphere of being on a real-life casino floor, with human dealers and interaction with fellow players, all through your laptop or mobile phone screen. If you’ve seen this list of great blackjack movies and want to put on a small wager yourself today, find the best Dutch online casino for your needs today and enjoy a few hands. Always be aware that casino’s are made for entertainment and choose a casino that has the right license for your country. The Dutch casino is only for Dutch players.
Movies with Blackjack themes
There are some absolute belters out there for you to watch, stone cold classics of the movie world. Let’s take a look at some of the best.
The Last Casino (2004)
Directed by Pierre Gill, The Last Casino is the story of a Maths professor who devises a special strategy of card counting when playing blackjack at the casino. He gets banned from the floor but figures out how to earn money without actually entering the casino through the use of a small team of students who he teaches at the university. He helps them become experts in blackjack. A great card counting movie for blackjack lovers.
The Card Counter (2021)
Oscar Isaac plays an army veteran who has become a professional gambler known throughout the US for his prowess. This gut-wrenching, serious drama from Paul Schrader, plays all the cards of drama, revenge, remorse, and fragile masculinity, all within the world of the casino. All William ‘Tell’ Tillich wants to do is play cards, and he’s one of the best card counters around, knowing to win modestly and not to draw too much attention to himself. When a young man comes into his life looking for help in murdering a mutual acquaintance, William offers to take the young man on the road and teach him his skills in the casino, but will this be enough to stop the kid from killing.
Croupier (1999)
This Mike Hodges directed classic of the genre stars Clive Owen (this was his breakout film), who becomes drawn to the casino world, the glamour, the risk, the money, and the fraud. He is a writer who is desperate to make money and becomes a croupier. The entire film is dramatic, impressive, and spectacular, with the daily life of the croupier filled with drama, chaos, and danger, all within the world of the fast-paced casino floor.
Rain Man (1988)
One of the most famous card counting films of all time, Rain Man follows the life of autistic Raymond Babbitt played spectacularly by Dustin Hoffmann. His brother, played by Tom Cruise, uses Babbitt to beat the casino, with his split-second calculations and memory skills for both short and long sequences making him a great talent at beating the system and winning wads of cash.
Casino Royale (2006)
The Daniel Craig era of James Bond started off with a bang, with the cool and seductive Casino Royale, directed by Martin Campbell in 2006. Although the blackjack theme in particular might be missing from the film adaptation, there is still some rather tense scenes around thehigh-roller poker table in Casino Royale, which makes for engaging dialogue, cool and calm intrigue, and some dramatic moments for the new Bond to get to grips with the bad guys. A must-watch for Bond fans and also those who like the snippets of casino life.
The Knights built a 2-0 lead in the game but Erie ignited things with two quick goals near the end of the second period and eventually pushed ahead in the third and held from there to win their third game in their last four tries.
Sam O’Reilly’s fourth goal of the year opened the scoring at 14:30 of the first period as Philadelphia Flyers prospects Denver Barkey and Oliver Bonk combined to get the puck to O’Reilly who deked his way to the Erie net and got it past veteran Ben Gaudreau.
The game stayed that way until Isaiah George netted his second goal in his past five games during a four-on-four situation. George took a drop pass from Bonk and wired a shot under the glove of Gaudreau at 15:55 of the second period.
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Less than two minutes later, Anaheim Ducks draft pick Carey Terrance scored on a power play to cut the Knights lead to 2-1 and then just 36 seconds after that a Spencer Sova shot found its way into the London net and the teams went into the final 20 minutes tied 2-2.
The teams traded early third period goals over a 59-second span. First, Bonk earned his third assist with a pass that found Sam O’Reilly on the right side of the ice and O’Reilly found Jacob Julien going hard to the Erie goal. Julien flipped a shot high over the blocker of Gaudreau and London led 3-2.
Pano Fimis of the Otters knotted things up again with a wrist shot from the blue line that got through everyone.
Martin Misiak gave the Otters their first lead of the game with 6:40 to play as he batted a centring pass past Michael Simpson for his third goal of the year.
London pressed for a tie with their net empty and Terrance was able to score his second of the night into that empty net to close the scoring.
The Knights outshot the Otters 28-26.
London’s power play was o-for-4 in the game.
Erie went 1-for-2 on the man advantage.
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The loss kept Knights head coach Dale Hunter tied for second on the OHL’s all-time coaching list as the London heads on the road on Oct 22 to face the Saginaw Spirit.
Easton Cowan’s four points against the Brantford Bulldogs on Oct. 18 set a new career-high for the 18-year old from Mt. Brydges. Cowan picked up two goals, one short-handed, in the first half of the game and then set up Kasper Halttunen for a pair over the second half.
The Knights record for most points in a game is eight. it is held by Dennis Maruk, Wayne Thompson, Dave Simpson, Corey Perry and Rob Schremp. Ruslan Gazizov had seven points in a game last season on Feb. 6, 2023.
Up next
The Knights will head for the home of the 2024 Memorial Cup tournament on Sunday, Oct. 22 for a game against the Saginaw Spirit at 5:30 p.m.
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Saginaw has started the year 3-3 heading into the weekend but own a scary power play that has accounted for nine of their 22 goals heading into Friday night.
Coverage will start at 5 p.m., on 980 CFPL, at www.980cfpl.ca and on the Radioplayer Canada app.
Just days before Spears’ memoir, The Woman in Me, hits shelves on Tuesday, October 24, resurfaced footage — seemingly from comedian Dave Chappelle’sAugust 24 birthday celebration — showed Timberlake, 42, singing his hit “Cry Me a River,” a song allegedly about his relationship and subsequent split from Spears, 41.
Before launching into the 2002 single, he revealed that people have warned him to ditch the track from his live performance. “They said not to do this [song] no more,” he told the crowd in the clip, which is circulating via X (formerly known as Twitter). “F—k that!”
Timberlake and Spears — who met on the set of the All New Mickey Mouse Club in the early ‘90s — made their public debut as a couple in 1999. They called it quits in 2002 after three years of dating amid reports of infidelity. “Cry Me a River” also seemed to suggest a cheating scandal, with Timberlake hiring a Spears lookalike to costar in the music video.
Justin Timberlake has weathered many storms throughout his career in the spotlight. After getting his start on Star Search and The All New Mickey Mouse Club, Timberlake formed ‘NSync alongside MMC costar JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick. During the group’s heyday, lead singer Timberlake sparked a romance with Britney Spears. Spears […]
After its premiere in 2002, Spears told Rolling Stone that Timberlake warned her he was releasing a “controversial” video.
“He got what he wanted. I think it looks like such a desperate attempt, personally,” she told the outlet at the time. “But that was a great way to sell the record. He’s smart.”
Prior to her book’s October 24 release, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that Spears admits to making out with choreographer Wade Robson while dating Timberlake in The Woman in Me. She writes that the pair “agreed to move past” the infidelity given the years that she was “loyal to Justin” and “only had eyes for him.”
However, Spears also says that Timberlake cheated on her “a couple of times” throughout their relationship. In one instance, Spears alleges that the Grammy winner was photographed with “one of the girls from All Saints” while out in London in 2000. At a later date, she says he allegedly bragged to one of Spears’ dancers about a girl he hooked up with the night before in Las Vegas.
Barry King/WireImage
Over the years, Timberlake has raised eyebrows on multiple occasions for his commentary on Spears. During a 2003 appearance on 20/20, Barbara Walters asked Timberlake whether Spears had “kept her promise to wait [to have sex] until marriage.” In response, Timberlake infamously burst out laughing. In a 2006 profile with journalist Robert Haskell, Timberlake claimed that if “I was writing an article about [Britney], I would not be able to fight the urge to write every dirty thing about her.” (Screenshots of the article were shared via X by a Spears fan account on Thursday, October 19.)
Timberlake later apologized for the remarks, saying he wanted to “take accountability” for his hurtful words in a lengthy May 2021 Instagram statement. “I know I failed,” he said at the time. “I also feel compelled to respond, in part, because everyone involved deserves better and most importantly, because this is a larger conversation that I wholeheartedly want to be a part of and grow from.”
Meanwhile, as the release date for The Woman in Me looms closer, a second insider told Us earlier this month that Timberlake is trying to steer clear of the drama.
Alexa, play “Cry Me a River” by Justin Timberlake — and then, cue up “Everytime” by Britney Spears. Timberlake and Spears called it quits two decades ago, but fans are still invested in their rocky romance. The former boy bander and pop princess met in the early ’90s while filming The Mickey Mouse Club. In […]
“Justin will always be supportive of Britney and all of her endeavors, but he’s trying to distance himself from her upcoming book,” the source explained. “It’s not something he’s focusing too much on in terms of anything she might discuss when it comes to their former relationship.”
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Spears, meanwhile, took to Instagram on Friday, October 20, to clarify that her memoir isn’t meant to “offend anyone.” “That was me then … that is in the past!!!” she wrote.
Following his split from Spears, Timberlake went on to wed Jessica Biel in 2012. The couple share sons Silas, 8, and Phineas, 3. Spears, for her part, shares sons Sean, 18, and Jayden, 17, with ex-husband Kevin Federine. She recently separated from Sam Asghari, who filed for divorce in August after 14 months of marriage.
Mr. Galanis, a 2010 Duke University graduate, recruited a fellow alumnus and software engineer, Devon Townsend, to build it. In the spring of 2017, the website BookCameo.com launched with a tweet from Mr. Marsh, promising videos for around $20; Tori Spelling and niche Vine personalities like Evan Breen joined later that year. (Mr. Blencowe, 37, and Mr. Townsend, 33, who are also co-founders, still work at the company.)
For Mr. Galanis, Cameo, based in his hometown, Chicago, felt like the company the trio was destined to build. He and Mr. Blencowe were fresh from a short-lived production career. (Mr. Galanis still highlights their IMDb credits, which include a TV show called “SAF3,” pronounced “safe,” about an elite rescue task force.) Mr. Townsend had been a star on Vine, the short-lived, short-form video app.
“We lived in this world,” Mr. Galanis said. “We didn’t build this business by accident.”
This article is based on interviews with Mr. Galanis and more than 30 current and former Cameo employees, investors and advisers as well as internal documents, screenshots and photographs.
Mr. Galanis sports a dark close-cropped beard and often wears either polos or Cameo-branded shirts and baseball caps. He’s a self-assured pitchman who views himself as an ultra-connector, peppering conversation with references to business leaders he admires like Elon Musk.
He pointed to a 13-year-old college newspaper profile of the events company he ran at Duke, with the headline “The Mayor of Main Street.” He said it offered “pretty important” context for why he was able to build Cameo. The article, which is topped with a photo of Mr. Galanis flashing a thumbs-up while drinking a Busch Light, describes how he made a name for himself by befriending local venues and organizing huge parties, like a beer-pong event that was viewed as innovative for taking place on a weeknight at Shooters, a spot that was normally a sweaty dance club with a cage. (He also took credit for an “April Showers” party, featuring coeds in wet T-shirts.)
The first trailer for director George Clooney’s Christmas Day release, The Boys in the Boat, dropped today.
The Boys in the Boat is based on Daniel James Brown’s #1 New York Times non-fiction bestseller about the 1936 University of Washington rowing team who competed for gold at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. This inspirational true story follows a group of underdogs at the height of the Great Depression as they are thrust into the spotlight and take on elite rivals from around the world.
Cast includes Joel Edgerton, Chris Diamantopoulos, Callum Turner, Jack Mulhern, Sam Strike, Luke Slattery, Thomas Elms, Tom Varey, Bruce Herbelin-Earle, Wil Coban, James Wolk, Hadley Robinson, and Courtney Henggeler. Mark L. Smith adapted Brown’s book for the screen. Clooney also produces with Grant Heslov and Donna Gigliotti. MGM produces with Clooney’s Smoke House Pictures and Spyglass Media Group.
Sylvester Stallone is giving fans a look behind the curtain with his upcoming documentary Sly.
From Rocky to Rambo to The Expendables, Stallone has been entertaining viewers with iconic characters in blockbuster franchises for nearly half a century. Now, the actor is sharing a more intimate look into his own personal and professional life.
Helmed by documentarian Thom Zimny, Sly gives a raw look into Stallone’s journey to stardom. The documentary will combine footage of his pursuit of filmmaking, scenes from his films, photographs from his childhood and candid conversations that have taken place within his Los Angeles-based family home.
“We spent a couple [of] years together and I just let my guard down,” Stallone told Entertainment Tonightin September 2023. “I was speaking, quite frankly, like if you only have a limited amount of time on Earth, and you wanted to say things, and you didn’t really guard yourself, and just let it go.”
Stallone noted that while he’s seen “a lot” of documentaries in his life, most of them only touch on a person’s body of work — not about “why you are the way you are” and who “molded you.”
Keep scrolling for everything you need to know about Stallone’s Sly documentary:
United Artists/Courtesy of Getty Images
What Is ‘Sly’ About?
According to the film’s official synopsis, Sly is a retrospective documentary that “offers an intimate look at the Oscar-nominated actor-writer-director-producer” that parallels his “inspirational underdog story with the indelible characters he has brought to life.”
A legendary leading man! Sylvester Stallone is known for being the face of several successful franchises, from Rocky to Rambo. The New York native nearly gave up on acting before landing his major breakthrough in 1974’s The Lords of Flatbush. The first Rocky film hit theaters two years later — and Stallone’s career changed forever. […]
Is There a Trailer?
Netflix released a first look at the film in June, which gives viewers a glimpse into Stallone’s pursuit of filmmaking throughout his career. A second trailer (which you can watch above) was released in October, promising an intimate look at Stallone’s life behind the camera and the trials and tribulations faced as he climbed the Hollywood ladder.
Tiger Shroff and Kriti Sanon’s Ganapath is directed by Vikas Bahl.
Ganapath Box Office Day 1: The Tiger Shroff, Kriti Sanon and Amitabh Bachchan starrer has opened to low numbers at the box office.
Tiger Shroff and Kriti Sanon’s much-awaited movie Ganapath is finally in theatres. Directed by Vikas Bahl, the film is getting a positive response from the audience as of now. After watching the first show on Friday, several social media users took to the microblogging site X to appreciate the movie. While some called Ganapath ‘futuristic’, others laud the film for its top-notch action sequences.
“#Ganapath thrusts #Bollywood into a futuristic world with vigor. #TigerShroff does what he does best while #KritiSanon again shows how a heroine can shine in a male-centric plot. Director #VikasBahl’s narrative faces a few, minor bumps along the way, but the end result is an unprecedented spectacle for #Indian #cinema,” one of the users wrote.
As per early estimated quoted by market tracker Sacnilk, the film made 2.50 Cr India net on its first day with an overall 9.72% Hindi Occupancy on Friday, October 20, 2023. The film, that clashed with Divya Khosla Kumar, Meezaan Jafri and Pearl V Puri starrer Yaariyan 2, was a little ahead of it in the race. Yaariyan 2 performed rather low on its first day at the box office and earned only 0.60 Cr India net on its first day with an overall 5.65% Hindi Occupancy on Friday, October 20.
Ganapath, which also features Amitabh Bachchan, is being produced by Vashu Bhagnani, Jackky Bhagnani, Deepshikha Deshmukh and Vikas Bahl. The film is now in theatres in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada languages.
News18’s review of Ganapath read, “Ganapath is a mashup that is constructed from a mountain of absurdities that keeps growing with each passing minute so much so that even Tiger and Kriti cannot salvage the situation.”
Shreyanka Mazumdar is Chief Sub Editor of the entertainment team at News18. With an unbridled passion for all things Bollywood, music and fashion, she…Read More
Gomez’s America Chavez, who made her MCU debut in 2022’s Doctor Strange 2, is just one of a string of super-powered adolescents to pop up in the franchise post-Avengers: Endgame.
Doctor Strange 2 star Xochitl Gomez posted a new video on TikTok with fellow MCU actress Kathryn Newton, seemingly baiting Kevin Feige to make a Young Avengers project.
TikTok
The short video sees the two actresses answering, “Oh my gosh, I love this question. I think…” to “When people ask us when they’re gonna see us in a project together.”
TikTok
Seeing as Gomez and Newton are two of the newest additions to the MCU, this is likely referencing a potential Young Avengers Marvel Studios title.
At this point, it is starting to feel like an MCU Young Avengers project is an inevitability.
While Xochitl Gomez has been one of the more vocal advocates for the superstar team-up, she is not the only MCU actor making the case for something to happen.
Stranger Things 4 Volume 2 left us with quite a cliffhanger, so it makes sense that people are ready beyond ready for more. This long-running saga of a superpowered girl, her nerdy friends, and a small town with a dark dimension beneath is wrapping up its story for good, making people extra excited. Stranger Things 5 will be the last season, a plan that the Duffer Brothers have had since the beginning. So naturally, they have been dropping information here and there for a while. Here’s what we know so far about Stranger Things 5.
Netflix
Stranger Things 5 Releases Pre-Vis First-Looks at Episode One
Who would have thought we’d have our first-look at Stranger Things 5 so early. At least, a technical first-look. In support of the SAG-AFTRA strike, the Stranger Things 5 writers, who were recently allowed to return to work, posted a very interesting-looking Steve Harrington.
FYI this is pre-vis for a scene in ep 1. So technically your first look at season 5. We told Joe he has to perform it EXACTLY like this.
They followed up the slightly freaky image by noting, “FYI, this is pre-vis for a scene in ep 1. So technically your first look at season 5. We told Joe he has to perform it EXACTLY like this.” This Stranger Things 5 “first look” doesn’t actually reveal anything… But we are glad to see Steve, regardless.
The writers also shared a continuation of the moment and revealed that Jonathan is also present in it. It looks like they might be working on a car or something of the sort together. We honestly wouldn’t mind seeing a little bit more of their tenuous friendship.
Lastly, Stranger Things‘ writers have revealed pre-viz for a scene in Stranger Things 5 that features Nancy, Jonathan, and Dustin. They’re screaming a lot in a car… and also appear to possibly be heading into the Upside Down by way of Stranger Things 2 location McCorkle’s farm. Very interesting.
Stranger Things 5 Will Be a Return to Season One and More
The Duffer Brothers teased the tone we can expect from Stranger Things 5. They shared:
Five, the way we see it, is kind of a culmination of all the seasons, so it’s sort of got a little bit from each… Whereas before, each season was so [distinct]… [Season] 3 is our big summer blockbuster season with big monsters, and [Season] 4 was the psychological horror. Five, the way we see it, is kind of a culmination of all the seasons, so it’s sort of got a little bit from each. I think that what we’re trying to do is go back to the beginning a little bit, in sort of the tone of 1.
While having an Eleven-centric final season is a no-brainer, The Duffer Brothers affirm via a Variety interview that Will Byers is going to once again become a big focus in Stranger Things‘ final season. There’s no outright onscreen confirmation that Will is indeed gay (we do get lots of heavy hinting); however, actor Noah Schnapp did reveal his truth via TikTok as well as previously stating that his character is gay. In an interview with Variety, Schnapp affirms his own journey would inform how he portrays Will in the final season.
“I think the way I act in season five, honestly, might be a little different,” Schnapp says. “I will be fully aware of who I am. Knowing all of that about myself and being able to invest that in my character, I’m honestly just excited.”
Ross Duffer further adds, “Will really takes center stage again in [season five]. This emotional arc for him is what we feel is going to hopefully tie the whole series together. Will is used to being the young one, the introverted one, the one that’s being protected. So part of his journey, it’s not just sexuality—it’s Will coming into his own as a young man.”
In terms of scale, the episodes are still as epic as Stranger Things 4‘s were. In fact, Stranger Things’ writers had quite a visceral way of describing the upcoming season. Take a look.
Season 5 is like if season 1 and 4 had a baby. And then that baby was injected with steroids.
Additionally, the script for Stranger Things 5 made Netflix executives cry, according to the creators… And David Harbour refers to it as “very, very moving.” So strap in folks.
Will There Be a Time Jump Between Stranger Things 4 and Stranger Things 5?
If you’re wondering whether we’ll see a major time jump between Stranger Things 4 and Stranger Things 5, it sounds like the answer is no, but the door does remain open.
Netflix
In an interview recorded before the SAG-AFTRA strike began, David Harbour chatted to the Happy Sad Confused podcast about when Stranger Things 5 will pick up the story. He offered, “…when you watch us on that hill looking at the ash and the smoke and fires—we’re going to start somewhere after that. So you’ve got to imagine the world is a different place.” Of course, somewhere after that could mean more than a little time, but it does feel like the ash is still hanging in the air when the cameras begin to roll.
The Title of Stranger Things5‘s First Episode
To celebrate Stranger Things Day, Netflix gave us a tease of what we might expect in the final season of the show. Well, a tiny tease, anyway. Netflix released the title of Stranger Thing 5‘s first episode. The episode’s title? “Chapter One: The Crawl.”
Netflix
Hrm… The doesn’t really clear much up. But for our money, that better mean Eddie Munson’s crawl back to life from his death in the Upside Down. Listen, it could happen. We guess we’ll just have to hang on for now. But we feel sure thousands of theories about this Stranger Things 5 title are already brewing.
Stranger Things 5 Will Be Shorter Than Stranger Things 4
Stranger Things 5 will be shorter than this very, very long season. According to an interview on Josh Horowitz’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, the reason for this is pretty simple. “The only reason we don’t expect [Season 5] to be as long is because, this season, if you look at it, it’s almost a two-hour ramp-up before our kids really get drawn into the supernatural mystery,” Matt Duffer said. “You get to know them, you get to see them in their lives, all while they’re struggling with adapting to high school and so forth … Steve’s trying to find a date. All of that.”
For now, it looks like the Duffer brothers and other Stranger Things writers are teasing us with an eight-episode Stranger Things 5.
Based on the end of Stranger Things 4, this all makes sense. There’s plenty going on with them immediately in Stranger Things 5, to be honest. And this doesn’t mean we’ll get a shorter finale. The runtime for the very last episode will be movie length and have a Return of the King type of deal with eight endings. Goodness.
Netflix
Stranger Things 5 Will Only Be Set in Hawkins
Stranger Things 4 felt like that song about the dude who’s been everywhere, man. There were so many locations in several states (and even Russia). But the final season will stick to the place where we began this adventure: Hawkins, Indiana. According to Matt Duffer, returning to home base is what it’s all about. “We wanna go back to a lot of the things we did in season one,” Duffer told Entertainment Weekly. “A lot of the original groupings and pairings that we had in season one–there’s something nice about coming full circle.”
This is interesting considering the new faces we’ve added on like Robin and Erica. Where will they fit into these groups in Stranger Things 5? We know the first season was heavy on Mike, Dustin, and Lucas being together while Will was missing. Uh, oh. Does this mean Will will separate from his buddies again?
One thing we got confirmed: the Duffer Brothers know how Stranger Things will end. And we can only speculate what they have up their sleeves.
The Work Is Currently on Hold for Stranger Things 5
In a Colliderinterview, Ross Duffer confirmed that the writers’ room will be back to work in August 2022. However, things came to a grinding halt in May 2023 with the writers’ strike. The Stranger Things writers room made a post on Twitter affirming that production would stop until a fair deal was reached.
Duffers here. Writing does not stop when filming begins. While we’re excited to start production with our amazing cast and crew, it is not possible during this strike. We hope a fair deal is reached soon so we can all get back to work. Until then — over and out. #wgastrong
This likely means we won’t get Stranger Things 5 until 2025. And that’s okay. The most important issue is to make sure that actors and writers are being treated fairly.
The Stranger Things Spinoff Will Connect to the Series
Netflix
That elusive Stranger Things spinoff that only the Duffer Brothers and apparently Finn Wolfhard know about will have “connective tissue” with the series. They will be involved in putting it together but they also want to put the reins in someone else’s hands so they can take a step back. In the aforementioned podcast interview, they admit to wanting to stay involved. But they also say they are looking for “that right person to pass the baton to” so they can do new things. Makes sense considering they have been in Stranger Things land for several years.
Max Is in a Really, Really Bad Situation
The Duffers also confirm some really sad news about Max and her fate on Stranger Things. Apparently, she is alive but “brain dead, blind, and all her bones are broken.” So, at least for now, Max is certainly not the same person she was before. It’s not clear how this will play into Stranger Things season five but hopefully, she won’t end up being some vessel for Vecna or anything. We can’t bear to see anything else happen to Max. Save her, please!
Poncle, the team behind Vampire Survivors, has announced Whiteout, a free update available now for PC, Xbox, and Mobile. It’ll be coming soon to Nintendo Switch. Not only does Whiteout bring the spirit of Christmas to the game, but it also has a variety of new content, some of which include a new bonus stage, achievements, and more.
To unlock Whiteout, players must collect 20 Orologions. Once they’ve unlocked it, they’ll be able to find the Antidote relic and the Glass Fandango weapon, and if they pick up and max out Wings, it’ll evolve the Glass Fandango. The goal of Whiteout will be to survive for 20 minutes, and if players make it to the post-game, they can find the Chaos Altermanna in the Tiny Bridge.
Whiteout also features She-Moon Eeta, a new playable character that has a “CriticalHP skill” that triggers when her health drops below 25%, and a new music track. In addition to all the new content, there’s also a new series of cheats players can use to help give them the upper hand. Below are all the cheats, alongside information on what they do:
duraistruth : Unlocks Antidote relic
chapatribe : Unlocks Chaos Altemanna relic
cygnusmagnus: Unlocks She-Moon and Glass Fandango
buriedinthesnow : Unlocks Whiteout stage
In a Steam Blog post, the dev team teased what players can expect with future updates. According to the post, Adventures is the next big thing in store for the game, and will “add a bit of new flavor through new stage progression and descriptions.” This will let players start new chapters without fear of losing anything they earned in the main game, and it’ll have several new features. The team is also working on a new cross-save feature that will be available for beta channels.
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors.
GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
Heineman, whose latest film, American Symphony, premiered to acclaim at the Telluride Film Festival, will receive the prestigious Pennebaker Career Achievement Award, named for the legendary filmmaker and pioneer of “direct cinema” D.A. Pennebaker. Heineman is expected to be on hand to receive the honor, which has previously gone to Richard Leacock, Susan Lacy, Barbara Kopple, Stanley Nelson Jr., Alex Gibney, Liz Garbus, Sheila Nevins, Frederick Wiseman, Dawn Porter, Sam Pollard, and to Pennebaker and and his wife and filmmaking partner Chris Hegedus.
Jon Batiste in ‘American Symphony’
Netflix/Higher Ground
Hamptons Doc Fest will screen American Symphony, which has been acquired by the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground through the former first couple’s deal with Netflix. The documentary about Grammy-winning musician Jon Batiste and his wife, the musician Suleika Jaouad, and her struggle with cancer, earned six Critics’ Choice Documentary Award nominations earlier this week.
Hamptons Doc Fest will feature a special tribute to beloved and respected filmmaker Nancy Buirski, who died unexpectedly in August. Buirski, whose latest documentary Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy is in awards contention this year, will posthumously receive Doc Fest’s first Legacy Award. Buirski’s sister, Judith Cohen, will accept the award, and the presentation will be followed by screening of Buirski’s first feature documentary, The Loving Story. That film, about the couple at the heart of a U.S. Supreme Court case that ended anti-miscegenation laws, was later adapted into the fiction film Loving, starring Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton.
Dancer Loïe Fuller, (1862-1928), in 1902.
Everett Collection
The festival, in partnership with NYWIFT, will also honor the work of Artemis Rising Foundation by presenting its Impact Award to the foundation’s founder and CEO Regina K. Scully, accompanied by a screening of Obsessed with Light, directed by Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum, a documentary about Loïe Fuller, a pioneer of modern dance in America in the late 1900s.
Hamptons Doc Fest also announced its lineup for the 16th edition of the festival, which unspools from Nov. 30-Dec. 6 in the Eastern Long Island town of Sag Harbor. In the Company of Rose, a film about poet Rose Styron, the widow of writer William Styron, will kick off the festival. Frank Marshall’s documentary Rather, about news man Dan Rather, closes the festival. The slate of 30 films continues Doc Fest’s tradition of “highlighting the best of non-fiction programming” along with its annual program for local schools, Young Voices… “dedicated to local community youth in middle and high schools, which will include a film and a hands-on workshop led by award winning filmmaker, Roger Sherman.”
Jacqui Lofaro, executive director of Hamptons Doc Fest, said in a statement, “During this time of disconnection, film and festivals like ours can play a powerful role in re-stitching our communities. Our 2023 documentary program promises you the power and experience of quality storytelling. Good stories surprise us. They make us think and feel. They stick in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts. This is what the Hamptons Doc Fest is all about and even more so in its 16th year.”
The lineup for the 2023 Hamptons Doc Fest:
American SymphonyPennebaker Career Achievement Award to Matthew Heineman
Saturday, 12/2, 6:30pm, 100 min @ Bay Street Theater
Matthew Heineman will be in attendance for the award ceremony
DIRECTOR: Matthew Heineman
PRODUCERS: Lauren Domino, Joedan Okun
EDITORS: Sammy Dane, Matthew Heineman, JIm Hession, Fernando Villegas
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Tony Hardmon, Matthew Heineman, Clair Popkin, Thorsten Thielow
American Symphony follows Jon Batiste as he prepares his original musical composition for its premiere at Carnegie Hall while at the same time, supporting his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, whose rare form of leukemia has returned after 10 years in remission. In September 2023, the film was acquired by Netflix and the Obamas’ production company Higher Ground. Variety’s
Screening of the film follows the Gala reception and Award ceremony.
In the Company of Rose Opening Night Film
Thursday, 11/30, 8:00pm, 85 min @ Sag Harbor Cinema
Director James Lapine in attendance for Q&A, Rose Styron by Zoom
DIRECTOR: James Lapine
PRODUCERS: James Lapine, Jack Shear, Grace Sin, Miky Wolf
EDITOR: Miky Wolf
CINEMATOGRAPHER: James Lapine
On Martha’s Vineyard, Tony-winning playwright and director James Lapine meets Rose Styron, the widow of the great American novelist William Styron. Over six years of periodic meetings, 95-year old Rose shares the fascinating story of her complex life as a poet, journalist, human rights activist, and life partner to William.
Cocktail reception to follow. The film is sponsored by EPIC.
Rather Closing Night Film
Wednesday, 12/6, 7:00pm, 95 min @ Bay Street Theater
Martin Rather, Dan Rather’s grandson and participant in the film, via Zoom for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Frank Marshall
PRODUCERS: Frank Marshall, Jenifer Westphal, Joe Plummer, Jeff Hasler, Ethan Goldman, Aly Parker
EDITORS: Curtis McConnell, Joe Fenstermaker
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Michael Koshkin
Dan Rather’s 60+ year career coincides with some of the seminal moments in American journalism. From his days embedded in the Vietnam War, to his on-the-ground coverage of JFK’s assassination, to his presence at the foot of the Berlin Wall as it fell, Dan Rather has reported on an astonishing number of iconic moments in history. Now, as a 92-year-old reflecting on seven decades of service and looking to the future of democracy, we meet a man freed from the auspices of any overarching network or deadline and with a dedication to the truth.
The film is sponsored by Douglas Denoff/Sutton Square Entertainment.
Call Me Dancer Recipient of the 2023 Art & Inspiration Award
Thursday, 11/30, 5:30pm, 84 min @ Sag Harbor Cinema
Director Leslie Shampaine in attendance for a Q&A
DIRECTORS: Pip Gilmour, Leslie Shampaine
PRODUCERS: Cynthia Kane, Leslie Shampaine
EDITOR: Jennifer Beman
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Neil Barrett, Abhijit Datta
Manish, a young and talented street dancer from Mumbai, struggles against his parents’ insistence that he follow a traditional path that will enable their only son to support them. When he secretly attends an inner-city dance school and accidentally walks into a ballet class, he meets Yehuda, a curmudgeonly 70-year-old Israeli teacher, and a hunger develops within him. Ambitious and passionate, Manish is determined to make it as a professional dancer, but the odds are stacked against him.
The Gullspång Miracle
Friday, 12/1, 12:00pm, 108 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Maria Fredriksson via Zoom for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Maria Fredriksson
PRODUCER: Ina Holmqvist
EDITORS: Orvar Anklew, Mark Bukdahl
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Pia Lehto
When May is injured in a freak accident on a rollercoaster ride, she and her sister Kari decide to buy a home in the small Swedish town of Gullspång. But when the siblings encounter the property’s seller, Olaug, they become convinced that she is their older sibling, Lita, who allegedly committed suicide some 30 years earlier. It is at this point that documentary filmmaker Maria Fredriksson, at the behest of the sisters, begins to investigate this strange history, resulting in a true-crime family drama that journeys down a series of surprising paths.
The Rainbow Warrior
Friday, 12/1, 2:30pm, 94 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Edward McGurn in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Edward McGurn
PRODUCERS: Edward McGurn, Sophie Daniel, Chris Dallas-Feeney, Katie Buchanan, Eva Gunz
EDITOR: Chris Dallas-Feeney
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Andrew McGeorge, Neil Harvey, Ian Kerr, Matthew Pothier
On July 10th, 1985 two French secret agents bombed Greenpeace’s flagship The Rainbow Warrior while it was at port in Auckland, New Zealand. The operation, code-named “Satanic,” has been called one of the greatest intelligence failures in history. The Rainbow Warrior put Greenpeace on the map, caused international outrage and ended nuclear testing in the Pacific.
Orca – Black & White Gold
Friday, 12/1, 5:00pm, 92 min @ Sag Harbor Cinema
Director Sarah Nörenberg in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Sarah Nörenberg
PRODUCERS: Walter Köhler, Sarah Nörenberg, Michael Frenschkowski
EDITORS: Max Kliewer, Verena Schönauer
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Sergei Amirdzhanov
This is a riveting docu-thriller exposing the illegal trade in endangered wild orcas fueled by American business practices. Ten years after the award-winning Blackfish opened our eyes to the cruel and inhumane treatment of whales in captivity, this film offers unprecedented access to activists, trainers, journalists and the catchers themselves and reveals the shocking truth behind the global orca trade.
Obsessed with Light Recipient of the 2023 Impact Award, Regina K. Scully, Artemis Rising Foundation
Co-Presented with NYWIFT (New York Women in Film & Television)
Friday, 12/1, 7:30pm, 90 min @ Sag Harbor Cinema
Directors Sabine Krayenbühl and Zeva Oelbaum in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTORS: Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum
PRODUCERS: Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum
EDITOR: Sabine Krayenbühl
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Bob Richman, Claudia Raschke
The Artemis Rising Foundation is dedicated to supporting media projects that transform culture and challenge the status quo. Led by Founder and CEO, Regina K. Scully, the foundation champions powerful stories about some of the most challenging social justice issues of our time — including gender-bias, healing, trauma, mental health, addiction and women’s empowerment.
Obsessed with Light pulls back the curtain on Loïe Fuller, a wildly original dancer and inventor who pioneered the creative use of electric lighting for the stage. The documentary, produced with major support by Regina K Scully and Artemis Rising Foundation, delves into the astonishing influence Fuller’s work has on contemporary culture including artists like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Taylor Swift, and Shakira. Anyone who has been to a rock concert has seen a modern version of the lighting designs that Fuller patented over a century ago.
Cocktail reception to follow.
A Cooler Climate
Saturday, 12/2, 1:00pm, 75 min @ Sag Harbor Cinema
Director James Ivory in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTORS: James Ivory, Giles Gardner
PRODUCER: Bertrand Faivre
EDITOR: Giles Gardner
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Giles Gardner
In 1960, Oscar-winning filmmaker James Ivory made a trip to Afghanistan to shoot scenes for a documentary. The film was never completed and the footage stayed in a box unseen for 60 years. In 2022, aged 94, he decided to revisit this unique material as a means to look back at his younger self and to unravel how this unlikely journey far from his hometown in Oregon helped form the celebrated filmmaker he was to become.
James Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. For many years, he worked extensively with Indian-born film producer Ismail Merchant, his domestic as well as professional partner, and with screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. All three were principals in Merchant Ivory Productions, whose films have won seven Academy Awards. Ivory himself has been nominated for four Oscars, winning one in 2018 for Best Adapted Screenplay for Call Me By Your Name at the age of 89, making him the oldest recipient of an Oscar.
Invisible Beauty
Saturday, 12/2, 3:00pm, 115 min @ Sag Harbor Cinema
Director Bethann Hardison and Producer Lisa Cortés in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTORS: Bethann Hardison, Frédéric Tcheng
PRODUCER: Lisa Cortés
EDITORS: Chris McNabb, Frédéric Tcheng
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Mia Cioffi Henry, Frédéric Tcheng
Fashion revolutionary and model turned agent and activist Bethann Hardison knew that Black is Beautiful well before the fashion industry acknowledged the truth. From walking runway shows alongside Iman to discovering supermodels like Tyson Beckford and mentoring icons like Naomi Campbell, Hardison has been at the epicenter of major representational shifts in fashion.
The film is sponsored by Sarah Cuyler.
The Loving Story Posthumous Legacy Award to Nancy Buirski
Sunday, 12/3, 2:00pm, 77 min @ Bay Street Theater
Susan Margolin and Chris Hegedus in attendance to present the award to Judith Cohen
Hamptons Doc Fest is proud to honor Nancy Buirski with our first Legacy Award, accepted by her sister, Judith Cohen. In Nancy’s honor, the festival will screen the Emmy and Peabody award-winning documentary The Loving Story, her first feature as writer, director and producer, as well as the short film Daughter of Mine, where she acted as Executive Producer and mentor to the filmmaker.
DIRECTOR: Nancy Buirski
PRODUCERS: Nancy Buirski, Elisabeth Haviland James
EDITOR; Elisabeth Haviland James
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Rex Miller, Steve Milligan
The Loving Story is an unusual telling of a civil rights story. Though often overlooked among the pantheon of civil rights struggles, Mildred and Richard Lovings’ quest to live together as husband and wife in the state of Virginia was a pivotal one. A white man and a part-black, part-Rappahannock woman were in love and did not understand why their marriage was a criminal offense in the eyes of the state. Their effort to make this right – to not live in shame or in exile – is universal, metaphorically reminding us of oppressed and exiled people everywhere. The Lovings are paired with two young and ambitious lawyers who are driven to pave the way for Civil Rights and social justice through an historic Supreme Court ruling, changing the country’s story forever and making anti-miscegenation laws illegal.
Anselm (in 3D)
Co-presented with Sag Harbor Cinema
Sunday, 12/3, 4:00pm, 93 min @ Bay Street Theater
DIRECTOR: Wim Wenders
PRODUCER: Karsten Brünig
EDITOR: Maxine Goedicke
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Franz Lustig
This immersive 3D documentary chronicles the art of German innovative painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. The film illuminates his work, life journey, creative process, and the artist’s fascination with myth and history. Director Wenders called the film “a labor of love.”
Wim Wenders is a major figure in New German Cinema. Among many honors, he has received three nominations for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for Buena Vista Social Club, Pina, and The Salt of the Earth. He is the former President of the European Film Academy, and is also a member of the advisory board of World Cinema Foundation, founded by Martin Scorsese, that aims to find and reconstruct world cinema films that have been neglected.
Hidden Master: The Legacy of George Platt Lynes
Sunday, 12/3, 7:00pm, 96 min Sag Harbor Cinema
Director Sam Shahid in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Sam Shahid
PRODUCERS: Sam Shahid, Matthew Kraus, Nando de Carvalho, John MacConnell,
EDITOR: Conor McBride
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Matthew Kraus
Hidden Master features a stunning collection of photography from the 1930s-50s, uncovering the less-known life of celebrity photographer George Platt Lynes: his gifted eye for the male form, his long-term friendships with Gertrude Stein and Alfred Kinsey, and his lasting influence as one of the first openly gay American artists.
26.2 to Life
Monday, 12/4, 12:00pm, 90 min @ Bay Street Theater
Set at San Quentin, California’s oldest prison, 26.2 TO LIFE explores the crisis of over incarceration through the stories of three men living out life sentences. As they work to better themselves and be productive despite surviving behind bars, the men train for the most unique marathon in the world – 105 laps around an uneven dirt and concrete path that loops the prison’s crowded Lower Yard.
The Eternal Memory
Monday, 12/4, 3:00pm, 85 min @ Bay Street Theater
DIRECTOR: Maite Alberdi
PRODUCERS: Maite Alberdi, Rocio Jadue, Juan de Dios Larrain, Pablo Larrain
EDITOR: Carolina Siraqyan
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Pablo Valdés
Augusto Góngora, a veteran Chilean political journalist, dedicated himself in the 1970s and 1980s to bringing the iniquities of the Pinochet regime to public attention and later to conserving that national memory for future generations. So it is somewhat ironic that now Góngora struggles with his own memory as he contends with the ravages of Alzheimer’s. What gives the film heart is the love story between Góngora and his devoted wife and caretaker, former Chilean culture minister Paulina Urrutia.
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Monday, 12/4, 5:30pm, 116 min @ Bay Street Theater
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 and sexuality. So why did Shere Hite disappear from public view in the decades before her death in 2020?
La Singla
Monday, 12/4, 8:00pm, 95 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Paloma Zapata in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Paloma Zapata
PRODUCERS: Paloma Zapata, Nadja Smith, Paola Sainz de Baranda
EDITOR: Paloma Zapata
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Iñaki Gorraiz, Dani Mauri
Antonia Singla was once considered the best flamenco dancer in the world. Born deaf in the slums of Barcelona and unable to speak until she was a teenager, dance became the language through which she expressed herself. La Singla’s striking movements—and intense gaze—were seared with passion and revolutionized the art form. Then, suddenly, at the height of her fame, she vanished without a trace.
The Camera of Doctor Morris
Tuesday, 12/5, 1:00pm, 73 min @ Bay Street Theater
DIRECTORS: Itamar Alcalay, Meital Zvieli
PRODUCERS: Itamar Alcalay, Meital Zvieli
EDITORS: Itamar Alcalay, Meital Zvieli
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Dr. Reginald Morris
For decades, Dr. Morris filmed his family. Their lives were captured on 8mm – years of births and deaths, joys and tragedies, dramas and quiet days spent in the sun – a strange British bubble all unfolding in the heat of the Israeli desert. Long after his death, the footage is rediscovered, along with the shattering story of his two young daughters.
Mourning in Lod
Tuesday, 12/5, 3:00pm, 73 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Hilla Medalia in attendance for the Q&A via Zoom
DIRECTOR: Hilla Medalia
PRODUCER: Hilla Medalia
EDITORS: Erez Laufer, Doron Djerassi
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Avner Shahaf, Hanna Abu Saada
In this film, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is retold through three people whose fates become inextricably linked in a vicious cycle of violence. Lod is a “mixed” city inhabited by Arabs and Jews who live side by side in a strained coexistence. The outpouring of love, anger, and forgiveness that unfolds when the two cultures collide following a tragedy offers a glimpse of morning light to offset a collective state of seemingly endless mourning.
Dusty & Stones
Tuesday, 12/5, 5:30pm, 83 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Jesse Rudoy in attendance at the Q&A via Zoom
DIRECTOR: Jesse Rudoy
PRODUCERS: Melissa Adeyemo, Jesse Rudoy
EDITORS: Jesse Rudoy, Loulwa Khoury
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Michael Koshkin
Dusty & Stones is a continent-crossing hero’s journey story told through country music. The film intimately chronicles the remarkable ride of cousins Gazi “Dusty” Simelane and Linda “Stones” Msibi, a determined duo of struggling country singers from the tiny African Kingdom of Eswatini (known as Swaziland) who long for their big break. They embark on their pilgrimage in order to compete in a Texas battle of the bands.
999: The Forgotten Girls of the Holocaust Recipient of the 2023 Human Rights Award
Tuesday, 12/5, 8:00pm, 99 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Heather Dune Macadam in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Heather Dune Macadam
PRODUCERS: Heather Dune Macadam, Jane Schonberger, Beatriz M Calleja, Jay Heit, Stephen Hopkins
EDITOR: Beatriz M Calleja
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Stephen Hopkins
The first official Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz were all young women, but for 80 years their story was overlooked by historians. In the spring of 1942, the Nazis ordered the Slovak government to send a slave labor force and received 999 teenage, Jewish girls. Their government paid the Nazis 500RM, the equivalent of $4,000 per girl today. Their railway ticket was a one-way trip to Auschwitz. The bonds between these women were unbreakable. It kept them alive. This untold story is important both to Holocaust history and to women’s history.
Award-winning author of the international best-seller, 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of The First Official Transport To Auschwitz, Heather Dune Macadam is the foremost U.S. scholar on the first Jewish Transport to Auschwitz. Her critically acclaimed book has been translated into nineteen languages and was a Pen Award Finalist for Biography. This documentary is based on that book, and the result of eleven years of research and interviews, which she filmed.
The film is sponsored by Leslie & Andrew Siben.
Shari & Lamb Chop
Wednesday, 12/6, 2:00pm, 92 min @ Bay Street Theater
Director Lisa D’Apolito in attendance for Q/A by Zoom
DIRECTOR: Lisa D’Apolito
PRODUCERS: Lisa D’Apolito, Nicholas Ferrall, Cassidy Hartmann, Morris Ruskin, Douglas Warner
EDITOR: Andrea Lewis
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Anne Etheridge
As a young female ventriloquist with big aspirations, Shari Lewis was searching for a voice who could say things that a young woman in the 1950s could not, and found it in a sock puppet named Lamb Chop. The duo debuted on the CBS children’s television series CAPTAIN KANGAROO in 1956 and went on to attain cultural icon status in the U.S. by the end of the 20th century. The documentary examines Shari Lewis’ surprising personal journey, as well as her professional one, which included winning 13 Emmys and a Peabody and authoring 60 children’s books.
Deep Rising
Recipient of the 2023 Environmental Award
Wednesday, 12/6, 4:30pm, 93 min @ Bay Street Theater
DIRECTOR: Matthieu Rytz
PRODUCER: Matthieu Rytz
EDITOR: Elisa Bonora
A gripping tale of geopolitical, scientific, and corporate intrigue that exposes the machinations of the International Seabed Authority, a secretive organization empowered to greenlight massive extraction of metals from the deep sea floor that are deemed essential to the electric battery revolution. The film examines humanity’s destructive pattern of extracting materials from this last pristine environment for profit.
Young Voices Program – for students, faculty & family only
Wednesday, 12/6, 10:00am @ Bay Street Theater
Our Young Voices program has hosted hundreds of students who filled the theater to watch curated films and to better understand the language of film within a context of art, history and society. The Young Voices program at the festival expands on this theatrical viewing experience with a hands-on orientation workshop in filmmaking, with a focus on the professional development of young filmmakers.
SHORTS & BREAKFAST BITES – Program 1
Saturday, 12/2, 10:00am, 74 min @ Bay Street Theater
In recent years, more than 2,500 books have been removed from school districts around the U.S., labeled as banned, restricted, or challenged, and made unavailable to millions of students. This film is a love letter to reading and education that begs us to consider what gets lost as books continue to be banned across the country.
The Bridge, 12 min
Director Carl Sturgess in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: Carl Sturgess
PRODUCER: Casey Bannon
Bob Rubin and his wife Stéphane Samuel founded The Bridge Golf Foundation, a year-round sports youth-development program based in Harlem. The students get college prep tutoring and golf lessons and in the summer live and work at Rubin’s club in Bridgehampton, Long Island.
The Barber of Little Rock, 35 min
Co-Director John Hoffman in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTORS: John Hoffman, Christine Turner
PRODUCER: Christina Avalos
This film explores America’s widening racial wealth gap through the story of Arlo Washington, a barber in Little Rock, Arkansas, whose visionary approach to a just economy is found in the mission of People Trust, the nonprofit community bank he founded.
SHORTS & BREAKFAST BITES – Program 2
Sunday, 12/3, 10:00am, 104 min @ Bay Street Theater
The Orchestra Chuck Built, 22 min
DIRECTOR: Christopher Stoudt
PRODUCERS: Ryan Suffern, Maryann Garger, Bob Logan, Brainz Prasad
Less than 2% of the professional orchestra workforce in the U.S. is black. Chuck Dickerson, a former lawyer-turned-conductor, is on a mission to change that. The film is a loving portrait of a tireless mentor and a testament to the transformative power of music.
Rocks 4 Sale!, 16 min
Director David Dibble in attendance for Q&A
DIRECTOR: David Dibble
PRODUCER: David Dibble
A slice-of-life look at how kids in the former mining town of Silverton, Colorado stay busy in the summer by “mining” and selling rocks to tourists. These “rock stars” learn history, social skills, and become little entrepreneurs while delighting tourists from around the world.
Last Song from Kabul, 30 min
DIRECTOR: Kevin Macdonald
PRODUCERS: Katie Buchanan, Sophie Daniel
The devastating reality of Afghanistan after the Taliban occupation: Music has been banned and musicians are forced into hiding. Can a group of daring young musicians find their voices again?
Daughter of Mine, 36 min
DIRECTOR: Vanessa Martino
PRODUCER: Javier Parra
A mother works decades to keep her daughter’s killer in prison after she was murdered delivering Girl Scout cookies in 1973. Nancy Buirski was the Executive Producer.
SAG-AFTRA has issued a statement, indeed a clarification, on it’s Halloween costume rules for striking actors, which has been much discussed online since The Hollywood Reporterfirst posted about the rather strict-sounding guidelines Wednesday.
No, the guild isn’t backing off its rules, which state that card-carrying actors should stick to generic costume ideas (such as “ghost, zombie, or spider”), rather than specific characters which might inadvertently promote a struck studio’s content (e.g. most of filmic pop culture).
Late Friday, the guild sent the following explanation/clarification: “SAG-AFTRA issued Halloween guidance in response to questions from content creators and members about how to support the strike during this festive season. This was meant to help them avoid promoting struck work, and it is the latest in a series of guidelines we have issued. It does not apply to anyone’s kids. We are on strike for important reasons, and have been for nearly 100 days. Our number one priority remains getting the studios back to the negotiating table so we can get a fair deal for our members, and finally put our industry back to work.”
The statement follows some celebrities mocking the rules, such as this Ryan Reynolds tweet, which specifically called out the kids angle: “I look forward to screaming ‘scab’ at my 8 year old all night. She’s not in the union but she needs to learn.”
While Mandy Moore wrote on her Instagram Stories: “Is this a joke? Come on @sagaftra. This is what’s important? We’re asking you to negotiate in good faith on our behalf. So many folks across every aspect of this industry have been sacrificing mightily for months. Get back to the table and get a fair deal so everyone can get back to work.”
The original spookily restrictive-about-your-personal-time-with-your-friends-and-family guidelines are embedded below. “Let’s use our collective power to send a loud and clear message to our struck employers that we will not promote their content without a fair contract,” the guild stated.
The chips are falling into place now, and we are circling the end of this wild and alluring season. With the deck stacked against Tommy, from enemies he can see and enemies he’s not even aware of, you can’t even begin to predict how things will end up.
This was a very messy installment from start to finish.
And there’s no easy place to jump in, but it’s probably best to start at the top with Vic doing his damndest to cover his tracks.
Vic has been flying by the seat of his pants since he became a snitch, and he stepped in it when he killed Vargas. He may not have had a choice, but it put an even larger target on his back as far as Stacy was concerned.
Stacy Marks feels like every attorney we’ve seen across the Power Universe rolled into one. Notoriously bad at their jobs, save for a couple, the attorneys we’ve seen in this Universe are obsessed with bringing down the bad guy to the point their ethics go flying out the damn window, often alongside their dignity.
Stacy: You know, if Miguel Garcia finds out that you fucking his little sister, he might take you off the map before I do. Be careful, Mr. Egan. Chicago is a very dangerous city. Tommy: So I keep hearing.
Stacy wants to make her mark in Chicago, and she sees a pathway by capturing a notorious criminal like Tommy Egan. I’m sure she wants to help rid the streets of drugs and violence, but I can’t help but think her ambition trumps almost everything else.
Bobby provides an interesting counterpoint to that ambition, but she doesn’t seem to really listen to him ever. She’s got a plan, and she’s operating in a way where she will get all the glory if things go right.
But things haven’t been going right, and while she’s had Vic on the hook, he’s been about the least helpful informant in the history of informants.
Vic Flynn made his bed and has to lie in it now, though it’s so apparent to Stacy and the audience that he doesn’t want to really screw Tommy over. But he was always going to have to, and killing Vargas just sped up the timeline.
Vic was a bare minimum informant, giving the FEDs just enough information to build their case, but he was by no means giving them anything they could use as a finishing move. Catching Vic in a lie meant that Stacy could exert all her power and get Vic to implicate Tommy, whether his words were true or not.
Now, Stacy will operate moving forward like she’s going to drop some bombshell on Tommy, but she doesn’t know that Tommy’s now been tipped off to the rat, and there’s no way in hell he doesn’t immediately finger Vic as the traitor.
Tommy’s suspicious by nature, but who else could it be but Vic?
Vic did an excellent job of pushing the blame onto Jenard and Claudia, and Tommy’s just as suspicious of them, but he wasn’t with them twice when Vargas was sniffing around.
In the aftermath of the murder, Tommy was seeing what was right in front of him, but with new knowledge and some time to think things through, Jenard going to the FEDs would make about as much sense as him going himself.
Jenard may be A LOT of things, and we know he’s actively trying to undermine Tommy in another way, but he’s not the one to go to the authorities, even if it would mean getting rid of Tommy for good.
It was unbelievable hearing Tommy basically tell Jenard he was lucky Tommy let him back into CBI, like Tommy didn’t come into town seventeen seconds ago and Jenard hadn’t spent his adult life helping establish CBI as one of the biggest crews in the city.
It’s so interesting watching Tommy do this dance with all these people he knows don’t care about him and he knows he can’t trust. But as long as they’re useful to him and helping him get to where he needs to be, he’s keeping them around.
But even knowing he can’t trust them, does he realize how many people are actively after him?
We know that Tommy can find his way out of even the most dire of situations, but it’s okay to be concerned about Tommy because he’s got heat from so many different directions, and he can’t jump over every hurdle.
We’ve seen him get tripped up in the past, and we’ve seen him lose people, and we’ve seen him hit rock bottom. To think Tommy can be in control at all times and never get touched would make for a pretty damn boring show, and that’s never been how Power has operated.
Right now, Diamond (and Mireya if you want to lump her in) are the only people in Tommy’s orbit not praying on his downfall and making moves to make it happen.
And we’ll see over the next two hours if they succeed or not.
Speaking of Tommy’s enemies, it took almost the whole season for Miguel to finally see what his Abuelita picked up on immediately.
Miguel Garcia‘s got pride oozing out of his pores, and he needed to be stared in the face with Tommy’s betrayal to understand that he was being played. And he didn’t even have time to fully process that before Tommy decided to rub it in by rubbing elbows with his superiors.
Tommy has done a great job keeping his relationship with Mireya and his business relationship with Miguel separate. Still, he pounced on her information about the quinceañera without hesitation or care for how it would make Mireya feel.
Tommy had a great speech about wanting to be honest with Mireya and learning from his past mistakes, but he didn’t seem to think about how his barging into the party to talk business would affect his relationship.
Mireya has been so up and down with Tommy, from swearing him off, but not really, and falling head over heels seemingly overnight. But wasn’t it always going to end up here?
She has alluded to Miguel killing one or both of them about forty times by now, but she’s always folded when Tommy would assure her everything would be okay. But seeing Tommy and Miguel together must have been the spark she needed to push her to walk away from the situation.
Did she really think Tommy would be above killing Miguel? While I understood her anger toward Tommy, I didn’t quite understand her shock. Was Tommy supposed to let the man kill him if it came down to it?
Their whole spat just reinforced how little they know about each other, especially on Tommy’s part, with this kind of fantasy he’s built up in his head.
He fully convinced himself they could come clean to the world and that if Miguel pushed back, he’d stick a bullet in his head, and then he and Mireya Garcia would live happily ever after.
That was absolutely never going to happen, even with Mireya’s insistence that Miguel would kill her in a minute. She was never going to advocate for Miguel’s death.
Stacy’s little drop by Mireya’s was precisely why she didn’t want to get involved with Tommy in the first place. She’s made an effort to stay clear of Miguel’s business, and here she gets involved with Tommy, and suddenly, she could be involved in a RICO.
Dropping the LaKeisha bomb was something I didn’t see coming, and once Mireya does a little research, what will she do moving forward?
While I can’t see Mireya straight up turning on Tommy in any way, how deep are her feelings right now? Deep enough to allow herself to go all in with a guy who has multiple deceased girlfriends and isn’t remotely interested in leaving the life?
Someone else never leaving the life? Diamond Sampson.
Look, I am an unapologetic Diamond stan. There’s something about his calming presence and quiet dominance I’ve enjoyed since he was introduced, and since he’s been with Tommy, their partnership, while rocky, has still been such an exciting part of the season.
I’ve lamented the subplot with Leon and Gianna only because it’s felt out of place from everything else. But during Power Book IV: Force Season 2 Episode 7, it became clear that maybe this was all being set up to end in tragedy.
Now, it also taught Diamond something, or at the very least, allowed him his first chance since getting out of prison to do more than be the man he was before he went in.
You could see the pride on his face when Reeves thanked him for his speech and heard that he made a difference in someone’s life in a positive way.
Diamond wasn’t exactly walking around trying to be some motivational speaker or a man who gave back to the community, but he enjoyed helping Leon, and he enjoyed helping him become more assertive and aware of his strength.
He was beaming, watching Leon stand up for himself and punch that bully straight in his jaw, but everything turned terrible in the blink of an eye.
Leon was a great kid, full of so much promise, and his life was taken by a coward who was embarrassed that he got showed up.
Diamond was naturally filled with tremendous guilt, but he didn’t pull that trigger. All he wanted to do since he met Leon was help him, not complicate his life or put him in danger.
That was never his intention, and the guilt he’ll feel about this one will be heavy in his heart for a long time.
As I was saying before, Diamond’s calm is something I love and something we’re so used to seeing, but Leon’s death just tore him up to the point he was drinking himself to blackout territory and showering himself in drugs and money to prove a point.
Gianna: I know who you are. My neighbor told me. Diamond: Oh, yeah? Who am I? Gianna: Diamond Sampson. Head of CBI. You’re a gangbanger, and a drug dealer. But don’t get it twisted. I knew that before I let you in my bed. I’m grown.
Diamond asked Gianna to tell him who he was earlier, and he couldn’t even deny it to himself anymore, so he decided to wear it like a scarlet letter.
Tommy was right on time and a little too late to help Diamond, and when Reeves showed up at the barbershop, I was convinced Tommy would get the drop on him. What’s another dead member of law enforcement at this point?
But Diamond literally breaking free of his stupor to just Sweeney Todd his parole officer was crazy.
The deaths this season do not stop, especially the deaths of those in perceived positions of power.
Tommy was worried about Diamond all hour. Afraid that he was slipping and he had his priorities mixed up.
And a distracted and unfocused Diamond was bad for Tommy. In the long run, things don’t work without Diamond, and that’s why he was so happy to see that blood cascading down the mirror.
The Diamond Sampson he needed was back, and now the games can truly begin.
Everything Else You Need To Know
The blood squirting from Reeve’s neck was so nasty. One of the nastier deaths on the series.
I mentioned this earlier, but Stacy genuinely doesn’t listen to anything Bobby says. I would feel bad for him, but he knows who he married.
It took me way too long to remember who Jamal was when he first confronted Reeves.
Kate returned just for JP to tell her the truth and give her an ultimatum regarding her sobriety. I don’t know if that will work with Kate, nor do I know where this neglected storyline is going.
Kate said she was in New York, and I’m VERY curious about what she was doing there.
How many times will Jenard get choked this season? That is a serious question.
Mirković has taken about as many L’s as Jenard has this season, and maybe he needs to team up with Miguel because I don’t see how the Serbs make it out of this season any other way.
Claudia Flynn, always wanting to go scorched earth, will eventually come back to bite her. She’s putting too much trust in Shanti, not understanding that Shanti’s loyalty will be to herself and Jenard before anyone else.
It’s fascinating watching Shanti work and seeing how she navigates her position with everyone around her. In another life, she and Tommy would have been an exciting team. But in this life, I look forward to seeing them become true adversaries once Tommy fully figures out the game she’s playing.
This was a lot of words, but if there was ever an episode that needed it, it’s this one.
Not a single minute of this hour was wasted, and with only two episodes left, we’re heading toward an epic conclusion.
Do me a favor and drop all your thoughts down below and make sure you watch Power Book IV: Force online right now so you can join the conversation!
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What’s more dangerous than a teenage girl? Sexualizing one.
The fear of newfound sexual freedom, particularly the libidos of adolescent girls, were interrogated, explored, and — at times — exploited in ’90s-era high school-set psychosexual thrillers. From the age of characters portrayed, actors’ requests for body doubles, or the questionably problematic market for watching real-life teens undress onscreen, the eroticism of teens in the ’90s still has resonance today.
Now, as Todd Haynes’ “May December” shows the lasting psychological effects of the traumatic grooming of a male tween (Charles Melton), and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” charts a sexual awakening from a developing child mind in an adult body (played by Emma Stone), it’s only right to return to the trend of coming-of-age sexuality onscreen, most infamously weaponized by a niche genre trend of thrillers framed by teen female perpetrators.
Sex is back onscreen, but what did overt eroticism look like in films past?
Hollywood in the ’90s has been tainted in retrospect, as the culture has grappled with what the rise of Harvey Weinstein as a mega-producer really meant, along with studios pushing for more sex and more nudity from younger and younger stars. But were these teen films for high school theater-goers, or leering adults? And even worse, did studios even care so long as tickets were sold?
“Crush,” “Wild Things,” “Fear,” “Cruel Intentions,” and “Poison Ivy” each offered iconic portrayals of young femme fatales onscreen that marked the cornerstone of the erotic thriller trend for adolescents, whether intentional or not.
The 1992 film “Crush,” starring a 15-year-old Alicia Silverstone, was told from the perspective of magazine writer Nick (Cary Elwes), who is renting a house from a couple whose 14-year-old daughter Adrian (Silverstone) attempts to seduce him — with sinister, obsessive consequences. Adrian sets out to ruin Nick’s life, just as he falls for an (adult) colleague (Jennifer Rubin).
“Crush” was written and directed by Alan Shapiro, who told IndieWire that his initial “tongue-in-cheek” concept was thwarted by studio Warner Bros. “They thought, what I think a lot of people did, was that it was just a teenage thriller,” Shapiro said. “But to me, it was tongue-in-cheek, totally. I always saw her as sort of a teenage Gloria Swanson kind of character. It was like a satire to me, but they didn’t let me do that. I tried to do it as best I could, but they wanted thriller.”
“Crush” was marketed as the teen “Fatal Attraction” and, according to Shapiro, the studio pushed for more (underage) sexually suggestive scenes and nudity.
“There’s a scene where Cary Elwes is in the closet looking out at her [Silverstone] getting dressed and she turns around and lets her shirt drop.I got a call the next day from the studio saying, what is wrong with me? ‘How come I don’t see any tits?,’” Shapiro said. “So I said, ‘Well, I didn’t really want to do that.’ And they insisted on hiring a model for Alicia and showing her breasts. And we did. We shot it but I was able to cut it out. There’s another shot they made me use the double when it’s his point of view from her bedroom and she’s looking at her going into the bathroom, naked, and we can see her back with her butt. The butt was the biggest reveal that we could do.”
He continued, “It all revolved around sex. They wanted as much sex as possible from Alicia. I mean, obviously, it wasn’t a porno, but they wanted it as titillating as possible. She kind of went for that. She got it. This is 1992; this is pre-#MeToo. It was like they could have said anything. I mean, the law prohibited them from shooting a minor but they would have if it wasn’t illegal. Also, we were in Canada, but I don’t think that really made a difference.”
Alicia Silverstone and Cary Elwes in “Crush”
He added, “Now you look back, I mean, she was 15. She turned 16 in the middle of the shoot, but still it was very ridiculous.”
Shapiro credited the popularity of “Single White Female” and “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” (also both from 1992) for pushing the genre of a “teenage girl from Hell.” In fact, the spec script for “Crush” incited a bidding war between studios before landing at Warner Bros. Production was fast-tracked and the film was released less than a year after the script was bought. The film grossed $13.6 million at the box office against a $6 million budget.
Shapiro pointed to the marketing campaign envisioned by Warner Bros. for “Crush”: “My sense was they wanted a film that could be talked about and get people buzzing about it because they had a certain position,” he said. “Once Alicia was cast, they started reacting to the dailies and how she was fantastic. And they thought, ‘Oh God, she could give us more of whatever,’ and then that those calls from L.A. would come in.”
Lead actress Silverstone told Interview in 1994 that she did not have a chaperone on set, saying that it “worked better for my character without one.” Silverstone said that she “envied the power” her character Adrian wielded at age 14 in the film.
“I loved being able to walk on the set as Adrian and think that everyone there was hot for me. I would never feel that way in life,” Silverstone said at the time. “I decided that if she’s going to just be a tough girl, you can’t love her. You can only want her physically. But I wanted to make her a real, whole human being. … I wish I could go back and do the movie again, because it isn’t often that a young girl can be really aggressive and take over the whole movie.”
Writer-director Shapiro said the “Lolita” element of “Crush” led to him getting letters calling him a “pedophile” upon the film’s release. Now, Shapiro is aware of the “cult following” for “Crush,” referencing how the newfound fandom decades later is closer to his initial pitch for the film in general.
“I certainly never intended it to be a down-the-middle scary movie because it’s not scary at all, and it was never intended to be. It’s not even thrilling; I just thought it was funny,” Shapiro said. “I was trying to do a sort of a black comedy on those genres, but clearly I failed, or it is just kind of the timing of it.”
“Wild Things,” which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year, is also a satirical dark comedy, directed by John McNaughton. The 1998 film follows a guidance counselor (Matt Dillon), who is accused of rape by a preppy popular girl (Denise Richards) and a wrong-side-of-the-tracks teen (Neve Campbell). It turns out that the rape charge was a fake shakedown for a cash settlement, and twists abound — including a later consensual threesome and a few unexpected murders.
Director McNaughton told IndieWire that the target audience for “Wild Things” was, well, himself. “I made a movie that I would like to see. The idea that I needed to make a commercial film in those days, I went, ‘OK, what sells? You want sex, you want violence, here you go, more than you can swallow,’” McNaughton said. “It was just to make a movie that broke the rules, a movie that was transgressive. It wasn’t just meant to be a teen candy cane movie.”
McNaughton pointed to how grounded in the “real world” the script was, while still serving as somewhat of a spoof of teen thriller films themselves. “It was intended to be a believable story,” he said. And the basic premise of “Wild Things” (sans twists) is believable because, well, it happened to the film’s screenwriter.
Scribe Stephen Peters told The Independent that the concept for the mock erotic thriller was based on an actual encounter with two teenage girls during a door-to-door car washing fundraiser. “I told them to step inside for a second and shut the door,” Peters recalled of interacting with the two girls. “I found my wallet, paid them and they left. I stopped and thought, I was in a situation where these two girls could say anything about me.”
The paranoia of the power wielded by beautiful young women inspired “Wild Things,” like a “Basic Instinct” for the high school halls. By the mid-’90s, erotic thrillers with adult characters, marketed to adult audiences, were losing their luster. “Sliver,” screenwriter Joe Eszterhas’ follow-up to “Basic Instinct” also starring Sharon Stone, was a box office and critical flop. Yet teenagers were ripe for warnings on just how dangerous budding female sexuality could be, especially during adolescence and when adult men are the targets of seduction.
“My notion was how to portray sexual power,” “Wild Things” screenwriter Peters said. “They were very powerful girls because they knew what effect they had. It was another trick in the story — it looks like they’re being exploited, but they’re doing the exploiting.”
Denise Richards in “Wild Things”
McNaughton added that “Wild Things” was driven by a “political statement” about the “underdog” character, played by Campbell. “It was topsy-turvy, turning the whole political structure and social structure upside down,” McNaughton said. “I always like to push ahead of the boundaries of good taste or acceptability.”
McNaughton admitted that he “resents” the reviews calling the film “sleazy” or “trash” upon release. “It’s like the idea that this movie was intended to be a piece of shit, but accidentally turned out to be a good movie. Nothing could be further from the truth,” McNaughton said. “The tone, as I look at it, reminds me a lot of John Waters films. The idea was to tell that story in a believable way and with a certain sense of style and a certain sense of irony.”
In the 25 years since the film’s release, “Wild Things” has been heralded as a “feminist statement” onscreen, something that McNaughton agrees with while admitting that wasn’t the intent at the time.
“When the film was first released, there wasn’t a lot of laughterbecause it was shocking,” McNaughton recalled. “But it was funny, 25 years later, it was a comedy.”
Denise Richards, Matt Dillon, and Neve Campbell in “Wild Things”
“Wild Things” was pitted against James Cameron’s “Titanic” upon release, a scheduling choice for a would-be summer blockbuster in the winter months that McNaughton claimed was due to Sony shipping anything Mandalay producer Peter Guber developed after Guber parted ways with the company. The film grossed $67.2 million at the box office against a $20 million budget, something that McNaughton claims could have reached even higher heights.
Part of “Wild Things” cult fandom is the chemistry between lead stars Campbell and Richards, with the film propelling both actresses’ careers. “Party of Five” star Campbell was originally approached to play the good girl cheerleader role, which later went to Richards after Campbell turned it down.
Due to Campbell’s TV contract, she had a no-nudity clause. Richards, meanwhile, negotiated how much she would strip down on camera.
“I’ve always found that it’s, ‘How many buttons will we unbutton?’ I mean, it gets down to the most pinky,” McNaughton said. “And then comes the day: If you treated the actors well and you haven’t pulled any fast ones on them, I say, ‘Oh, well, would you take your shirt off in the scene?’ ‘Well, it’s not in the script.’ To me, you always have to read the script. We’re going to do just exactly what it says on this page, no more, no less. I hold you to it, you hold me to it. And so on the day, if it says you do such and such, then you agree to do that. I agree not to ask for more than what’s on the page.”
McNaughton continued, “So coming up to the big sex scenes, there’s always a lot of tension and people get cranky and worried, but if people have been treated well and things are going OK socially amongst the cast, crew, director, actor, relationships, etc., then so often once the scene gets rolling, the actors will go further. They’ll want to go further once they’re into what the scene’s about. And that’s sort of what happened.”
He added, “I know in the pool scene that Neve and Denise, both were in their trailers drinking margaritas ahead of time. And by the time they got on set, they were ready to go.”
Neve Campbell and Denise Richards in “Wild Things”Everett
But the other hotel sex scene was a “tough day” coming off of a 22-hour shoot for the courtroom scene with Matt Dillon’s character. The sensual scene was filmed in an “old warehouse converted to a studio where they used to shoot ‘Flipper,’” according to McNaughton, and the humidity was almost unbearable.
“Everyone was a little burned out,” he said. “It was one of the most uncomfortable days of my life. For actors to pretend to have sex in front of however many crew members you allow on the set, I can’t think of a more uncomfortable way to spend a few hours, pretending to have sex, half-clothed in front of strangers on a set with lights, cameras, gear everywhere. But we got through it and Jeffrey Kimball, the cinematographer. … No one could make women look more beautiful than Jeffrey could and he just nailed it.”
Actress Richards, who negotiated in her contract over which nipple she would show on-camera, recently told The Guardian that it was “terrifying” to film her nude scenes. “It was the first time I had filmed anything like that, so I was obviously extremely nervous,” Richards said. “There are a couple of scenes that are very risqué. There’s a lot of choreography of figuring out who’s going where, so it’s not as sexy as people think. I’m sure people must think that behind the scenes it’s very exciting, but it’s not. But I’m glad it comes off that sexy in the movie.”
Richards had filmed “Starship Troopers,” directed by “Basic Instinct” helmer Paul Verhoeven, the year prior to “Wild Things.” Richards told The Guardian that she had “refused” to film a topless scene that Verhoeven added that was not in the original script. Richards has not publicly spoken about whether her experience on the film led to her negotiations over nudity with “Wild Things.”
The community atmosphere McNoughton described on “Wild Things” did not extend to every film that fell under the “sex sells” teen genre in the ’90s. Reese Witherspoon recently made headlines for opening up about her lack of “control” over her nudity in 1996’s “Fear,” directed by James Foley. The film made $20.8 million at the box office.
Witherspoon was 19 when filming the infamous rollercoaster scene in which her character is digitally penetrated by a sinister love interest (Mark Wahlberg). Witherspoon noted that she requested a stunt double for the below-the-waist scenes, but ended up shooting them herself.
“I didn’t have control over it,” Witherspoon told Harper’s Bazaar. “It wasn’t explicit in the script that that’s what was going to happen, so that was something that I think the director thought of on his own and then asked me on set if I would do it, and I said no. It wasn’t a particularly great experience.”
The Hello Sunshine producer added, “I’m certainly not traumatized or anything by it, but it was formative. It made me understand where my place was in the pecking order of filmmaking. I think it’s another one of those stories that made me want to be an agent for change and someone who maybe can be in a better leadership position to tell stories from a female perspective instead of from the male gaze.”
In contrast, 1992’s “Poison Ivy,” directed by Roger Corman alum (and female filmmaker) Katt Shea, capitalized on lead actress Drew Barrymore’s “baggage,” as Shea told Yahoo! recently. Barrymore was 16 years old at the time of production, and she had previously been to rehab for drug and alcohol addiction at age 13; the child star was legally emancipated from her parents by age 14.
In “Poison Ivy,” Barrymore’s character seduces her friend’s father (Tom Skerritt), who was in his fifties at the time. Skerritt allegedly told director Shea that he was hesitant to film the intimate sequences with teen star Barrymore.
“[Drew] was just like, ‘Oh boy, let’s do it!’ Meanwhile, Tom is going, ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ His discomfort is so palpable in the film,” Shea recalled, noting that “Poison Ivy” was viewed as Barrymore’s chance to shed her child star image.
Studio New Line wanted an NC-17 version, similar to Warner Bros.’ push for “Crush” to have more nudity; an unrated cut is available on the “Poison Ivy” DVD.
“I hate that stuff because they’re just throwing in the kitchen sink. Everything that we needed in the movie was there, and I thought the other stuff was kind of unnecessary,” Shea said. “I didn’t want to include it just for titillation.”
Tom Skerritt and Drew Barrymore in “Poison Ivy”New Line Cinema/Photofest
Per Shea, “Poison Ivy” is also based on executive producer Melissa Goddard’s real-life experience, much like how “Wild Things” was inspired by the screenwriter’s encounter with teen girls. Shea reflected on the aspirational fandom of Ivy, with audiences perceiving her as a martyr and not a homewrecker.
“A lot of people take it that way, which I regret,” Shea said. “I didn’t intend for girls to make her a role model. So that’s why I don’t make movies like that anymore. I think it was misinterpreted.”
She added, “I don’t think that movie would be made today, period.”
“Cruel Intentions”
Erotic thriller goes to boarding school, with a high-brow reception.
Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe in “Cruel Intentions”
Is the visceral response from female viewers to “Poison Ivy” empowering or problematic? Does the subversion of an innocent teen seducing an older man and acting the part of a femme fatale accurately represent the coming-of-age journey for women? And how many teens are thinking that adult men are watching these films through an entirely different lens?
The female gaze, queer film “Cruel Intentions” made the inner workings of elite high schoolers a game to be won; a virgin (Selma Blair) was fresh meat for the taking, as audiences watched Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) seduce her stepbrother Sebastian’s (Ryan Phillippe) prey to foil his bet while he actually falls for Annette (Reese Witherspoon). The 1999 indie film was an adaptation of the 1782 novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” and became an iconic kinky cult classic with a twist ending that champions sexual freedom and female empowerment.
The cult fandom of “Cruel Intentions” was unparalleled to the more niche B-movie adoration for “Poison Ivy,” and arguably offered a better, more moralistic ending: the good girl gets away, the bad man dies, and the school slut’s social reign is over.
So, What Now?
Much like the ’70s and ’80s obsession with erotic thrillers, the insatiable quality of offering a ’90s twist on the genre by lowering the age of its core characters faded out by the early 2000s. Instead, teen-centric films were offered with a more upbeat play, capitalizing on the literary updates made famous by 1995’s “Clueless” and later leading to “10 Things I Hate About You,” “She’s the Man,” and more. The trend of “Lolita”-esque seductress roles threatening adult mens’ livelihoods by way of temptation fell by the wayside, and were deemed schlock once more instead of box office gold.
Lifetime cable made-for-TV movies instead became the outlet for teen erotic thrillers, with the evil babysitter/cheerleader/insert teen stereotype being the threatening force disrupting the domestic bliss of a happily married couple. The sexualized teen was no longer an out-of-control mysterious figure turned heroine like “Poison Ivy”; instead, the pre-Code ethics of the sexually promiscuous woman being punished by death or jail time or a psych ward returned via the small screen.
As the rise of erotic thrillers geared toward adults are now returning to theaters, from Adrian Lyne’s “Deep Water” to Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play,” will teen erotic thrillers inevitably come back into fashion once more?
Grace Van Dien in “What Comes Around”
“What Comes Around,” released in early 2023, incorporated the questionable ethics of a gender-swapped #MeToo story, something that has now been seen in Catherine Breillat’s “Last Summer” and Todd Haynes’ “May December” as well with young male victims at the center of the story.
“What Comes Around,” though, acts as a bridge between Lifetime and indie films; the feature is arguably more in line with the campiness of ’90s teen erotic thrillers, but has a modern message from a female filmmaker who told IndieWire she was intentional to not exploit the concept of teen sex for audience titillation. The film follows a mother-daughter love triangle, with an alleged rape victim (Kyle Gallner) trying to frame his former teacher (Summer Phoenix) for assault by grooming her teen daughter (Grace Van Dien).
Director Amy Redford told IndieWire that the thriller, based on Scott Orkin’s play, is a “Trojan horse” vehicle to remind audiences that “binary thinking” is the real danger, not the sexual awakening of teens.
“It was intentional that we are not sort of getting off on watching these two,” Redford said of the intimate scenes involving Van Dien and Gallner’s characters. “We’ve all done the mental gymnastics asking, ‘Is that a good thing that we’re eroticizing the brutal murder of young teenage girls?’ I think that’s it not necessary [to sexualize teen stars]. I think it was a little bit of a hack to get people to have the sensation of fear or be in a heightened emotional state. And it turns out we can do that in all kinds of ways.”
Redford, the daughter of Sundance founder and acclaimed writer/director/star Robert Redford, continued, “The evolving of filmmaking and the permission to put in some of those deeper themes allowed it to not just lean on a few different devices. I think also just the ways in which we understand where the cost is, if we give permission for lack of consent in some way or another.”
And 30 years later, we’re still culturally taking stock of the lasting costs of studios promoting promiscuity as being dangerous and yet still something to gaze upon. These teen girls in ’90s thrillers just love being bad, and audiences flocked to see just how “gone wild” they became in the suffocating social norms of adolescence. Doesn’t it say more than these teens wanted to take control of their own lives by way of predatory sex and violence onscreen, than the campiness of the films themselves?
In the three decades since the 1990s, films like “Spring Breakers,” “Jennifer’s Body,” and “Thirteen” have instead morphed the sex positivity of teens onscreen into statements about body autonomy and consent rather than being salacious for the sake of selling tickets.
But with a remake of “Fear” in the works as of 2018 at Universal Pictures, perhaps the return of teen erotic thrillers is on the horizon. It’s still a dangerous game to ask which came first, though: the eroticization of young women, or the misunderstanding of them.
The saga of Comedy Central’s apparently endless quest to find a new host for The Daily Show—something it’s presumably been attempting to do for more than a year at this point, after Trevor Noah announced he was departing the position back in September of 2022—has reportedly hit another snag. This is per TVLine, which highlighted a report from Puck’s Matt Belloni this week that states that Hasan Minhaj has been told he’s formally out of contention for the gig.
Writers’ strike shuts down late-night talk shows
This is all sourced anonymously, so we have to take it with an artery-damaging grain of salt. But Belloni’s report states that Minhaj had been extremely close to being announced for the job—as it, all but told he was getting it—before a New Yorker report in September blew the whole thing up, accusing Minhaj of embellishing multiple facts about his life for the purposes of his stand-up specials. (Which speaks, presumably, to the weird position that The Daily Show holds as a comedy-focused news program; you want the setups on a show like that to be pretty factual/credible, even as the punchlines get patently absurd.)
The timing of all this does make a certain amount of sense, since The Daily Show just announced a brand new slate of guest hosts in the wake of the writer’s strike ending instead of, say, finally settling on a permanent host. (As we’ve noted before, Roy Wood Jr. is still right there, and has said he’d still take the job if offered, but Comedy Central has supposedly gone “back to square one” in their hunt; god save whichever poor exec has been tasked with seeing what Jon Stewart is up to, now that he’s out of a job at Apple…) There was at least some assumption that Minhaj was still at least in the running, but, if this latest report is to be believed, he’s now been told he’s straight-up not getting the job.
I first knew Richard Anthony “Cheech” Marin as one half of the timeless stoner comedy act Cheech and Chong. But once I dug just an inch beneath that surface, I came to know Cheech Marin the art collector, cultural communicator and Chicano legend.
Ahead of the broadcast premiere of A Song for Cesar, I spent some time talking with Marin to pick his brain on the Chicano Movement and on labor leader Cesar Chavez’s role in pushing it forward.
Photo by Carlos Puma. Courtesy of Riverside Art Museum, 2022.
CHEECH MARIN: I heard about Cesar when I was in college, when he first started his movement in the mid to late 60s. Everybody was so glad to see he was representing some unrepresented parts of society—and with a firm resolve, too.
JOE SKINNER: What do you appreciate about the way Chavez carried himself in life and in the farmworkers’ movement?
MARIN: You know, I was really surprised. I met him a couple times, but the first time I met him I think I was still in college or something. They were doing a rally and Tommy [Chong] and I went and what I was really surprised about was his sense of humor. He had a great sense of humor, he’s always smiling. You kind of had this picture of this really stern union leader or movement leader, and it was always quite the opposite. He was always very amiable to everybody around him and had a great sense of humor. I guess you need that to make it through the kind of thing he was going through, and to represent or fight for the things that he was trying to accomplish. So this is really a man of the people. This is not a fiery leader. He was a fiery leader, but kind of a mild killer. He said all the things that he had to say. It was amazing. I was really taken by him. The first time I met him, he knew who we were. He knew our comedy. He just treated us like a member of the family, and I was just amazed by that.
SKINNER: How can comedy impact a cause like the Chicano Movement and the farmworkers’ movement?
MARIN: Chicanos have a great sense of humor, because it’s family oriented more than anything. The Chicano Movement was always family oriented. So you got a big turnout there when you went, because everybody in the family went—the kids, the mother, the father, the grandparents. So there was always a sense of “don’t take the pinche play so seriously.”
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The line Marin uses, “don’t take the pinche play so seriously,” comes from Luis Valdez’s critically acclaimed 1979 stage drama, “Zoot Suit,” and its 1981 film adaptation.
It was the first Chicano play on Broadway, which notably blends meta narratives around entertainment alongside a dramatic retelling of 1943’s Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles, California. The symbolism of the zoot suit would come to inspire Chicanos during the Chicano Movement, including leaders like Cesar Chavez.
It is art and entertainment like “Zoot Suit” that Marin refers to as a great way to “chronicle” culture in Chicano neighborhoods, and to take note of “how some things have changed, and how some things have not changed.”
Marin has a sharp wit about him and a light and joyous presence on Zoom calls, but he certainly does take art seriously. His interests have led him to establish The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art, Culture & Industry, which you can also just call The Cheech. It houses hundreds of Chicano artworks from Marin’s personal collection.
SKINNER: What do you think makes art such a powerful force in social movements and in culture?
MARIN: I think it’s because it’s easy to understand. I mean, it goes to that adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. The Chicano muralists took their cue from the Mexican muralists who were doing the same thing in the Mexican Revolution. But playing to an audience—providing art for an audience—that was largely illiterate. And so pictures did speak a thousand words. They saw what was going on in a picture in murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera.
Hospicio Guadalajara, MX, “Man of Fire” by Jose Clemente Orozco – Courtesy of Najib Joe Hakim
MARIN: Now, the Chicanos took that and furthered it, it was a little even more sophisticated because their audience was not illiterate. They were very literate. Putting those images in front of them, they were motivators, where they could see it very clearly what we’re talking about with what the movement was about. You identify with it more easily than with rhetoric. As each new generation, each new artist comes into the field, I would call it “news from the front.” This is what my neighborhood looks like. These are the problems in mine. This is what the people look like. These were the kids, the older people. This was what my playground and what our neighborhood looks like. And you communicate in that method. And it changes as your neighborhoods change. “Oh no, my neighborhood’s getting gentrified.” What does that look like? So there’s always movement, there’s always movement. As the population of Chicanos gets more and more educated with a college degree or even high school, the ability to understand and identify with that movement becomes easier and more pronounced. I mean, I’m a third generation [Angeleno]. My kids are fourth generation, and you see that they—like me—believe that all the promises that were made to the citizens of United States applied to me. I think, increasingly, the new generations think that all the promises guaranteed and promised to the American public, they belong to us, too.
SKINNER: Is there a particular artist you’re working right now that you’re excited about, who you think is carrying this torch?
MARIN: A lot of them are. There’s Vincent Valdez, a young guy from Texas, and when I did the “Chicano Visions” tour, he was the youngest artist in the show, and he had just graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. His thesis for graduation was the painting “Kill the Pachuco Bastard!,” which chronicled the zoot suit riots that were a real, real thing during the 40s.
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In a time when cultural gestures and artistic statements are quick to be tried by the court of public opinion, Cheech Marin has long advocated in defense of free artistic expression. He holds that virtue sacrosanct.
MARIN: Telling artists what to make is a useless proposition. It goes against the process. They’ll make what they want to make. All Chicano artists that I know of, they come to a point where they just want to pursue their own artistic concerns, whether it is relationships with their parents, their kids, their neighborhood, or their government. So they can be all-encompassing, because [Chicano] is not a painting style, it is a description of culture. And everybody has their own description of culture.
SKINNER: Was there a moment when you were growing up when you realized how important Chicano identity would come to be for you?
MARIN: Yeah, it was a derogatory term at the beginning from Mexicans to other Mexicans. The Mexicans who had moved from Mexico and now were living in tin shacks along the borders were no longer truly Mexicanos because they had left their country. They were something less. They were “Chicos.” They were little “Chicanos,” little satellite Mexicans, living on the other side of the border. I grew up half the time in an all-Black neighborhood and then half the time in an all-white neighborhood. I was always “Mexican,” “Yo, Mexican!” I’m not Mexican. I have never been to Mexico. I don’t speak Spanish. So how am I Mexican? So I was always struggling. But I knew I was partly [Mexican]. Everybody in my family was Mexican. They spoke Spanish. My grandparents and my mom and dad and uncles and aunts . . . But I was always searching for what describes me in this process. I tell this story every so often: One time I came home to dinner and there was a family gathering going on. And my Uncle Rudy, who I knew all my life, he was a policeman, as was my father. He was LAPD. And he was telling the story about how he went to get his car fixed at some mechanic, and he said, “He wants $200 to fix it! Give me a piece of tinfoil and pliers and I can fix that. I’m a Chicano mechanic.” And I go, “That’s what I am!” I’m a guy who can survive under any circumstances and doesn’t let anything stop him. “Okay, it costs too much. I’ll make something else. It doesn’t cost much, but it does the job.” You know, it’s that great rasquache attitude that really, really resonated with me. I could speak Spanish or not. I could speak Spanglish or not. I can eat Mexican food or Bob’s Big Boy hamburgers. It doesn’t matter. I am part of that Chicano Movement, and it really described a lot.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Dwayne Johnson‘s wax figure made its debut this week in Paris and the reviews are in — fans want it burned to the ground.
The Rock’s wax figure was unveiled at Musée Grévin in France and fans were quick to notice that the wax figure is lacking the actor’s darker skin tone. What’s more, a throng of fans think the wax figure actually resembles his Fast co-star, Vin Diesel, whom The Rock had a very public feud with not that long ago.
That comparison prompted one person to tweet, “Are they trying to heal the spat between The Rock and Vin Diesel by doing a two for one wax figure?”
While many have said that this rendition is not nearly as bad as the infamous Cristiano Ronaldo bust from 2017 (which has since been fixed!), fans are furious that the museum had to gaul to think the life-size wax figure is a presentable product. And the backlash was swift, as Musée Grévin’s Instagram account became flooded with comments from fans blasting the wax figure.
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“He’s missing melanin. FIX IT!” one fan commented. Another wrote, “Why’s he white? And when are you going to fix it?”
A quick scroll in the comments section reveals a bunch of Mr. Clean GIFs, with one person commenting, “Dwayne THE EXTRA INSTA SMOOTH FILTER Johnson.”
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The Rock has yet to react to the wax figure, but it’s possible he’ll take it all in stride and maybe crack a laugh or two. It’s kinda his thing.
Case in point, a fan last year tweeted video comparing The Rock’s trademark eyebrow lift (dubbed “The People’s Eyebrow” from his time as a WWE star) to a cow doing the exact same thing. The person who tweeted the video then asked, “Who did it better?”
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The 10-second video quickly went viral, and it got Johnson’s attention. He responded with, “Ok, I was not expecting that from my moo cow friend.”
YouTube is apparently working on a new AI tool that could give content creators the ability to produce songs using the voices of famous singers and musicians.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, the platform has approached several record labels with this technology with negotiations still ongoing. YouTube is trying to obtain rights to use certain songs to train the AI while also trying not to step on any land mines that would lead to them getting sued to high heaven. We’re already seeing a similar situation happen with OpenAI as it’s currently being sued by 17 authors, including A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin, who all allege ChatGPT is illegally using their work. Bloomberg states musicians and labels want to maintain control over their work so developers aren’t using it “to train models without permission or compensation.”
Originally, a beta of this tech was supposed to be shown off during the Made On YouTube event last month. Billboard states in their report the beta would have had a “select pool of artists [give] permission to” certain creators to use their likeness on the platform. Eventually, it would officially launch as a feature where everybody can try using the voices of consenting artists.
Mixed response
The response from the music industry at large has been mixed. Bloomberg claims “companies have been receptive” agreeing to work with YouTube on this project. However, Billboard states record executives have had a tough time finding artists willing to participate. Some acts feel anxious about putting their voices into “the hands of unknown creators who could use them to make statements or sing lyrics” that they don’t agree with.
YouTube is trying to position itself as everybody’s best friend – as a partner to help the music industry figure this whole thing out. However, the air is gloomy. The industry sees generative AI as an unstoppable force, but it’s not an immovable object. The technology is an inevitability that they’ll have to deal with or they risk getting left behind.
Ray of positivity
There’s another snag in all this regarding publishing. Making music isn’t a one-person show as there are entire teams involved in production. To solve this, a Billboard source says YouTube will probably give labels one big licensing fee that they have to “figure out how to divide among” songwriters.
Despite the dour attitude, there is some positivity. Billboard claims rights holders are engaging in “good faith to get a deal done” amicably. A few artists do “recognize these models could open new avenues for creative expression.” Record executives may be less keen as another Billboard source states AI can put “companies at a disadvantage”.
We’ll just have to wait and see what comes from all this. Again, YouTube’s new model could help people explore their creative side assuming deals are made fairly.
During 2020 when live music was at a standstill, Shavonne Dargan took the time to reflect on the deficits and opportunities across Live Nation’s businesses. These reflections resulted in her founding CURATED by Live Nation, which bridges Live Nation’s Black-founded festivals with the resources available to them to increase sponsorship revenue.
“Live Nation has a Black founder consortium — so Live Nation, Urban, Dreamville, Festival, Femme it Forward — and those groups and teams of people were not as connected to all the resources that exist within the division that we work in,” the senior vice president of strategy & marketing said. “Lightbulb moment, I was like, ‘Hey, we can be the bridge, we can be that team that make sure that the resources are being delivered to our Black founders.’
Dargan and Soukee Van Orden, who serves as strategic partnerships & operations lead, formed CURATED to develop strategic partnerships that center authentic Black and multicultural influences. The two sat down to discuss CURATED’s mission and progress in the Variety Studio, presented by Canva, at Advertising Week.
Dargan said Van Orden, being from a younger generation than her, has “her ears to the ground” when it comes to generating ideas. After brainstorming, they emerged with various properties for CURATED to focus on.
“One was focused on queer communities of color, especially coming out of COVID and the shutdown of many things,” Dargan said. “And then we developed another platform that is called Rooted in Country, and it is really about the origins of the music and how Black musicians really helped lay the foundation for country music.”
One way CURATED fulfills these missions is through putting on festivals, as well as other types of event series. “We’re constantly thinking outside of the box and trying to develop new ways of working together and new ways to bring Black audiences great things,” Van Orden said.
CURATED helps guide brand partners in understanding the nuances within the various properties across their portfolios.
“Each one of those properties has its own identity, and then there’s a culture within, and then when you look at Black audience and Black-founded festivals, there’s an additional layer of nuance,” Dargan said. “A lot of what we’ve been doing is a little bit of redirecting and guiding in that nuance to how to communicate with Black audiences.”
For Van Orden, staying on top of the interests and passions of their fans will continue to be a priority in CURATED’s future.
“Our fans, particularly our Black fans, are creating community through music … We’re seeing a lot of these different collectives focused around subcultures and music popping up everywhere,” Van Orden said. “These collectives are, no matter what’s happening in the world, they are constantly growing and gravitating, pulling people into family and into closeness, regardless. So that’s something that I’m just very passionate about and want to see how it moves us and our work.”
Jodie Turner-Smith, 37, turned heads in a little black leather dress on October 19! While out with friends in Beverly Hills that evening, the Anne Boleyn alum sizzled in the plunging mini-dress just one day after her estranged husband, Joshua Jackson, 45, was pictured with Lupita Nyong’o, 40. Jodie styled her ensemble with a gold statement necklace, gold bracelets, and a mini black purse.
Jodie Turner-Smith sizzled in a little black leather dress on October 19. (Sydney Jackson/BFA.com/Shutterstock)
Earlier that evening, the 37-year-old added a leather fringe jacket to her outfit. Jodie also made sure to stick to her monochromatic theme and accessorized with black high-heel pumps. She was in attendance at the André Leon Talley Collection celebration at an event titled “What Goes Around Comes Around.” Jodie was pictured among other A-listers including actress Tracee Ellis Ross, model Lori Harvey, and rapper Big Sean.
She also took to her Instagram Story that evening to share a video of her ensemble and added a cheeky caption. The clip featured an audio that played Taylor Swift‘s song “Karma” which led Jodie to caption the post, “exactly that… doll.” Although earlier Jodie was pictured with a mini black purse, she swapped the accessory for a highly-coveted teal Hermès Birkin bag in the social media post. She notably tagged Gucci and the What Goes Around Comes Around store.
Her night on the town comes just one day after her ex was pictured at theJanelle Monáe concert on October 18. While at the concert, Joshua enjoyed an evening with newly single actress, Lupita. The rumored date night notably comes on the heels of Jodie and Joshua’s divorce, which she filed for on October 2. TMZalso reported that Jodie cited the date of separation from the Dawson’s Creek alum as September 13. Additionally, the now exes share one daughter Janie, 3.
One day after Jodie’s night out, she took to social media to share a since-deleted quote about “unhealed” people, seemingly shading her ex. “An unhealed person can find offense in pretty much anything someone does,” the quote read, as reported by Us Weekly. “A healed person understands that actions of others has absolutely nothing to do with them. Each day, you get to decide which one you will be.”
Meanwhile, the 45-year-old was spotted out with an also newly single lady. Lupita took to Instagram on October 19 to confirm her split from Selema Masekela. “At this moment, it is necessary for me to share a personal truth and publicly dissociate myself from someone I can no longer trust,” Lupita penned in the letter about her breakup. “I find myself in a season of heartbreak because of a love suddenly and devastatingly extinguished by deception.” The Black Panther star and Selema went Instagram official in December 2022, however, it is unknown when they began dating.
This Swedish slasher, arriving on Netflix right on time for Halloween, is about one of the great horrors of modern life: work retreats. A group of municipal employees gather at a resort to get back in touch with nature, build team spirit and discuss plans for a controversial project that requires the appropriation of local farmland. The strained smiles of the leaders of the project — and their circular corporate-speak whenever any colleague raises ethical qualms — are sinister in their own way. But when the resort staff and guests are killed one by one in spectacularly disgusting fashion, the group’s ability to work together — and traverse zip-lines and make D.I.Y. rafts — acquires life and death stakes. The director Patrik Eklund crafts a lean thriller out of this premise, serving up sharp satire about corporate greed with a generous splattering of blood and gore.
The premise of this Tunisian thriller by Youssef Chebbi is mesmerizing in its own right: In Tunis, a young detective, Fatma (Fatma Oussaifi) investigates a string of increasingly inexplicable cases of self-immolation. But historical context deepens the genre pleasures of “Ashkal: The Tunisian Investigation” into a political parable. In 2010, a Tunisian street vendor lit himself afire in public to protest harassment by the authorities in a tragic spectacle that set off the Arab Spring. Taking inspiration from that moment, Chebbi crafts a beguiling take on the classic, hard-boiled police procedural. Many of his flourishes are familiar (though rendered with great visual originality), like the puzzle-solving detectives prowling an industrial urban landscape depicted in stark chiaroscuro. The mystery at the heart of the film, however, burns unquenchably: It illuminates no answers or evidence, but only a people’s blazing desire for self-determination.
Bad news for all the Nymphs and BB/ANG3Ls out there: Shygirl has canceled her upcoming joint-headlining North American tour with R&B artist Tinashe, citing an “ongoing respiratory condition.”
“I’ve been forced to make the difficult decision to cancel my appearances on the upcoming U.S. tour on the advice of my doctor that I can no longer delay surgery,” the U.K. musician posted in a statement on social media Friday afternoon.
The tour was set to begin next Saturday in Chicago and continue a 13-date run throughout the United States and Canada, including a performance in Los Angeles on Nov. 16.
Shygirl wrote that she was “heartbroken” to share the news and had been excited to tour with Tinashe and their opener, Jersey club DJ Uniiqu3.
“My thoughts also go to Tinashe and Uniiqu3 as we were all so looking forward to this tour together,” Shygirl said.
“I’ve been working tirelessly with my team to put together my own tour which will be announced in the coming weeks,” the Los Angeles-based performer said on social media. “This new show is absolutely incredible and I can’t wait to show you what we have been working so hard on.”
No information was provided regarding refunds. As of Friday, Shygirl was still set to embark on a European leg of her solo Nymph World Tour beginning in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on Nov. 29.
When Marvel Studios began its foray into television with 2021’s WandaVision, it seemed that streaming would become the latest medium that the Marvel Cinematic Universe would conquer.
Starring Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff, WandaVision was lauded by critics and fans alike for its character development, storytelling, and celebration of television history.
Source: Marvel
Two short years later, Marvel is overhauling how it makes television. Following the troubled productions of Secret Invasion and She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, both of which received mixed reviews from critics, Marvel has decided that it is time for a change.
Reflecting back on the dawn of Marvel Studios television, WandaVision director Matt Shakman gave some insight into how Marvel’s inaugural streaming show avoided the pitfalls of its predecessor.
Photo: Marvel
“WandaVision was its own special thing,” the director told Yahoo Entertainment. “It was a combination of Marvel scope, and celebrating the best of television.”
When asked about the current turmoil surrounding Marvel’s streaming series, Shakman pointed out the difference between WandaVision and other series.
Photo: Marvel
“I’m not sure about Daredevil — I haven’t been involved in that at all. I only know my experience with WandaVision. I made that with Justin Hermes Jac Schaeffer and we had a great time. It was a limited series, and we knew it wouldn’t have a second season from the get-go. It was always going to just be the story of Wanda in Westview.”
Shakman Was The Only Director
As opposed to the subsequent Marvel streaming series, WandaVision also benefited from the fact that Shakman was the series’s only director.
That gave WandaVision the kind of continuity and creative oversight that Marvel is looking to create with showrunners on future series.
“Because we were doing something over six hours, and I was the only director, we could really pick and choose where we wanted to make the most of a sequence and where we could save some money to get through things quicker,” Shakman continues. “We did it globally across the whole project, and there are real benefits to that. But I don’t know about [Marvel’s] future, and I don’t know what benefits they’ll gain from changing their structure.”
“A Love Letter To Television”
Finally, WandaVision’s premise, where a grief-stricken Wanda uses her powers to create a reality that resembles her favorite television shows, gave the series an advantage when working within the TV medium.
Image Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+
“It was really a love letter to television,” Shakman explains. “And with each episode, were bringing back the quaint notion of gathering around the television at an appointed hour. So it had its own unique opportunities there.”
If Marvel wants to be successful, it should look to WandaVision as an example of the path forward. Shakman and Jac Schaeffer have given Marvel the blueprint.
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Lady Gaga has caused a stir by dressing like Harley Quinn in real life, generating excitement on social media for her role in Joker: Folie à Deux.
Gaga’s casting as Harley Quinn marks the second big-screen interpretation of the iconic DC antihero following Margot Robbie in the DC Extended Universe.
The upcoming film will delve into Harley Quinn’s troubled backstory and her deep connection with Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker character.
Pop singer and Joker: Folie à Deux star Lady Gaga has caused a stir after being spotted dressing like Harley Quinn in real life. Following on from 2019’s critically acclaimed Joker, the unexpected sequel has cast Gaga as Dr. Harleen Quinzel, better known as Harley Quinn, a psychiatrist assigned to treat Joaquin Phoenix’s Arthur Fleck who ends up forming a twisted romantic attachment to him. Currently scheduled to be released in October 2024, Gaga’s casting marks the second big-screen interpretation of the iconic DC antihero, following on from Margot Robbie’s turn in the role which began with 2016’s Suicide Squad.
With a year still to go before her debut as the DC character in Joker: Folie à Deux, Gaga recently generated a wave of excitement on social media as images and clips emerged of her wearing an outfit featuring Quinn’s trademark black and red color scheme. Check out just some of the reactions below:
Twitter user @CHISSGAGA shared a clip of the singer signing autographs for fans, saying “that’s not lady gaga that’s harley quinn.”
Meanwhile, @cempaxochitlz shared an image of the star in her Harley Quinn-inspired outfit sporting a nearly identical caption.
User @allurequinn posted a side-by-side comparison of Gaga’s outfit with the classic Harley Quinn look made famous by her appearance in Batman: The Animated Series.
What To Expect From Lady Gaga’s Harley Quinn In Joker 2
Unlike many other well-known DC characters, Harley Quinn is unique not only in her rapid rise to popularity but also owing to her origins as an original animated character rather than a comic book creation. First brought to life by the late Arleen Sorkin, who also helped inspire the character’s creation, over the years several talented actors and voice artists have all lent their own spin on the role. While most audiences may now associate the role with Robbie’s own live-action Harley Quinn, Gaga’s casting promises to deliver another memorable take on one of DC’s most beloved rogues.
In a surprising turn of events, director Todd Phillips has elected to turn Joker: Folie à Deux into a musical, something for which Gaga’s own vocal talents are eminently suited. Yet as strange as this premise may seem at first, it fits perfectly with both Quinn’s own deranged journey into the Joker’s unique psychosis, and even the film’s subtitle, which when translated from the original French means “Madness for Two.” The musical aspect of Phillips’ sequel potentially suggests that much of the story will be told through the lens of Quinn’s own delusions concerning her deeply troubled patient.
While Harley Quinn’s troubled backstory and relationship with the Joker was alluded to throughout Robbie’s movies, Gaga’s Harley Quinn appears set to deliver a far more in-depth look at her character’s own tragic fall into madness. Whether her take on DC’s clown princess of crime will generate the same level of critical acclaim as Phoenix’s Joker remains to be seen, but the fan-favorite singer is already generating unprecedented levels of excitement for her DC debut in Joker: Folie à Deux.
Halo Infinite is.. back? Yeah, I’m thinking it’s back. We just got a metric ton of content with the brand-new Season 5, but the gravy train keeps on rollin’ with an upcoming nostalgia-bomb release.
Coming on November 14, following a release of a new flavor of Mountain Dew Game Fuel on November 6, we’re getting a Halo 3-themed playlist of eight new (to Infinite) maps, including a brand-new Mountain Dew-inspired battleground. The maps are as follows (images below via Halo Twitter):
Critical Dewpoint (new)
Sylvanus
Domicile
The Pit (exists in-game, palette-swap)
Cliffside
High Ground
Banished Narrows
Isolation
Halo vets are no doubt familiar with the franchise’s relationship with The Dew, which has spawned numerous undying memes, including the infamous “Dorito Pope” image of Jeff Keighley. Hell, there have even been Halo-themed Doritos releases, including a chic black Halo 4 bag with a matching Mountain Dew can. In other words, Halo and Mountain Dew go together even better than Death Stranding and Monster Energy.
I have fond memories of each and every one of these maps, including the new one I haven’t even played. I mean, look at that gnarly, radioactive green. It’s just like the real thing! Mountain Dew, I mean.
I’m also really glad we’re getting a Pit redux. The Forge variant that exists in the game now is.. fine. It plays great, obviously, but I’m not a big fan of the weird neo-80’s aesthetic it has going on. I’m glad we’re getting back to basics: a Spartan training ground with all the grit that comes with it.
This update is a great holdover until whenever Firefight modes officially start dropping. Those will begin with Firefight King of the Hill, happening sometime “mid-season,” so we’re crossing our fingers that that means November as well.
After SAG-AFTRA urged its members not to dress up as characters from struck companies this Halloween, former president of the actors guild Melissa Gilbert is calling out the costume guidelines as “silly bullshit” and “infantile.”
“THIS is what you guys come up with? Literally no one cares what anyone wears for Halloween,” Gilbert wrote on Instagram in response to the union’s Halloween suggestions. “I mean, do you really think this kind of infantile stuff is going to end the strike? We look like a joke. Please tell me you’re going to make this rule go away… and go negotiate!”
Gilbert then directly tagged the Instagram accounts of current SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, writing, “For the love of God, people are suffering mightily and this is what you have to say… c’mon guys… This is the kind of silly bullshit that keeps us on strike. ‘Let’s enact a policy that makes us look petty and incompetent at the same time.’”
Gilbert led the actors union from 2001 to 2005, and was the third woman to be elected president.
On Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA published a post on its website encouraging members to “celebrate Halloween this year while also staying in solidarity” with the ongoing strike. Instead of trick-or-treating as Barbie and Ken, the guild recommended striking actors “choose costumes inspired by generalized characters and figures,” like, say, a “ghost, zombie, spider, etc.,” or “characters from non-struck content, like an animated TV show.”
“SAG-AFTRA issued Halloween guidance in response to questions from content creators and members about how to support the strike during this festive season. This was meant to help them avoid promoting struck work, and it is the latest in a series of guidelines we have issued,” a guild spokesperson told Variety on Friday afternoon. “It does not apply to anyone’s kids. We are on strike for important reasons, and have been for nearly 100 days. Our number one priority remains getting the studios back to the negotiating table so we can get a fair deal for our members, and finally put our industry back to work.”
A number of SAG-AFTRA members chimed in on the Halloween guidelines on social media, with Ryan Reynolds quipping, “I look forward to screaming ‘scab’ at my 8 year old all night. She’s not in the union but she needs to learn.”
SAG-AFTRA also suggested actors “don’t post photos of costumes inspired by struck content to social media,” as to not give the studios any additional publicity. As the guild fights for a better contract with the AMPTP, members are prohibited from doing press for struck shows and films. SAG-AFTRA met with the AMPTP last week to negotiate, but talks fell apart.
Meanwhile, Drescher is working to hold the actors guild together and convince members to stay the course. “This too shall pass,” she said Thursday. “But this is the moment where we don’t succumb to pressure. This is the moment where we stand tall and we hold firm.”
EXCLUSIVE: Indian powerhouse producers Guneet Monga Kapoor and Karan Johar, who have previously collaborated on movies including lauded drama The Lunchbox and TIFF 2023 title Kill, are moving ahead with their Hindi-language adaptation of French smashIntouchables, by hiring director Collin D’Cunha.
The Indian filmmakers first acquired the remake rights from Gaumont almost a decade ago. The original box office sensation, starring Omar Sy and François Cluzet, saw an aristocrat hire a young man from the projects to be his caregiver after he becomes a quadriplegic from a paragliding accident. The movie spawned a string of remakes, including a Telugu and Tamil version, and a U.S. version starring Kevin Hart.
According to the producers, the Hindi adaptation “aims to recreate the magic of the original while adding a unique touch that resonates with Indian audiences”.
The film is part of a larger creative synergy that was announced in May 2023 between Johar’s Dharma Productions and Monga Kapoor’s Sikhya Entertainment.
Director D’Cunha is in post on Amazon series Call Me Bae, which is also produced by Johar. His movie credits as a first and second AD include hits Sanju, Secret Superstar and PK.
Karan Johar said today: “Working on The Intouchables is a creative challenge and a thrilling opportunity. We are committed to bringing the essence of this beloved French film to the Indian audience while infusing it with our cultural sensibilities. Collaborating with Guneet once again is an exciting prospect, and I am confident that this project will touch the hearts of viewers across the country.”
Guneet Monga Kapoor added: “The Intouchables is iconic and one of the most celebrated films around the world. It is very exciting to be able to bring that to India and Hindi audiences. After a high-octane, action packed, Kill we are laying our hands at dramedy which signifies the range of the spectrum of our collaboration with Dharma which we are incredibly excited about!”
Director Collin D’Cunha commented: “Directing The Intouchables adaptation is an incredible honour for me as a filmmaker. The original film left an indelible mark on audiences worldwide, and I am honored to have the opportunity to bring this story to life for Indian viewers. Working with Karan Johar, Guneet Monga, and the entire team is something I’m greatly excited for and looking forward to”.
President Joe Biden’s Israel-Hamas address landed in the top 10 most-watched broadcast programs of the week.
While the Oval Office speech scored nearly 22 million total viewers as it aired on Thursday night across six broadcast channels and three cable news networks, the ABC telecast of the speech, which ran from 8 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. ET drew in 4.65 million viewers, according to Nielsen live-plus-same-day figures. The address on ABC, which addressed both the Hamas attacks and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, ranked as the seventh most-watched program of the week among all other weeknight primetime programming from last Friday to this Thursday, per TheWrap’s weekly broadcast TV ratings breakdown.
A federal judge voiced concern Friday that a sprawling copyright infringement lawsuit against reggaeton superstar Bad Bunny — and more than a hundred other artists including Karol G, Pitbull, Anitta, Drake, and Daddy Yankee — could put a chokehold on the “creativity” of an entire genre of music.
Still, U.S. District Judge Andre Birotte Jr. declined to issue an immediate ruling after hearing nearly two hours of argument over a defense motion to dismiss the high-profile case filed by lawyers for the Jamaican group Steely & Clevie.
The massive case, which consolidates more than 50 related lawsuits filed over the last two years, alleges Steely & Clevie’s 1989 hit “Fish Market” originated the distinctive dembow rhythm that’s become a signature of reggaeton music. The duo claims “Fish Market” has been copied or sampled in some 1,800 songs from more than 160 defendants without credit or compensation.
“What’s the end game? Does this lawsuit run the risk of arguably stifling creativity?… Look at the ripple effect this style has had on reggae, reggaeton, Latin music, Hip-Hop, you name it. Does this stifle the creativity of all of those genres?” Judge Birotte, who said he worked as a party DJ in college, asked the parties in a Los Angeles courtroom Friday.
“Maybe we do need a reckoning,” Scott Burroughs, the lead lawyer for Cleveland “Clevie” Browne and heirs to the estate of Wycliffe “Steely” Johnson, responded. He claimed many of the defendants had no problem clearing samples from other artists included on their songs, so why should his clients be “left out in the cold.”
Bad Bunny’s lead lawyer Kenneth D. Freundlich denied the allegation his client infringed on Steely & Clevie’s work in the more than three dozen Bad Bunny songs named in the lawsuit. (The list includes “Tití Me Preguntó,” “Un Ratito” and “Una Vez.”)
He said there are no straight samples of Steely & Clevie sound recordings in any of his client’s works, so the claims against Bad Bunny center on the duo’s composition copyrights only, which “filter out” elements such as instrument choice, synthesized sounds, and timbre. He argued that without those elements, the only thing left is the drum rhythm, which he said is not protectable.
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His attorney told the court he “was not looking to throw out the entire case” at this stage, rather he thinks it should be pared down by tossing the infringement claims related to the written composition of “Fish Market,” as opposed to its sound recording used in samples.
“I want this (case) to be cut down by 75%, with the musical composition out of here. And frankly, I don’t think they’re going to have any claims against Bad Bunny left, because there’s not a sample in there,” Freundlich argued.
“We’ll see what happens, but I think Benito needs to be out of this thing. I hope the judge gets that right,” Freundlich told Rolling Stone after the hearing. (Bad Bunny’s legal name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio.)
Lawyers on both sides sparred over whether a drum rhythm is protectable under copyright law, whether “Fish Market” was truly original, and why Browne and the heirs to Johnson’s estate waited until 2020 to even register “Fish Market.” A defense lawyer pointed out that the plaintiffs never sued Denis (Dennis The Menace) Halliburton over his hit 1990 song “Pounder Riddim,” which famously copied the drum pattern on “Fish Market” and was later sampled widely, allegedly by several defendants.
“An entire genre of music, reggaeton, grew up over 30 years. Did they sue? Did they bring a claim? Did they do anything? No,” lawyer Donald Zakarin, who represents several defendants including Luis Fonsi, said.
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For his part, Judge Birotte was interested in the question of whether “prior art,” meaning music that existed prior to the composition of “Fish Market,” was something he should consider.
“Prior art does matter when we’re talking about combination, selection and arrangement claims. It goes into the new or novel standard,” Zakarin said. “One way you look at that is, ‘What existed?’ Well, there was revival music. The plaintiffs… they heard this in the streets of Jamaica. They heard these beats, they borrowed it. So what? They borrowed this piece, that piece. That means it’s not new or novel.”
Burroughs disputed the argument, saying his clients’ work was original and that the concept of “prior art” did not apply in this particular case. “In 1989, when this song was released… this was an original work, there was nothing like it,” he said.
“So your view is that before this, nothing like it existed?” Judge Birotte asked. “The boom-bap-boom-bap sort of rhythm, you think there was nothing like it before it?
Burroughs said his client’s version has “seven discrete elements” that made it new and protectable. In the complaint, he and his fellow lawyers described the “groundbreaking” drum loop on “Fish Market” as a kick drum, hi-hat, and snare playing a one-bar pattern with a synthesized tom drum and synthesized bass note playing on beats one and three — and timbales at the end of every second bar.
“How would you distinguish this, if at all, from the traditional dancehall rhythms used since I was a kid in reggae? If you go on the streets of Jamaica… big speakers, same beat,” Judge Birotte asked. “Again, I was a college party music DJ. I had probably hundreds — hopefully this is beyond the statute of limitations — hundreds of CDs from the streets of New York and New Jersey with literally the same riddim running for 45 minutes.”
Burroughs didn’t budge, describing the particular drum pattern as “absolutely original” in 1989. He said the fact that so many artists went on to allegedly copy the song with “mathematical precision” proves it was special.
“This is a difficult question. I see the arguments on both sides,” Judge Birrote said shortly before taking the matter under submission.
Trending
In their motion to dismiss, Bad Bunny and his lawyers argued that the plaintiffs were using “a smoke and mirrors approach” by claiming their choice of instruments, synthesized sounds, and the “deep tone timbre” of “Fish Market” all contributed to the protectability of the work.
“Plaintiffs erect a façade of protectability by including (elements) that are compositionally irrelevant under Ninth Circuit law,” they wrote. “Once that veneer is stripped off, all that remains is the Dem Bow Rhythm.”
In America, doing what Andy Lau does in Hong Kong film industry satire “The Movie Emperor” would likely net him an Oscar nomination. Or at least an MTV Movie Award. Or maybe just the admiration of his peers, considering how few stars are willing to poke fun at their own image, much less entertain the question of what might happen if their fans were to turn on them tomorrow.
Reteaming with “Crazy Stone” director Ning Hao for an ultra-polished, good-sport parody of A-list vanity, Lau plays Dany Lau — not quite himself, but a megastar of roughly his own stature. The movie is loaded with inside jokes, but like French series “Call My Agent,” it should have no trouble translating around the globe. Between Lau’s international standing — bolstered by roles in everything from “Infernal Affairs” to “A Simple Life,” plus a Cantopop singing career — and the script’s deft way of contextualizing some of its best jokes.
Dany Lau should not be read as Andy Lau so much as an amalgam of various top Hong Kong stars, including Tony Leung and Stephen Chow, all of whom share one thing in common with Hollywood heartthrobs: Everything they’ve strived so hard to build could be snatched away in an instant. That possibility has never seemed more intimidating than it does in the age of social media. Dany has no business managing his own profile, which leads to a series of easily avoidable mishaps.
That may sound like fodder for an easy-target sketch comedy, but Hao aims higher, shooting the film in the style of a crisp, meticulously composed Ruben Östlund movie like “The Square.” “The Movie Emperor” is cinema, designed to be screened on the biggest possible screen, as DP Wang Boxue constructs each shot the way Jacques Tati might have: from such a distance that each location starts to feel dehumanized and absurd — as when Dany attends the Hong Kong Film Awards.
At what appears to be the actual kudocast, he’s not only snubbed for best actor, but subjected to the indignity of accepting the trophy on behalf of “Jackie Chen,” who didn’t even bother to show up. In Hong Kong, as in Hollywood, actors are celebrated for “serious” roles, and Dany’s mistake (he thinks) is that he hasn’t played a peasant in a self-important art-house movie. “In Chinese films, it’s all about cotton padded jackets,” explains director Lin Hao (played by Hao) at a wardrobe fitting where Dany tries on the uniform of stereotypical salt-of-the-earth Chinese farmers (essentially the safer version of the “Simple Jack” joke in “Tropic Thunder”).
Dany should have recognized this new part was patronizing (festivals may flip, but “sticks nix hick pix,” to quote a classic Variety headline), just as he ought not to have solicited product placement from an electric car company for such a project. But driven by something between commitment and a deep-seated inferiority complex, Dany doesn’t stop there. He locates a genuine mainland farmer and researches his mannerisms for maximum authenticity. Dany rejects a rig that simulates horse riding, insisting instead on doing his own stunts, and he even goes as far as to adopt a pig.
Of course, every step backfires in a big way, to the point that Dany’s being canceled by animal rights activists over the horse situation (that plot point lands awfully close to what happened to Hao after video surfaced of a dog being mistreated on his film “Crazy Alien”). His half-hearted attempt to apologize on a celebrity talk show only digs him in deeper. Off-camera, he has even more problems. Dany’s discreetly trying to divorce the wife (Kelly Lin) he swore to secrecy — lest his fans lose interest — while attempting to date a young female promo director (Rima Zeidan).
In a running gag, Dany is terrified of being filmed unawares, so every time he sees a blinking red light, he overreacts, which leads him to smash the windshield of a random van whose dashcam sets him off. “The Movie Emperor” doesn’t take a position on AI, but virtually all other new technology conspires to oppress Dany, from the autonomous hotel robots to a fitness app that’s constantly reminding the health-conscious star to exercise. Little by little, these annoyances pile up until such point that his whole life seems to be in freefall — like a pig dropped from a 43rd-floor balcony.
By the time a battle royale breaks out on the set of his Chinese peasant project, Hao has so successfully melded lowbrow humor with the film’s otherwise respectable tone that he can get away with such insanity. One of his cleverer strategies involves letting the camera linger on something upsetting in the frame after a scene has wrapped, like news reports of an actual disaster or a sketchy colleague (Pal Sinn) hitting on a younger female assistant. Dany Lau’s so self-involved, he’s oblivious to such “real world” issues, but “The Movie Emperor” has more on its mind, making it one of the year’s savvier satires.
People who live and travel along Highway 99 near Pemberton, B.C., say an ongoing situation is putting lives at risk.
Horses are roaming freely and two were killed on the busy highway last week after a car struck them.
Wayne Andrew, who owns most of the horses, told Global News he would like to see the highway fenced off in a way to protect the animals and the people but he can’t be the one to do that on his own.
“These horses are bred from way back, even before me when I was born,” he said. “But we’ve looked after this herd.”
Pemberton resident Cam McIvor told Global News this isn’t a new issue — it’s been going on for more than two decades.
“My principle concerns are public safety, welfare of the animals, protection of private property and the cost to taxpayers.”
Horses graze and roam freely in the Pemberton area.
Global News
Horses graze and roam freely in the Pemberton area.
Global News
Potential for mudslide triggers Highway 99 safety concerns
He said the horses, between 50 and 60 of them, roam free around the community.
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“(They are) owned by an individual who does not contain them. They roam and forage on other people’s property throughout the year.” McIvor explained.
He added that over the years some of the biggest issues involve the horses being hit by vehicles on the highway.
McIvor said he is concerned someone is going to die in an accident at some point.
He would like to see them fenced in and taken care of.
But Rosa Emhalqwem Andrew, Wayne’s sister, told Global News the horses are not roaming on private property.
“We’re still the rightful owners to our traditional territory,” she said. “We’ve never ceded or surrendered our rights to our traditional territory.”
Andrew said the horses know it’s their grazing area and they have been going to the same areas to feed for years.
They are concerned about the horses and the people but the highway was put through their land without the consent of the First Nations people.
RCMP investigating horse shooting on Vancouver Island
Jen Ford, chair of the Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, said they have been aware of the issue with these horses for many years.
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“There are certainly concerns in the community about the safety of the horses as well as the safety and well-being of everyone in the are, when people are driving and the horses sometimes step out of nowhere,” Ford said.
She explained that due to the fact that the horses move from property to property and for most of the winter they spend their time close to the highway, so that actually falls under the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
“So that is where the majority of the jurisdiction lies,” Ford added.
“We do know that there is no facility within this area, within the region that could capture and house these horses, short of private property or a private owner taking ownership and responsibility for them.”
Ford said the RCMP has been involved in this file for “many years” but due to the size of the horses and the difficulty in catching them, little has been done at this time.
Global News reached out to four different jurisdictions about this issue — Tribal police, RCMP, the regional district and the Lil’wat Nation council — but none of them responded to a request for comment.
The Rolling Stones held a surprise show in New York City on Thursday night to celebrate the release of “Hackney Diamonds,” their first new album in 18 years — and that wasn’t the only surprise. A sequined jumpsuit-clad Lady Gaga joined Mick Jagger on stage as to duet on the veteran rockers’ new single, “Sweet Sounds of Heaven.”
Watch an official video of the performance below:
Last night the Rolling Stones played a one off surprise show in New York City, to celebrate the release of the brand new album Hackney Diamonds! Special guest @ladygaga joined the band on stage to perform the new track Sweet Sounds of Heaven ?? pic.twitter.com/VfGmIXUroA
In the brief clip uploaded to the band’s official YouTube and X channels, the pair robustly trade off shouts of “Oh yeah!” in a chorus Jagger previously described as “really face-to-face… slightly competitive and screaming.”
In an interview last month, Jagger raved about the “A Star is Born” actress to Apple Music: “She’s a really great singer, and I’d never heard her sing quite that style before.”
He added that the recording of the tune, which was written by Jagger and Keith Richards, was done “live in the room.” And the “oh yeahs” were done in the overdub room, “really face-to-face, getting them really tight, the parts really tight and then being slightly competitive and screaming,” Jagger said.
According to People, the star-studded guest list included Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz as well as Questlove, Jimmy Fallon, Keegan-Michael Key, Chris Rock, Trevor Noah, Elvis Costello and Mary Kate Olsen.
The band also played classic hits “Shattered” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” at the gig, which was held at Racket NYC.
“Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” one of 12 tracks on the new album, features both Lady Gaga and Motown legend Stevie Wonder. The album also sees musical assists from Paul McCartney, who plays bass on “Bit My Head Off,” and Elton John, who plays piano on “Get Close” and “Live by the Sword.”
“Hackney Diamonds,” the band’s 24th British studio album, is now on sale. It was produced by Grammy-winning songwriter Andrew Watt, who previously worked with Justin Bieber, Miley Cryus and Ozzy Osbourne.
This is Hot Pod, The Verge’s newsletter about podcasting and the audio industry. Sign up here for more.
Well, this is a weird email to write — today is technically my last day at Hot Pod. But you’ll still see my byline around from time to time because I’m joining The Verge’s news team in November. Starting next week, the newsletter will entirely be back in the very capable hands of lead Hot Pod reporter Ariel Shapiro. Although I’m sad to leave, I’m also really excited to see her take the reins again and continue to churn out the coverage that Hot Pod is known for.
It’s probably not a surprise to most of you that I knew very little about podcasts before taking this job back in April — a time that also coincided with some seismic changes in the podcast industry itself. Although my background is in tech reporting, I’m normally known for writing stories like this and stories like this. Weirdly enough, I also covered Spotify’s acquisition of Podsights and Chartable way back in 2019 for Engadget — a story that I have no memory of actually writing. I learned a ton in a short period of time by relying on the work of my Hot Pod predecessors, which include Ariel, Ashley Carman, and Nicholas Quah — as well as the help of my editor, Jake Kastrenakes. But I also relied on the tips and expertise of numerous Hot Pod readers. So thanks for your help over these past several months — as well as trusting me to tell your stories.
A couple of people at Podcast Movement noted that all of the Hot Pod writers have had very distinct styles. Obviously, we’re all different people — but we all took over during very distinct periods for the industry at large. In my view, Nicholas and Ashley covered the promises and failed hopes of the “golden” era of podcasting and the rush of dumb money that made it possible. For me and Ariel, our challenge seems to be how to document an industry that is in the middle of a contraction — but also figuring out how to survive and reinvent itself.
During the time I was in charge of Hot Pod, Spotify laid off hundreds and effectively killed its in-house podcast production units, Gimlet and Parcast. It seemed like every entity, from public radio to news publishers, made cuts to their podcast units. Companies folded, and left their creators hanging. The film industry effectively went on hiatus this summer as both the unions for screenwriters and actors went on strike, which, living in Los Angeles, I saw firsthand. The loss of Hollywood ad dollars led to real consequences for public radio — both WNYC’s president LaFontaine Oliver and former Southern California Public Radio chief Herb Scannell cited it as a factor in layoffs. A few celebrities lost podcast deals — but it seems like every day, a new famous person gets a podcast.
To that end, it’s still a mystery to me why most popular podcasts got that way. I don’t know why Joe Rogan’s weekly drop of three hours of unedited babble is always one of the top podcasts in the country. I don’t know why so many people like Morbid or Alex Cooper. When I look at the top podcast charts, I see a mix of disposable true crime, news podcasts from major media outlets like NPR or The New York Times, and buzzworthy celebrity-led efforts like Strike Force Five or SmartLess or that one hosted by Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and his brother. But while the titles that have wide appeal may be a mystery to me, they clearly resonate with others.
I was heartened to see Heavyweight, a former Gimlet podcast hosted by Jonathan Goldstein and now made by Spotify Studios, do well now that it’s available widely on all players — it currently ranks number 36 on Apple Podcasts. But it was also kind of surprising, given that many interpreted Spotify letting go of Gimlet and Parcast as a sign that narrative podcasts were over. I’m sure Goldstein’s ties to the early days of Gimlet and This American Life no doubt plays a factor in its success.
But at the end of the day, I do think people still have an appetite for good stories. It’s easy to forget that, I guess, during an age where “everything is content” and virality is the key to survival. The number of views or streams on a video or news article or a post often seems like the only thing that matters. While algorithms can be tweaked — I do think certain concepts are timeless.
YouTube’s uncertain podcast future
Can audio-only podcasts actually thrive on YouTube? Despite an ongoing effort by YouTube to cater to traditional podcasters this year, the answer to that question is still uncertain — and YouTube’s idiosyncratic approach to ads and RSS remains the big reason why.
Google sunset Google Podcasts this year and announced plans for those users to migrate to YouTube Music, which will effectively double as both a video platform and a conventional audio podcast player by adding RSS support later this year. Many popular traditional podcasts have already made the transition to YouTube and YouTube Music, with very mixed results.
Rob Walch, vice president of podcaster relations at Libsyn, told Hot Pod that he viewed a webinar on Thursday that YouTube Music hosted for podcasters. He said that as the webinar progressed, a Slack channel he was a part of for podcasters “filled with expletives.” The overall reaction was very negative.
“No one I talked to is going to recommend [YouTube Music] to podcasters,” said Walch.
A sizeable dilemma for audio-only podcasts is how YouTube will handle their ads. Neither YouTube nor YouTube Music allows dynamically inserted ad spots. YouTube’s terms of service explicitly state that podcast content can’t contain ad formats that compete with YouTube’s own. Technically, there’s an exception that applies for host-read ads or baked-in ads — podcasters can disclose them by checking the paid promotions box. But even if podcasters are able to keep their original ads, YouTube will still run its own ads against the videos, splitting revenue with the creator, rather than the dynamic ones a podcaster may want served and that would pay out only to themselves.
“Nobody will accept ads on their content that they have no control over,” said Walch.
It’s not a surprise to many in the podcast industry that “putting your podcasts on YouTube” is harder than it sounds. “It’s always been a little strange to me that people understand that video-only platforms like YouTube, Twitch, and TikTok work in fundamentally different ways, and that content between them is not interchangeable, but still expect podcasts to automatically work on YouTube,” noted Bikram Chatterji, CEO of Maximum Fun in an email to Hot Pod. Max Fun has experimented with putting some of its podcasts like FANTI on YouTube but notes that YouTube’s practice of inserting its own ads “could be a problem” for them on YouTube Music.
There’s a growing sentiment in the podcast world that YouTube’s podcast vision is (perhaps unsurprisingly) designed for video-first content creators.
There’s a growing sentiment in the podcast world that YouTube’s podcast vision is (perhaps unsurprisingly) designed for video-first content creators. The company’s messaging doesn’t jibe with the day-to-day reality of most people who make audio-only podcasts, as well as the numerous hosting, distribution, and monetization services that form the traditional podcast ecosystem in place for decades. Surveys from Edison Research and others that concluded that YouTube was the number one platform for listening to podcasts failed to capture what kind of podcasts those people were listening to.
Hot Pod reached out to a number of different podcasts and podcast networks to see what their plans were for YouTube Music. Some still plan on making their podcasts available on YouTube and YouTube Music, if only for discovery purposes. Others are taking a “wait and see” approach for now.
“We have asked for more info, and gotten very little so far from our YouTube rep,” wrote The Vergecast’s supervising producer, Liam James, to Hot Pod in a Slack message.
The Vergecast only uses YouTube’s ads for now — but wants to eventually bake ads into its videos. The podcast only started publishing on YouTube in the beginning of the year. “Right now we make peanuts on YouTube. It’s a loss for us overall but we are looking at it as an investment,” wrote James.
Betches Media plans to put its audio-only podcasts on YouTube Music when it rolls out RSS ingestion. “We see any new distribution platform as an opportunity to reach new audiences, but as YouTube’s strategy becomes clearer, we’ll continue to evaluate and see what is right for Betches and our podcast network,” wrote David Spiegel, chief revenue officer of Betches Media, in an email. Betches currently relies on YouTube to run pre- and mid-roll ads.
“While YouTube’s decision to not allow podcasters to monetize their ads directly isn’t what we’d prefer, it is not surprising at all, at the end of the day, restricting podcaster’s ability to monetize will affect their interest in promoting the platform,” noted Spiegel.
But the challenges with YouTube Music and RSS ingestion — as well as YouTube and podcasts more broadly — go beyond just ads.
“YouTube uses a different language than us,” Bryan Barletta, the founder of podcast research group Sounds Profitable, told Hot Pod.
One example: when YouTube talks about podcasts on YouTube, what it’s talking about is a cached video that is audio-first that can have a full video component or static video. And even when YouTube adds RSS support, it won’t work as a traditional podcast player. “They’re pulling from your RSS feed, caching it, so it’s one call from YouTube and that’s it,” said Barletta.
If a podcaster wants to change the audio after an episode is published, they only need to update the audio file on their hosting platform — which automatically carries over to all podcast players. Except, it turns out, for YouTube. Podcasters will have to manually update the audio on YouTube Studio.
Listener stats are another issue with YouTube podcasts. In a video titled “Why YouTube Music ingesting podcast RSS feeds could be a huge mess,” Justin Jackson, the co-founder of hosting platform Transister.fm, highlights some of those problems. Whenever a listener presses play in a podcast player like Spotify or Overcast or Apple Podcasts, it requests the RSS feed from a hosting platform. Hosting platforms, therefore, hold a ton of data on who listeners are and where they’re coming from. But YouTube is doing something very different from other podcast players in that it will literally host the audio — instead of redirecting listeners to the hosting platform.
This also means hosting platforms won’t be able to access any of a podcast’s YouTube listener stats. While it’s true that you can see listener stats on YouTube Studio, the data offered by hosting platforms is much more detailed.
“This will make it harder for podcasters to analyze where their listeners are coming from, which episodes are most popular, and how episodes perform over time,” wrote Jackson in an email.
Lightning Round
Jon Stewart and Apple are reportedly parting ways over creative differences, including the host’s intention to cover topics such as AI and China. I’ll be curious to see what happens with the podcast, considering it performed so much better than the TV show.
Speaking of former Daily Show hosts, Trevor Noah’s podcast on Spotify is set to launch on November 9. The show, which is hosted and distributed by Megaphone, will be released across podcast platforms as part of Spotify’s shift away from exclusivity.
Audioboom is still making deals, announcing yesterday that it has signed exclusive partnerships with Girls Next Level, The Bulwark Podcast, We’re Here to Help, and Out of the Pods.
On October 26, Serial will debut The Kids of Rutherford County, a new investigative podcast that examines how a juvenile court in Tennessee abused its power. The show was produced in partnership with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio, and is hosted by WPLN reporter Meribah Knight.
Suge Knight is making a podcast from prison, and according to TMZ, it’s all about personal beef.
Triton released its September podcast ranking, with Dateline NBC ranked number one. Two caveats to the ranking, which is that NPR is excluded temporarily because of a data migration. The second is that it also does not include Spotify podcasts, so Joe Rogan (the real number one) is not on there.
Spotify reports earnings on October 24, and will be followed by Cumulus Media on October 27 and SiriusXM on October 31 (spooky!).
Food Network re-signs Kardea Brown
Food Network has signed a new exclusive deal with Delicious Miss Brown host Kardea Brown, the channel’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Friday (Oct. …
The soundtrack for Martin Scorsese’s Apple Original film “Killers of the Flower Moon,” composed by the late Robbie Robertson, is now available everywhere, the same day as the film’s theatrical release. Robertson died in August at the age of 80.
In addition to the original score he created for the film, the soundtrack includes six additional tracks featured in the film that are true to its 1920s Oklahoma backdrop. This was the eleventh collaboration between Robertson and Scorsese, who had worked together over the span of more than 40 years.
Robertson spent much of his childhood on the Six Nations Reserve through his mother’s Mohawk community; he thus had personal ties to “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which centers on the Osage Nation of the Midwest.
Before his passing, Robertson commented on his work and relationship with Scorsese: “I feel that the score is unexpected in many ways and authentic to the heart of the story. For me, it’s kind of perfection to be able to go all the way around this big circle. Starting at Six Nations when music comes along in my life, and then to my history with Martin Scorsese and all the movies leading up to ‘Killers of the Flower Moon.’ The fact that we’re getting to do a Western in our own way, you really couldn’t have written this. We’re in awe ourselves that our brotherhood has outlasted everything. We’ve been there, we’ve been through it. I am so proud of both our friendship and our work. They have been a gift in my life.”
Robertson spoke more of his creative process: “I was gathering pictures in my head of music I heard as a child at the Six Nations Indian Reserve,” he said. “My relatives are all sitting around with their instruments, and one guy would start a rhythm, and then somebody would start singing a melody to that, and it was just haunting. The feeling of the music beside you like that, humming and droning – the groove and the feel of it got under my skin and it lives there forever.”
Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ to Receive Cultural Icon and Creator Tribute At Gotham Awards
Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” will receive the Cultural Icon and Creator Tribute at this year’s Gotham Awards ceremony.
The tribute was created for this year’s awards in order to recognize cultural icons and the filmmakers responsible for bringing that icon’s story to life. In creating the award, the tribute will honor legendary composer and musician Leonard Bernstein who Cooper portrays in the film.
“With’ Maestro,’ Bradley Cooper and the film’s entire creative team have vividly brought to life the story of an almost mythical figure in popular culture,” said Jeffrey Sharp, Executive Director of The Gotham Film & Media Institute. “Cooper has crafted a powerful story that highlights the ecstatic highs and anguished lows that come with a life pursuing love, family, and art. It is our privilege to honor Bernstein, Cooper, and this spectacular film.”
The film opens in select U.S. theaters on Nov. 22 and globally on Netflix on Dec. 20.
This year’s Gothams will be the first since the organization announced the removal of the $35 million budget cap. The nominations will be announced on Oct. 24, with the ceremony scheduled for Nov. 27 in New York.
NewportFILM announces return of Cinematography Lab
NewportFILM is bringing back its Cinematography Lab, which provides creative support and mentorship to six emerging documentary cinematographers. This year’s lab will be held Oct. 20 – 22.
Robb Moss (Harvard University, Department Chair, Visual and Environmental Studies), Bing Liu (Director of Photography, All These Sons, Minding the Gap), and Alex Pritz (Director of Photography, The Territory, The First Wave) will serve as mentors. Accepted participants in this year’s program include MacPherson Christopher, Danielle Bryant, Gideon Elron, Matteo Moretti, Jonathas Nazareth and Satya Sullivan.
“I look forward to connecting this incredible trio of nonfiction filmmakers, all creative leaders in the industry, with the exceptional, New England-based talent included in this year’s cohort,” newportFILM Artistic Director Andrea van Beuren stated. “We are aspirational in our vision to provide an experience that elevates the lives and careers of our 2023 fellows.”
“The newportFILM Cinematography Lab, now in its third year, is an extraordinary opportunity for a group of talented filmmakers to gather, look at work, and imagine the visual quality and energy that cinematography can bring to a project,” Moss said. “The mood is informal, rigorous, and imbued with a love of filmmaking.”
‘American Fiction’ Trailer: Jeffrey Wright Writes a Satirical Take on the Black Experience
When a literary book agent tells his brilliant but less exciting author to write about “Black stuff,” he writes a successful novel titled “My Pafology” full of “dead beat Dads, rappers and crack.”
That’s the premise of the new comedy MGM and Orion Pictures film, “American Fiction” from writer, director and producer Cord Jefferson, and the recent winner of the Toronto Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award.
Based on the novel “Erasure” by Percival Everett, the film stars Jeffrey Wright as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison,” a frustrated novelist who is fed up with the establishment profiting from “Black” entertainment that relies on tired narratives and themes. After he writes an outlandish book making fun of the offensive tropes, his success propels him into the center of hypocrisy. The film also stars Sterling K. Brown as Monk’s gay brother, who recently came out of the closet, Issa Rae as a successful and respected Black author whom Monk resents, and Erika Alexander as his neighbor and love interest. Also among the ensemble cast are John Ortiz, Adam Brody and Leslie Uggams.
In his review, Peter Debruge of Variety wrote that “American Fiction” is about the unfairness of asking individual artists to represent the entire Black experience. As such, it’s better to read the film as a window into Monk’s white-collar reality.”
Under the production banners of MRC, T-Street Production, An Almost Infinite and 3 Arts, “American Fiction” is also produced by Jefferson, Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios and Jermaine Johnson. Oscar-nominee Rian Johnson, Ram Bergman, Percival Everett and Michael Bowes serve as executive producers.
“American Fiction” will open in select theaters on Dec. 15 before expanding on Dec. 22.
Searchlight Pictures and L.A. Times Studios Acquire ‘The Last Repair Shop,’ Co-Directed by Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot
Searchlight Pictures and the L.A. Times Studios have boarded the award-winning documentary short film “The Last Repair Shop,” the latest from Kris Bowers and Ben Proudfoot (Oscar nominees for “A Concierto is a Conversation”). The film will be released Nov. 8th on the Los Angeles Times’ YouTube channel and latimes.com as part of the paper’s Short Docs series, making it accessible globally for free.
“The Last Repair Shop” shines a light on the Los Angeles Unified School District’s instrument repair program. “Once commonplace in the United States,” the film’s synopsis explains, “today Los Angeles is by far the largest and one of the last American cities to provide free and freely repaired musical instruments to its public schoolchildren, a continuous service since 1959.” More than 800,000 student instruments make use of this unique service, critical to making the arts accessible to all.
Produced by Proudfoot’s Breakwater Studios, the documentary had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival and subsequently made its international premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize for best documentary short. Earlier this week, “The Last Repair Shop” landed two Critics Choice nominations for best short documentary and best score, and was included on DOC NYC’s 15-film short list.
“We’ve discovered such a special film with The Last Repair Shop, and we’re thrilled to be working with Ben and Kris,” stated Searchlight presidents David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield announcing the acquisition. “This is the kind of story we need right now, and we are proud to shed light on these extraordinary personal journeys.”
Adds Leslie Lindsey, director of development of L.A. Times Studios and supervising producer of L.A. Times Short Docs: “Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers are masterful directors who have captured this stunning story about the people whose craftsmanship helps keep instruments in the hands of the city’s students. We can’t wait for people to see it.”
The deal was negotiated by Searchlight Pictures’ Paul Hoffman and Chan Phung and Breakwater Studios’ Sam Widdoes.
Eva Longoria to Receive Icon Award at National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Impact Awards Gala
Eva Longoria will receive the Icon Award at the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s annual Impact Awards Gala on Oct. 27. The event, held at the Vibiana in Downtown Los Angeles, “honors the incredible contributions of Latine individuals creating a more inclusive society.”
Longoria was named of one of Variety’s 10 Directors to Watch this year. She recently directed the 2023 drama “Flamin’ Hot,” about the Mexican American janitor who came up with the idea for Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Additionally, Longoria is co-founder of the Latino Victory Fund as well as Poderistas. She recently teamed up with entertainment executive and entrepreneur Cris Abrego to start Hyphenate Media Group, a media holding company and content studio which intends to offer greater financial participation for creators while spotlighting inclusive stories.
Additional honorees at the Impact Awards Gala include Aarón Sánchez, Ángel Manuel Soto, Eugenio Derbez, Gina Torres, Jharrel Jerome, Jessica Sarowitz, Julissa Prado and Miguel.
Francia Raisa and MJ Acosta-Ruiz will host the event.
Ava DuVernay’s ‘Origin’ To Release in New York and Los Angeles for One Week Only
Ava DuVernay’s film “Origin,” starring Oscar-nominated Aunjanue Ellis Taylor (“King Richard”), will have a one-week exclusive engagement in New York and Los Angeles starting Dec. 8. DuVernay serves as writer, director and producer.
Adapted from Isabel Wilkerson’s bestselling book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” the story follows journalist Isabel (Ellis-Taylor) as she traces “the global phenomenon of caste and its dark influence on society,” as per the teaser poster. The film previously premiered at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on Sep. 6.
“Origin” will be in theaters in select cities starting Jan. 19.
Netflix Announces New Kevin Hart and Chris Rock Documentary
Netflix has announced its new documentary, “Kevin Hart and Chris Rock: Headliners Only,” and released an accompanying teaser trailer.
Directed by Rashidi Harper (“Hip Hop Uncovered”), the documentary follows the two comedians on tour together during a week of sold-out shows in New York City. As per the film’s description, the film will “give audiences a behind the scenes glimpse into the lives of two comedy titans.” Viewers can expect to see Hart and Rock “give first hand accounts of their early lives, struggles, triumphs and their unbreakable brotherhood.”
“This is a story about two separate journeys, but somehow align and end up at the same intersection at the top,” Hart says in the teaser. The video clip sees the two on stage together, hugging each other and participating in a joint interview.
“Kevin Hart and Chris Rock: Headliners Only” premieres Dec. 12, streaming on Netflix.
Camp Hideout on set: Christopher Lloyd (Falco), Sean Olson (director), Corbin Bleu (Jake)Credit: Mark Levine
‘Camp Hideout’ cast and crew Credit: Mark Levine
