After partnering with Leica for a limited run of special edition Q2 compact cameras earlier this year, Disney has now courted Fujifilm with an even more exclusive project; 100 Disney-themed X100V compact cameras, complete with branded accessories that mark the 100th anniversary of Disney (and Fujifilm’s 55th anniversary).
You can’t buy a Fujifilm X100V in 2023 and you’d be even more fortunate (or hell-bent) to bag one of these Disney-themed versions; walk-in preorders in three stores across Hong Kong started on 13 July 2023, with a release date of 29 July 2023.
The Fujifilm Disney project website reveals the list price for one of the 100 cameras, each equipped with a unique serial number, is HK$14,999. That price converts to around $1,918 / £1,465 / AU$2,807 – not a bad deal for one of the best compact cameras in 2023, plus some of the proceeds will go to the Hong Kong Community Chest to support its children and youth services.
What’s in the box?
Well… a deluxe wooden box itself is part of the package, and inside you’ll find the Disney-themed X100V that is functionally identical to an original model. It’s only the modified aesthetics that are new; the monochrome Disney Mickey and Friends Collection design over the faux-leather finish, plus a Disney 100 and unique serial number etched onto the camera’s top plate.
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(Image credit: Fujifilm)
(Image credit: Fujifilm )
(Image credit: Fujifilm)
(Image credit: Fujifilm)
(Image credit: Fujifilm)
Additional accessories include a thumb rest, camera strap, and leather half-case, all with Disney 100 branding. Considering the asking price is similar to a regular X100V, it’s actually a bit of a bargain, and the design is kind of fun too. It’s also novel that a brand other than Leica is running a limited edition of one of its coveted cameras. I’ve always fancied going to Hong Kong… now how much are the flights…
Judy Solomon, the former six-term president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, died Friday morning. She was 91 years old.
The Golden Globe Awards, of which the HFPA serves as parent company, announced the news Saturday. They credited Solomon with overseeing the Globes’ growth and for innovating many of the awards ceremony’s best-known features.
“We are incredibly saddened by the loss of our dear friend and colleague, Judy Solomon. The loss is profound, but we take this opportunity to celebrate her incredible achievements in helping evolve the Golden Globes into the world-spanning award it is today,” current HFPA president Helen Hoehne said in a statement. “We are grateful for her support and leadership during her 67 years of membership with the HFPA.”
Hoehne continued: “Not only did Judy love the HFPA, but she also loved Hollywood. She loved the people she met, the executives she collaborated with and the rich tapestry of films and television that audiences around the world enjoyed.”
This article contains spoilers for “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 2. All interviews with actors were conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike.
It’s not summer without “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
Prime Video’s hit teen drama has returned for Season 2. The first three episodes, which dropped on July 13, re-introduced its rabid fanbase to the world of 16-year-old Belly Conklin (Lola Tung), who spends summers with her family and friends at an idyllic house in Cousins Beach. Caught in a love triangle between two brothers, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad Fisher (Chris Briney), Belly navigates romance and friendship — and, in Season 2, grief, for the first time.
A New York Timesbestselling series written by Jenny Han, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” debuted on Prime Video in 2022, where it became the No. 1 show on the streaming service in its debut weekend. Han is also the co-showrunner of the series, alongside Gabrielle Stanton in Season 1 and Sarah Kucserka in Season 2. Besides Tung, Casalegno and Briney, the cast also includes Sean Kaufman as Steven, Belly’s brother; Jackie Chung as Laurel, Belly’s mother; Rachel Blanchard as Susannah, Jeremiah and Conrad’s mother; and Rain Spencer as Taylor, Belly’s best friend.
The Season 1 finale included the reveal that Susannah has been re-diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. But Season 2, which takes place about a year after Season 1, almost immediately sets the tone by revealing that Susannah died during the school year, leaving Belly, Jeremiah, Conrad and their families grieving in the wake of her death.
In addition to mourning Susannah, Belly is also grappling with a breakup with Conrad. Season 1 ended with the two kissing on the beach, but through flashbacks, we learn that the two decided not to pursue a relationship right away. Over the course of the school year, however, they spend more time around each other and eventually travel to Cousins Beach in the winter, where they witness snowfall by the ocean. This is a fan-favorite scene that first appeared in the book; however, for the television show, Han added one very crucial scene that doesn’t exist in her original novels. In the second episode, it’s revealed that Belly loses her virginity to Conrad by the fireplace in the house at Cousins Beach after the snow at the beach scene.
“I felt like that’s where Belly was in her journey,” Han tells Variety. “These two characters were very much in love and had known each other their whole lives. I felt like they had really been through something together, and we had been with Belly through many first-times. It was important for the audience to be with her for that one.”
“I thought no matter what happened in the future, this will always be a moment that she shares with her first love,” she adds. “I approached the show in some ways as if I was writing a story in this moment in time. That’s what I would have done if I was writing it today.”
When asked about filming the scene, Tung says that she and Briney talked with an intimacy coordinator individually and together on set while filming the scene.
“I felt very safe in that environment,” she says. “They were trying to do everything that they could to make us feel safe and and make it as easy as possible for us to do our jobs… I feel very grateful that we were able to check in with each other and to bring the scene to life in a really beautiful way.”
Briney concurs, saying that there was an “intense focus on comfort and making sure everybody’s comfortable.”
“It’s a closed set situation,” he says, adding that the sex scenes are generally “very choreographed.”
Belly makes this decision, Tung says, because “she is really in love” with Conrad.
“For her in that moment in time, it is the the right thing and something that she wants to do and something that I think they both want,” she adds. “So it feels right to them. They both have a lot of love for each other, and they feel safe together too. So it’s familiar, and it’s comfortable, but also new and exciting for them.”
As for Conrad, Briney says, “He’s really terrified. He maybe has never cared about something more in his life and is afraid of ruining it or overstepping or being insensitive. He’s in uncharted territory of his own in how much he cares about it and that scares him.”
This moment of intimacy is embedded in the grief that Belly experiences in the aftermath of their breakup, which happens on her prom night. Conrad, devastated by his mother’s deteriorating condition, retreats into himself and pushes everyone away, leaving Belly by herself (and without a corsage) at her own prom. Then, at Susannah’s funeral, Belly makes the situation worse by lashing out at Conrad, telling him, “Go to hell.”
So when Jeremiah calls her weeks later to tell her that his brother has gone missing, Belly knows it’s her shot at redemption and, possibly, healing. When the two set off for Cousins in Jeremiah’s red Jeep, we understand that not only are they searching for Conrad, but they’re also chasing the chance to repair the relationships that formed them so deeply.
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 2 episodes drop weekly on Prime Video through August 18.
Existential hand-wringing has always been part of Hollywood’s personality. But the crisis in which the entertainment capital now finds itself is different.
Instead of one unwelcome disruption to face — the VCR boom of the 1980s, for instance — or even overlapping ones (streaming, the pandemic), the movie and television business is being buffeted on a dizzying number of fronts. And no one seems to have any solutions.
On Friday, roughly 160,000 unionized actors went on strike for the first time in 43 years, saying they were fed up with exorbitant pay for entertainment moguls and worried about not receiving a fair share of the spoils of a streaming-dominated future. They joined 11,500 already striking screenwriters, who walked out in May over similar concerns, including the threat of artificial intelligence. Actors and writers had not been on strike at the same time since 1960.
“The industry that we once knew — when I did ‘The Nanny’ — everybody was part of the gravy train,” Fran Drescher, the former sitcom star and the president of the actors’ union, said while announcing the walkout. “Now it’s a walled-in vacuum.”
At the same time, Hollywood’s two traditional businesses, the box office and television channels, are both badly broken.
This was the year when moviegoing was finally supposed to bounce back from the pandemic, which closed many theaters for months on end. At last, cinemas would reclaim a position of cultural urgency.
But ticket sales in the United States and Canada for the year to date (about $4.9 billion) are down 21 percent from the same period in 2019, according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Blips of hope, including strong sales for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” have been blotted out by disappointing results for expensive films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Elemental,” “The Flash,” “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” and, to a lesser extent, “The Little Mermaid” and “Fast X.”
The number of movie tickets sold globally may reach 7.2 billion in 2027, according to a recent report from the accounting firm PwC. Attendance totaled 7.9 billion in 2019.
It’s a slowly dying business, but it’s at least better than a quickly dying one. Fewer than 50 million homes will pay for cable or satellite television by 2027, down from 64 million today and 100 million seven years ago, according to PwC. When it comes to traditional television, “the world has forever changed for the worse,” Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson, wrote in a note to clients on Thursday.
Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Global and WarnerBros. Discovery have relied for decades on television channels for fat profit growth. The end of that era has resulted in stock-price malaise. Disney shares have fallen 55 percent from their peak in March 2021. Paramount Global, which owns channels like MTV and CBS, has experienced an 83 percent decline over the same period.
On Thursday, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, put the sale of the company’s “noncore” channels, including ABC and FX, on the table. He called the decline in traditional television “a reality we have to come to grips with.”
In other words, it’s over.
And then there is streaming. For a time, Wall Street was mesmerized by the subscriber-siphoning potential of services like Disney+, Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock, so the big Hollywood companies poured money into building online viewing platforms. Netflix was conquering the world. Amazon had arrived in Hollywood determined to make inroads, as had the ultra-deep-pocketed Apple. If the older entertainment companies wanted to remain competitive — not to mention relevant — there was only one direction to run.
“You now have, really in control, tech companies who haven’t a care or clue, so to speak, about the entertainment business — it’s not a pejorative, it’s just the reality,” Barry Diller, the media veteran, said by phone this past week, referring to Amazon and Apple.
“For each of these companies,” he added, “their minor business, not their major business, is entertainment. And yet, because of their size and influence, their minor interests are paramount in making any decisions about the future.”
A little over a year ago, Netflix reported a subscriber loss for the first time in a decade, and Wall Street’s interest swiveled. Forget subscribers. Now we care about profits — at least when it comes to the old-line companies, because their traditional businesses (box office and channels) are in trouble.
To make services like Disney+, Paramount+ and Max (formerly HBO Max) profitable, their parent companies have slashed billions of dollars in costs and eliminated more than 10,000 jobs. Studio executives also put the brakes on ordering new television series last year to rein in costs.
WarnerBros. Discovery has said its streaming business, anchored by Max, will be profitable in 2023. Disney has promised profitability by September 2024, while Paramount had not forecast a date, except to say peak losses will occur this year, according to Rich Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm.
Giving in to union demands, which would threaten streaming profitability anew, is not something the companies will do without a fight.
“In the short term, there will be pain,” said Tara Kole, a founding partner of JSSK, an entertainment law firm that counts Emma Stone, Adam McKay and Halle Berry as clients. “A lot of pain.”
Every indication points to a long and destructive standoff. Agents who have worked in show business for 40 years said the anger surging through Hollywood exceeded anything they had ever seen.
“Straight out of ‘Les Miz’” was how one longtime executive described the high-drama, us-against-them mood in a text to a reporter. Photos circulating online from this past week’s Allen & Company Sun Valley media conference, the annual “billionaires’ summer camp” attended by Hollywood’s haves, inflamed the situation.
On a Paramount Pictures picket line on Friday, Ms. Drescher attacked Mr. Iger, something few people in Hollywood would dare to do without the cloak of anonymity. She criticized his pay package (his performance-based contract allows for up to $27 million annually, including stock awards, which is middle of the road for entertainment chief executives) and likened him and other Hollywood moguls to “land barons of a medieval time.”
“It’s so obvious that he has no clue as to what is really happening on the ground,” she added. Mr. Iger had told CNBC on Thursday that the demands by the two unions were “just not realistic.”
In the coming weeks, studios will probably cancel lucrative long-term deals with writers (and some actor-producers) by virtue of the force majeure clause in their contracts, which kick in on the 60th or 90th day of a strike, depending on how the agreements are structured. The force majeure clause states that when unforeseeable circumstances prevent someone from fulfilling a contract, the studios can cancel the deal without paying a penalty.
Eventually, contracts with the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, as the actors’ union is known, will be hammered out.
I teach students in my race, sports and culture class that the most significant campaigns for racial equality in sports consistently have reflected the overall quest for civil rights in the United States.
To see how Black athletes and coaches have for more than a century challenged social norms and values, one can watch many films made over the years that focus on their inspiring stories.
This quote may be from the movie “Woodlawn,” however, it easily could have been said in any film involving race and sports: “When you play for yourself, you can be great, but when you play for something higher than yourself — that’s when something extraordinary can happen.”
Which brings us to “Black Ice,” a must-see film that opened in theaters nationwide Friday. It’s not only about the challenges and triumphs of Black players, both past and present, within the predominantly white sport of hockey, but also the struggle we all share even talking about race.
Here are 25 other films that focus on Black athletes and the desire for a greater societal good. The list prioritizes true stories, excluding films such as “Bring The Noise,” “Creed,” “He Got Game,” “Love & Basketball” and “White Men Can’t Jump.” I also left off some “white savior” films such as “Cool Runnings,” “Radio” and “The Blind Side.”
The following list is far from scientific. Key factors: Did it make me cry a little, laugh a lot or swell with pride? It’s likely the ones at the top did all three.
After casting Emilia Clarke in the MCU, her character in Secret Invasion has been completely butchered before even being given a chance, most evidently in Episode 3’s cliffhanger twist.
Warning – This article contains spoilers for Secret Invasion.
After barely getting to know Talos‘ daughter, Kingsley Ben-Adir’s Gravik shot her down, leaving her (supposedly) dead.
But why was she killed?
Forcing Emilia Clarke’s G’iah Death for Shock Value
Marvel Studios
Since the beginning, G’iah has been lazily written as a follower of the new Skrull regime, led by Gravik. Believing that Nick Fury and Carol Danvers betrayed them and they’re set on taking Earth from humans.
G’iah hasn’t been loyal, to anyone seemingly, caught in the middle of a conflict that she’s unsure about because of family ties.
During Episode 3, G’iah was inside the Skrull bunker, assisting her father Talos to stop a missile launch.
Following the betrayal (the episode is called “Betrayed” to really make the point clear), G’iah fled the scene quickly on a motorcycle.
It’s not hard to imagine the next scene was written similarly to this: Gravik arrives suddenly in a car, with little explanation…because he’s a villain.
Marvel Studios
Right place. Right time. Why? Because.
It’s sad to think of what this show was expected to be, and the great performances that are given on a weekly basis, just for some of the script to appear paper thin.
The shoe-horned death was clearly inserted solely for the purpose of shock value, something Secret Invasion is a big fan of.
Three of the four episodes of Secret Invasion have concluded with a death.
Marvel Studios
While Marvel Studios could’ve done something interesting like introduce G’iah’s human counterpart (possibly Abigail Brand) in the MCU, Emilia Clarke’s Skrull character was just quickly brought back to life.
As seen at the beginning of Episode 4, G’iah (for reasons unknown besides predicting her own death) experimented on herself to become a Super Skrull, powered by the healing Extremis.
This unsurprising and uninspired cold open was simply too predictable.
G’iah’s ‘pump fake’ style death is an example of a root issue with the series. An attempt to be thrilling, mysterious, and cool, but the execution falls flat.
The shocking death of Maria Hill at the end of Episode 1 was impactful and meaningful for the entire MCU, but it shouldn’t have become a trend.
Why Should Audiences Care About G’iah?
Marvel Studios
The Super Skrulls now seem invincible, following G’iah’s swift recovery after being shot in the chest, and witnessing Gravik’s face recover after being shot by Nick Fury.
In all likelihood, it looks like G’iah will be a vital piece of how Fury and the human race can end up on top by the end of Episode 6.
If Gravik fails, what was the point? So many characters have fallen, risen, and not even been themselves. But what’s getting lost is the root conflict between Gravik and Fury.
G’iah’s merry-go-round of allegiances has been mishandled and doesn’t give much for fans to care about. Following a “death” midseason, it all but confirms she’s safe to survive the rest of the show.
Stakes are low heading into the penultimate episode of this “event series”, can they turn the ship around? What will it take for audiences to care about Clarke’s new MCU character? Will we meet her human lookalike?
He’ll become one of nearly a dozen actors who have taken on DC’s most iconic superhero, giving fans a much different take on the Kryptonian native in the reboot that will immediately follow up on Cavill’s Superman.
In Superman: Legacy, Superman will be “joining a world in which superheroes already exist” rather than the way Cavill was the only superhero, that the audience knew of, in his own universe during Man of Steel (other than the other Kryptonians that came to Earth).
James Gunn has since justified the story decision to include other superheroes on Instagram.
Responding to a comment questioning the movie’s focus on Superman, Gunn explained that he would be unable to fully explore the superhero side of Clark Kent’s life without the presence of other powered beings:
“Superman is a man of two worlds: Clark with Lois, Jimmy, and Perry – and Superman with his meta human compatriots. How could I tell a full story about Clark/Superman without including all areas of his life?”
Seeing Superman start off in a world full of heroes already will be quite the change of pace from what Henry Cavill saw, as his Superman was the only hero actually utilized in the first DCEU solo movie.
Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb, Xbox’s Director of Programming and the long-standing spokesperson for Microsoft’s gaming business, has announced he’s leaving the company after 22 years.
In an announcement shared to his social media accounts on Friday, Hryb thanked fans and colleagues and said he looked forward to the “next chapter” of his career.
“After 20 incredible years, I have decided to take a step back and work on the next chapter of my career,” he wrote. “As I take a moment and think about all we have done together, I want to thank the millions of gamers around the world who have included me as part of their lives.
“Also, thanks to Xbox team members for trusting me to have a direct dialogue with our customers. The future is bright for Xbox and as a gamer, I am excited to see the evolution.”
Hryb confirmed that Xbox’s official podcast would be taking a hiatus and return at a later date. He’s yet to confirm what his next career move will be.
Director James Cameron responded today to rumors that he’s in talks on a film about the ill-fated voyage of the Titan submersible, which sank attempting to visit the Titanic wreckage.
Five people died when the submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion.
“I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually,” Cameron wrote on Twitter. “But I need to now. I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”
OceanGate was the expedition company behind the TItan voyage. It has since canceled all ongoing operations and scrubbed its social media.
Cameron was the director of the Titanic drama that won 11 Academy Awards in 1997, including Best Picture and Best Director.
I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now. I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.
When Die Hard hit theaters 35 years ago, it was like Christmas in July. The action classic, directed by John McTiernan and starring Bruce Willis, established a new standard for popcorn blockbusters when it opened wide on July 22, 1988. Willis’ leading man status was forever cemented in his role as New York City detective John McClane, the underdog everyman pitted against thieves who take over an L.A. high-rise on one incendiary Christmas Eve.
Gabriel Iglesias on his first gig, “Die Hard,” and “Wednesday”
Die Hard spawned a franchise, but the first movie still stands as a monument to Hollywood’s heyday of director-driven, star-powered attractions—and with its yuletide setting, it remains an unexpected holiday favorite. For Die Hard screenwriter Jeb Stuart, the secret of the film’s evergreen appeal is in both its craftsmanship and its heart. Take away the guns, exploding rooftops, and profane cowboy catchphrases, and Die Hard is about a husband who wants to make up with his wife. “It’s about a 30-year-old guy who should have said something to his wife before something really bad happens,” Stuart told A.V. Club in a recent phone interview. “It’s a family story.”
A novel approach to a movie adaptation
Cover of Roderick Thorpe’s Nothing Lasts Forever (Graymalkin Media), Bruce Willis in Die Hard (20th Century Studios)Graphic: AVClub
Officially an adaptation of Roderick Thorp’s 1979 noir novel Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard follows roughly the same plot with a few key differences. In the book, sixty-something protagonist John Leland must save his grown daughter Stephanie, an oil executive, from terrorists who seek vengeance against her employers. Spoilers: Stephanie falls to her death, and the book’s ending implies Leland also dies from his various wounds.
Die Hard was born out of Fox’s rights to Thorp’s book, which were in place before Thorp even wrote it. Stuart was an up-and-coming screenwriter with both a project at Columbia and a four-picture deal at Disney. Neither was bringing in enough income for Stuart to support his wife and two children. With a six-week period to fill with work, Stuart’s agent put him in contact with Lloyd Levin, a producer at 20th Century Fox, who hired Stuart to adapt Nothing Lasts Forever. “I would have taken the Dead Sea Scrolls if they offered it to me,” Stuart jokes.
Stuart liked Thorp’s book, but found it too grim to faithfully turn into a Hollywood movie. In the weeks he had to finish a draft, he struggled to crack the story, straining to reconcile the visceral nihilism of Thorp’s book with the demands of a summer crowd-pleaser. The effort took a toll on Stuart and his marriage. “I was burning the candle at both ends,” Stuart says. “I was working on the Columbia project from 8 [a.m.] until 6 [p.m.]. I’d come home, put my kids to bed, have dinner with my wife, and go back to Burbank at whatever hour [to write Die Hard].”
An inspiration that almost killed him
Jeb Stuart in 2022Photo: Charley Gallay (Getty Images)
One night, Stuart got into a fight over a trivial matter with his wife, the late Anne Bryant Stuart, who supported her husband through grad school and his dream of becoming a screenwriter. Stuart knew she was “completely in the right,” but his pride still had him storm off and drive down L.A’s Ventura Freeway. “It didn’t take me five minutes to go, ‘She’s right, and I’m wrong.’”
Before Stuart could turn around, he saw the cars ahead of him violently swerving. “There was a Frigidaire box, and I went over it at 65 miles an hour,” he says. Mercifully, it was empty. But with his heart racing, he pulled over on the freeway and saw the Century City skyline—where Nakatomi Plaza would stand—glistening in the distance.
“I suddenly knew what Nothing Lasts Forever was,” he says. The protagonist doesn’t lose his daughter—he has to save his wife. That night, Stuart typed through 30 pages. “Once that was in place, it was easy to take what Thorp had in the novel and build it out.” Ironically, this kept him from doing what actually had to be done: apologize to his wife. “I made the mistake of not calling as soon as I got to the studio,” he says. “She was angry.”
Stuart believes this point of view underscores everything about Die Hard. McClane is only driven to stop Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber because he just wants to talk to his wife, Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), one more time. “I always saw John McClane and [his wife] Holly as a very personal thing,” he says. It’s also why he sides with audiences who champion it as a Christmas movie. “Ever since I pulled over on [the freeway, Die Hard was] a family story. It’s that idea of bringing the family together for the holidays,” he says. “I wanted everybody to be okay in the end and off to new beginnings.”
(Stuart recalls Fox producer Lloyd Levin wanted Die Hard to end with snow, California climate be damned. Stuart stopped short of writing snow into the movie, but he still granted Levin his holiday wish. The torn-up bonds and office papers floating down Nakatomi, he says, “is L.A. snow.”)
‘Don’t hire the guy that just won the Oscar’
Director John McTiernan on the set of Die HardScreenshot: YouTube
Stuart doesn’t take all the credit for Die Hard. After he submitted his draft and started work elsewhere, writer Stephen de Souza came aboard for rewrites. Bruce Willis was cast after an exhausting process that first courted actors like Clint Eastwood (who, Stuart says, didn’t understand its humor). Willis knew he was no one’s first choice, but he wanted to prove he was the right choice.
Similarly, John McTiernan was fresh from Predator and wanted to prove he could direct the hell out of a movie sans aliens shooting lasers. “McTiernan was enormously hungry,” Stuart says. “He had done Predator, but felt the effects got all the credit. He wanted to do a movie where the director [got the credit]. Everybody brought on wanted to kick the doors down. That’s how you get successful movies. Don’t hire the guy that just won the Oscar, you want the guy dying for it.”
Adds Stuart, “I love working with people who aren’t just punching the clock. No one was punching the clock on Die Hard.”
Thirty-five years later, Die Hard is still the gift that keeps on giving. It explodes like the 4th of July while radiating the warmth of a Christmas spectacular. For Stuart, it is a reminder of his first wife, and the importance of opening up to those you love in the time you have left. “That’s why the origin story [of Die Hard] means so much to me,” he says. “Die Hard wouldn’t be Die Hard without a refrigerator box on the freeway.”
If, in her 12 years of visiting the Royal Box in SW19, Kate Middleton has tended to put a royal spin on Wimbledon whites, she surprised style watchers this year by dressing to match the Centre Court in various shades of green over the course of the championship. To catch up with Emma Raducanu on the second day of the tournament, the Princess of Wales appeared in a minty Balmain blazer with contrasting white buttons, upping the ’80s vibes by pairing it with a pleated white skirt.
For the Women’s Final on July 15, meanwhile, she selected a $615 Self-Portrait dress in a tennis ball green shade to watch Markéta Vondroušová and Ons Jabeur face off. (For what it’s worth, tennis balls are technically classed as “optic yellow” by the International Tennis Federation, a fact large swathes of the internet has taken issue with.) Pinned to her lapel? A bow in the tournament’s signature dark green and purple colors.
Getty Images
The Princess is a confirmed fan of 2-in-1 designs like the above, particularly those by Self-Portrait’s Han Chong. Made to appear like belted jackets paired with midi-skirts, the looks are, in fact, dresses—making styling a cinch while still delivering maximum polish. In the last few years, Kate Middleton has worn a monochrome version to reopen the National Portrait Gallery, a blush-toned one to visit the Royal College of Midwives with Princess Anne, and a cream bouclé iteration for the Platinum Party at the Palace.
The Princess of Wales wearing Self-Portrait to the opening of the National Portrait Gallery
Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images
The Princess of Wales wearing Self-Portrait in 2022
Karwai Tang
“I love dressing the royals,” Chong—who co-hosted the British Vogue X Self-Portrait Summer Party with Edward Enninful and Emily Ratajkowski earlier this week—has previously said. “It’s a positive thing that women now have more choices than just high street or designer. It’s a good message to young girls that princesses wear £300 dresses to big events. It makes me proud.” Happily, that list of big events now includes Wimbledon.
This article was originally published byBritish Vogue.
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero star and voice director Chris Sabat about the Dragon Ball Super movie. Sabat discussed playing both Piccolo and Vegeta and how early dubs were handled differently from modern dubs. The film is now available to stream on Crunchyroll.
“The Red Ribbon Army was once destroyed by Son Goku. Individuals who carry on its spirit have created the ultimate Androids, Gamma 1 and Gamma 2,” reads the official synopsis for the film. “These two Androids call themselves ‘Super Heroes.’ They start attacking Piccolo and Gohan … What is the New Red Ribbon Army’s objective? In the face of approaching danger, it is time to awaken, Super Hero!”
Christopher Sabat: It was phenomenal. I could not believe it. I remember there was a moment when the producers at Crunchyroll brought me in to work on the film. It was very, very hush-hush. I literally had to sign an NDA within 15 feet in that building, and we watched the preliminary version of it on a producer’s laptop in a locked room, with security guards outside. I could not believe what I was watching. It was the most incredible way to present Piccolo: put him in a situation where he doesn’t have Goku and Vegeta to rely on and he has to use his own strategy to figure out how to make things happen. It was not only wonderful from a power-up standpoint to finally see him get an upgrade that he’s desperately needed for about 20 years.
It was really cool to see his relationship with Gohan and his family. That was probably my favorite thing about it, to realize that he’s very, very close with them — I mean, he’s a family member practically. They rely on him to pick up Pan. If you recall the beginning scene where Videl calls him and she’s like, “Can you pick up Pan again? I’ll get you one of those stuffed animals.” He’s like, “I don’t like stuffed animals.” And there’s a whole table full of them in the corner. He’s clearly spent a lot of time with their family and I loved that part of the film.
I love that the relationship gets explored so wonderfully in the movie. My buddy just saw the movie for the first time and his first reaction was “Piccolo’s not Gohan’s stepdad, he’s the dad that stepped up.”
That’s so true! [Laugh]. It’s so true. Goku gets a lot of criticism, even amongst the comparisons between Goku and Vegeta as to who’s the better dad. But when people are arguing, I usually step in and say, “Actually guys, Piccolo’s the best dad because he chose it and he chose Gohan.” In many ways, Gohan saved Piccolo just as much as Piccolo saved Gohan, not just in this movie, but in the whole course of the series. If it weren’t for Gohan, Piccolo would probably still be evil. Gohan sort of unlocked this goodness that was deep within Piccolo, and I think that changed him forever. That’s why some people really love Piccolo, just like they love Vegeta for his transformation.
That’s a really wonderful read. This movie really spoke to the strength Dragon Ball’s ensemble cast that you can have Goku in the background pretty much for the entire movie, not involved in like the core plotline, and it’s still such an interesting movie and it was still so well received. Can you speak to how strong that cast is in that series that you can have these secondary characters that aren’t Goku and still just deliver such a satisfying movie?
The great part is that calling in any of the legacy cast members … everybody came back. Krillin/Sonny Strait was back, Gohan — played by Kyle Hebert, and Goten and Kid Trunks — everyone was played by their original actors. When you bring those guys in, it’s super easy. They’re a primed machine that are ready to go. They know their characters. You don’t have to explain anything, it’s just literally playing in the booth when you get to work with them. A beautiful thing was, now that we’re at this point in Dragon Ball history where it’s been around for so long and Crunchyroll is so established as a dubbing studio, our talent pool has grown just exponentially from 1997 to now. There were 15 people on the cast list I could call in those original days.
Now there’s thousands of actors. Being able to pick from a really broad casting pool of really talented, skilled actors to play these other characters. I mean, Dr. Hedo was played by the voice of Tanjiro in Demon Slayer — his name is Zach Aguilar. And we got Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario. I saw that Chris Pratt was going to play him in the movie, and I was like, “Well, if he can’t be in a Mario movie, then he’ll be in a Dragon Ball movie instead!” I happened to know Charles from going to conventions, but we had Zeno Robinson and Aleks Le playing the two Gammas, and they were wonderful. They were great. I got to call in these people that are just ringers in the industry, like really strong, very powerful actors in their own respective fields as well.
So it’s very cool to be able to call them in to not only just work with them on a show and be able to absorb their talent into this experience, but it was really fun directing someone like Zeno, who I would explain something and he’d be like, “Bro, you don’t have to tell me. I know Dragon Ball! I grew up on Dragon Ball! I love this stuff!” And it reminded me how much I had to explain to people at the beginning, because Dragon Ball … no one knew about it in those early days. Now I’m working with actors who grew up watching it. So it’s the coolest thing to bring in people who are really versed on the series and know how to inject themselves into the series in the right way. I know when they got to those screaming moments at the end, everybody went above and beyond because they know that’s what happens in Dragon Ball.
I love that. You’re speaking to your role as the voice director and it’s so awesome to see this mixture of old and new in this movie, but when you get to bring back these people you’ve worked with for so many years now, how joyous is it that you all get to keep on voicing these characters? That these actors are still coming back and that you have such great work to do. It’s not a retread — this is a very fresh movie. We’re seeing character development. Just how special is that?
It’s incredible. These actors … I basically have grown up with them. I’ve spent the last 25 years with a lot of these guys. They’re like brothers and sisters, in many ways, to me and it’s always a fun reunion. For instance, working on Gohan’s moments at the end of this feature that I won’t spoil for anyone … it was like working with a really close friend to try and make something great. I didn’t have to explain to Kyle how Gohan was supposed to feel in that moment. We just got to really dive and granularly think about the best possible way to portray him in those moments. We were both working and both locked-in and both just laser focused on trying to make that final scene with Gohan otherworldly.
And when we got it right, there was hardly any oxygen in the room, because we both inhaled so deeply that it was just so effective and such a powerful moment in the movie that we knew we finally got it right. These actors are incredible. They’re been doing this forever and they’re still doing it. Movies like Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero are amazing because many of the years that we were working on Dragon Ball, we were regurgitating a lot of the same content, right? Like a lot of the video games way back in the early days were repeating the storyline. But I love it when there’s new story to be told and I’m very excited to see if we get some more Dragon Ball Super in the future too.
You mentioned earlier just how overdue this kind of power-up for Piccolo was. What was your reaction when you saw the Orange Piccolo transformation for the first time?
Oh dude, when Piccolo floats up, all hulked out, I screamed at the top of my lungs — and I think everyone in the theater did too. It was such a cool moment, that crazy pan up and he is looking all beefed out. It was incredible. This is the Piccolo we’ve been needing forever. I’d be curious if he could run with Goku and Vegeta now, considering that this upgrade was pretty intense.
Hopefully we’ll see that explored in the future. Vegeta is in the background here, but he has some really important character moments. It’s shows how far he’s come that he’s meditating. We’ve just seen Vegeta change over so much time and I really like that we’ve seen more humor with him, like with the Bingo song. How has it been, watching that transformation for Vegeta? He goes from the ultimate bad guy to being this really fun dad.
He does, but what’s cool is he still gets to be the ultimate bad guy. He’s more of an ultimate badass now. I love that he has this full range of character and emotion and development throughout the series. I love that in Super Hero, you see him meditating, chilling out, explaining to Goku that instead reaching for more intense, more angry, more screaming, more rage, the idea was to pull back entirely. It’s interesting, if you really want to get deep into kind of old Dragon Ball dubbing lore, Dragon Ball was, in its original form, back when you may have been watching it on Toonami or whatever, it was edited so that it’d be more appropriate for audiences and the writers then were injecting a little bit of stuff into those scripts.
At that point the writers were adding some things about Goku letting go and that’s when he finally becomes a Super Saiyan, or something like that. And same with Vegeta, when the original translations were more along the lines of Vegeta harnessing rage. So I think at this point, for them to kind of get back to where that was, that was kind of weirdly prophetic. It’s looking like maybe the more relaxed you are, the more focused you are, the more zen-like you are, the more powerful you can become. I’m really interested to see where that goes later on.
Yeah, it’s where in the storylines take place [that] is a little nebulous to me. This appears as if it happens perhaps maybe right before … Super is supposed to technically happen right before that final tournament in Dragon Ball Z, to my knowledge. But it’s interesting how these movies somehow either transcend the series and doing things that aren’t happening actually in the Dragon Ball Super series or in the manga, or they become the set-up for what will become a series. So I’m interested to see what they do with Vegeta. I’m interested to see what they do with Broly. They seem to be priming him to be kind of a third Musketeer in this trio, this fighting universe. So we’ll see what happens with him, too.
You worked on the Case Closed dub and Detective Conan is my favorite anime. So I was curious if you had any memories of working on that show,? The dub was really fun because it added a little extra flair to the characters and the extra personality really shined through.
Yeah, that was definitely one of … I’d say Case Closed may have been one of the last examples of Fundation making changes to the substance of the translation to make sure it was entertaining for audiences, because that show definitely had an ability to maybe cater to a younger audience, too. So I think they were trying to harness some of that as well. So that might have been one of the last shows that they did that with. And it was very special too. It was a difficult adaptation, I know, because a lot of it had to do with kanji and interpreting text and things like that, which you had to work your way around. Some of it had to do with stuff that was culturally irrelevant in America — people wouldn’t know what it is. It was also interesting because Detective Conan — what was his name? Jimmy?
Oh, Jimmy Kudo?
Jimmy Kudo, that’s right. His parents, I guess, live in America, which is weird because they kind of treated Detective Conan as if it was happening in America too. So yeah, I loved that show. I think that is such a fun time because … it was almost like One Piece where you got to always bring in new people all the time and a lot of new actors were found in recording that series.
Speaking of that era of making changes, the ultimate example of that is the Shin-Chan dub, which was just so westernized and over-the-top and hilarious. As you were saying, you don’t really see that sort of creative license within the dubs anymore. It’s more of a straight adaptation, and there’s obviously pros and cons to each and it’s great to see the original work, but it’s kind of fun from a looking back perspective to have the original and then see this other version that took these different things. You can enjoy these episodes in two completely different ways. I’m curious about your thoughts on how we’ve gotten far more faithful as the dubbing has continued.
I think the faithful dub is I think what people — if you interviewed everybody — probably want, right? I think that’s what Crunchyroll has brought to the table too. Some interesting revelations I’ve found, and I kind of believed some of this even back in the day, is that a lot of these shows can stand on their own without having to inject anything into them, right? Dragon Ball survived every other language and excelled in every other language in the universe. So there was really no real reason to have to change it anymore. I understand why they did in 1997 in the United States when people were like, “Cartoons for kids, right?” There was no understanding that adults and older people might be actually watching this stuff, so that you almost had to dumb it down to get it on television back in those days.
But now there’s a lot of great faithful dubs that I think are great. When I’m working on a show, when I’m directing it, my goal is to make it as entertaining in English as it is in the original language. So if there are moments that are awkward, I’ll write around that if I have to, or I’ll add something to it just to make sure that that fans still stay engaged to it. I don’t do anything that changes canon or anything like that, but I’ll sneak an extra line in somewhere just to fill an awkward gap or change the tone of something so it matches what the picture looks like a little better so Americans can grasp onto it a little better.
Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” is No. 1 at the box office, though it is flying at a lower altitude than expected with $16.4 million grossed on Friday from 4,327 theaters, as studio estimates project a 5-day opening of $78 million for Tom Cruise’s seventh round as Ethan Hunt.
Prior to the weekend, projections for “Dead Reckoning” stood at $85-95 million, but the film is instead opening in the same vicinity the $77 million 5-day start of “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” in 2018 and slightly below the $82 million 5-day start of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” two weekends ago
To be fair, comparisons to those films are not exact, as the 5-day start of “Dead Reckoning” stretches from its release this past Wednesday through estimated Sunday grosses, while “Fallout” and “Dial” were Fri.-Tues. totals with “Dial” getting a small Fourth of July boost on Tuesday. But it does show how “Dead Reckoning” is performing more like a “Mission: Impossible” film without any of the boost that was hoped to have come from Cruise’s box office triumph with “Top Gun: Maverick” last year.
On the other hand, “Dead Reckoning” is enjoying much stronger word of mouth than “Indiana Jones 5” with an A on CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 96% critics and 94% audience. “Dead Reckoning” has also been reported to have stronger opening days in key overseas markets like South Korea and Great Britain and is on course for a $240 million global start.
That would be a good start if “Dead Reckoning” was budgeted like past “Mission: Impossible” films, but COVID delays and cost overruns tied to the pandemic pushed the film’s budget close to $300 million, similar to “Dial of Destiny.” The film is now in a position where it will need that strong word of mouth to get it to break even territory with stiff competition from Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” and Universal’s “Oppenheimer” coming next weekend.
Perhaps a factor in the current box office performance of “Dead Reckoning” is the torrid pace being set by Angel Studios’ “Sound of Freedom,” which this weekend has passed A24’s Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to become the highest grossing independent release in the U.S. since theaters reopened.
Lindsay Lohan is not playing around when it comes to her baby’s nursery.
The 37-year-old mom-to-be showed off her baby’s set up in a series of photos, simultaneously unveiling her Dubai nursery as well as her collaboration with the baby furniture and design company Nestig. In the pics, which can be seen here, Lohan cradles her baby bump while dressed in a chic white maxi dress. Everything in the pics from her “dream nursery” is shoppable—even the Morning Light Wall Mural, which retails for $499.
“So excited to show you my nursery & the collection I designed with @nestigbaby! Everything is inspired by the beach and is so peaceful and playful ?,” Lohan wrote on Instagram. “I loved working with @nestigbaby to create my dream nursery—everything is handmade and perfect for any little one in your life!”
In an interview with Architectural Digest, Lohan expanded on the inspiration behind the collab. “I feel so peaceful by the ocean—I wanted to create a space where my little one and I could share in that feeling,” Lohan said. Regarding the seaside mural, she added, “The planes and the sailboat felt so instantly classic, but the almost-rainbow watercolor effect felt really fresh and unexpected. It warms the space so much and I can’t wait to point out all the cute little elements to my babe.”
Lindsay Lohan is preparing to welcome her first child with her husband Bader Shammas, a financier she began dating in 2018 and secretly wed in 2022. Lohan announced their growing family in a March Instagram post featuring a baby onesie with the phrase, “coming soon…”
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“We are blessed and excited! ????,” the Falling for Christmas star captioned the image at the time. We couldn’t be more excited for her.
NOW ON TUBI! It’s an all-night booze-fueled adventure, Chicago style, in writer/director Zachary Trussell’s intoxicating feature debut, That Night. Stacey (Julio Alexander) is a budding graphic artist who works part-time in a tuxedo shop. He and his co-worker, Carolina (Emily Sue Bengston), sometimes hook up though they aren’t dating. She wants him to meet her at a party later tonight, but Stacey has prior plans with his buddy Joey (Oscar Mansky), which he can’t break. Those plans include another party at the apartment of his pal Schmidt (Michael C. Hyatt), who lets Stacey know that he plans to propose to his long-time girlfriend Andrea (Kendall McCarthy).
“…liquor-soaked calamities are in store for Stacey and his friends…”
Andrea’s cousin Lily (Julie Gester) is supposed to be there, which is awkward as Stacey and she used to be in a serious relationship. He still loves her. Stacey and Joey pick up their chum Luke (Terence Williams), who needs to pick up the engagement ring from his cousin. Sitting in a dark alley in the car, waiting for Luke, Stacey begins to feel this night may not go so smoothly. Little does he know what liquor-soaked calamities are in store for Stacey and his friends on the streets of Chicago.
I had a question by the end: does That Night misbehave enough to be considered a raunchy comedy? Yes, piss, s**t, puke, boners, and some very foul philosophical questions are all prominently featured. The running gag with the Uber drivers is delightfully obscene. However, by today’s standards of how low comedy can go, Trussell’s script maintains a surprising amount of good taste. He orbits the profane gags around a strong dramatic core that draws your attention like light into a black hole. So while the laughs may roll past on a river of bodily fluid, it is the life trajectories that will make you stay up all night with these characters. Rarely has someone captured the rhythm of a 20-something social circle as the filmmaker has here.
ISRAEL’S Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been rushed to a hospital after feeling unwell.
The 73-year-old reportedly complained of chest pains before fainting at his home in Caesarea.
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Benjamin Netanyahu has been rushed to the hospitalCredit: Reuters
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The Israeli Prime Minister during his visit to the UK in MarchCredit: Jack Hill/The Times, The Sunday Times.
He was undergoing medical evaluation in Sheba Hospital, his office said.
An official close to Netanyahu said he had fainted but was fully conscious at the hospital, according to Israeli reports.
The Israeli leader walked into the emergency room, Israel’s Channel 12 TV said, quoting the premier’s doctor.
He was not undergoing sedation and no procedures were underway to declare him incapacitated, Channel 12 said.
It is the second time the Israeli leader is being hospitalised in the past year as last October he was rushed to the hospital with chest pains.
He also underwent a “routine colonoscopy” in January.
A spokesperson for his office confirmed: “Prime Minister Netanyahu arrived a short while ago to the Sheba Medical Center.
“He is well and is undergoing a medical evaluation.”
Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving leader as he has served multiple terms stretching over 15 years in office.
The conservative leader has been in the eye of a political storm over his controversial judicial plans that sparked fiery protests across the country.
Benjamin Netanyahu refused to back down over the new laws that could give politicians the power to overrule judges.
In the wake of the protests across Israel, he vowed to make sure new laws would not give “unlimited” powers and wanted to find a “happy centre” ground.
He has also been on trial in three corruption cases in which he denies wrongdoing.
“Dead Reckoning,” the seventh installment of the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, is the latest Hollywood blockbuster to be split into two movies, but Tom Cruise and writer-director Christopher McQuarrie tried their hardest to give “Part One” a non-cliffhanger conclusion. The filmmaker recently told Total Film magazine that thinking about how to conclude the first of two movies kept Cruise up at night during the filming of “Part One.”
“Where we ended the movie was always where we were going to end it,” McQuarrie said of the train action sequence. “How we ended the movie was a big, big mystery for us. It kept Tom awake at night throughout production. He would come in all the time and say, ‘This can’t be a cliffhanger, it’s got to be satisfying.’ The audience has to feel a sense of completion.”
McQuarrie continued, “Tom kept looking at that scene, and he had all this anxiety about whether or not it would be a satisfying conclusion or whether it would feel open-ended. We constantly revisited it, constantly refined it.”
Unlike “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” which threw moviegoers a curveball by ending on a massive cliffhanger (its second part, “Beyond the Spider-Verse,” arrives in March 2024), “Dead Reckoning Part One” ends with Cruise’s Ethan Hunt achieving his immediate goal (he secures the key to unlock the source code of The Entity, the film’s villainous AI program) and Hayley Atwell’s Grace accepting an offer to join the IMF. There are dangling plot threads for “Part Two” to pick up (chief among them being that the film’s human villain, Esai Morales’ Gabriel, is still alive), but at least one mission has reached its definitive end. This is a far more conclusive ending than “Spider-Verse,” which leaves viewers hanging as Miles Morales is stuck in an alternate universe with the Prowler-version of himself.
“If you leave it with a cliffhanger, it feels a little bit like we’re expecting you to come back,” McQuarrie told Total Film. “We didn’t want that feeling. The feeling we were reaching for — and we hope you feel — is we dare you not to come back. We want to leave you thinking, ‘Oh, I can’t wait to see what happens next.’”
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is now playing theaters nationwide from Paramount Pictures. “Part Two” is set to open on June 28, 2024.
In Issa Rae’s reboot of “Project Greenlight,” filmmaker Meko Winbush was chosen to direct the film “Gray Matter,” which launched alongside the docuseries on Max July 13. In addition to producing through HooRae Media, Rae served as a mentor alongside actor Kumail Nanjiani and director Gina Prince-Bythewood. “Project Greenlight” previously aired on HBO from 2001-2005, and the mentors discussed how this newest iteration reflected 20 years of change in cinema.
Rae, Nanjiani and Prince-Bythewood sat down with TheWrap in an interview conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike to dissect the structure of the show, particularly how having the finished film launch simultaneously would naturally drive audiences to see how it came together.
“I’m really curious about what the audience’s reaction is going to be to watching it,” Prince-Bythewood said. “I know there’s going to be some pretty strong opinions about it.”
Rae stands by the competition show format through with “Gray Matter” was produced.
“It’ll be interesting because it’s almost like a layered experience watching the movie,” Nanjiani added. “You’re not just watching the movie. You’re watching how it interacts with what you know of the making of the movie. So it’s, it’ll be fascinating.
Read more from the interview below:
Do you feel like the genre aspect of the film Meko had to make presented certain challenges, and at the same time, benefits for viewers to see inside the process?
Rae: As a producer, that was a learning lesson. I felt like we were really ambitious on our side to one, I think that finding a talented female filmmaker wasn’t a challenge at all, it’s more just having them produce something with a limited budget in a limited amount of time. That’s that’s just extremely challenging no matter what, and one of the things we’ve been discussing is obviously the script needed to be in the best shape. So rewriting the script awesome in that timeframe is super challenging.
Twofold, if I were to do again, I would make it a solid comedy or drama and make sure the script was super strong and then set the filmmaker on a main journey and that really is more about like how good of a director are you. How much of a visionary Are you? So yes the genre aspect was for sure a challenge.
Nanjiani: Sci-fi movies you think of are not made in 18 days, so you’re really having to, in some ways, do a deconstruction of a genre because you can’t afford to really go all out. You can’t make a “Star Wars” movie with this budget. So it is challenging, but I think that the writer did a good job of finding a very grounded way into a superhero movie.
If you three have another shot, what else do you feel like you learned during this season that you would take into the next, or at least advise if someone else were to pick it up and do it?
Prince-Bythewood: “When I used to watch ‘Project Greenlight’ it was just normal for all of the filmmakers and even the people up for it were all white men. I don’t even remember a person of color even being even up for it and the normalcy of that is kind of stunning to me. I’m so happy. that Issa and her team had this idea to reboot it and be reflective of what is going on now and where the industry absolutely needs to go. So I feel really good about being part of changing the narrative of who filmmakers are, what voices are worthy. To be able to do again, I’m confident that we would all continue in this vein and give shots to filmmakers that aren’t getting shots that should be getting shots.
Rae: I’m gonna be a little controversial. There’s some filmmakers that we that we met that I still think about daily and I wonder what it would look like if we chose [them] and if we had to make the same movie. Obviously, that’s like a budgetary Max conversation, but like I constantly think about what would it look like if LC made a movie as well with more comedic instincts or Nicole. There’s so many other filmmakers who are doing well and have these opportunities, but I just feel like there’s such a cruelty in even just choosing one, and that almost plays into the there’s only one slot for you women, so get it together. But I hope that especially with the ending episode we’re showing these other women are working and they’re still out there and they’re hireable. So I hope that exposure still lends itself to more opportunities for them as well.
Nanjiani: Choosing Meko was a very difficult decision, and it wasn’t based on talent. It was based on ‘Who was a good fit for this material? And the material is very specific. It’s a Lo-Fi sci-fi movie. As Lisa said, a lot of the other filmmakers are really really, really good. I’d love to work with them in any capacity doing something with a different tone.
The evaluation process to choose the director consists of a short film submission, and then the selected contestants each have to make a scene from the same script. Is that enough to judge a director’s ability and also to get exposure for the other directors that don’t get chosen?
Rae: I stand by [the competition structure]. Having them all create the same scene was probably the most exciting thing for me because you really get a chance to see — they don’t know anything about the script and this is purely [their] vision and how are you going to showcase the best of your abilities without also just throwing [in] everything including the kitchen sink. Some filmmakers kind of fell into that trap of just like I’m going to show them everything.
Nanjiani: Some of the filmmakers really tried to sort of show everything they could do, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. The point of the exercise was to do this scene to trust the scene and to trust yourself to do the scene. They were all so talented, but the ones whose scene we felt we didn’t connect with were the ones who couldn’t focus down and find the core of the scene, the purpose of the scene, because they don’t have the full script, but you read that scene, you see what the emotion of it is, you see what’s going on. And the ones who sort of tried to show us their ability rather than just do the same were the ones that didn’t resonate as much.
Prince-Bythewood: It’s a strange thing to make creativity competitive. However, it was a pretty even playing field. They all got the same amount of money, same amount of time, same scene, and it really did elevate a number of folk to the top of our list and, and it really was what did they do with that scene? At the end of the day, we were all looking for the core of what you want as a filmmaker is to move people. Did you move us, and the top three, that’s what they had. It isn’t just about showing off your craft and skill and look what I can do, but did you make me feel and so that was a really fascinating exercise, and I think it’s a great way to you know, to structure this thing and choose a filmmaker, but it really came down to a top three that was really difficult to choose, so that’s what we have to do again.
“Project Greenlight” and “Gray Matter” are now available on Max.
After two years in the role and 9 total with the organization, Shawn Finnie has resigned as executive vice president, Member Relations and Awards for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, TheWrap has confirmed.
He was promoted into the role in June, 2021; his last day with the organization was July 13. Prior to serving in the position, Finnie was a longstanding and well-respected member of the organization, having served in a variety of roles and frequently promoted over his tenure. During his time with Member Relations and Awards, Finnie was also involved in the Academy’s DEI efforts and according to Variety, who first reported his resignation, he was specifically praised for his work by Rosie Perez.
Finnie’s exit comes just over 2 weeks after that of the film academy’s executive vice president of impact and inclusion, Jeanell English, who quit after just one year in the job. Finnie and English are just 2 of the Black Hollywood executives who have stepped down or have been laid off the last month.
The others would be Vernā Myers, who exited Netflix, Latondra Newton who departed the Walt Disney Company and Karen Horne, who was laid off by Warner Bros. Discovery.
So far there hasn’t been enough information made public to conclude anything but that these exits are coincidental, but the timing has understandably drawn attention from within and without Hollywood. On Thursday, the California Legislative Black Caucus held a press conferences calling for the studios to explain the matter.
Kevin Costner, Christine Baumgartner.Shutterstock (2)
Things are only getting messier for Kevin Costner and Christine Baumgartner’s divorce — and their latest squabble is over household items.
In court documents obtained by Us Weekly on Friday, July 14, Baumgartner, 49, claimed that Costner, 68, is concerned that she will “take too many pots and pans.” Baumgartner, however, refuted the claims by stating that she “wouldn’t strip the house bare” while calling his complaints “trivial.”
Baumgartner also alleged that she “provided a written list” of the items she planned to take when she moves out, which includes the former couple’s silver mirror, dining chairs, silverware, pots, pans, Baumgartner’s e-bike, swivel chairs, queen bed, mattress, bedding, rug, nightstand and kitchen table.
In an objection filed earlier on Friday, Costner argued that his estranged wife’s property list request was “so vague” he was unable to consent to the items’ removal.
“For instance, Petitioner lists ‘Plates and bowls/ silverware’ without specifying which plates, which bowls and which silverware. She lists ‘Christine’s family heirlooms and/or gifts to her’ but does not specify which items she believes were gifted to her (as opposed to both parties or the children),” the documents read.
Baumgartner, however, rebutted her estranged husband’s position, stating he wouldn’t be “harmed” by her removal of personal items, including her “Peloton bike” and “family heirlooms.” She claims in the docs that Costner wants to “control the move out process” as she gears up to vacate their family home.
“With the exception of my clothing, jewelry, toiletries and handbags, Kevin wants to have the final say as to whether I remove my personal items from the house or my storage unit,” the docs state. “For example, under Kevin’s proposed order, I could not remove my mother’s childhood dresser without first meeting and conferring, and then obtaining his approval.”
James Veysey/Shutterstock for SAG Awards
Despite her claims, a judge ruled in Costner’s favor, on Thursday, July 13, that Baumgartner can only take her “toiletries, clothing, handbags and jewelry” from the home. Costner, meanwhile, stated that while he agrees to the ruling, his estranged wife will be permitted to take additional items from their home once the pair reach a written agreement.
Us confirmed in May that Baumgartner had filed for divorce from Costner, citing irreconcilable differences and dated their separation back to April 11. The twosome share children Cayden, 16, Hayes, 14, and Grace, 13. Following their split, Costner and Baumgartner have been engaged in a messy and ongoing legal battle over finances and child support for their three kids.
The former model made headlines in June after she alleged that the Yellowstone actor was attempting to kick her out of their family home. While the duo’s prenuptial agreement stated that if Baumgartner chose to end their marriage, she would have to vacate the premises one month after their split, Baumgartner claimed that she didn’t have the funds to move with their children. However, a judge ruled she must do so by the end of July.
Baumgartner also requested $248,000 per month in child support from her estranged husband to continue raising the kids in their current lifestyle. Costner alleged in court documents obtained by Us last month that he couldn’t afford the specified amount because he “will earn substantially less in 2023” once Yellowstone comes to an end. A judge later ruled on Tuesday, July 11, that Costner will pay Baumgartner $129,755 per month in child support.
This week, Ben Platt sat down with Rolling Stone reporter EJ Dickson for an interview. Ben is currently promoting his new film Theater Camp.
During the chat, the reporter asked, “You were on the cover of New York Magazine’s Nepo Baby issue. I’m curious, what was your response to that? And what do you make of that whole discourse?”
Ben’s replied, “We’re going to skip right over that if we can.”
The interviewer then asked, “No comment?” They then noted that Ben’s publicist interjected with “If we could just focus on TheaterCamp, that would be great. Thank you.”
The interview continued with more film and theater-related questions, but the reporter noted that the chat was essentially cut in half. At the end of the piece, the reporter made a note, writing, “Publicist intervenes again to say we only have one more question — at the halfway mark of what was supposed to be a 45-minute interview.”
Yikes, awkward. I know I’ve definitely been there before when you ask a celeb a question that’s not exactly favorable to them.
But…looks like the reporter was just doing their job, and the publicist was doing theirs.
What do y’all make of this whole moment? Let me know in the comments below!
Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music rights company, has requested aid from the United States Congress to combat copyright infringement by people using and developing new AI technology.
Jeffery Harleston, UMG’s general counsel/executive vice president of business and legal affairs, spoke as a witness in a Senate Judiciary Committee on July 12 and called for a federal “right of publicity” — the intellectual property right that shields a person’s likenesses such as their voice and name (some states already follow this guideline but Harleston is arguing for a nationwide statute). According to a report by Music Business Worldwide, the company also requested copyright owners should have awareness of AI training models and that all “AI-generated content” should be labeled as such.
The music industry has been quick to respond to the fast rise of AI technology and its legal complexities. Paul McCartney recently revealed that AI was used to purify an old recording of the late John Lennon in order to create a new song from the Beatles that McCartney is billing as the band’s last original release. There’s also the deep-fake-Drake and the Weeknd track, “Heart on My Sleeve,” which was rapidly racking up listens and views until DSPs began deleting the track during the day, presumably under pressure from UMG.
UMG is one of more than 40 organizations behind the Human Artistry Campaign — a coalition made in response to the music industry. The members also include the Recording Academy, the National Music Publishers Association, the Recording Industry of America and others.
Their goal is “to ensure artificial intelligence technologies are developed and used in ways that support human culture and artistry – and not ways that replace or erode it,” the organization outlined principles advocating AI best practices, “emphasizing respect for artists, their work, and their personas; transparency; and adherence to existing law including copyright and intellectual property.”
Harleston’s closing statement also made note of some of the positives of AI, emphasizing that the use of someone’s likeness “without authorization, without consent simply is not a good thing.”
In a memo to Marvel staff, however, Feige and and producer Louis D’Esposito reaffirmed their appreciation for filmmakers.
(Photo by Disney/Image Group LA via Getty Images) KEVIN FEIGE
“We recognize how much you’ve all done on your specific projects and it’s disappointing when carefully laid plans have to shift, but constant change is the nature of the production business, and our teams are no stranger to unexpected challenges and rising to meet them,” the duo said. “We deeply appreciate all your efforts to make the best of the situation, and we can all hope that a new agreement will be finalized soon so we can resume the great work we have in process.”
The Best Laid Plans
Marvel is well-known for planning their releases well in advance in order to lay out the story they want to tell. The last year, however, has been an especially difficult one.
Source: slashfilm.com
Following the mixed reactions to Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love and Thunder, as well as the box office disappointment of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Disney CEO Bob Iger has frequently spoken about the need to slow Marvel’s release schedule down.
Subsequently, nearly every one of Marvel’s upcoming films were delayed, including Avengers: Secret Wars, which now won’t hit theaters until 2027.
Source: comicbasics.com
How Long Will The Strike Last?
With both the writers and actors now on strike, and both sides being far apart on issues such as residuals and AI, Hollywood is bracing for an extended shutdown.
Photo: Robert Hanashiro/USA Today
As always, be sure to check back with MickeyBlog. We will continue to bring you updates on all the news surrounding the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
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Great movies tell great stories. Great stories have many moving parts. When that’s the case, there are plenty of opportunities for unintentional mistakes that make it past writers, directors, editors, casts, and crews. Sometimes, it remains unnoticed until the movie hits theaters. Other times, it takes a digital release to spot the issue. Either way, plot holes are everywhere. Even the best movies have them.
Update July 15, 2023: This article has been updated to include even more films with massive plot holes, including a few recent films.
Many of these films are at the top of the industry. From iconic releases to blockbuster hits, storyline mistakes are a part of filmmaking. With many, once you see it, it can’t be unseen. Want to see for yourself? Take a look. These are 20 movies with the biggest plot holes.
21 The Shawshank Redemption Poster Problem
Columbia Pictures
We kick things off with a literal hole. Andy Dufresne knew he had to escape from prison and find his Shawshank Redemption. Not only was he innocent, but the torment by the evil warden and the sinister “sisters” was sure to be his downfall. When he asked his pal, Morgan “Red” Friedman, to get him a ball-peen hammer, he assured him that escaping with it would be a silly thought. After all, the hammer was tiny. It would take years to bust a gigantic hole through the cell wall and into the sewer system. Yet, that’s what Andy did. With one small hammer, he smashed an enormous opening into the concrete and crawled his way to safety. It seems unbelievable. Even more unbelievable? That’s not the plot hole.
When the escape tunnel was discovered by Warden Norton, we are treated to a Scorsese-esque reveal, watching through the hole as the poster over it was removed. The issue? How did Andy crawl through the opening and reattach the poster from the outside?
20 RoboCop’s Failed Logic Does Not Compute
Orion Pictures
RoboCop is one of the best films ever made by Paul Verhoeven, but it’s far from perfect. While there’s not much to pick on here, there’s a big failing in Murphy’s logic after he realizes Dick Jones, a bigwig in OCP, is behind criminal enforcer Laurence Boddicker. He has Boddicker on record admitting to being the hired muscle of the executive, which would have been enough for any regular police officer to place him under arrest had anyone seen the footage, which Murphy can show on any device using the plugin connection in his right hand.
Murphy’s failed logic drives him to arrest Jones without any backup. As expected, directive 4th activates, and he can’t arrest the high-ranking executive. Lucky this doesn’t interfere with his other functions as Jones freely admits to killing Bob Morton in front of him with Murphy recording the event, which leads him to face Jones again at the end of the film and finally get rid of him with the help of the old man, who fired him on the spot.
19 Indiana Jones and Time Travel Don’t Mix
Walt Disney Studios
Where do we begin with this one? Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny is a flawed film in many ways, but the plot revolving around the McGuffin that drives the story doesn’t make much sense. Jürgen Voller wants the dial to travel back to Nazi Germany and get rid of Hitler to ensure a Nazi victory. He somehow manages to reunite the artifact and opens a wormhole, but this will only take him to the precise moment when Archimedes created the device.
This single sequence brings so many questions. Was Archimedes working on the dial at the precise moment when the Romans attacked? How did he know in the future that the dial would be found? Did he plant the dial with the sole intention of saving himself? Do these time vortexes open any other moment in history or only when two sets of users coincidentally activate them simultaneously in different periods? If you dig past that, there’s also the colossal plot hole about how Helena managed to bring back Indy after knocking him out, but that would require a separate entry.
18 The Terrorist’s Big Plan in Die Hard is to Bring Heat on Themselves
20th Century Fox
Die Hard is one of the most beloved action films of the 80s and one that people revisit at a particular time of the year, even though Bruce Willis stated it’s not a Christmas movie. While there are a few pressing plot points that can be easily overseen, one regarding the logistics of the terrorist doesn’t make a lick of sense. From the very start, we are led to believe the takeover of the Nakatomi Building is a hostage crisis, but the actual plan of the bad guys is to cut off the power in the building to open a vault and steal a lot of bonds.
The criminals seem unfazed after the FBI are made aware of their presence and decides to cut off the power grid in the building, thus enabling them to carry out their ploy. There’s one little problem, though. Hans Gruber and his henchmen didn’t make this hit unprepared, and it’s clearly stated they have access to explosives. Why not make a planned heist within a limited time stamp where they take out the power in the building themselves? There wouldn’t even need to create the hostage crisis, to begin with, and it would have eased their operation a lot!
17 Why is Supergirl Weak in The Flash?
Warner Bros. Pictures
The Flash is another film taking a beating at the box office right now. It’s been hinted at multiple times in the DCEU that Kryptonians are vulnerable to Kryptonite and very little else. Blocking their access to the sun does not diminish their powers. We must highlight the final fight between Superman and Doomsday in Batman V Superman to point out how the Man of Steel held his own against the monster at night.
When Barry and Bruce find Kara Zor-El locked up in Russia, she’s on her last legs, but there’s nothing to contain her natural powers. Not a speck of Kryptonite or a red light dampening her powers (as happened in the comic storyline with Kal-El), nothing at all. This shouldn’t have been possible. Sunlight does indeed power up Earth-bound Kryptonians, but negating them sunlight barely diminishes their abilities as something more would be required to contain them, such as Kryptonite or red sunlight.
16 The Karate Kid’s Illegal Crane Kick
Delphi II Productions
It is one of the most famous plot holes in history. In The Karate Kid, Daniel LaRusso wins the All Valley Under 18 Karate Tournament by kicking Johnny in the face. Essentially, the hero of Hill Valley breaks the only rule in the entire tournament. That’s it. Yet, he wins.
It’s been a source of snarky observation since the movie’s release in the 1980s. Referenced in pop culture and the Cobra Kai Netflix continuation, Daniel’s kick has been explained by a myriad of excuses. None, however, do it justice. The Karate Kid cheated. That’s why Johnny got his own series.
15 Back to the Future Paradoxes
Universal Pictures
Fans love Back to the Futureso much that they will recognize every single plot hole and still embrace it. This franchise is beloved for the fantastic story it tells and the nostalgia it evokes through several decades. It’s proof that “haters” can’t drag down a wonderful movie.
So, what plot holes are in Back to the Future? Well, how about the gasoline that was sitting in the second DeLorean in 1885 that could have been siphoned out in the third movie? Why didn’t Doc go to the Western Union and change his note to ask Marty to bring back gasoline? Didn’t Lorraine and George recognize their son as the boy who united them in high school? Did she freak out when her kid resembled the guy she was in love with in 12th grade?
There’s a lot to process in this one. Maybe it’s best to just sit back and enjoy it. Don’t ask why George hired the man who tried to violate his wife to wash his car and interact with his children. You ask too many questions.
14 Armageddon Trains the Wrong People
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
Picture it. You’re NASA. You know that an asteroid is coming to the Earth. You need to destroy it. Pick the scenario that seems easier. The first choice is to take established astronauts who have been vetted and trained in the elite space force for exploration and have a skilled team of deep-core drillers teach them how to drill. Then, send the drilling-trained astronauts to save the world. Case closed. Or…
Hire a bunch of deep-core drillers, many of whom seem mentally unstable and with addiction issues, to fly to the middle of outer space and do the job that they only do on Earth. After all, it’s easier to teach the Bad News Bears how to go into outer space than to teach geniuses how to drill. You can’t make an omelet without cracking some deep-core drillers.
It’s hard to unsee Armageddon‘s plot hole once it’s there. Even Ben Affleck, one of the film’s stars, questioned this decision in the DVD Commentary. As Ben quipped, ‘We can’t teach astronauts to drill in 8 months, but we’re going to teach our drillers to be astronauts in a week” (via Insider).
13 Gravity Falls
Warner Bros. Pictures
When you make a movie about astrophysics, you’re going to get some upturned eyebrows. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock know this firsthand. The 2013 movie Gravity, while a fun film, has been battered by science fans for over a decade. The most common critique? The damaged communication satellites should have been in orbits too high to be affected by the debris. According to those who know, the Russian missile strike would have sent most of the remnants up and down rather than remaining in orbit. It should not have been a threat to the telescope.
It is just one of a slew of physics issues in the film. According to astronaut Michael Massimo, the biggest problems were the smallest details, like the jetpacks. “To have the movie astronauts Matt Kowalski (Clooney) and Ryan Stone (Bullock) zip over to the space station would be like having a pirate tossed overboard in the Caribbean swim to London,” Massimo told Gizmodo.
12 A Quiet Place, Bad Neighborhood
Paramount Pictures
A terrifying tale of monsters who stalk based on sound,A Quiet Place is the type of film you need to watch to understand. The family lives a life of near-silence as aliens without faces listen for their terror. It costs them family members and happiness.
While there have been small questions like how the family would place their sound traps around the perimeter of their home without making noise initially when putting them out, there is one even more glaring one that Reddit came together to make some noise about. Given that there’s a waterfall in the area — so loud that the family can freely talk while it roars near them — why didn’t they move there? Why build a home in the middle of the silent forest when you can literally live next to the only thing that muffles you? Bad move, Jim Halpert. Some families deserve to be eaten.
11 The Lonely Citizen Kane
RKO Radio Pictures
It’s one of the most famous lines in any movie. “Rosebud,” the last words of the titularCitizen Kane, were debated and deconstructed by everyone in the film. It’s the entire point of the movie and the big hook that most remember. Without this call for his childhood memory, the movie has no purpose.
The biggest question for the characters in Citizen Kane should not be what it means. It should be how they even know he said it. Kane uttered the words all alone with no one around. Yet, through the magic of movies, it’s all they can talk about.
10 Beauty and the Beast A/S/L?
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
As each rose petal falls, the Beast in Beauty and the Beastheads one more year to his 21st birthday. It is then that he will forever remain hairy and scary. Yet, in the song “Be Our Guest,” his trusted candle sings about how it’s been “ten years” since the spell was cast. Do the math. He’s not 21, and he’s been a monster for ten years. That would make him a boy at the time of his curse.
Yet, there’s a painting in the castle of him as a grown man. How is that possible? On top of it, Teacup Chip is markedly younger than ten. Was he born a cup? How does that work? What is happening in this castle? No one use the silverware.
9 How Does Hawkman’s Ship Know About Sabaac?
Warner Bros.
Black Adam is filled with many plot holes, from how come nobody ever draws the comparison to Black Adam and Shazam! to why the Justice Society is working with Amanda Waller, and if she had them, why did she ever need to form the Suicide Squad? Yet one of the most baffling plot holes comes from the main villain, Sabbac.
In the film’s climax, Sabbac is beginning his attack, and the Justice Society flies in to stop him. Hawkman’s ship is able to identify Sabbac and gives a bit of brief information regarding him like he is a Pokemon on a Pokedex. Now Sabbac has never walked the Earth before this moment, so how does the computer know any of this? How is able to identify him? If Hawkman is a tech-based hero, then why would his computer know any of this, and wouldn’t it have been easier for the magic user Doctor Fate to reveal this information? With plotholes like this, it is no wonder the DCEU is being rebooted into the DCU.
8 The Butterfly Effect Prison Proof
New Line Cinema
The Butterfly Effect is like Back to the Future with less love. People enjoy the story, but the plot holes get put through a bit more scrutiny. Like the Michael J. Fox time travel tale, Ashton Kutcher’s opens itself up for some questions given the paradoxical adventure it tells. There are a number of questionable moments, but there’s one that most fans caught a plot hole red-handed. After spending so much time illustrating how one small change in the past can drastically alter the future, they undo it all in one prison scene. In an attempt to prove his powers to a cellmate, Kutcher goes back in time and stabs his own hands as a child. He then returns to show the Doubting Thomas his scars.
Yet, nothing else was affected? Did he encounter no new people during his healing process? There were no activities or jobs he had done originally that he could no longer do because of his injury? Life went on as normal after stabbing himself, but a random sneeze in 1995 can change the planet?
7 Buzz Freezing In Toy Story
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
One question that has baffled fans since 1995 is why doe Buzz Lightyear freezes up when Andy comes into the room in Toy Story. Buzz doesn’t think he is a toy, so why does he behave like them? One could assume it is he is trying to act like the natives on what he perceives as an alien planet, and he is just that good of a space ranger, but the movie never quite makes it explicit.
6 The Hangover Rooftop Vacation
Warner Bros. Pictures
In Casino, Ace Rothstein illustrated Vegas culture to a tee. He pointed out all the people on the floor who were tasked with watching one another for cheating. According to Ace, the trump card was the video cameras. The eye in the sky, he said, was watching us all. This was set in 1975.
In 2009, however, a man can spend days on a Vegas hotel roof, and no one sees him. He just lives there. No cameras. No security. Nothing. Good to know if you’re low on cash in Las Vegas that you can live for free on the roof. Never mind that his friends never check the last location they remember being in before setting out on a Galifianakis adventure. It’s kind of a mess, but at least there’s a monkey in The Hangover.
5 Kate and Leopold Hot For Grandma
Miramax
Did you see the 2001 movie where Meg Ryan has a romantic relationship with her own grandson? It was in theaters. They didn’t mention it on the poster, but that’s totally what it’s about.
The movie, Kate and Leopold, was not meant to be as salacious as it turns out. The time travel tale (yes, that again) provides one of the most unintentional shocks in movie history. Ryan leaves her boyfriend, Hugh Jackman, to fall for a man from the past. The man, as it turns out, is the ancestor of Jackman. Then, before the film ends, Meg is pregnant…which means that Jackman is her own grandson.
4 What Does Bruce Willis Do During the Rest of His Day in The Sixth Sense?
Hollywood Pictures/Spyglass Entertainment
Spoiler alert. Bruce Willis is dead. The film, The Sixth Sense, is over 20 years old. You should have seen it by now. Get out there. Live life. That’s the point of the movie. When Willis’ ghostlike presence is revealed at the end, it flashed back through moments in the movie. You see how his dinner with his wife is not quiet and cold. He’s simply not there. The same can be said about his silent sitting with Haley Joel Osment’s mom when the boy enters the room.
The only question? How did he arrange these meetings? Why was his widowed wife sitting alone at a fancy restaurant before leaving disgustedly? Why was Toni Collete sitting in silence and creepily waiting for her son? How did Willis arrange his life with no one talking to him and not realize he wasn’t interacting with anyone? When the kid said, “I see dead people,” Willis should have said, “I know.”
3
2 Cinderella’s Slipper Stays Glass
Walt Disney Studios
Cinderella was essentially a servant to her stepmother and sisters. When her fairy Godmother granted her a night of decadence until midnight, she made herself clear. When the clock strikes 12, all items transformed through magic will turn back to normal. That includes her carriage, dress, and glass slippers. Oh, wait…
If that’s the case, then how did the slipper left behind for the Prince to find remain a slipper? Shouldn’t he have found the slipper socks or whatever they were when the Godmother did her Bewitched gimmick on them? How did this one item, out of all of them, remain?
The FTC is looking into whether OpenAI, the developer of the artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, “engaged in unfair or deceptive privacy or data security practices or engaged in unfair or deceptive practices relating to risks of harm to consumers, including reputational harm,” according to a letter the regulatory body sent to the company.
The agency’s probe into OpenAI was first reported by the Washington Post, which shared a redacted copy of the letter to the company (at this link). The time period for the FTC’s information requests to San Francisco-based OpenAI date from June 1, 2020, “until the date of full and complete compliance” with the investigation, which is technically called a “civil investigative demand” (CID).
Among the info the FTC is asking from OpenAI is a “description of any refining the Company actually undertook in order to correct or remediate any Large Language Model’s propensity to ‘hallucinate’ or to reveal any Personal Information,” per the letter.
OpenAI, founded in 2015, introduced the first publicly available version of ChatGPT in November 2022. The chatbot is able to generate seemingly coherent texts on a wide range of topics — while it has on occasion been shown to entirely make things up.
Following news reports of the investigation, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted, “it is very disappointing to see the FTC’s request start with a leak and does not help build trust. that said, it’s super important to us that out technology is safe and pro-consumer, and we are confident we follow the law. of course we will work with the FTC.”
Altman continued, “we built GPT-4 on top of years of safety research and spent 6+ months after we finished initial training making it safer and more aligned before releasing it. we protect user privacy and design our systems to learn about the world, not private individuals.” He also wrote, “we’re transparent about the limitations of our technology, especially when we fall short. and our capped-profits structure means we aren’t incentivized to make unlimited returns.”
The Golden Apricot Film Festival, now in its twentieth year, always tends to spotlight films from countries in the region which are not likely to get much exposure at other festivals. This, in addition, of course, to a wide selection of other films from around the world and prize winners from top festivals such as Cannes and Venice.
On Bastille Day, July 14th, I caught up with two off-beat Georgian features at the Big red Hall in Kino Moskva.
The first, “Magic Mountain” (by Mariam Chachia and Nik Voigt) was a documentary about a remote Tuberculosis Asylum in the mountains of Eastern Georgia. Full review here!
The second film of the day was “The Drummer” by director Kote Kalandadze.This focuses on a young man who was a bullied outsider in school but emerges with a remarkable talent for band style drumming. He is terribly discontent with life in Georgia
but his misery is somewhat relieved when he strikes up a relationship with a pretty young girl. However the band has now scheduled a European tour where our young hero hopes to escape to the outside world. Lots of Pot is smoked and cocaine snorted in this bleak study of youth in current day Georgia, which seems to be influenced by similar drug laden American films of the sixties. I never found out if our hero made it out because It was too depressing to sit this out to the very end.
Politically things in Georgia are in turmoil at the moment but a strong contingent of filmmakers continue to keep the film industry going nonstop.
When San Diego Comic-Con launched in 1970, it was a niche convention for about 300 fans. In the decades that have followed, it has, of course, become a mandatory stop for the biggest franchises in Hollywood, from the universes of Marvel and DC to Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. But after years of movies and TV (and top actors) taking center stage and propelling the event to new heights, 2023 will be the least star-packed Comic-Con in more than a decade.
This week, SAG-AFTRA announced that actors will be joining the writers guild on picket lines, as Hollywood faces yet another shutdown amid a historic double strike. Already, most Hollywood majors, including Disney, Warner Bros., Sony, Universal, Netflix and HBO, chose to sit out Comic-Con this year, due to prior strike uncertainty and financial stress on studio travel budgets.
With actors now confirmed to be out for the count, the convention’s lineup takes yet another hit with a slew of previously announced panels now canceled, including Legendary, which was secretly planning to bring Dune: Part Two. Also canceled: panels for TV shows such as Amazon’s Wheel of Time, Freevee’s Jury Duty and ABC’s Abbott Elementary.
This year also marks the first time since 2011 that at least one of the two biggest comic-to-film franchisees — Marvel and DC — won’t be holding court in the 6,500-capacity Hall H.
“This is obviously an unusual year,” says Comic-Con spokesperson David Glanzer. “But that hasn’t diminished the anticipation for Comic-Con.”
Indeed, badges sold out months ahead of the event as attendees vie for tickets long before panels are even announced. While Hall H stops from Marvel or DC have generated the biggest headlines, only a small portion of the estimated 150,000 attendees each year ever set foot in that space, which requires camping out in line overnight to get inside. In other words, plenty of the faithful go for smaller panels and a chance to show off their best cosplay.
Some major presentations will continue on without actors, including Paramount Animation’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (July 20, 11:30 a.m.), which may feature a presentation from director Jeff Rowe.
Star Trek: The Animated Series will celebrate its 50th anniversary.
Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
After the Oscar-winning success of RRR, the big-budget Project K (July 20, 1 p.m.) hopes to build on that momentum by becoming the first Indian project to hit Hall H. Collider also will host a Hall H “Directors on Directing” panel (July 21, 11 a.m.) with such helmers as Deadpool 2‘s David Leitch, Haunted Mansion‘s Justin Simien and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story‘s Gareth Edwards, who is expected to show footage from The Creator.
On the TV side, panels still on the docket include a two-and-a-half-hour look at AMC’s Walking Dead franchise (July 21, 1 p.m.) and a Star Trek presentation (July 22, 1:30 p.m.) for that universe’s three Paramount+ shows.
FX will promote the fifth season of What We Do in the Shadows (July 20, 4:30 p.m.), and Peacock will show off its new Anthony Mackie action-comedy series Twisted Metal (July 20, 3:15 p.m.). Despite canceling their The Wheel of Time panel, Prime Video will still be promoting the Steven Yeun-starring series Invincible, with a panel (July 21, 5:45 p.m.) and season-two screening (July 21, 10 p.m.). Starz also plans to present its John Wick spinoff series, The Continental (July 21, 3 p.m.).
The Continental, a prequel to John Wick.
Katalin Vermes/Starz Entertainment
Months after co-creator and star Justin Roiland was fired from Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty and Hulu’s Solar Opposites, (July 21, 2 p.m. and 3 p.m.), though Roiland is not expected.
Some of these panels might have gotten modest attention in years past, but now they have a chance to break through this year, including films not made by companies party to the SAG-AFTRA agreement. Notes one actor-filmmaker, who is bringing footage from a new film amid this year’s unusual landscape, “I might as well go all out.”
This story first appeared in the July 14 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
Gary King’s behavior on Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 4 has made him an unpopular figure to return next season. The First Officer is one of the oldest cast members on Below Deck Sailing Yacht, appearing on the series for three consecutive seasons. During this period, Gary has enjoyed an excellent relationship with the show’s fanbase, as he is seen as the livewire of the crew. This has often helped him get away with inappropriate behavior, but it seems everyone’s patience may have grown thin on him this season.
Much of the action in Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 4 has centered around the messy love triangle involving Gary, Chief Engineer Colin MacRae, and Chief Stew Daisy Kelliher. This unexpected storyline has somewhat put Gary on edge, and some of his character flaws have now become more exaggerated. Because of this, he may not have a chance to return to the show.
Gary Is Coming Off As Creepy This Season
Gary has always had a romantic charm that made him quite appealing to the ladies on the boat. Of all the male crew members to ever set foot in the Parsifal III, he’s the one who has been linked with the most boatmances. Gary’s playboy persona has once again been a focal point on Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 4. Nevertheless, this season has exposed a worrying trend to how he goes about things on the Parsifal III.
Due to some of his antics, Gary is coming off as creepy in how he pursues flings with some of the ladies. This weird behavior is even more pronounced when considering how he has responded to the developing romance between Daisy and Colin. Apart from that, Gary makes many of the ladies uncomfortable with his sexual gestures and doesn’t respect their personal space. Additionally, Gary has received heavy backlash for grabbing and kissing some of the women even after they tell him no.
Gary Causes Too Much Drama
Gary has been at the center of much of the drama on the Parsifal III for much of Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 4. While this has made the series quite fun to watch this season, he has served as a disruptive force on the boat. When Gary isn’t picking fights with deckhand Chase Lemacks for no particular reason, he’s busy manipulating Colin and Daisy through his words, thereby making things messier than necessary. Even his relationship with Mads Herrera hasn’t gone as smoothly, and the deckhand noted she regrets picking Gary and having to deal with all his drama.
The Gary, Daisy & Colin Love Triangle May Be An Issue Next Season
Gary’s behavior in Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 4 has made things quite tense between his once closely-knit trio with Daisy and Colin. Although Gary and Daisy’s romantic interest in each other has always been present from previous seasons, the first mate always had eyes for other ladies on deck. Gary never showed a genuine desire to make things official between himself and Daisy, even though the latter had expressed interest in him following their boatmance during Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 3.
Despite hooking up with Mads earlier this season, Gary immediately switched attention to Daisy once she started getting close to Colin. This is after he denied having feelings for Daisy and gave Colin the nod to begin a relationship with her. Gary’s actions betrayed Colin, and things were pretty tense between the trio in recent episodes. With how things are currently set up, it’s likely that this awkward situation will spill over to Below Deck Sailing Yacht season 5.
Editor’s Note: Studio Ghibli took the unprecedented step of doing no marketing in Japan for Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, releasing no trailers and no plot summary. Instead, the fabled studio invited fans to go see the movie with no preconceptions, with producer Toshio Suzuki saying, “Deep down, I think this is what moviegoers latently desire.” So, briefly consider your true filmgoing desires before reading this article!
Shrouded in mystery and anticipated by millions, anime legend Hayao Miyazaki’s first film in a decade, The Boy and the Heron, finally met a curious public in Japan Friday, as its local release got underway. So far, the collective reaction could best be summed up as a combination of slight bewilderment and deep appreciation.
Japanese news service Kyodo was on the scene Friday morning in Shinjuku, Tokyo’s largest business district, as dozens lined up outside a cinema for The Boy and the Heron‘s first screening. And as the crowd filed out of the theater after the film’s 124-minute runtime, a 27-year-old company employee described the film as the “culmination” of Miyazaki’s anime world, adding: “I can’t digest it by just watching it once and I feel like I want to watch it again immediately.”
Information about the movie prior to its release was deliberately scant. Ghibli had previously shared only that the film was very loosely inspired by Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 philosophical children’s book, How Do You Live?, one of Miyazaki’s personal favorites. In a TV interview back in 2017, Ghibli co-founder Toshio Suzuki, considered Miyazaki’s righthand man, said that the great animator was making the movie for his grandson, as a way of saying, “Grandpa is moving onto the next world soon, but he is leaving this film behind.”
And the studio’s decision to do zero promotion for the movie — releasing no plot summary, voice cast, trailers, art or description — kept fans in a keen state of curiosity (while also leaving large portions of the Japanese public unaware that a new Miyazaki movie was even coming). Suzuki said he believed the opportunity to see the film completely afresh, with no preconceptions, is what the audience “latently desires.”
So, now that many in Japan have seen the film, what are they saying?
Early reviews and descriptions to emerge from Japan, in both English and Japanese, suggest a movie that’s visually stunning but somewhat darker and more enigmatic than much of the Ghibli catalog.
In a somewhat mixed but overall positive review, specialty outlet Anime News Network describes Miyazaki’s animation work within the film as “truly astounding.”
“Every frame of this film feels like a separate work of art — one that only becomes grander when put together as part of the greater whole,” the reviewer writes. “It’s a film you could watch a hundred times and still discover new things in the background of any given scene. It cannot be understated how the little visual details take the film from real to surreal — like a heron flashing a toothy grin or wooden dolls vibrating as if in sympathetic laughter. It’s an animation tour de force unlike anything seen in the past decade.”
“It is no exaggeration to say that this film is among the best of Ghibli’s works in terms of visuals and story,” Japanese film site Eiga Channel wrote. “On the other hand, those who are not Ghibli fans may be confused by the dizzying pace of scene development.”
It added: “Ghibli, which has produced fantasy works that are easily understandable by children, has finally released a work that requires time and consideration to understand, so it is natural that there will be reactions of confusion. And there must be many viewers who were simply overwhelmed by the visual beauty.”
Japanese film and culture magazine Cinemas+ similarly described the film as a “culmination” for Miyazaki, drawing on motifs and characters from across his filmography, but embedding them in a story that’s somewhat darker, more challenging, and more personal than many of his beloved children’s works.
“To understand the setting and story deeply, you need to commit to watching it repeatedly while ruminating on the various scenes — and analyzing Hayao Miyazaki as a person,” the outlet said while also noting similarities between The Boy and the Heron‘s story and Miyazaki’s own biography.
The film begins with an impressionistic depiction of the firebombing of Tokyo during World War II, with the story’s protagonist, a boy named Mahito, fleeing his home. His mother is lost in the conflagration and his father, who works in a factory producing warplanes, soon marries his late wife’s younger sister and moves the family to a grand traditional home in the countryside. Mahito, wracked by grief and filled with angst over his new circumstances, begrudgingly begins exploring his new surroundings. He meets a mischievous blue heron that speaks — and taunts him — and stumbles upon a mysterious abandoned tower in the nearby forests. When his new mother goes missing, Mahito follows the heron into the tower in pursuit of her — crossing over into a parallel world of dizzying fantasy and philosophical import.
Many Japanese reviewers have noted that Miyazaki’s own family escaped the bombing of Tokyo for the Japanese countryside and that his father worked during the war as an engineer in a fighter plane factory, just like Mahiko’s. Miyazaki also has spoken over the years about how an especially close relationship with his mother shaped him as a person and helped inspire the strong female protagonists that recur across his filmography.
So far, Miyazaki has given no interviews about The Boy and the Heron. Nonetheless, the best hints to emerge about his inspirations and intentions with the film come from the old animator himself — via the grandson of the man who wrote the book that inspired the film.
Taichiro Yoshino, grandson of Genzaburo Yoshino, author of How Do You Live in 1937, is today working as a journalist and editor in Tokyo. Taichiro published an article in Japanese Friday describing a private Ghibli preview screening he attended earlier this year, where Miyazaki shared some brief words about his final feature.
“The moment the end credits were over, the lights were turned on, and comments from Hayao Miyazaki were read out,” Yoshino writes. The director’s statement for those in attendance was, simply: “Perhaps you didn’t understand it. I myself don’t understand it.”
“Light laughter emerged from the audience,” Yoshino says, adding that he was among those chuckling because he was “sitting there in a daze,” struggling to digest and understand the film’s messages.
Yoshino goes on to recount a meeting he attended at Ghibli’s offices in 2017 when Miyazaki explained his plan to make a film loosely inspired by Yoshino’s grandfather’s book. According to Yoshino, Miyazaki said he was coming back from retirement to approach a film from a new perspective.
“I’ve been avoiding it for a long time, but I have to make [a film] that’s more like me,” Miyazaki told him. “I made several works about boys who were cheerful, bright, and positive, but that’s not the way many boys really are. I myself was a person who was really hesitant, so I always thought that boys are actually less pure and swirling with all kinds of things.”
Miyazaki added: “Let’s be open about the fact that we live in conflict. So I thought I’d create a hero who is slow to run and has a lot of embarrassing things inside that he can’t share with others. When you overcome something with all of your strength, then you become the version of yourself who can accept such problems.”
Yoshino’s article goes on to become a moving meditation on the legacy of his grandfather’s book, and he describes how the themes in Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron inspired him to ask himself, “If I could have a direct conversation with my grandfather right now, what would I say to him?”
Near the end of the piece, he notes that The Boy and the Heron is “a separate work” from his grandfather’s How Do You Live, but that they perhaps share the same central theme — how to live with oneself and accept a world characterized by conflict and loss.
He concludes with a call to action: “For the time being, let’s go to the theater again in search of hints that I couldn’t collect by watching it just once. You may find a clue for a new dialogue with your grandfather too.”
Last week, Australian pop singer Troye Sivantold British GQ he’d spent the previous few years discovering that he loves “people … community, and sex.” And, perhaps most importantly: “I really, really love to party.” “Rush,” his sultry lead single to his upcoming album Something to Give Each Other, celebrates all these things: It’s a pop-house heater, named for the ubiquitous brand of poppers, that treats sex and partying as a practically religious act. Conceptually, that’s nothing new—but 28-year-old Sivan, already an expert at making winky, slyly subtextual pop songs, manages to inject this trope with virility, producing a sublime, orgiastic summer anthem in the process.
Inspired by nights spent at the gay clubs on Melbourne’s Smith Street—shout out to Sircuit, a queer institution that’s both rickety and heavenly—“Rush” is unconcerned with anything but pure ecstasy. Its hook taps into the latent horniness and homoeroticism of a football chant—a chorus of men sing “I feel the rush/Addicted to your touch” beneath Sivan’s feathery falsetto—and the song’s exhilarating piano-house beat rarely lets up. Unlike past bangers like “Bloom” and “Stud,” there’s little innuendo here: “Take me to the feeling boy, you know the one/Kiss it when you’re done, man, this shit is so much fun.”
As the SAG-AFTRA strike gets underway, documentary filmmakers are still at work. But despite the fact that the dual strike by actors and their writer counterparts in the WGA could lead to gaps in narrative content for broadcast networks and streaming companies, the doc industry isn’t holding out much hope that studios will start flooding money into documentaries.
“There’s a feeling of solidarity and support for SAG and for the WGA,” says Bryn Mooser, founder of nonfiction film and television studio XTR. “The struggle they are facing is a struggle that doc filmmakers have also faced since the beginning of the industry on the documentary side, which is fair pay and making sure we are represented in the right way, et cetera. But if anybody thought that this would mean that (studios) will just shift resources to a different part of the industry like docs while this gets figured out, that’s not happening.”
In the last year and a half, the doc industry has had to grapple with shrinking budgets for commissioned docuseries and one-offs. In addition there has been a dramatic decline in distribution deals for indie docs.
“There is a glimmer of hope that the strike could mean a resurrected appetite for acquiring indie docs, but if I am reading the room correctly, I don’t think so,” says Annie Roney, founder of documentary distribution agency Roco Films. “The commercial streamers just don’t have the incentive to invest in anything that might challenge their audience.”
Mooser adds, “There is a real uncertainty about what is this industry is going to look like overall when this ends. So, there is real level of uncertainty and instability that can be felt through every single part of the entertainment industry, including documentaries.”
So far the writers strike, which began on May 2 has not resulted in broadcast networks or streaming companies turning to docus to fill any voids in their narrative content lineups. Unlike the 2007 writers strike, when networks cut seasons short and aired reruns, streamers have years worth of content in the pipeline along with international shows written by scribes outside the WGA.
“It seems like people are hoping that the writers strike has a similar effect to COVID in giving documentaries and nonfiction more opportunities because of the halt on production for fiction projects,” documentary producer, and the founder of Motto Pictures, Julie Goldman told Variety in May. “I think there are two key factors which will limit this situation: one is it’s unlikely that the strike will go on for a long time, and the other is that there was time to prepare because no one was taken by surprise.”
Although the writers strike largely shut down Hollywood this summer, the actors strike means that all production will now be forced to shut down completely. Prior to July 14, some projects managed to stay up and running by working off completed scripts and not having any writers on set — including big-budget productions like the second season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” Now with television and film production on an indefinite standstill, streamers could potentially benefit doc filmmakers.
It’s a possibility, according to Oscar nominated doc director Sam Pollard (“The League,” “MLB/FBI”).
“If this thing drags on for six to eight weeks, it may be an opening for the streamers, the HBOs and the Netflixes to say, ‘We need some product. Let’s reach out to these documentary people who are pitching us,’” says Pollard. “It might happen. We will see.”
Paul Scanlan, co-founder of Legion M, the industry’s first fan-owned media start-up, which produces narratives, unscripted and docus, also thinks that the strike could help documentaries.
“While I don’t foresee documentaries supplanting the role of major blockbuster theatrical releases, they can undoubtedly serve as important content for streaming platforms, contributing to the variety and helping retain subscribers,” Scanlan says. “However, one industry-wide apprehension we have is that alternative entertainment mediums like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and gaming could emerge as the main beneficiaries from the strike.”
In addition to shutting down all narrative production, the SAG-AFTRA strike means that SAG members will not be able to attend premieres, do interviews for completed work, go to awards shows, attend film festivals or promote projects on social media while the strike is in effect. This stipulation could mean that the upcoming Telluride, Toronto and New York film festivals, if they aren’t cancelled, will feature solely doc talent.
For Ryan Harrington, a curator at Jacob Burns Center in Pleasantville, N.Y., this strike will result in a significant shift in programming.
“As an art house distributor, we rely heavily on in-person events with studios who have fiction films with known talent who can attend screenings,” says Harrington. “Especially after COVID, it’s hard to get people back into theaters so having an event around a screening is super important. So, it’s going to be a bit more difficult for us now.”
Harrington is an Emmy-winning producer (“The Cave,” “Becoming Cousteau”) who has worked in the docu space for more than two decades. While Jacob Burns Center does screen docus, Harrington intends on ramping up the art house’s nonfiction lineup.
“I’m in complete support of the strike, but this does give us the opportunity to work with more documentary talent.”
The largest Indigenous gathering and multi-sport event to be hosted in Atlantic Canadian history kicked off on Saturday, as an opening ceremony for the North American Indigenous Games (NAIG) will be held at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax to a sold-out crowd on Sunday evening.
The 10th edition of the event, which runs until July 23, features more than 500 athletes hailing from 756 nations throughout the continent.
The nine-day showcase, which highlights a variety of cultural activities to complement 16 individual sporting competitions, will mainly be held in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), with additional events taking place in Dartmouth, Millbrook First Nation and Sipekne’katik.
The first competitions kick off on Monday with cultural events taking place at the Halifax Common throughout the weekend.
The most talented young athletes from a wide range of cultural and geographic backgrounds will go head-to-head in their respective sports, including soccer, basketball, baseball and wrestling.
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North American Indigenous Games canoe relay makes final stop in Halifax
Three traditional Indigenous sports will be on display as well, as spectators will be treated to 3D archery, box lacrosse and canoe/kayaking competitions.
“Indigenous people have been playing games since Creation. Whether it’s stickball, games of endurance, games of chance or ceremonial games, there has always been a strong link to the land, water, air and spiritual connection to the Creator,” the official NAIG site stated.
Venues that will serve as hosts to the week’s competitions include the Halifax Common, Lake Banook, Dalplex, Point Pleasant Park and the Canada Games Centre.
All sporting events are open to the public. Event times and locations can be found by checking the tournament’s schedule.
Fiona Kirkpatrick Parsons, the chair of culture for the Games, said the organization originally put out a call for 3,000 volunteers in preparation for the event. To their surprise, more than 4,000 people registered and will now assist with the programming.
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“The overriding feeling is complete and utter excitement,” she said during a June interview with Global News Morning.
“Everyone is completely ready for these games. We’ve been ready since 2020,” Parsons said, referencing the original 2020 date that was postponed due to restrictions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It was tremendously disappointing when we had to postpone back then but we definitely have taken it to heart and we’ve added a few flourishes that we might not have time to do before.
“Really enhancing that participant experience is what it’s all about for us.”
On Saturday, the Halifax Common transformed into the Mi’kmaq “cultural heart” of the NAIG, as the event’s “cultural village” opened to the public. Running until July 22, the area will be home to wigwams, marketplaces, food trucks, a space for a sacred fire and cultural demonstrations, and live music.
Kjipuktuk is ready for you, Turtle Island!
A special thank you to Elder Billy Joe for teaching our Culture Chair the traditional way for making the Mi’kmaq Wikuoms (Wigwams). pic.twitter.com/Y35khRHDyS
— 2023 North American Indigenous Games (@NAIG2023) July 13, 2023
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Performances from popular local acts like City Natives, Morgan Toney and Neon Dreams will be heard at the Common’s main stage throughout the week.
Drum-making, basket-weaving, sacred medicines and storytelling are just some of the many activities and presentations included as part of the cultural schedule.
In addition, festivities will take place at Dartmouth Crossing and on the Halifax Waterfront throughout the event’s duration. Performances, vendors, interactive activities and cultural demonstrations will be reoccurring from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. daily at both locations until July 22.
The cultural festival on the Halifax Waterfront is hosted by the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre.
The games will also be live-streamed on the NAIG’s official YouTube channel for those who aren’t able to attend in person.
Catch over 1,500 hours of sport events (with the exclusion of golf, archery and rifle shooting) on the NAIG 2023 Live Stream as well as the Opening and Closing Ceremonies.
— 2023 North American Indigenous Games (@NAIG2023) July 12, 2023
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Following a week of sporting and cultural entertainment, a closing ceremony will be held at the Halifax Common’s cultural village on July 21 at 8:30 p.m.
Unlike the opening celebration, the closing ceremony is a free and non-ticketed event that is open to all members of the public. The evening’s lineup will feature live music and cultural performances intended to celebrate the athletes and volunteers who contributed to the nine-day event.
Nova Scotia’s First Nation athletes have previously competed in four NAIG events, earning a total of 82 medals, with 18 of those being first-place honours.
In 1990, the first North American Indigenous Games took place in Edmonton, where about 3,000 athletes and performers from First Nations throughout Canada and the U.S. travelled to participate.
Since then, eight tournaments were successfully held, with the most recent being hosted in Toronto in 2017. The majority of NAIG competitions have been hosted by Canadian cities and First Nations communities.
The event is governed by the North American Indigenous Games Council, which comprises 26 representatives from 13 Canadian provinces and territories and 13 regions in the United States.
“Warm greetings to everyone. Namaste… I am Lisa,” before telling the audience this was “a historic moment for journalism.”
The channel boss Jagi Mangat Panda called the moment “a milestone in broadcasting TV and digital journalism” and said ‘Lisa’s’ role would involve doing repetitive work “so news people can focus on doing more creative work to bring better quality news.” ‘Lisa’ will be able to deliver news in a variety of local Indian languages, and bring election results and similarly speedy news responses to the audience at great speed.
India Today launched a female AI news anchor called ‘Sana’ back in April. The figure presents during the 9pm slot every evening, reading headlines before being replaced on screen by a human presenter. The Times reports India Today boss Vibhor Gandotra affirming no job losses would result and that the public had reacted positively to her introduction. However, sceptics remain critical of the impact on reporting and chairing debates if such use of AI presenters is expanded.
“Ishtar.” “From Justin to Kelly.” “Beverly Hills Chihuahua.” “Cats.”
No, this isn’t the marquee of a movie theater in Hell, but rather some of the episodes of bad movie podcast “The Flop House.” For 16 years, Dan McCoy, Stuart Wellington and Elliott Kalan have analyzed box office or critical bombs that either failed to make a dent in pop culture or became notoriously reviled.
“The Flop House” is hitting a milestone on July 15, with the group releasing its 400th episode, a discussion of legendary bad movie “Troll 2.” What started as a lark in the early days of podcasting has turned into a refuge for the trio’s creativity, friendship and even a way for the hosts to pay the bills.
Speaking with the trio on a warm spring night at Brooklyn’s Hinterlands Bar, which Wellington owns, it’s clear how their quick wit and easy chemistry has kept the show going. That said, as McCoy is quick to note in his self-deprecating manner, “That’s our secret to success: Be there before everyone else, where it’s easier to get noticed.”
The first episode launched on September 7, 2007, as McCoy, Wellington and another friend riffed on the 2005 action misfire “Stealth.” McCoy was hoping to develop a career in comedy, putting in time at New York’s sketch and improv scenes, and Wellington, despite not having professional comedy ambitions, was his funniest friend. But the “Flop House” formula didn’t quite gel until McCoy invited another mainstay in the improv community, Kalan, to be the new third host starting in early 2008.
“They lucked out in finding someone who can talk, talk, talk without stopping,” Kalan quips. “The show needed a Jewish person on it. These two Midwestern gentiles needed an East Coast Jew, for the tax breaks.”
Kalan’s frequent tangents, which frustrate, mystify and impress his co-hosts in equal measure, were the secret sauce to complement McCoy’s hangdog humor and Wellington’s “cool guy, but knows everything about ‘Warhammer’” persona.
As their banter became breezier, the trio gained more buzz and press, part of which could be attributed to Kalan and McCoy’s eventual day jobs writing for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” The hype around this podcast — two “Daily Show” writers and their funny friend snark on bad movies — was enough to land glowing coverage in The New York Times, The A.V. Club and Slate. With the hype, their audience grew, and “The Flop House” became a more meaningful part of their lives.
“We did it for many years just as a hobby and not particularly professionally,” Kalan said. “Dan would say, ‘Hey, it’s been a while since we put an episode out, we should get together tonight.’ I think once you’re written up in places kind of spontaneously, you start taking it more seriously.”
Another part of the business that became more serious to the trio in recent years is the fiscal element, which has remained remarkably steady for men who work in volatile industries. Wellington, who also owns Brooklyn’s Minnie’s Bar in addition to The Hinterlands, was able to depend on advertising and live show revenue from “The Flop House” to keep afloat during a pandemic. And for Kalan, who left his position as head writer at “The Daily Show” in 2015 and has written for “Mystery Science Theater 3000” and the Fox animated series “HouseBroken” since then, and McCoy, who left “The Daily Show” in 2021 and worked on projects such as “Hell of A Week with Charlamagne Tha God,” the podcast has given them financial stability during the WGA strike.
“No one’s getting rich off of this,” McCoy says. “But it’s nice to know that I currently, after 11 years that I had television writing jobs, having no current television writing job, I’m not going to be on the street, because between the podcast and my wife’s income we can live.”
Kalan noted that despite the fact that both he and McCoy are Emmy-winning writers from a popular show, there is a dependability in podcasting that can’t be duplicated in other entertainment fields.
Beyond the money, the trio maintain what Wellington refers to as “the best enforced friendship” as a result of working together.
“Dan and Stuart are the friends that I’m in contact with the most,” Kalan said. “They’re great dudes and I love them, but also because we have this thing there are times our friendship is hurt by the fact that we also have a show business, business. But it also means that we have to talk to each other regularly, which is really good.”
After episode 400, “The Flop House” is launching a new project called Flop TV, a series of remote live shows focusing on some of the most notorious titles they haven’t covered yet, such as 2002’s “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” and 1987’s “Nukie.”
And while the movies just don’t get any better, “The Flop House” hosts don’t plan on stopping any time soon.
“Doing the show for so long and doing live shows… there’s just a level of trust I have with these guys,” Wellington says. “I know that they have my back, that they will fill the space, that they will know where I’m going. I trust almost no one in this world as much these guys, and that’s a really big deal for me.”
Actors and writers tell TheWrap their stories of hope, stress and rage towards the studios and Disney CEO Bob Iger
As they step off the bus, a chant of “Jig is up!” fills the air, invoking a phrase from Drescher’s impassioned speech Thursday, decrying Hollywood executives like Disney CEO Bob Iger and which has been seen by dozens of SAG-AFTRA members who spoke with TheWrap on Friday at picket lines in both New York and Los Angeles.
The members say that the veteran actress and organizer’s speech spoke directly to their experience as working class actors, finding it increasingly harder to make ends meet from a profession they pour their passion into for the profit of multibillion dollar studios and who they see as trying to render them obsolete through artificial intelligence.
“I am Gen X and I never imagined that I would be radicalized,” said Heather Dowling, a seven-year member of SAG-AFTRA who says she hadn’t been seriously involved with her union until the Writers Guild of America went on strike two months ago, when she learned that a fellow actor she had great respect for and who worked on up to 24 productions a year didn’t make enough to qualify for SAG-AFTRA’s health plan.
“I never believed I would find myself on a picket line. That was not on my life bingo card,” Dowling said. “Watching this mess has just emboldened me to say, ‘We have to stand up and speak up for people,’ and I mean people not just actors… standing up for working people that are just trying to make a living doing what they’re good at.”
At picket lines across both cities, the atmosphere among writers and actors was a mix of motivated optimism and deep anger towards Hollywood’s C-suite, particularly its most prominent CEOs. When the picket lines began at 9 a.m. at the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, WGA members took to picketing at the lot’s western entrance while SAG-AFTRA members took up the main gate on the east side, with the two unions gradually mingling as more picketers trickled in.
“We didn’t even have this east gate picketed earlier this week,” said WGA strike captain Eli Edelson, who spoke to TheWrap this past Tuesday. “This is definitely a morale booster for our members here on this line, and we are going to be right there supporting our SAG brothers and sisters for however long it takes to get a deal.”
“There’s a lot of common ground and a lot of similarity with the response to our asks… where [SAG-AFTRA] asks weren’t even given proper consideration, where they weren’t even showing any daylight, and that is what we saw in negotiations as well,” WGA assistant general counsel Kathy Christovich added from the Fox picket line. “It does come down to wages, residuals, AI — that’s common language of our collective bargaining agreements and we’re seeking, in a lot of ways, the same protection.”
But while a few dozen writers and actors dotted the entrances to the Sony, Fox and Universal lots, the sidewalks surrounding the headquarters of Netflix, Warner Bros. and especially Disney were filled with hundreds of picket signs from both unions.
Netflix has become a major target of frustration for WGA and SAG-AFTRA as the impacts of streaming on wages, writers rooms and residuals have become key sticking points that have led to this double strike. David Zaslav’s tumultuous year as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery has also earned him the ire of Hollywood labor going back to day 1 of the WGA strike, when WGA board member Adam Conover called him out during a CNN interview.
And then there is Bob Iger, who during a CNBC interview said that when it came to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA contract proposals, “there’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic, and they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”
The picket signs surrounding the Disney lot pounced on Iger’s comments, with messages like “We made you a billionaire, Bob” and “Hey Bob: Power doesn’t panic,” a reference to the Disney+ “Star Wars” show “Andor,” which earned eight Emmy nominations this week.
“For him to have the nerve to say that our asks are unreasonable and what the writers are asking is unreasonable when we know the salaries of these CEOs… I’m telling you it was like pouring gasoline on a fire,” Dowling said.
Beyond Iger, other quotes from studio executives — especially those circulated within a recent article that reported the endgame of the AMPTP was to let writers start losing their apartments and houses — fueled a distaste among those on the picket line who are fighting just to make ends meet.
“That’s horrendous. That is vile,” seethed Sue Birch, a SAG-AFTRA strike captain at the picket line in front of Netflix’s Manhattan offices. “That’s the first thing I have to say. The second thing I have to say is that writers and actors are used to being out of work. When we work, we put our money aside because we know that this might be our only job this year. They tried this with us on the commercial strike in 2000, it was a six-month strike. We stuck it out.
“I just want to wake up tomorrow and feel secure — I don’t want to have to worry,” SAG member B.K. Phillips said, adding that he must continue to put money into training for when the strike ends. “It doesn’t seem to be fair where the wages for people in my tier of acting keeps getting cut each year, but these executives are walking away with contracts and deals… if some of that money was returned into the product maybe the product would be fantastic and everyone would come out a winner.”
Beyond their bottom line, artificial intelligence was another issue that SAG-AFTRA members railed against, as multiple actors who spoke to TheWrap referenced chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland’s statement at Thursday’s press conference that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers’ proposal would allow studios to use AI recreations of a background actor in perpetuity for only one day’s pay.
The AMPTP says that this is false, claiming that its proposal would only allow for digital recreations for the project that the actor is employed on and that use of such digital recreations in other projects would only be done with the actor’s consent and with compensation.
While more information on the two sides’ proposals on AI and other sticking points is still forthcoming, actors say that they are glad that their union is doing everything in its power to fight against AI at its earliest stages of adoption by studios.
“AI can give you words, it can give you scenes, but it can never give you heart and soul — that is only gonna come from creators,” SAG-AFTRA member Oral Forrest Jr. said at the Fox lot. “That can only be fully executed by actors, real actors, real people, who have real lived experiences that we want to share with people.”
“What we’re facing right now with AI is something that every profession is going to face,” added voiceover actor Clay Savage from the Sony pickets. “AI is only going to become more efficient as the years go on, and what CEOs in Hollywood are trying now will be tried by CEOs of other businesses. It can be a useful tool, but if we all don’t make a stand now, it will replace us.”
Savage’s words were echoed by several other WGA and SAG-AFTRA members on Friday, as well as Drescher herself in the speech that got rave reviews from her fellow actors on the picket lines.
It was a potentially career-defining moment for Drescher, who was elected SAG-AFTRA president in 2021 after a heated union election that saw her Unite for Strength caucus and the opposing Membership First sling attacks at each other. Drescher would later polarize the SAG-AFTRA membership with comments she made opposing mandates for COVID-19 vaccines on productions as Hollywood emerged from the pandemic.
But all of that seemed distant after Drescher’s speech, in which she set the record straight about her presence at a contractual brand shoot for Dolce & Gabbana in Italy with Kim Kardashian a week ago, saying that she didn’t neglect her duties as guild president and remained in videoconference contact with her negotiating team as the contract deadline approached with no progress on a deal being made.
“At 10:30 p.m. at night, I would leave the event. I would go to my hotel room and I call into the Zoom. And when I couldn’t get through to them because I was on a plane, I was texting with them constantly throughout the plane ride,” Drescher said on Thursday. “I worked around the clock in three different time zones because my parents live in Florida, so I keep asking them to move here, and I manage their well-being as well. So you know I think that all of the people standing behind me stand behind me.”
Shari Belafonte, a member of the SAG-AFTRA negotiating committee, had nothing but praise for how Drescher led her team during talks with the AMPTP, and says that she thinks the studios underestimated her.
“From the beginning, she’s been the little pit bull, and I think there were people who thought, ‘Oh, she’s The Nanny, she’s going to be a pushover,” she said. “She was always in contact with us. We’d be here in the afternoon, she’d be talking with us after midnight.”
Drescher’s passion may have gotten Hollywood’s double strike off with a bang, but a rough road lies ahead. On top of the financial and emotional strain that comes with a strike, the immense summer heat waves gripping the United States and much of the northern hemisphere will likely persist for much of the next two months. Both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA’s captains were seen unloading extra coolers full of water while picketers regularly took breaks in shaded areas to cool off.
“I hope the studios come to their senses and realize that nobody needs to do this. We’d rather be working under a fair deal making shows in a room with AC,” Belafonte said. “But I think people are going to keep coming out here. We’ll bring the tents, we’ll bring the ice and the water and we’ll stay out here until we get what we need from the studios.”
Kanye West is going to make his fans wait a bit longer. There was a fear about whether he will ever return to the limelight after all the controversies. But the rapper has been quietly working for both his music and fashion career, away from the limelight. However, his fan pages stay active, often slipping updates on his projects. The latest one brought the good news of his music collaboration.
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After collaborating with Fivio Foreign, he was rumored to feature in rapper Traxster’s deluxe album, ‘CHICAGO.’ The original album is out, with the deluxe one queued up as well. But the ‘Surrender’ singer has an update for his fans which is quite saddening.
Traxster drops an update on the album rumored to feature Kanye West
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Ever since Ye returned, there have been rumors of him making music. Since the rapper keeps his distance from the paparazzi, it is difficult to tell the difference between a rumor and a fact. His potential collaborator himself has spoken out on Instagram now. The Legendary Traxster was supposed to feature Ye on the deluxe version of his album ‘CHICAGO’. He has now given an update stating that they are looking for a new date and that the album is on ‘standby’.
According to fan page GoodAssSub, it was to first release on 15th July. The reason for its postponement is not revealed, but there are proofs to suggest that it may finally happen. Traxster was present at Ye’s 29th birthday party, even seen in a photo clicked along with him which he posted on Instagram and tagged ‘CHICAGO’. So far, both rappers have kept mum about West’s appearance, but it might happen after all this wait.
Ye, meanwhile, stays busy expanding other aspects of his career while spending quality time with his family.
The rapper remains in Tokyo for other work
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Kanye West has been busy in his favorite city Tokyo with his wife Bianca Censori, even meeting her Australian family there. On the professional front, his Yeezy food department hosted a food event while he posed with music fans for photos. Even his Yeezy office work is in full swing as he seeks to compete with rival Adidas.
He is also said to be working with Freddie Gibbs as revealed by Hit-boy and Big Hit during an interview with Bootleg Kev. The date for ‘CHICAGO C’ is yet to be revealed by Traxster and fans can meanwhile just wait for it and revisit his previous musical prowess.
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What are your opinions on the postponement of the deluxe album featuring Kanye West? Share them in the comments.
Ram Charan plays a deaf character in Rangasthalam.
Rangasthalam surpassed the opening day numbers of Brahmāstra, making it the highest-grossing opener among Indian films in Japan in 2023.
Rangasthalam, starring Ram Charan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu, is widely regarded as one of the greatest Telugu films ever made. The film made a lot of noise at the box office when it was released in 2018 and received critical acclaim. Yesterday, the makers released the film in Japan and since then, it has been creating quite a stir among the audiences.
Touted as a gritty village drama, the film was directed by Sukumar, who is known for Pushpa: The Rise, Arya and To Father with Love. In a remarkable achievement, Rangasthalam surpassed the opening day numbers of Brahmastra, making it the highest-grossing opener among Indian films in Japan in 2023.
Ram Charan’s loyal fan base in Japan played a significant role in the film’s remarkable success. Even with the release of the highly anticipated KGF franchise, Rangasthalam managed to capture the attention of Japanese audiences. It will be intriguing to witness how the film will perform at the Japanese box office in the coming days.
Ram Charan plays the role of Chittibabu, a deaf protagonist. Samantha Ruth Prabhu plays the female lead in the movie. Rangasthalam also stars Aadhi, Jagapathi Babu, Prakash Raj, Rohini, Ajay Gosh, Pujita Ponnada, Brahmaji and others in significant roles.
Earlier, SS Rajamouli’s directorial RRR achieved resounding success, particularly in Japan. RRR, with its release, not only shattered numerous records but also opened up new frontiers for Telugu cinema to explore and conquer overseas.
Ram Charan has established himself as a prominent figure in the film industry with blockbuster movies like RRR, and Magadheera. His other notable releases include Dhruva, Bruce Lee- The Fighter, Yevadu, Naayak, Chirutha and Acharya, to name a few. The actor was last seen in a cameo appearance in Salman Khan starrer Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan. Currently, he is preparing for an exciting lineup of upcoming films including Game Changer, RC16 and an untitled film directed by Gowtham Tinnanuri.
Entertainment Bureau brings you all updates from the world of entertainment — breaking news, Twitter trends, features, movie reviews, exclusive inter…Read More
While many have speculated that Spider-Man: Freshman Year has been cancelled on Disney+, a new update offered a promising sign that the show is still in the works.
Alongside revealing a special first look, Marvel Studios announced a 2024 release window for Spider-Man: Freshman Year during 2022’s San Diego Comic-Con. However, there have been minimal updates since.
Is Spider-Man: Freshman Year Cancelled by Disney+?
Marvel
Polygon Pictures announced its involvement in Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Freshman Year, indicating that the animated series have not been cancelled by Disney+ despite concerns from fans.
In the studio’s official statement, Polygon Pictures expressed excitement about its upcoming collaboration:
“Polygon Pictures (“PPI,” President and CEO: Shuzo Shiota, Head Office: Tokyo, Japan) is proud to announce its involvement in Marvel Studios’ upcoming animated series, ‘Spider-Man: Freshman Year.’
Marvel-published Spider-Man comics are beloved around the world, and the story and characters have been adapted into numerous TV series and other media. In Japan, the 2021 live-action film ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ was a smash hit, becoming the first Hollywood film to earn over 4 billion yen at the domestic box-office since the start of the COVID pandemic.
Animation for ‘Spider-Man: Freshman Year’ will be produced by Japanese digital animation studio, Polygon Pictures. We hope you are looking forward to this return to the world of Spider-Man, utilizing the latest CG technology!”
Although the show is not cancelled, it is still unknown when it will release due to recent developments from Marvel Studios.
In March 2023, Disney+ changed the release windows of several MCU series from Phase 5 to “Coming Soon,” meaning that the shows, including Spider-Man: Freshman Year, could be delayed.
Why It Would Not Be Wise to Cancel Spider-Man’s Disney+ Series
Spider-Man is perhaps Marvel’s most popular hero, and many would agree that cancelling his animated Disney+ series is not the best route moving forward.
In fact, Spider-Man: Freshman Year executive producer and head writer Jeff Trammell shared a promising update about the series in November 2022, noting that development was still progressing while celebrating the anniversary of his pitch for the show.
Given that it was already confirmed that Spider-Man: Freshman Year is set in an alternate Earth, exploring his story in a different universe allows more opportunities to showcase a fresh take on the web-slinging hero.
Aside from focusing on a new Peter Parker, Freshman Year also gives fans a chance to learn more about other Spider-Man villains, such as Speed Demon and Tarantula.
All in all, Spider-Man: Freshman Year has the potential to be a hit among Marvel’s web-slinging projects while also expanding the MCU’s Multiverse Saga.
Spider-Man: Freshman Year has no release date yet.
After weeks of negotiations with Hollywood studios, SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists has officially gone on strike. The actors’ guild represents 160,000 members, who will join the Writers Guild of America in their first joint strike in 63 years and their first joint walkout since 1980. But why is this strike happening? How long will it last? What does it mean for viewers at home? Allow us to explain on today’s episode of Nerdist News. Watch more Nerdist News: http://bit.ly/1qvVVhVOpens in new tab Follow Us:
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The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) request for injunctive relief in its case against Microsoft has been further denied in appellate court by the Ninth Circuit just two days after the commission filed for the appeal. This caps off an eventful week in the related court drama between Microsoft and the FTC as the tech giant sought to close its deal to acquire Activision-Blizzard that was first announced over a year and a half ago.
The presiding judge’s ruling landed on Tuesday, July 11, and denied the FTC an injunction. A day later, the FTC moved to appeal that ruling and find its injunction in appellate court, but that too has now been denied. It’s very likely Microsoft will now close on the deal, perhaps as soon as Monday, July 17.
Xbox’s parent company still needs to work things out with the UK’s regulatory body, the CMA, as the regulators had concerns over Microsoft’s potential for future cloud monopolization specifically. In an internal memo from Xbox lead Phil Spencer earlier this week, Spencer mentioned that his team is already seeking ways to modify the deal “to address the CMA’s concerns in a way that is acceptable to the CMA,” so it’s likely the two parties have been in close contact all week in the event the FTC’s appeal was swiftly denied.
It’s the weekend now, so it may be right not to expect any more movement on the matter until Monday at the soonest. And for gamers, don’t expect Call of Duty to hit Xbox Game Pass so soon, as it was revealed it can’t arrive in Xbox’s subscription library until at least 2025.
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.
‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
What can we, as independent filmmakers, learn from movie franchises with big legacies? How is AI affecting the careers of writers and actors? What is the best way to properly insure film equipment in the event it gets stolen?
In today’s episode, No Film School’s Charles Haine and GG Hawkins discuss:
Barbie is soooo close to its release, and honestly, this movie has become my entire personality for the past month and a half.
So, to celebrate the movie’s debut, we had some of the cast — Margot Robbie, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, and Michael Cera — take a quiz to find out which Barbie character they are most like IRL.
Is Margot a real-life Barbie? Who’s got the most Ken-ergy? And most importantly, what color are they painting their Dreamhouses? Watch the video below to find out:
Ty Pennington, the host of HGTV’s Rock the Block and Battle on the Beach, shared on Instagram that he is recovering from a throat abscess that landed him in the intenive care unit of a Colorado hospital.
Pennington’s airway was blocked, necessitating the intubation. His condition came just two days after attending the Barbie premiere in Los Angeles.,
Pennington is also the former host of Trading Spaces and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.
“From the red carpet, to the ICU… this last week has been interesting! I’m okay now, still recovering,” he wrote. “To shed some light on why I was MIA… Sunday I hit the red carpet for @barbiethemovie; Monday I flew to Colorado to start filming in Breckinridge and Tuesday morning I woke up at 4 a.m. and could barely breathe. Turns out, that sore throat Ive had for the last month was actually an abscess which had grown so large it was closing off my airway.”
He continued, “Next thing I know, I was intubated and flown to the ICU in Denver,” he continued. “Wednesday I had surgery and yesterday afternoon I was released from the ICU. Thank you so much to all the amazing staff at St.Anthony’s in Lakewood, CO & Summit Health in Frisco for taking such great care of me. A great reminder to LISTEN to your body when it’s telling you something #justhappytobehere Also, even through heavy sedatives it’s good to see I was still in the right frame of mind (pic 4)…”
Pennington attended the Barbie premiere on Sunday to promote HGTV’s four-part special Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge. He will compete on one of eight teams of HGTV stars transforming a Southern California home into a real-life version of Barbie’s pink palace.
The Bear is a drama series created by Christopher Storer and premiered in 2022 on FX on Hulu. The series stars Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Abby Elliott. It has received a lot of critical acclaim for the way it captures the intensity of the food industry. The Bear achieved the rare accomplishment of a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, dealing with the concepts of mental illness and grief in a moving way. The cast is incredibly impressive, bringing life and dimension to their characters, with Variety‘s review of the series specifically praising White’s performance.
Update July 14, 2023: The Bear has been nominated for 13 Emmys, so this list has been updated with even more series similar to The Bear.
The Bear season 2 premiered on Hulu on June 22, 2023, and also gained positive reviews and saw an increase in viewers. Shortly after season 2 premiered, the show’s first season was nominated for 13 Emmys, including Outstanding Comedy Series. The series makes for a quick binge, and while you wait for season 3 of the series, here are more shows to watch if you enjoyed The Bear.
12 Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown
Zero Point Zero Production, Inc.
Winner of twelve Primetime Emmy Awards and with a strong twelve-season worth of content, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown is a show that bears similarities in theme and tone to the gritty restaurant dramedy in question. If you are a food lover, you’re already aware of the impact Bourdain had on the culinary world for creating a show where he travels the globe and explores various cultures and cuisines
. Food serves as a lens for Bourdain to dive deep into various destinations, paying close attention to their complexity and nuance rather than just tracing the edges. Like The Bear’s Carmy, Bourdain approaches food, people, and place with equal parts sensitivity, humor, and a fiercely curious mind. The show isn’t merely a travelogue, it is an adventure story that introduces the audience to honest conversations and new experiences.
11 Family Business
Netflix
Family Business is a French comedy-drama that centers on a working-class family that runs a butcher shop in Paris. When Joseph Hazan, a bankrupt businessman, gets a whiff of the fact that marijuana was about to get legalized in Paris, he secretly turns the kosher butcher shop into a marijuana cafe. Right from the premise to the atmosphere, the show reminds you of The Bear. It utilizes the high-stakes world of a restaurant or food business – in this case a kosher butcher shop – as a microcosm for exploring larger themes of family, tradition, ambition, and following one’s passion. The tone carries an incredible balance of comedy and drama as it flows through the ups and downs of a loving yet dysfunctional family attempting to accept change while holding on to their roots.
10 Happy Endings
ABC
Very few people have heard of and appreciated this underrated 2011 sitcom that follows a group of six dysfunctional friends living in Chicago. Brad and Jane are the very definition of a happily married couple, Max and Penny are both single but with different priorities in life, and Alex and Dave, the nucleus of the group and the show, who have recently broken up. The best part about Happy Endingsis its sharp writing, fast-paced jokes, and an ensemble cast of quirky characters that always keep you on your toes. But perhaps what makes it align with The Bear the most is the environment inside Alex and Dave’s food truck. The owners are cynical, and the customers are rowdy. Their banter-filled dynamic feels smart, familiar, and hilarious more than anything.
9 Itaewon Class
Netflix
A rather light-hearted fluffy Korean drama that revolves around a group of misfits trying to make their mark (and get revenge) with a restaurant and bar in the lively Itaewon neighborhood of Seoul, Itaewon Class stars two of the most talented stars in the industry, Park Seo-joon, Kim Da-mi. After Park Sae-royi is wronged by a school bully who causes an accident that kills his father, he ends up serving time for physical assault.
Following which, he decides to open his own pub. The meticulously crafted food, the decor, and the vibe of the atmosphere will really appeal to fans of The Bear’s authentic take on the restaurant world. And though separated by language and culture, both the shows reveal the universal struggles and joys of chasing your dreams against all odds.
8 Industry
HBO
This British drama delivers the breakneck pace and environment of a workplace occupied by up-and-coming professionals desperately trying to “make it.” In Industry, six young graduates compete for a limited number of full-time positions at Pierpoint & Co., a leading investment bank in London. The show really digs deep into the obsessive drive, cutthroat ambition, and simmering tensions that characterize a high-pressure, high-stakes workplace.
The world of high finance mirrors the hasty but casual restaurant at the center of The Bear in its demands for long hours, thumping stress, and relentless competition. Both the shows also match in pushing the characters to their limits both physically and mentally. Despite vastly different settings and featuring a wild jargon of the financial and culinary world, both Industry and The Bear offer human portrayals of young people in an intense professional environment.
7 Shameless
Showtime
One of the first comparisons that immediately comes to mind is Shameless. The series follows the dysfunctional Gallagher family and their lives in Chicago, combining humor with gritty backdrops and family dynamics. The series also stars Jeremy Allen White as Lip Gallagher, who struggles with addiction. He has evolved a lot as an actor in The Bear. However, his performance in Shameless is also very impressive, and it’s easy to see similarities in their characters in both series.
6 This is Going to Hurt
BBC One
This is Going to Hurt stars Ben Whishaw in the leading role, following a doctor in 2006 who is overworked in his job. The series serves as a critique of the British healthcare system and does not shy away from portraying the shortcomings that it has. His personal life begins to suffer due to the burden that is being placed to him, and it’s a perfectly done, gritty drama that bears much resemblance to The Bear.
5 Ramy
Hulu
Ramy follows a first-generation Egyptian-American teenager, played by the show’s creator Ramy Youssef, who has to find balance between his religious upbringing and the culture of New Jersey and the lifestyle that goes along with it. Ramy experiences a lot of internal struggles that are similar to Carmy, and viewers will definitely enjoy this show if they enjoyed The Bear.
Sweetbitter follows Tess (Ella Purnell), a young waitress who is working at an extremely high-end restaurant in New York City. The similarities between this Starz show and The Bear lie in the restaurant settings that they share, and we see the characters in both shows develop their relationships with their co-workers in a familiar setting.
3 The Chef Show
Netflix
The Chef Show is a spinoff series of Jon Favreau’s Chef, which follows a chef who opens up a food truck after he is humiliated at work and fired. The spinoff series focuses on the real lives of various chefs as they are invited to cook with Favreau, resulting in natural conversation. The Chef Show shares the setting of a restaurant and the backdrop of food and also focuses on true stories from those in the restaurant industry.
2 Severance
AppleTV+
Severance is directed by Ben Stiller and follows Mark S. (Adam Scott), who is the central character. The show focuses on Mark’s mission to “sever” his outside self from his workplace so his grief that he feels after the loss of his wife can be kept in a box. Both this series and The Bear focus on characters who are struggling with their mental health in very different ways in the workplace, both being equally successful.
1 Succession
Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Succession is an HBO drama that centers around the Roys, a family of billionaires who are vying for control of the media empire that their father controls, which results in the Roy siblings desperately competing for his attention and trying to outdo each other. The Bear is obviously very different in its narrative, however, the focus on Carmy’s relationship with his brother, Mikey, and how much this impacted his character ties these two shows together as family dynamics are explored.
Walk the Moon is going on an indefinite hiatus. The band behind hits “Shut Up and Dance” and “Anna Sun” made the announcement on social media today.
“The time has come for us to take a good, long break from touring and making records together. When we do reconvene, that will be a glorious day. And the truth is, we don’t know when that’s gonna be,” frontman/singer/keyboardist Nicholas Petricca said.
Petricca expressed his gratitude to Walk the Moon’s guitarist Eli Maiman and drummer Sean Waugaman, its team, and its dedicated fan base.
“This summer will mark 18 years since I started the band that would change its name to Walk the Moon — half my life ago,” Petricca said. “For half of my life, this band has been the main focus of my creative love and energy.… It is an enormous act of love to carefully lift something like this from the center of our lives and place it gently to the side, out of focus, and let it rest for a moment. It’s a choice we make powerfully, to follow our truth, to make space for new creations, for family, to serve our well-being, and in the long run, even serve the well-being of Walk the Moon.”
In the video, Petricca also said the band’s final show will be livestreamed around the world, and that Walk the Moon will be releasing new music in the near future.
The group started at Ohio’s Kenyon College in 2006, self-releasing Walk the Moon’s debut album I Want! I Want! in 2010.
Beastie Boys are reissuing their 1998 album, Hello, Nasty, in the 4xLP box set format that debuted in 2009 before going out of print. The collection features 21 bonus tracks including rarities, remixes, and B-sides, packaged alongside the original album in an eight-panel gatefold, along with a coffee table book–style slipcase. It’s out September 8, via UMe.
This week, Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz’s hardcore punk supergroup DFL also announced the reissue of its debut album. Read about the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head and “Sabotage” in Pitchfork’s rundowns of the albums and tracks of the 1990s. Plus, read “An Oral History of the Tibetan Freedom Concert,” which Adam “MCA” Yauch co-organized.
The remote wilderness is the ideal location for adventure films and captivating documentaries. In recent years, blockbuster movies like “Into the Wild” and “The Revenant” have proven that the backcountry is a popular choice amongst audiences, too.
The wilderness has also given indie films, like “The Blair Witch Project”, the perfect set and scenery. You don’t have to pay for CGI and special effects when shooting in the great outdoors, as the mountain ranges, flora, and fauna can speak for themselves.
However, shooting in the remote wilderness can be perilous — both for your project and your crew. You need to be well prepared before you decide to take your cast and film crew deep into the woods for a weekend of work.
Location Scouting
A quick Google search for stunning wilderness scenes will yield hundreds of results, all of which may serve your film perfectly. However, before you load up an RV to visit remote national parks, you’ll need to conduct some location research first. Before committing any resources to a location, consider:
Permission: Can you actually get permission to shoot your film? If not, don’t try to sneak on for a few shots — the fines will be hefty.
Cost: Some locations will charge a premium to film crews. Set a budget for your location and stick to it.
Logistics: The remote wilderness may not be easy to access. Think about how you’ll operate the camera booms and how much it will cost to fly everyone to your proposed location.
Once you’ve researched your location, it’s time to hop on a plane, train, or automobile to visit your proposed shoot site. Seeing the site in person is critical, as you’ll get a far better understanding of how your script will pan out.
Death Valley, California: A.K.A. Tatooine, the miles of desert and mountains in Death Valley are perfect for sci-fi space dramas.
Glacier National Park, Montana: There are plenty of Old West stories here to inspire your cast and improve your script.
Great Smoky Mountains, Tennessee: As a tourist hot spot, the Great Smoky Mountains could be the perfect backdrop for a thriller set in the Appalachian wilderness.
Set aside a few days to take in the scenery and explore your proposed location fully. Eventually, you’ll find locations that are perfect for your movie and make logistical sense.
Preparing for the Worst
Every film encounters some kind of major setback or logistical challenge during the shooting stage. However, shooting in the remote wilderness increases your odds of being set back due to unpredictable weather. Prepare to film in inclement weather by:
Bring plenty of waterproof gear and spare equipment in case of a sudden deluge;
Bring grit and high-traction flooring to keep everyone safe on set during the shoot;
Use umbrellas, tents, and ice packs to keep your staff cool and cameras functional;
Tie everything down if you expect high winds and avoid shooting altogether if dust and debris are jeopardizing the integrity of your equipment.
Give yourself plenty of time to shoot and build in some slack to the schedule. You may be able to shoot all day long in a controlled warehouse environment, but you cannot force the natural world to acquiesce to your plans. Instead, simplify your shoot and accept that setbacks are part of the process.
Successfully Shooting in the Wilderness
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when you first start filming in the remote wilderness. You can’t pull up your phone to check in with co-producers and you can’t suddenly decide to change the lighting or alter the scenery.
You may need to self-fund your first short film set in the wilderness, too. Investors may be put off by the risk involved with a remote shoot, meaning you may need to turn to crowdfunding and personal loans to pay the bills. Keep costs low by simplifying your shoot and slowly working through your shot list. Remember to build in some downtime, too, as this can keep morale high while you wait for storms to pass and winds to abate.
During the downtime, encourage your crew and cast to pull on their hiking boots and walk amongst remote mountain ranges and valleys. Walking can enhance creativity, alleviate some symptoms of depression, and help your crew unwind after a busy day at work. A team hike can be a good way to better understand the environment you are working within. This can give you new ideas for your scenes and may even help you discover new shoot locations in the area.
Conclusion
The remote wilderness is the perfect setting for sci-fi spectacles and Western dramas. However, you’ll need to do your research before packing up your crew and heading into the backcountry. Secure a location within your budget and build some slack into your shoot. This can improve morale and will ensure that your film is as eco-friendly as possible.
Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Portland area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts. If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter.
