It’s (finally) official: Prime Video has greenlit Season 2 of “Citadel,” with Joe Russo set to direct the entire season.
The first season of the spy drama, which premiered in April, had a number of directors attached, including Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Jessica Yu and Newton Thomas Sigel. On Season 2, however, it will be solely Joe Russo on directing duties, with David Weil returning as showrunner.
Prime Video has also revealed that its big-budget original — which stars Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and features Lesley Manville and Stanley Tucci — is its second most-watched new original series outside the U.S. behind “Rings of Power” and its fourth most-watched program worldwide.
All episodes of Season 1 will land on Prime Video on Friday. Meanwhile, the series premiere will be made free to stream without membership on both Prime Video and the ad-supported Freevee for a month in the U.S. and until May 28 internationally.
The show follows an international spy agency whose operatives, including Madden’s Mason Kane and Chopra Jonas’ Nadia Sinh, must come out of hiding to take down a powerful crime syndicate called Manticore. The series, which is the brainchild of Amazon and MGM Studios boss Jennifer Salke, was envisioned as an interconnected global franchise, with off-shoot series made in Italy and India, starring Matilda De Angelis, Varun Dhawan and Samantha Ruth Prabhu. The latter global series are now in production.
“‘Citadel’ is a truly global phenomenon,” said Salke. “Our goal was always to create a new franchise rooted in original IP that would grow Prime Video’s international audience. This show has drawn an outsize number of new international customers to Prime Video. Its massive worldwide debut audience is a testament to Joe and Anthony Russo’s remarkable vision, the incredible talents of Richard Madden, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Lesley Manville and Stanley Tucci, and the tireless work of the creative teams, cast, and crew. Given the overwhelming number of our customers who have embraced this show, we are not only thrilled to share the premiere episode of ‘Citadel’globally without membership, but also confirm that the series will return for a second season.”
Anthony Russo and Jos Russo added: “AGBO is thrilled to embark on this next phase of the spyverse with Jen, Vernon, and the entire team at Amazon. The innovative storytelling of ‘Citadel’ has paved the way for an incredible, worldwide collaboration with creatives in front of and behind the camera.”
Despite its ambitious premise, however, “Citadel” has so far received mixed reviews from critics, who’ve remained wary of its formulaic approach to creating an international franchise à la “Squid Game” or “Money Heist.” In her Variety review, Alison Herman wrote: “After ‘The Rings of Power,’ Amazon is once more trying to buy a global phenomenon without the basic acumen to back it up. The Everything Store has gone mad, and ‘Citadel’ certainly can’t save it.”
Prime Video recently received $25 million in California tax incentives to relocate to the state from the U.K. The show is expected to pay $119 million in “qualified” expenditures — which include below-the-line workers and California vendors — making it the biggest show ever lured from out of state by the credit.
From Amazon Studios and the Russo Brothers’ AGBO, “Citadel” is executive produced by Anthony Russo, Joe Russo, Mike Larocca, Angela Russo-Otstot and Scott Nemes for AGBO, with Weil serving as showrunner and executive producer. Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, Jeff Pinkne, and Scott Rosenberg serve as executive producers for Midnight Radio. Newton Thomas Sigel and Patrick Moran also serve as executive producers.
The Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California, will be the recipient of the 2023 Regional Theatre Tony Award, the Tony administration committee announced today.
The award, based on a recommendation by the American Theatre Critics Association, is accompanied by a $25,000 grant.
“Pasadena Playhouse has made a significant impact, on both a local and global level, by developing some of the most innovative and inspiring works and artists,” said Heather Hitchens, President and CEO of the American Theatre Wing and Charlotte St. Martin, President of The Broadway League, in a joint statement.
The playhouse’s Producing Artistic Director Danny Feldman called the award “a defining moment for our community,” adding, “This most prestigious award honors every person who has played a role in making and continuing to make Pasadena Playhouse one of the great cultural institutions in America.”
Pasadena Playhouse, the official State Theater of California, has staged thousands of original productions since its founding in 1917 including premieres of works by Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, Suzan Lori Parks and hundreds more.
The 76th Annual Tony Awards will air live on Sunday, June 11, from the United Palace in Washington Heights, New York City, from 8-11 PM, ET/5-8 PM PT on CBS and will stream live and on demand on Paramount+. The pre-show, The Tony Awards: Act One, will stream from 6:30-8 PM, ET/3:30-5 PM PT on Pluto TV.
Anjimile created “The King,” the title track of his debut album on 4AD, almost solely using acoustic guitar and his own voice. These two instruments, humble in their ease and accessibility, are reintroduced as gargantuan, almost terrifying forces as he returns from a three year absence with observations on being a Black trans person in a cruel country. The effect is immediate, a whiplashing storm you can’t look away from.
“The King” begins with a choir of voices moving swiftly in an ecclesiastical dance. Anjimile’s voice, appearing over a minute later, is booming and omnipresent by comparison, like a god speaking from the clouds above. He labels silence as the mark of Cain amidst Black Death, invoking recent years of racial unrest. “What don’t kill you almost killed you/What don’t fill you pains you, drains you,” he sings gracefully. Beneath this, Anjimile plays razor arpeggios on acoustic guitar; they’re sharp and quick, disappearing like tendrils of lightning bolts. There’s always been power afforded by watching and waiting: Now, on “The King,” Anjimile finally steps to the throne and speaks.
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! Indie filmmaking is not the only discipline that refuses to take “No” for an answer. Jacob Krupnick’s documentary short, Then Comes The Body, brings the art of ballet into the most unlikely of locations. The film tells the story of Nigerian ballet dancer/instructor Daniel Owoseni Ajala. What makes Ajala so remarkable is that ballet in Nigeria doesn’t exist. There is no national company, theater, or even the slightest interest in this global art form.
Not taking “no” for an answer, Ajala grabbed the bull by the horns and learned ballet from YouTube videos. After teaching himself, Ajala then began teaching willing Nigerian students from his hometown. Again, not taking “no” for an answer, he built his own makeshift studio and theater. His stage is his backyard and the local streets of Nigeria.
Building a ballet company was not easy for Ajala. Early on, he was persecuted as his interest in ballet was seen as indecent to the predominantly Christian nation of Nigeria. However, his persistence and perseverance ultimately paid off as his student received scholarships and opportunities abroad.
“…Ajala grabbed the bull by the horns and learned ballet from YouTube videos.”
I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of ballet, even though I married a dancer. Where Then Comes The Body succeeds is the obvious “rags to riches” story of Daniel Owoseni Ajala. Let’s be clear, he’s not quite at the “riches” part yet. However, his love for ballet and his passion for passing that along to the youth is nothing if not inspiring for anyone living in impoverished areas of the world.
Where the film shines is Krupnick’s storytelling and cinematography. The dances from Ajala’s students are beautiful, mainly when set against the backdrop of the Nigerian streets and Ajala’s backyard stage. The filmmaker finds some visually stunning locations in this small town to dance at.
Also, Then Comes The Body uses a distinctly African beat for its selection of music. No Western classical music here. Krupnick’s tale is inspirational and a pure joy to behold.
Gia Gray seems like a dream client for any bank: a well-off family doctor living in an exclusive Bay Area town, in a 5,000-square-foot mansion with a master bath bigger than my office.
With a credit score topping 800, she expected little drama when she and her husband decided to refinance their Danville home and two other investment properties in 2020 to capture some of the lowest interest rates in recent history — remember when 3% loans were a thing?
But after endless excuses and delays in her applications, “I started feeling Black,” Gray told me. Her bank, Wells Fargo, flat out turned her down on the investment properties, she said, and slow-rolled the application on her residence, coming up with new requirements as the process dragged on.
“At the visceral level, I felt that something was not right,” she said.
Across the country, other borrowers have had similar experiences. Earlier this year, a federal court in Northern California, where Wells Fargo is headquartered, consolidated the claims of Gray and seven other Black plaintiffs into one case that may be certified as a class-action suit in coming months.
The lead attorney in the case, Los Angeles-based Dennis S. Ellis, says up to 750,000 minority customers nationwide — Black, Asian and Latino — could have been affected by what he sees as a pattern of discriminatory lending that left qualified borrowers denied or pushed into higher interest rates and more expensive loans.
It’s a form of modern-day economic redlining, he told me, that if proven true inflicted pain that resonated beyond the borrowers, many of whom lost out on a chance to save hundreds or thousands off their loans each month. It also hurt Black and minority communities as a whole, because it took away an exceptional chance to build generational wealth through affordable homeownership.
“Realizing the American dream of owning your own home is not just about having a safe place to live,” Ellis pointed out. “It’s about securing the future of generations that follow because of the incredible financial stability that homeownership provides.”
Ellis contends that the problem developed in part because Wells Fargo was short-staffed during the pandemic and relied on flawed algorithms and an automated system that may have had discrimination baked into it.
But it wouldn’t be the first time Wells Fargo was found to have discriminated. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice won a $175-million settlement against the bank, the second-largest fair-lending settlement in the department’s history, over allegations that Wells Fargo engaged in a pattern or practice of “discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers in its mortgage lending from 2004 through 2009.”
The cities of Oakland and Philadelphia have also sued Wells Fargo for discriminatory lending practices; Philly settled its case for $10 million in 2019.
Wells Fargo has been accused of holding fake job interviews with minority candidates for posts that had already been promised to other applicants, low-balling home appraisals and ignoring issues of discrimination that, as they come to light, may be harming the bank’s bottom line.
Wells Fargo has denied all of the allegations, including those made in this lawsuit. In a statement, the company said it was confident it was following all required guidelines and that its underwriting practices are consistently applied regardless of a customer’s race or ethnicity.
“These allegations against Wells Fargo stand in stark contrast to the company’s significant and long-term commitment to closing the minority home ownership gap,” the statement read.
It’s not just owning a home, though. It’s owning it on good terms.
Google tells me that a $500,000 30-year loan at 3% interest costs about $900 less a month than a loan at 6% interest — about $324,000 over its lifetime. For the folks who weren’t able to refinance, that’s money lining corporate pockets instead of paying for college or retirement or funding other investments.
The lawsuit alleges that in 2020, “at a time when millions of white Americans were able to take advantage of historically low-interest rates for home loans,” Wells Fargo approved 47% of refinancing applications from Black homeowners, 53% from Hispanic and/or Latino homeowners, and 67% from Asian American applicants. That compares with 71%, 79% and 85%, respectively, for these same groups across all other lenders, according to the lawsuit.
That same year, Wells Fargo approved 71% of residential refinancing applications from white borrowers.
Ouch, Wells Fargo. Those are some dismal numbers.
The lawsuit also alleges that federal data show Wells Fargo was more likely to approve refinancing applications from low-earning white borrowers than high-earning Black borrowers. Analyzing data from 8 million refinancing applications filed in 2020, Ellis and his team found white applicants earning less than $63,000 a year were “more likely to have their refinancing application approved by Wells Fargo than Black refinancing applicants earning between $120,000 and $168,000 a year,” according to the lawsuit.
The insidiousness of financial discrimination lies in how hard it is to prove on an individual basis — and in how hard it is to even believe it’s happening. The loan process can be so remote and impersonal — even more so during the isolation of the pandemic — that Gray and her co-defendants were at first unsure if what they felt was really taking place.
Last week, Gray met two of those other borrowers in person at a news conference in San Francisco. I spoke with the three of them in a coffee shop afterward, but mostly I just listened, because there was a tremendous sense of relief and camaraderie as they shared how similar their experiences had been.
Until the lawsuit, Aaron Braxton, a Los Angeles homeowner, had been left wondering, “Are they doing this to everybody, or are they only doing this to Black folks?” he said.
Braxton was one of the first to file a complaint in 2020. A noted screenwriter, playwright and teacher, Braxton had owned his home in a historically Black neighborhood near USC for about 18 years and owed a fraction of what it was worth when he went to refinance his Wells Fargo mortgage. Like Gray, it was one thing after another, despite never missing a payment and having good credit. By the time Wells Fargo approved his loan, the interest rate had climbed and so had his frustration.
“I told them, ‘I am going to sue you. I don’t know how I’m going to sue you, but I am going to sue you, because I know I am not the only one,’” he said.
Gray was scrolling through her phone during the pandemic lockdown and came across a story about Braxton. “It was like a bright bulb,” she recalled, “and I said, ‘Oh, my God, this happened to someone else.’”
Christopher Williams flew in from Georgia, where he owns a home and rental properties. He worked in the financial industry for decades, so when Wells Fargo offered him a loan at 3 points higher than he expected, he asked why. Williams said the bank couldn’t give him clear answers, and he too began to suspect it was about the color of his skin.
Now, Williams said he wonders how many people there are who accepted loans at higher rates or with higher costs without knowing it. “How many of those loans and lines of credit are on the books of Wells Fargo right now?” he asked.
Ellis will be in federal court in San Francisco for the lawsuit on Thursday, the anniversary of the death of George Floyd. He says like the movement Floyd’s death set off to address issues of social justice, he hopes this case can raise awareness of financial injustice and its toll — which he considers the “21st century battleground of civil rights.”
“Just as we’ve cried out against policing practices that kill Black lives, so we denounce Wells Fargo’s racially motivated banking practices that kill Black opportunity,” said civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is also involved in the case.
Interest rates are not as compelling as the tragedy we witnessed with Floyd, but Crump and Ellis make an important point.
This is a capitalist joint.
Until we all have the same opportunities to create wealth, we’re left with the oppressed and the oppressors, who too often get away with strangling equity under the cover of paperwork and algorithms.
EXCLUSIVE: Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss and husband/entrepreneur Todd Tucker have joined the producing for the Broadway-bound revival of The Wiz, Deadline has learned.
In a statement, Burruss and Tucker said, “We are thrilled to be part of The Wiz. The songs, choreography, costumes, everything about The Wiz is epic.
“We have always said we want to help open the doors of theatre to all people,” they continued. “Theatre has the power to influence and inspire people to create change through art, and that is what we all need now. Art can heal and art can change you. It has changed us. So, come on and ease on down the road with us.”
The Wiz will be the latest Broadway production credit for Burruss and Tucker, following the recent revival of The Piano Lesson and last season’s Thoughts of a Colored Man.
The revival of the Tony-winning William F. Brown-Charlie Smalls musical, with new additional material by Amber Ruffin, will launch a national tour on September 23 at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore, the city where The Wiz made its world premiere in 1974. The revival will begin a limited engagement on Broadway in Spring 2024.
Casting will be announced later.
Burress and Tucker join the producing team of Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson, Brian Anthony Moreland and Ambassador Theatre Group.
Directing the revival will be Schele Williams (The Notebook, the revival of Disney’s Aida). The Wiz creative team also will include choreographer JaQuel Knight (Beyonce’s “Single Ladies,” Black is King), Joseph Joubert (music supervision, orchestrations and music arrangements), and Allen René Louis (vocal arrangements, music arrangements).
The Wiz design team will include scenic design by Hannah Beachler (Black Panther, Beyonce’s Black is King and Lemonade), costume design by Sharen Davis (Ray, Dreamgirls), lighting design by Ryan J. O’Gara (Thoughts of a Colored Man), sound design by Jon Weston (Parade) and wig design by Mia Neal (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom).
Based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the original production of The Wiz opened on Broadway in 1975 and ran for four years. The 1978 film adaptation starred Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Richard Pryor and Lena Horne.
European Union officials recently warned Apple against imposing charging speed limitations on third-party USB-C iPhone 15 chargers, and it looks as though the company is preparing to lift restrictions on wireless chargers from other manufacturers, too.
At present, newer iPhones support up to 15W wireless charging, but only when they’re paired with Apple-produced MagSafe chargers. Third-party wireless chargers, on the other hand, are limited to 5W-7.5W charging, meaning traditional wired chargers are usually a more efficient option unless you’ve invested in Apple’s own wireless charging tech.
However, a new rumor (via 9to5Mac) hints that Apple could lift this 5W-7.5W limit on third-party wireless chargers used with the iPhone 15 series. If true, non-Apple wireless chargers will be capable of juicing up the iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Ultra just as fast as MagSafe chargers (aka the best iPhone chargers).
The iPhone 15 is expected to swap Apple’s Lightning port for a USB-C port (Image credit: Shutterstock / charnsitr)
Why would Apple do this? It’s hard to say for sure, since Apple has never disclosed why, exactly, it imposes this 5W-7.5W limit on third-party wireless chargers in the first place.
The company claims that the magnets in its MagSafe chargers “align themselves perfectly [with the iPhone’s charging coils] every time for faster wireless charging,” so perhaps it hasn’t trusted third-party manufacturers to achieve 15W wireless charging in a way that’s equally as efficient and – crucially – safe.
That stance could be changing with the iPhone 15, though, but we suspect Apple will only lift restrictions on next-generation wireless chargers using the Qi2 standard – i.e., those whose charging technology is based on Apple’s own MagSafe technology (to ensure safety).
Suffice to say, this is good news for anyone who’s reluctant to spend the big bucks on Apple’s expensive MagSafe tech. But it’s good news for your iPhone’s security, too.
Of course, we’re some years away from seeing Qi2-standard wireless chargers replace standard chargers in airports, train stations and shopping malls, but Apple’s potential commitment to levelling the charging playing feel can only bode well for the future.
Mike Pence is be next in line to conduct a Republican presidential primary town hall on CNN, with chief political corespondent Dana Bash as moderator, following in the footsteps of his former boss Donald Trump and new rival Nikki Haley.
Pence’s turn comes up Wednesday, June 7 at 9 p.m. ET on CNN from Grand View University in Des Moines, Iowa, the network announced. Haley will get her turn a few days before on Sunday, June 4.
Here is where we might expect the orchestra to come in—or, you know, the djembe or jazz band or choir. Instead we get a quick blast of harmonica and a low, grinding drone—as if a country ensemble were passing in a slow-moving truck. The effect is jarring, adding an eerie sense of dynamics, like the dreams where you try to raise your voice but can’t make a sound. With only a few instrumental accompaniments (strings, flute, an instrument called “theorbo”) and guest vocals from Edie Brickell and British a cappella group Voces8, it is easily the most solitary record Simon has made since his early solo work. The restraint is the point; just as he’s found inspiration in wide-ranging rhythms and textures from around the world, he now seems thrilled by just how much quiet he can conjure.
Simon has long been driven by a desire to challenge expectations, annotating his words or retracting them as soon as we’ve absorbed them. Often it’s for comedic effect: “All my life, I’ve been a wanderer,” he sang in 2000’s “Darling Loraine,” swiftly followed by, “Not really, I mostly lived near my parents’ home.” After so much godly imagery of endless flowing rivers and white light that eases the pain, there’s a similar twist near the end of Seven Psalms: Just before the final movement, he shifts his exaltation of the Lord from a distanced, metaphorical interpretation—the face in the atmosphere, a meal for the poorest of the poor—toward a role more suited to his actual surroundings: “The Lord is my engineer/The Lord is my record producer,” he announces with an arched eyebrow.
And with that, we’re right there with Simon in the unromantic, soundproof rooms where he has spent a great deal of his working life. “My hand’s steady/My mind’s still clear,” he tells us. “I hear the ghost songs I own/Jumpin’, jivin’, and moanin’ through a heartbroken microphone.” These lines occur in a movement called “Wait,” as in, “Wait, I’m not ready,” a lyric he sings in as fragile a delivery as he’s ever mustered. Brickell, the singer-songwriter to whom he’s been married for more than 30 years, joins to accompany him, and their voices build to a muted gospel climax around the word “amen.”
That’s where we leave him—standing beside someone he loves, completing the task set out for him, and accepting the inevitable with a prayer. Simon has referred to this record as an “argument I’m having with myself about belief or not,” and happy endings don’t come much clearer than this. But is anything ever so simple? When Brickell assures him that heaven is “beautiful… almost like home,” what does she mean by “almost”? And what about those questions of doubt he raises in “Your Forgiveness,” and the deliberating jury he imagines still pondering our fate? For every resounding major chord Simon strums around that final, elongated iteration of “amen,” there’s one that sounds a little unsteady, shakier and more unresolved. If there’s a comfort to be found in this music, or any certainty in the story that Simon feels compelled to keep telling us, it’s that the searching never ends.
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If you were to resurrect the tired storyline of a young couple having to meet their partners’ parents and were looking around for someone to play the gruff, disapproving future father-in-law, one name should definitely not pop out. Robert De Niro.
Yes, he’s hysterical as the intense, no-nonsense, overprotective dad who’d make any suitor turned wide-eyed. Yes, he’s good at playing the role with the straightest of faces. We know that because he’s done it to great effect in “Meet the Parents.” Many times.
And yet “About My Father” brings out this revered Oscar-winner for a sloppy reprise of that role in a consistently unfunny rom-com that you get the distinct feeling might not be in theaters at all if he didn’t lend his deadpan glower.
Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco has co-written and stars in this big sloppy Italian American kiss about family that not only leans into stereotypes — working-class Italians on one side, WASPs on the other — but plows the field with them.
Maniscalco plays a Chicago hotel manager in love with a country club-raised artist (played by the always-smiling Leslie Bibb) who both have a lesson to learn about the push and pull of blood. “The family is not just one thing. It’s everything,” is the motto the Maniscalco clan live by. It would have been a powerful message in 1972.
Maniscalco’s early life was built on thrift thanks to his father, Salvo, played by De Niro, a man who came to Chicago from Sicily for a better life and brought with him a savage work ethic and a chip on his shoulder about wealth. He didn’t buy his son a skateboard for Christmas, he made a janky one. Why does he love the Fourth of July? “It’s the only holiday you don’t have to buy a gift.”
On the other side is the Collins clan, who came to America on the Mayflower. Mom (Kim Cattrall) is a U.S. senator and dad (David Rasche) is CEO of a luxurious hotel group. They live in a gated compound in Maryland with peacocks wandering around. “You should see the house in Aspen,” mom says.
The plot turns on a July 4th holiday meeting when the Maniscalco father and son visit the girlfriend’s family to suss each other out. Will Salvo be too nice? Is he not trying enough? Could he be trying to sabotage his son’s happiness? Is his son pretending to be someone’s he’s not? Can all this be solved with some pasta and parmesan? Marone!
The clash of cultures is immediately strong, mostly mocking the kombucha-drinking, monogrammed pajamas-wearing and tennis-playing WASPs. (There’s also a Grandma Moses art joke for those still awake. Grandma Moses jokes slay.) The Maniscalcos have their own quirks, like spritzing cologne at every moment. The filmmakers — Laura Terruso directs from a script by Maniscalco and Austen Earl — have the meatballs to frame all this as an immigrant story.
For those who miss “Meet the Parents,” there’s even a scene virtually lifted, as if counting on viewers being dim. The pool volleyball scene from the 2000 movie — where Ben Stiller gets too competitive and painfully spikes on his girlfriend’s sister — has its equivalent when Maniscalco hits a tennis ball hard into his girlfriend’s brother’s torso.
“About My Father” isn’t the only comedy vying to be the “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” of 2023. The year started with Netflix’s “You People,” starring Jonah Hill and Eddie Murphy, and that movie, however flawed, dealt with race. “About My Father,” is about white people, and should be about class or privilege, but it’s not. It’s about embarrassment, denuding any potential depth.
Things sag and then get weird at the end, as this rom-com turns into a rom-com where the target is dad. There’s even a running-to-the-airport scene when the penny drops for Salvo’s son. But you’ll have figured out that this was a cash grab long before that.
“About My Father,” a Lionsgate release, is rated PG-13 for “for suggestive material, language and partial nudity.” Running time: 89 minutes. Half a star out of four.
___
MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
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Leading lights of contemporary Iranian cinema, including ‘Holy Spider’ actor Zar Amir Ebrahimi, ‘The Siren’ director Sepideh Farsi, ‘The Opponent’ helmer Milad Alami and producer Kaveh Farnham, turned up at the Cannes Film Festival to raise the alarm on the repression faced by Iranian cinema during a session hosted by Amazon Prime Video’s Sahar Baghery.
Iran has been the centerstage of widespread protests driven by women against the Islamic Regime since Mahsa Amini died in police custody for for wearing her hijab too loosely in September 2022. Although the rebellion has garnered vocal support outside of Iran, it hasn’t succeeded in dethroning the Iranian Regime. A number of dissident Iranian filmmakers and talent have been jailed over the last six months, notably Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof who was recently released from prison. Rasoulof was nevertheless banned from leaving Iran to serve on the jury of Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
As Baghery noted, “Iran is experiencing what is considered the greatest repression on Iranian Cinema. You can be arrested, imprisoned, held without judgement. Even if you win international awards, you can be spared for a while then one day you are stopped at the airport and your passport is being confiscated. It’s like an unpredictable quicksand,” said the Paris-born executive of Iranian origins who is in charge of co-production and acquisition for Amazon Prime Video in France.
The panel, which was also attended by revered scholar Asal Bagheri, who highlighted the polarization of Iranian cinema between politically minded Iranian movies that travel to festivals and the local output of mainstream propaganda entertainment that’s closely tied to the government and the Islamic Regime.
Iranian cinema has become an “important voice of resistance in Iran since the late 1980’s in post-revolution era and has managed to bypass censorship,” said Bagheri, who added that “one of the major evolution of Iranian cinema concerned the representation of women.” A doctor in semiology and linguistics, Bagheri is about to be published a book titled “Feelings, love and sexuality: the Cinema’s Dilemma in Islamic Republic of Iran”.
She said that up until the end of the 1980’s, the Islamic Republic “wanted to prevent a modern representation of the Iranian society” but they failed. Today, “single parents, family divorced and women fighting for their rights have become the leitmotif of Iranian cinema.” She said she wasn’t surprised to see “all these courageous women at the forefront of the protests.”
Farsi, whose latest film, the politically engaged animated feature “The Siren” opened the Berlinale’s Panorama section this year, spoke about facing Iranian censorship with her 2006 movie “The Gaze” which revolved a left-wing intellectual who returns to Iran after living in exile in Paris.
She said she initially tried to play by the rules so that her movies could be seen by people inside Iran but “it never happened because they all got censored.” She said she obtained the permission to shoot the film but didn’t obtain a visa to release it in Iran. “The most problematic part of the film for them was neither the left wing background of the character who was returning from exile, nor the metaphor about the repression of dissidents in the 1980s. It was the ending sequence of the film because ‘an unmarried couple cannot go to a hotel room.’”
After refusing the cut the scene, she said she took off to the Rotterdam Film Festival for the movie’s world premiere. “Then it was released outside and in France and elsewhere, and of course I got into trouble because I couldn’t make films in Iran anymore,” Farsi said.
Farsi also directed “Red Rose” about the social revolt that erupted after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s usurped election in 2009. She said the movie explored the way the younger generation is protesting on the streets and using social media.
“I’m glad to say the Iranian filmmakers inside Iran is tearing apart this curtain to show that Iranian society is very complex,” she continued.
Farnam, who has produced many movies by Rasoulof, including his Berlinale Golden Bear-winning “There is No Evil” and “A Man of Integrity” which won Un Certain Regard Award in Cannes, said Iranian have been “facing trouble with the censorship” for the last 100 years.
“We always try to deal with censorship in a way. We always try to find a solution. We hide our character, hide the touching, and so on but what we’ve understood after all these years is that the way to deal with censorship is to do not accept it at all,” said Farnam.
Amir Ebrahimi, who won best actress last year at Cannes for her performance in Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider,” also worked on the film as an associate producer. She said getting an authentic Iranian cast for the movie was crucial. “When you’re dealing with European producers, they argue that since your audience is your Iranian it doesn’t matter if the actor has an accent or if the location doesn’t look right.”
She said the casting process for “Holy Spider” took almost three years. “Ali went to Iran and we just organized a week of casting and auditions, and it was surprising that so many actors and crew members who live in Iran were all interested to work on this project, even if they knew that it was going to be risky for them because the subject is sensitive for the government and working with a European production, working with me and Ali, it’s very risky for them,” said Amir Ebrahimi, who is currently developing a feature debut under the working title of “Honor of Persia” and just receive an inaugural Breakthrough Award from Variety and the Golden Globes at a Cannes event.
Amir Ebrahimi fled Iran in 2006, when she faced possible stoning and lashing following the release of a sex tape. “Holy Spider” was based on the true story of a family man who became a serial killer and murdered sex workers in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad. The movie “exposes a daily reality of prostitution, patriarchy and socio-political injustices.”
Amir Ebrahimi said since starring in the film, Mehdi Bajestani “never got back to his home country in Iran. He’s now stuck in Europe.”
Alami, whose sophomore film “The Opponent” played at the Berlinale, said both “The Opponent” and his debut “The Charmer” looked at the “refugee system in Sweden and Denmark and how flawed it is and a critique to the Iranian regime and how it’s threatening people.”
Alami, who fled Iran with his family in 1987, pointed out both movies were co-productions. “It’s impossible to make these films in Iran. Both are about men whose only currency is their body and they’re about intimacy, sexuality, violence and freedom.”
He said he grew up feeling “obsessed with Iranian cinema because (he) was an outsider.” “The older I got and the more I got into films, it felt almost like a responsibility to tell stories that say something about this regime for the sake of people who’re trapped in that system and can’t speak up.”
Like Alami or Abbasi, most Iranian filmmakers are now working with international partners and insitutions.
“‘There Is No Evil’ got funding from France’s National Film Board’s Cinema du Monde initiative, co-produced with Germany and traveled to 25 countries around the world, while ‘Holy Spider’ involved four different European countries. “Opponent” is a Nordic collaboration between Sweden, Norway and Denmark, while “The Siren” is a coproduction between Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium, produced by Les films d’ici and distributed by Wild Bunch.
But Amir Ebrahimi argued that while “France has largely contributed to the development of Iranian cinema in the Western world (…) the breadth of Iranian movies is even more extensive, lively, innovative and more audacious than it appears.”
The panelists and attendees also observed a minute of silence to pay homage to the three men, Majid Kazemi, Saleh Mirhashemi and Saeed Yaghoubi, who were executed last week in Iran over anti-government protests.
“Iran is a country where politics have imprisoning us as citizens, as artists, filmmakers, intellectuals and human beings,” said Farsi.
Insomniac Games’ wall-crawling PlayStation sequel is set to debut sometime this fall, with fans getting to take control of a full-fledged Spider-Man adventure on the PS5.
Despite being announced nearly two years ago, still not much is known about Spider-Man 2 except that it will be “an epic single-player adventure” and Venom and Kraven were teased to feature heavily.
With the Fall 2023 release coming imminently, fans have gotten antsy to see more from the super-powered PlayStation title, as it looks to follow up on two of the best-reviewed comic book video games of all time.
Lizard and Kraven Coming to PlayStation
PlayStation
Sony’s latest PlayStation Showcase came to a close with a debut of gameplay from Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, including reveals for Kraven the Hunter and the Lizard.
The gameplay segment featured both Miles Morales and Peter Parker racing across New York City on a high-speed chase looking for Dr. Curt Connors (aka the Lizard).
PlayStation
The two web-slinging heroes took the classic reptilian villain head-on across the Hudson River in what looked to be a thrilling confrontation before Peter told Miles he would take care of Lizard himself.
Also featured in the trailer was Kraven the Hunter, who looks to take the hunt to New York, tracking down not just NYC’s web-headed heroes but their villains as well.
PlayStation
In classic Kraven fashion, the world’s greatest hunter’s brutal nature was put on display, setting up an epic head-to-head battle with New York’s friendly neighborhood wall-crawlers.
Judging from a tablet shown at the beginning of the trailer, it looks as though Dr. Conners has taken on his Lizard form before Kraven actually gets to New York, as he appears on a map of the city shown to Kraven before he comes stateside.
PlayStation
Both villains look pretty similar to their comic book counterparts with Kraven specifically pulled straight from the page.
Marvel Comics
The Lizard design feels less comic-book-y with the character lacking human traits like the lab coat or purple pants seen on the page.
Marvel Comics
See the full gameplay segment below:
The Many Villains of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
After years of waiting, fans finally have a better look at Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac.
While Lizard seems like he is going to be more of a secondary villain in the PlayStation sequel, Kraven is getting the big bad treatment, with one of his great hunts being at the center of the super-powered adventures.
Of course, there will also be other iconic names from Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery to take on. Some were even referenced in the mission showcase (take a good look at the Kraven tablet). But one that still remains absent is the murderous symbiote, Venom.
The character was seemingly shown off at the end of the title’s first trailer back in 2021, and Tony Todd (aka the voice behind Venom) has teased his appearance in the game, so it feels like only a matter of time before he gets his own moment in the spotlight.
However, with Peter – in his black symbiote-covered Spidey suit – teasing he has teeth too at the end of this gameplay snippet, there is also the very real possibility that Venom will appear in the sequel, just not in the way fans of Spider-Man traditionally expect.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 is set to hit PlayStation 5 sometime this fall.
Be warned, MAJOR SPOILERS lie ahead for The Flash…
The Flash director Andy Muschietti has revealed another super cameo that will feature at some stage during the multiversal madness that is the upcoming DC movie, The Flash. Look away now if you do not want to know who it is that will appear as MAJOR SPOILERS are incoming. Speaking with Esquire Middle East, Muschietti has confirmed that none other than Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage will finally don the red cape as Superman during The Flash, meaning the actor will at last fulfill a dream that he and director Tim Burton had more than two decades ago.
“Nic was absolutely wonderful. Although the role was a cameo, he dove into it… I dreamt all my life to work with him. I hope I can work with him again soon.”
Heaping praise on the National Treasure and Face/Off star, Muschietti confirmed once and for all that Nicolas Cage’s iteration of the Man of Steel will appear in a cameo in The Flash. And the filmmaker could not be happier or more excited about Cage’s involvement.
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“He is a massive Superman fan. A comic book fanatic.”
While we have no idea the details of when or how this will play out, it’s likely that Cage’s Superman will feature in a brief shot during the finale of the movie when the multiverse begins to collapse due to Barry Allen’s time travel. No doubt alongside an assortment of other crowd-pleasing cameos. Though this is just a semi-educated guess.
The story of how Nicolas Cage almost played Superman is now one of the most infamous in superhero movie history. Written by Kevin Smith and set to be directed by Batman and Batman Returns’ Tim Burton, the project was titled Superman Lives and would have seen Cage leading the way as the DC icon and doing battle with Brainiac. Fitted with a costume and ready to take flight, Superman Lives was ultimately canceled, meaning that audiences never got to see the glorious sight of Cage fighting a giant robotic spider. Not yet anyway…
Worlds will collide in The Flash when Barry uses his superpowers to travel back in time in order to change the events of the past. But when his attempt to save his family inadvertently alters the future, Barry becomes trapped in a reality in which General Zod has returned, threatening annihilation, and there are no Super Heroes to turn to. That is, unless Barry can coax a very different Batman out of retirement and rescue an imprisoned Kryptonian… albeit not the one he’s looking for.
Ultimately, to save the world that he is in and return to the future that he knows, Barry’s only hope is to race for his life. But will making the ultimate sacrifice be enough to reset the universe?
Directed by Andy Muschietti from a screenplay by Christina Hodson, The Flash sees Justice League star Ezra Miller return to the role of Barry Allen aka The Flash. The rest of the cast includes Sasha Calle as Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl, Michael Shannon as General Zod, Antje Traue as Faora-Ul, Kiersey Clemons as Iris West, Ron Livingston as Henry Allen, and Maribel Verdú as Nora Allen, with Ben Affleck and Michael Keaton starring as variant versions of Bruce Wayne/Batman.
The Flash is scheduled to be released in the United States on June 16, 2023.
The big streaming story this week is the confusing but the artist formerly known as HBO is not the only game in town. Paramount+ has been thanks in part to a unique bundle that This combination platter typically costs $12 per month, but a new promo halves that price for new subscribers.
In other words, you get a full Paramount+ Premium subscription with Showtime for just $6 per month, though this discount vanishes into thin air after three months. The company is hoping you’ll keep the bundle after that, as the combined might of the two streaming services offers a whole lot of content.
Paramount+ is home to all things Star Trek, including the that premieres on June 15th. It also airs next-day CBS content, live news, plenty of sports, and original dramas that aren’t set in space, like Sylvester Stallone’s Tulsa King and that weird Fatal Attraction reboot. The service also hosts a bunch of hit movies not based on comic books, like Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Top Gun: Maverick.
Showtime may not have the content stable of main rival HBO, but it does have plenty of standout shows like Yellowjackets, Twin Peaks: The Return, Billions and Dexter, in addition to recent theatrical hits like The Fabelmans and Everything Everywhere at Once. The deal is live right now and lasts until June 4th.
The HBO show’s creator will feature in an In Conversation session with journalist Marina Hyde. He’ll discuss all things Roy family, career highlights and what he’ll do next. Succession ends this Sunday on HBO after four seasons and numerous Emmy and BAFTA Awards.
Besides creating Succession, which tells the story of media mogul Logan Roy and his ambitious but incapable children, Armstrong is the co-creator of cult British comedies Peep Show, The Thick of It and Fresh Meat. He also received an Academy Award nomination for scripting satire In the Loop and was a co-writer on Chris Morris comedy Four Lions.
Succession has been dominating the news narrative this week ahead of the finale. Logan Roy actor Brian Cox yesterday told a BBC program his character was written out of the final run “too early.” Season four has largely focused on his children Kendall, Roman and Shiv jockeying for position after his unexpected death in episode three.
“Jesse has created some of the great defining moments and characters in TV drama over the years,” said Edinburgh TV Fest Creative Director Stewart Clarke. “It’ll be a special Festival moment to have him join us in Edinburgh.”
Already announced for Edinburgh this year are sessions involving writer Sally Wainwright and Universal Studios Group Chair Pearlena Igbokwe. Anticipation is growing over the identity of the speaker who’ll deliver the agenda-setting MacTaggart Lecture. Last year British newsreader and broadcaster Emily Maitlis delivered a blistering attack on political populism and warned the major networks faced an impartiality crisis.
The Festival will take place at its regular home, the EICC, on August 22-25.
Succession star Brian Cox thinks that his character of Logan Roy was written out of the HBO series too early.
The series finale of Succession is just a few days away. The story of the Roy dynasty will conclude, but that story came to an end for one character several weeks ago. While speaking with BBC’s Amol Rajan (via Deadline), Brian Cox commented on the surprise death of his character Logan Roy near the beginning of the final season of Succession.
Brian Cox feels as though Logan’s death was “ultimately too early,” and that it might have been more appropriate for that departure to happen later in the season. “I was fine with it ultimately, but I did feel a little bit rejected,” Cox said. “You know, I felt a little bit like all the work I’ve done and finally I’m going to, you know, end up as an ear on a carpet of a plane.”
Brian Cox added that he showed up to his character’s funeral “on [his] own volition” in order to throw off the paparazzi. He also flirted with the idea that Logan Roy might still be alive. “If you think about it, from Logan’s point of view, he has to find out, how are his children going to behave when he dies, what will then happen?” Cox said. “And the only way to do that is to fake his death and actually, at some distant point he’s observing the chaos that is following.” When asked if this might foretell a surprise return from the dead in the Succession finale, Brian Cox said, “No… I’m just saying that could have been a supposition.“
Succession explores themes of power and family dynamics through the eyes of patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his four grown children, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Siobhan (Sarah Snook), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Connor (Alan Ruck). The fourth and final season finds the sale of media conglomerate Waystar Royco to tech visionary Lukas Matsson moving ever closer. The prospect of this seismic sale provokes existential angst and familial division among the Roys as they anticipate what their lives will look like once the deal is complete. A power struggle ensues as the family weighs up a future where their cultural and political weight is severely curtailed.
The series finale of Succession will air on HBO on May 28th. The show’s composer, Nicholas Britell, has said that the finale is 90 minutes long, and I’m sure fans will savour every minute.
It’s been six weeks now since HBO’s Successionreleased “Connor’s Wedding,” the third episode of the show’s fourth season. If you’ve been living under several rocks that themselves live under, whatever, a boulder, you might not be aware of what happened in that episode—or how it pertained to the day-to-day life of series star Brian Cox.
On the other hand—and since we’re now down below the first paragraph break, —you do probably actually know by now that “Connor’s Wedding” is the episode where Cox’s character, Roy family patriarch Logan, abruptly drops dead, blowing up Succession’s whole world in the process. Certainly, Cox himself feels that he’s waited long enough to talk about it: He gave a pretty in-depth interview to the BBC this week, expressing his own personal belief that, maybe, just maybe, the show went Logan-less a bit too soon.
While being very clear that he finds the show’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, “brilliant,” Cox did note that, “He decided to make Logan die, I think ultimately too early.” Cox went on to add, “I mean, he’d made him die in the third episode. And it was a great scene. That’s why I didn’t watch it, because I have no interest in watching. My own death will come soon enough.”
And, like, jeeze, Brian!
Cox comes off, in excerpts from the interview, in that very specific blend of proud and slightly annoyed he usually seems like when talking about Succession, a reminder that there is a reason he was cast as a massively powerful, frequently cranky man of considerable pride and dignity. Among other things, he notes that, “It was an odd feeling” to die in the series with seven episodes to go. “I looked on it, wrongly, as a form of rejection. I was fine with it ultimately, but I did feel a little bit rejected. I felt a little bit, ‘Oh, all the work I’ve done. And finally I’m going to end up as a New Yorker on a carpet of a plane’.”
He does seem to take a certain Logan-ish pride in seeing the internet “go crazy” over his character’s death—and maybe also in the reactions of certain fans who’ve told him they won’t watch the show without him. “They said, ‘No, I’m not going to watch anymore. You’ve gone, I’m not watching’. Which I think is unfortunate and unnecessary because the show is about the succession. So you need to see what’s happening in in the wake of his demise. But, you know, I’m not the writer.”
Illustration by What’s on Netflix – Pictures: Netflix / XYZ Films / Paramount / Lionsgate / 2K Games
Welcome to your big preview of all the movies currently in active development, pre-production, production or even completed at Netflix for release in either 2023 (haven’t been announced), 2024, or beyond.
We should stress that everything on this list is subject to change, and just because projects get announced doesn’t mean they ever come to fruition.
Article Continues Below…
Netflix Movies Expected or Confirmed for Release in 2024
Important Note: This is listed in date release order, and if no date is available, in alphabetical order. Some of these movies could be released in 2023 but haven’t been included in official Netflix docs for the year.
Lift
Genre: Comedy, Action Director: F. Gary Gray Cast: Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó
Kevin Hart leads this new heist movie that sees a crew assembled and recruited to help stop a terrorist attack.
Also starring in Lift includes Billy Magnussen, and Jacob Batalon, with Jean Reno and Sam Worthington.
Atlas
Genre: Sci-fi, Action Director: Brad Peyton Cast: Jennifer Lopez, Simu Liu, Lana Parrilla, Sterling K. Brown
Picture: Getty Images
Following the success for the 2023 release The Mother, Jennifer Lopez will be back for another feature film as part of a deal struck back in 2021. Filming for the movie occurred throughout 2022 (with some reshoots in 2023).
Originally referred to as simply, “The Expansion Project”, the movie is about Atlas fighting for humanity in a future where an AI soldier has determined the only way to end war is to end humanity.
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel Foley (fka Beverly Hills Cop 4)
Genre: Comedy Director: Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah Cast: Eddie Murphy, Kevin Bacon, Judge Reinhold, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Paul Reiser, Bronson Pinchot
That’s right, decades after Eddie Murphy first played Axel Foley, Netflix has revived the action crime comedy for a fourth entry (and potentially more afterward).
Confirmed to be called Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the movie sees Axel Foley receiving a call that his estranged daughter is in danger.
Production took place between mid-2022 to late 2022 and is reportedly due to release on Netflix in 2024.
Carry-On
Genre: Action Director: Jaume Collet-Serra Cast: Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sofia Carson, Danielle Deadwyler, Theo Rossi
Pictures: Getty Images
From Amblin Partners, this new movie was filmed in Louisiana and Ohio throughout the latter months of 2022 and is now in post-production.
Here’s what you can expect from the new action thriller:
“TSA agent Ethan Kopek gets blackmailed by a mysterious traveler to let a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Day flight.”
Code 8: Part II
Genre: Sci-fi Director: Jeff Chan Cast: Robbie Amell, Stephen Amell
The first movie was a fan-funded movie short that turned into a movie and jumped onto Netflix.
Here’s what the sequel is about:
“The sequel follows the journey of a teenage girl fighting to get justice for her slain brother at the hands of corrupt police officers.”
Production took place in late 2021 and is expected to arrive in 2023.
Damsel
Genre: Fantasy Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo Cast: Millie Bobby Brown, Angela Bassett, Robin Wright, Ray Winstone, Nick Robinson, Brooke Carter, and Shohreh Aghdashloo
Coming from Roth Kirschenbaum Films and PCMA Productions, this is one of the significant new projects featuring Millie Bobby Brown.
Per Netflix, here’s what you can expect from the new sci-fi/fantasy featuring the Stranger Things and Enola Holmes star:
“A dutiful damsel agrees to marry a handsome prince, only to find the royal family has recruited her as a sacrifice to repay an ancient debt. Thrown into a cave with a fire-breathing dragon, she must rely on her wits and will to survive.”
Family Leave
Genre: Comedy, Family Director: McG Cast:
Picture: Twitter
This new family comedy is about the Brenner family, who all wake up to a full family body switch and quickly realize the same thing has happened to a family on the other side of the world.
The showrunner behind Netflix’s Sweet Tooth will be adapting the Image Comics God Country into a movie for Netflix. The comic comes from Geoff Shaw, Donny Cates, and Jason Wordie.
Here’s what you can expect from the story if you’ve never read the comics:
An elderly widower in Texas is cured of dementia after discovering an enchanted sword in the eye of a tornado. Due to this discovery, however, he must fight otherworldly creatures that the sword has summoned. Based on the Image comic by Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw.
Filming is expected to begin in 2023.
Gundam
Genre: Action, Sci-fi Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Picture: Legendary Entertainment
Based on the hit Japanese mech franchise, this new live-action movie is a collaboration between Legendary Entertainment and Sunrise Interactive. Production was expected to begin in mid-2023, although it has since moved back to early 2024.
The director of The Raid and Netflix’s Apostle returns for this new action thriller headlined by Tom Hardy.
The story follows a detective following up on a drug deal that’s gone dramatically wrong, which leads him to rescue a politician’s son.
The movie is being produced by XYZ Films and began filming in the summer of 2021.
High in the Clouds
Genre: Animation Director: Timothy Reckart
Netflix and Gaumont are producing this new animated feature film based on the novel by Paul McCartney, who is also reportedly producing brand new original music for the movie too.
The movie is about a teenage squirrel called Wirral who joins a team of rebels. At one point, the movie was looking at a 2023 release but no word on the exact release date right now.
In Your Dreams
Genre: Animation Director: Alex Woo and Erik Benson
Picture: Netflix
The story follows Stevie and her brother Elliot who magically travel into the world of dreams with the mission of finding The Sandman, who will grant them their ultimate wish — saving their parents’ marriage. Comes from Kuku Studios.
Irish Wish
Genre: Romantic Comedy Director: Janeen Damian Cast: Lindsay Lohan, Ed Speelers, Alexander Vlahos
The second movie to come from Netflix’s pact with Lindsay Lohan is eying a 2024 release date (and a third movie is on the way!).
Here’s what you can expect from the new movie:
“When the love of Maddie’s life gets engaged to her best-friend, she puts her feelings aside to be a bridesmaid at their wedding in Ireland.”
Locked In
Genre: Romance, Thriller Director: Nour Wazzi Cast: Famke Janssen, Anna Friel, Finn Cole, Rose Williams
Pictures: Getty Images
This new British-based romance thriller was reportedly filmed between December and early 2023. It comes from Gaumont and Neon Films and tells the story of an unhappy newlywed who is pitted against her brittle, damaged mother-in-law, Katherine.
Lonely Planet
Genre: Drama, Romance Director: Susannah Grant Cast: Laura Dern, Liam Hemsworth, Diana Silvers, Younes Boucif
Picture: Backgrid
Filmed in mid-2022, this romance movie is mostly unknown with it only described as a love story set in Morocco.
Monkey Man
Genre: Action, Thriller Director: Dev Patel Cast: Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley
Picture: Getty Images
This one was initially listed in the 2022 schedule and subsequently pushed. It was then included in the initial 2023 schedule and has been pushed out of a release window.
The new movie comes from Dev Patel, who writes, directs, and stars. It’s about an ex-felon released in India struggling to adjust to a world full of greed and eroding spiritual values.
Rez Ball
Genre: Drama Director: Sydney Freeland Cast: Jaren K. Robledo, Hunter Redhorse Arthur, Jojo Jackson, Devin Sampson-Craig, Henry Wilson Jr., Kauchani Bratt, Kusem Goodwind, Avery Hale, Damian Castellane, River Rayne Thomas.
Produced by LeBron James, this new movie is based on the Michael Powell book called Canyon Dreams. Follows a high school basketball team called the Chuska Warriors banding together after losing their star player.
SCOOP
Genre: Drama Director: Philip Martin Cast: Gillian Anderson, Rufus Sewell, Keeley Hawes, Billie Piper
Pictures: Getty Images
Based on the novel, “Scoops: Behind the Scenes of the BBC’s Most Shocking Interviews,” by Sam McAlister, this biopic will recount how the BBC obtained an interview with Prince Andrew for Newsnight.
Filming took place throughout the latter stages of 2022 and into early 2023.
Saving Bikini Bottom: The Sandy Cheeks Movie
Genre: Animation, Kids Director: Liza Johnson Cast: Carolyn Lawrence, Tom Kenny, Wanda Sykes, Clancy Brown, Bill Fagerbakke, Mr. Lawrence, Rodger Bumpass, Johnny Knoxville, Craig Robinson, Grey DeLisle, Ilia Isorelýs Paulino, Matty Cardarople
Coming to Netflix as part of its output deal with Nickelodeon is a new Spongebob animated spin-off movie focusing on Sandy Cheeks.
Shout It Out Loud
Genre: Music Biopic Director: Joachim Rønning
A music biopic on Gene and Paul, the two kids from Queens, New York, who went on to form a friendship and started the rock band KISS after enlisting guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss. Expected to begin production in 2023 for a 2024 release.
The Deliverance
Genre: Horror Director: Lee Daniels Cast: Andra Day, Glenn Close, Caleb McLaughlin, Rob Morgan
Pictures: Getty Images
Described as a mid-budget horror movie, this movie was shot in mid-2022 in Pittsburgh. It’s based on Latoya Ammons and her family, who claim to have been victims of a demonic possession that has spanned over two years and counting.
The Electric State
Genre: Sci-fi Director: Joe Russo and Anthony Russo Cast: Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt
The Russo Brothers bought their first big project to Netflix in 2022 with the release of The Gray Man and Netflix is investing in a slew of new projects from the pair, including an adaptation of Simon Stålenhag ‘s The Electric State.
Here’s what you can expect from the adaptation:
“Set in a post-apocalyptic 1997, The Electric State is the story of Michelle who, accompanied by her toy robot Skip, sets out across the western United States in a stolen car to find her missing brother. Told in achingly melancholy, spare prose and featuring almost a hundred gorgeous, full-colour illustrations, The Electric State is a novel like no other.”
The movie is in production in late 2022 and aims for a 2024 release date.
The Family Treehorn
Genre: Animation Director: Ron Howard
Picture: Holiday House
Based on the Florence Parry Heide book The Shrinking of Treehorn, this will be the animation directorial debut of Ron Howard, best known for A Beautiful Mind, Frost/Nixon, and Netflix’s Hillbilly Elegy.
The movie will be done by the Netflix in-house studio Animal Logic and is about a young man who begins shrinking in size after playing a strange board game, which goes largely unnoticed by his parents.
The Mothership
Genre: Family, Adventure Director: Matt Charman Cast: Halle Berry, Omari Hardwick, Quinn McPherson, Paul Guilfoyle, Sydney Lemmon, Molly Parker, John Ortiz
The Mothership starring Halle Berry – Picture: Netflix
Halle Berry will play Sara Morse in this new family sci-fi movie where she discovers a strange object nestled away in their rural arm, setting them off on an adventure.
Genre: Action Director: Victoria Mahoney Cast: Uma Thurman, Charlize Theron, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Henry Golding, Marwan Kenzari
Picture: Netflix
Filming has long since concluded on the sequel to the sci-fi comic book adaptation sequel in Italy.
Per Netflix, here’s what you can expect from the second outing:
“Andromache of Scythia and her band of soldiers are back in this second story chronicling the battles and burdens of their dubious immortality. Nile’s addition to the team has given them new purpose and new direction, but when you’ve got 6,000 years of history at your back, the past is always ready to return with a vengeance.”
The Piano Lesson
Genre: Drama Director: Malcolm Washington Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, John David Washington, Danielle Brooks, Ray Fisher, Danielle Deadwyler
Picture: The Piano Lesson play
Adaptation of August Wilson’s play that played on Broadway through 2022 and will see much of the primary cast return for this feature film adaptation.
The movie was filmed through Q2 2023 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Thelma The Unicorn
Genre: Animation Directors: Jared Hess and Lynn Wang
Coming from Mikros Animation is a new feature film adapting the children’s book by Aaron Blabey. It’ll tell the story of a small-time pony who dreams of becoming a glamourous music star.
Six Triple Eight
Genre: Historical Drama Director: Tyler Perry Cast: Kerry Washington, Susan Sarandon, Dean Norris, Sam Waterston, Sarah Jeffery, Oprah Winfrey, Moriah Brown
Picture: Netflix
Tyler Perry is directing this historical biopic on the overlooked story of the courageous women of The United States 6888th Battalion that operated during World War 2. It features a huge ensemble cast and has concluded filming with locations including the United Kingdom and the US.
Uglies
Genre: Sci-fi / Fantasy Director: McG Cast: Joey King, Keith Powers, Brianne Tju, Chase Stokes, Laverne Cox
Filming in late 2021, this sci-fi literary adaptation has gone MIA a bit since. It’s set in an Orwellian future in which teenagers undergo surgery on their 16th birthdays to become like supermodels.
Ultraman
Genre: Animation Director: Shannon Tindle
Confirmed for release on Netflix in 2024.
Picture: Netflix
Based on the long-running manga and anime series, this new feature film comes from Tsuburaya Productions.
The movie is being written and directed by Shannon Tindle, who produced the limited series LOST OLLIE for Netflix in 2022.
Unfrosted: The Pop-Tart Story
Genre: Comedy Director: Jerry Seinfeld Cast: Amy Schumer, Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, James Marsden, Hugh Grant
Jerry Seinfeld – Picture: Getty Images
Jerry Seinfeld will star, direct, write and produce this new comedy movie about the origin of the humble confectionery, the Pop-Tart.
A joke inspires the movie told on the stand-up stage and tells the story of the sworn rivalries between Kellogg’s and Post.
Untitled Safdie Brothers Movie
Director: Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie Cast: Adam Sandler
Picture: Getty Images
Set to get underway with filming in Summer 2023 is the brand new sports drama from the Safdie Brothers, who will reteam with Adam Sandler (all three worked on A24’s Uncut Gems) that’s set in the world of baseball trading cards.
Wallace & Gromit
Genre: Animation Director: Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham
A new movie in the Wallace and Gromit universe is coming to Netflix exclusively to Netflix (excluding the UK) in 2024.
Netflix Movies In Development at Netflix
These movies have yet to enter production but have been announced or are in active development or pre-production:
36 Questions – Brett Haley is on board to direct this adaptation of the podcast.
A God in Ruins – Western from writer Ibrahim R. Alraeesi.
A Million Miles Away Biopic of Jose M. Hernandez, the first Mexican-American astronaut.
A Note of Explanation – A time-traveling sprite inhabits Queen Mary’s dollhouse in Windsor Castle. Ben Queen to write.
A Time Lost – Adaptation of a story developed by Millie Bobby Brown and her sister Paige Brown.
ALICE – Modern musical reimagining of the classic Alice in Wonderland story.
Amnesty – Ramin Bahrani (who directed The White Tiger for Netflix) is on board to direct this thriller about an undocumented migrant who cleans houses when he finds out he may be an accessory to the murder of his employer.
Amy And The Orphans – Drama directed by Lindsey Ferrentino about two estranged siblings having to break the news of their father’s death to their sister who has Downs syndrome.
Arranged Marriage – Vali Chandrasekaran (who has worked on Modern Family, 30 Rock and My Name Is Earl) will direct this comedy about a white woman asking her Indian friend’s family to arrange a marriage for her.
Auntie Claus – New Christmas movie from the creator of High School Musical and Julie and the Phantoms.
Average Height, Average Build – Adam McKay’s second major Netflix Original movie dubbed as a dark comedy. Amy Adams and Robert Downey Jr. to star.
Backwards – Shawn Levy to direct this 21 Laps Entertainment movie about a father who reverses the aging process. Based on the novel by Finneas Scott.
Bad Dad – British comedy David Williams (Little Britain) is set to adapt his book for Netflix.
Ball and Chain – Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt star as superheroes in the movie based on the 90s comic.
Below – Thriller from David F. Sandberg.
Betty Ford – Ryan Murphy produced movie starring Sarah Paulson about the first lady, Betty Ford.
Beyond Good & Evil – Adaptation of the Ubisoft game led by director Rob Letterman.
Bird Box 2 – A sequel to the Sandra Bullock Netflix smash-hit has long been rumored in development based on the novel’s sequel.
Picture: 2K Games
Bioshock – An adaptation of the video game franchise.
Black Samurai – Addictive Pictures and 87eleven Entertainment team on this martial arts thriller.
Black Stallions – Comedy featuring Kevin Hart, Don Cheadle, and Lil Rel Howery.
Blackout – This anthology series will also have some feature films according to reports. Produced by the Obama’s Higher Ground Productions.
Blink Speed – Cynthia Erivo will headline this new sci-fi thriller based on the short story by Eric Matthew Brown.
Bright 2 – Sequel to the Will Smith fantasy movie.
Button Man – Brian Helgeland is set to adapt this British comic book strip.
BRZRKR – Keanu Reeves set to star in this comic-book adaptation
Carmen Sandiego – Gina Rodriguez to headline this live-action film based on the character from David Siefkin.
Caste – Ava DuVernay is behind this new political historical adaptation.
Change Agent – Immersive Pictures will produce this new crime thriller about an Interpol agent suffering a genetic attack that leaves him looking like a cartel leader.
Chinatown – Prequel to the 1974 film with David Fincher serving as executive producer and Robert Towne penning the script.
Christmas in Wonderland – Christmas feature film about Sierra who is recovering from a skiing accident and is taken in by a single dad.
Christmas Quinceanera – Aimee Garcia and Freddie Prinze Jr to star in this new Christmas feature film.
Chupa – Jonás Cuarón to direct this adventure drama starring Demián Bichir.
Cocaine Hippos – Comedy starring Jermaine Fowler.
Cold Warrior – Drama about a retired Cold War-era spy helping a younger agent track down a terrorist. Directed by Shane Black and written by Chuck Mondry.
Dark Days at the Magna Carta – 21 Laps Entertainment sci-fi horror being written by Michael Paisley.
Death and the King’s Horseman – Nigerian movie from EbonyLife Films about the chief of the King’s stables amongst a Yoruban tribe.
Dept. H – Adaptation of the Matt Kindt comic book with Alice Waddington attached to direct.
Dial A For Aunties – Romantic comedy which will be directed by Fresh Off the Boat creator Nahnatchka Khan.
Do Not Harm – Silver Pictures Entertainment is working on this erotic thriller about a surgeon going down a dangerous path when she has an affair with another doctor.
Dorothy & Alice – Adaptation of the Justin Merz novel based on the iconic figures from literature.
Down Low – Rightor Doyle directs this comedy about a deeply repressed man.
Dr. Rapp – John Hamburg is set to write and direct this biopic on a man that had a stroke that turned him into a rap legend.
Dragon’s Lair – Ryan Reynolds will lead this action fantasy movie from Vertigo Entertainment about Dirk the Daring who sets out to rescue a princes from the evil dragon.
Empathy Machine – Sci-fi horror directed by Francis Lawrence described as a mix of Ex Machine meets Rosemary’s Baby.
Exit West – Adaptation from Higher Ground Productions adapting the Mohsin Hamid novel and will star Riz Ahmed.
First Ascent – From Scott Free comes this new supernatural thriller.
Flash Boys – Previously at Sony Pictures, this book looks at the life of Michael Lewis, who worked on Wall Street and alleges the entire industry is corrupt.
Frankenstein – Guillermo del Toro to direct this updated horror classic, potentially starring Oscar Isaac.
Forty Acres – Thriller with Jay-Z producing. About a civil
Fuzzy Towers – Kevin James stars as an optometrist who dreams of working for a kids TV show.
Picture: Microsoft
Gears of War – Live-action adaptation of the Xbox video game series.
Hello America – Netflix secured the film rights to the 1981 novel by JG Ballard in 2017 with Scott Free to produce but has gone quiet.
Hello, Universe – Announced in May 2019, this movie is based on the novel by Erin Entrada Kelly.
Here Comes the Flood – Jason Bateman to direct this romance-heist movie.
I Slept With Joey Ramone – Pete Davidson will play Joey Ramone the so-called King of Punk.
I Used to Be Famous – Eddie Sternberg to direct this musical comedy following Vince (played by Ed Skrein) who dreams of making a comeback.
I Am Not Your Perfect American Daughter – Drama from director America Ferrera.
In the Land of Saints and Sinners – Thriller from director Robert Lorenz set in a remote Irish village. Starring Liam Neeson.
In Your Dreams – Animated movie from director Alex Woo.
Ivy – Sci-fi movie from Danis Goulet about a husband building his wife a smart AI house known as Ivy who soon generates an evil agenda.
Janet – Janet Mock will direct this biography of a young black woman at the Washington Post who has the goal of reaching the front page.
John Henry and the Statesmen – Action thriller directed by Jake Kasdan and starring Dwayne Johnson.
King of Boys 2 – Nollywood crime-drama sequel.
Knives Out 3 – A third entry in the detective movie franchise Knives Out which will see the return of Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig.
K-Pop: Lost in America – Rumored Rebel Wilson comedy.
Meet Me Next Christmas – Holiday romantic comedy.
Lady Business – Brie Larson to star and direct in this drama.
Lady Killer – Blake Lively will headline this action thriller as Josie Schuller, the perfect 1950s wife who leads a double life as a trained killer.
Leave The World Behind – Sam Esmail to develop this Julia Roberts-led movie based on Rumaan Alam’s novel.
Life Sentence – Sci-fi from 6th & Idaho Productions about a prisoner who chooses to enroll in a futuristic program that erase his memories.
Locked In – Famke Janssen and Rose Williams to headline this new psychological thriller.
Lost Dog – Canine movie adapting the novel Lost Dog: A Love Story.
Masters of the Universe – Aaron Nee to direct a live-action He-Man movie previously at Sony Pictures. Kyle Allen is to star.
Mea Culpa – Tyler Perry directed movie starring Kelly Rowland.
Mega Man – A live-action movie based on the classic Capcom game.
Millarworld movies include:
Empress
Prodigy
Sharkey The Bounty Hunter
Mixtape – Valerie Weiss will direct this rom-com starring Julie Bowen and Jackson Rathbone.
Most Dangerous Game – Netflix and Treehouse Pictures reunite Zoey Deutch, Glen Powell and writer/producer Katie Silberman in this new romantic comedy.
Most Talented Family – Camilla Blackett will write this new family feature film for Netflix.
Mother of the Bride – Brooke Shields, Miranda Cosgrove and Benjamin Bratt to star in this new rom-com.
My Hero Academia – Live-action adaptation of the anime series from Legendary Entertainment. Shinsuke Sato to direct, Joby Harold to write.
My Lovely Wife – Julia Hart to direct this adaption of the book by Samantha Downing.
My Wife and I Bought A Ranch… – 21 Laps horror movie adapted from the Reddit short story.
Pashmina – Animated feature film from director Gurinder Chadha about a young girl who discovers her heritage via her magical pashmina.
Past Midnight – Action drama produced by Anthony and Joe Russo and written by T.J. Fixman.
Planet of the Dead – A follow-up sequel to 2020’s Army of the Dead.
Quartermaster – Drew Pearce to direct a new movie described as a high-concept thriller.
Rebel Ridge – American thriller exploring systemic injustice in America. Directed by Jeremy Saulnier.
Rebel Moon Vol. 2 – The second movie Zack Snyder directs in the new fantasy sci-fi world.
Red Notice 2 & 3 – Follow-up movies to Netflix’s big action movie starring Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds.
Redd Zone – Jada Pinkett Smith to star in this upcoming drama.
Ripple – 21 Laps Entertainment sci-fi romance about a time traveler starting to meddle with the past.
Rockaway – 3dot Productions to produce this Kerry Washington-led adaptation of the book from Diane Cardwell.
Sand Kings – George R.R. Martin’s book being adapted as a Netflix feature film.
SCOOP– A biopic on the BBC Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. Gillian Anderson, Keeley Hawes, Billie Piper and Rufus Sewell to star.
Seesaw Monster – Adaptation of the novel by Kotaro Isaka and starring Anne Hathaway and Salma Hayek.
Seismic – 21 Laps Entertainment to produce this thriller about a single mother who fights to reunite with her missing son after the Earth’s surface is decimated by a mysterious attack.
Sherlock Junior – New movie looking into the early years of the famous detective with Ehren Kruger helming.
Shoe Dog – Adaptation of Phil Knight’s best-selling memoir about the shoe company Nike’s meteoric rise.
Shoot Like a Girl – Netflix is reportedly taking this project over which had Angelina Jolie originally listed but Gal Gadot is thought to be replacing her for the Netflix version.
Shout It Out Loud – Biopic on Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley who go on to form a band known as KISS. Directed by Joachim Rønnin.
Six Years – Movie adaptation of the Harlan Coben thriller with David Ayer writing and directing.
Spencer Confidential 2 – A sequel to the Mark Wahlberg action movie.
Steps – Animation from Alyce Tzue and Netflix Animation about two stepsisters who are overlooked for marriage by the prince and instead opt to go on an epic journey.
Student Driver – Action comedy from Peter Hoare with Kyle Newacheck directing. About a substitute driver’s ed teacher and his students embarking on a madcap adventure.
Super Normal – Comedic spin on the superhero genre from Rideback and Josh Gad.
Teddy Bear – Family feature film inspired by Alex Panagopoulos’ drawing of a teddy bear defending a young, sleeping child from an approaching monster. Bobby Florsheim and Josh Stolberg behind the project.
The Buried Giant – Stop-motion fantasy movie from Guillermo del Toro.
The Division – Adaptation of Ubisoft’s action game – believed to now be on the backburner.
The Helicopter Heist – First announced in 2018, this movie was initially set to star Jake Gyllenhaal.
The Netherfield Girls – Described as a contemporary update of Pride and Prejudice with Maitreyi Ramakrishnan set to star.
Take The Ice – Charles Randolph-Wright will direct this new family movie about a 15-year-old dreaming of becoming a world-class ice skater.
Tenzing – Biopic on Tenzing Norgay, the person who climbed alongside Sir Edmund Hillary to the top of Everest.
That Christmas – Animated feature film from Locksmith Animation.
The Chronicles of Narnia – At least one movie is part of Netflix’s huge upcoming Narnia universe. Greta Gerwig is in talks to direct.
The Bluff – The Russo Brothers will produce this period drama about a Caribbean woman whose secret past is revealed when her island is invaded by vicious buccaneers.
The Cactus – Romantic comedy based on the book by Sarah Haywood from Hello Sunshine.
The Cipher – Jennifer Lopez to star as FBI special agent Nina Guerrera.
The Council – Will Smith-led crime drama where he plays a crime boss Nicky Barnes.
The Dawn Patrol – Chernin Entertainment is developing this crime drama based on the Don Winslow book.
The Formula – Robert De Niro and John Boyega will star in this Formula One movie about a prodigy who is forced to become a getaway driver. Directed by Gerard McMurray.
The Ghost In The Machine – Drama from Heyday Films about how a middle-class black girl from the North Side of Minneapolis becomes one of the biggest threats to the entire US banking system.
The Girls I’ve Been – Millie Bobby Brown on board to star in this adaptation of the Tess Sharpe novel.
The Gray Man 2 – A sequel to the Ryan Gosling action movie.
The Hills Have Eyes For You – Horror romantic comedy from Eli Craig.
The Homeless World Cup / The Beautiful Game – Thea Sharrock directs this upcoming sports drama.
The House Across the Lake – Berlanti Productions is behind this upcoming psychological horror.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Musical featuring Idris Elba dubbed as a modern retelling of the classic tale.
The Kane Chronicles
The Kane Chronicles 1-3 – Percy Jackson writer Rick Riordan is bringing his excellent Kane Chronicles to Netflix.
The Kitchen – Kibwe Tavares to direct this new sci-fi movie set in 2040s London. Kano from Top Boy will star.
Picture: Sony Pictures Releasing
The Raid – Re-imagining of Gareth Evans’ 2010 action thriller. Patrick Hughes to direct.
The Rewind – Comedy adaptation of the Allison Winn Scotch novel.
The Sea Beast 2 – Sequel to the 2022 animated movie.
The Selection – Adaption of the Kiera Cass novel directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour.
The Tinder Swindler – AGC Studios is working on an adaptation of the story that went viral via Netflix’s documentary.
The Young Wife – Tayarisha Poe writes and directs about a 29-year-old woman on the day of her first wedding.
This Beast – Kurt Sutter writes and directs this movie produced by Blumhouse about a lowly trapper is tasked with killing a mysterious beast in an 18th-century village.
Tilt – MacMillan Hedges is on board to write this new movie from Chernin Entertainment.
To Hell with the Devil – Thriller from John Holiday about a group of misfits who conjure up a demon to help save their friend.
Trigger Warning – Catchlight Studios presents this Jessica Alba led action thriller directed by Mouly Surya.
Upstate – Comedy starring Ryan Reynolds.
Underworld – Ted Melfi to adapt the novel by Don DeLillo.
Untitled Nancy Meyers Movie – Ensemble comedy.
Uprising – 21 Laps Entertainment action thriller about a global viral pandemic that turns people into vampires. Directed by Travis Knight.
Virunga – Leonardo DiCaprio and Barry Jenkins teaming on a movie based on the documentary.
Void – Sci-fi movie based on a spec written by Christopher Borrelli.
War Party – Adventure film about Navy SEALS starring Tom Hardy.
We Can Be Heroes 2 – Sequel to the Robert Rodriguez movie that lit up the top 10s in Christmas 2020.
Wedding Season – Tom Dey to direct this rom-com about an Indian-American woman finding a boyfriend temporarily for the wedding season.
Where I End – Sophia Takal to direct this new sci-fi thriller.
White Mountains – UFO horror movie based on true events and produced by the Obama’s Higher Ground Productions.
Yes Day 2 – A sequel to the Jennifer Garner family movie.
Have we missed any major Netflix movies coming in 2024 or beyond? Let us know in the comments down below.
“Prehistoric Planet” is back on Apple TV+ with over two dozen new extinct species to explore. Given the amount of dinosaurs and birds, the biggest challenge for supervising sound editor Jonny Crew was “capturing those prehistoric sounds.”
Without a library of extinct sounds to pull from, Crew, who also worked on the first season, says the trickiest task was distinguishing the sounds of different birds. That’s where chickens helped crack an important moment in the show’s first episode, titled “Islands,” in which audiences are exposed to the behavior of the Hatzegopteryx, a stork-like reptile. A key scene focused on two dinosaurs mating.
“Whether you’re in a rainforest or swamp, the birds are going to sound different, but at that time birds hadn’t properly evolved,” Crew tells Variety. The challenge was capturing the sound of “massive, ferocious creatures having this tender moment together.”
Crew says, “Paleontologist Darren Naish suggested that the sound of a chicken purring could be used as a starting point. The romantic moment between the dinosaurs was the foundation of that.”
He adds, “I had a very fierce chicken known as Evil Bluebell — she’s no longer with us. She had a ferocious sound that was a fierce-sounding squawk. So, when the creatures are hunting and fighting, I used that sound as the basis for those scenes.”
In contrast, honing a sonic landscape for the underwater scenes was more straightforward. Having worked on “Blue Planet,” which mainly took place under the surface, Crew says, “Putting microphones underwater in those sequences doesn’t sound hugely interesting, but you can pick up whale sounds and go from there to create that sense of being underwater.”
Elsewhere, Crew and his team looked at how to raise the bar from the show’s first season. “That meant upping the game as far as sound, behavior and graphics, and delving deeper into the world that surrounds the Cretaceous period,” he says.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has announced a partnership with Endel, a company that uses AI to generate soundscapes meant to facilitate work, meditation, and sleep. UMG will license use Endel’s technology to enable its artists to create what it calls “science-backed” soundscapes designed to “enhance listeners’ wellness.” The deal includes both new music and new versions of catalog music.
Endel’s model factors in variables like weather, time of day, location, and heart rate when customizing its audio streams for individual users. Previous collaborations include projects with Grimes, Miguel, Richie Hawtin, and UMG artist James Blake.
In a statement, UMG’s Chief Digital Officer Michael Nash said:
“At UMG, we believe in the incredible potential of ethical AI as a tool to support and enhance the creativity of our artists, labels and songwriters, something that Endel has harnessed with impressive ingenuity and scientific innovation. We are excited to work together and utilize their patented AI technology to create new music soundscapes—anchored in our artist-centric philosophy—that are designed to enhance audience wellness, powered by AI that respects artists’ rights in its development.”
The generative elements of Endel’s tech are designed to enable musicians to use AI to scale their music ad infinitum, creating perpetually regenerating artworks in their own style. “We’re able to create albums with the push of a button,” co-founder and chief composer Dmitry Evgrafov told Pitchfork last year.
On April 14, a TikTok user uploaded a song called “Heart on My Sleeve,” which purported to use AI to simulate the style and voice of UMG artists Drake and The Weeknd. UMG responded with a takedown notice. Three days later James Murtagh-Hopkins, UMG’s senior vice president of communications, issued a statement condemning the use of copyrighted music to train AI models, calling on platforms like Spotify and Apple Music to block AI platforms from doing just that:
“UMG’s success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with our own innovation around AI for some time already. With that said, however, the training of generative AI using our artists’ music (which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation.
These instances demonstrate why platforms have a fundamental legal and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in ways that harm artists. We’re encouraged by the engagement of our platform partners on these issues–as they recognize they need to be part of the solution.”
Bless Me Father is the sophomore feature from writer-director-star Gianni McLaughlin. He produced the film with his wife, Milly-May McLaughlin, who also has a part in the movie. The story is a crime drama mixing familial duties, faith, and the dark side of humanity. Tales such as this have been told in cinema before, so do the McLaughlins find a fresh spin on this well-worn material?
Vinny (Gianni McLaughlin) breaks down in a church. The priest, Father Joe (Joesph McLaughlin), agrees to hear the man’s confessions. Thus Vinny describes his juvenile delinquency. Eventually, a relative offers the man a chance to make some real money. Vinny does a good job, which puts him in with The Don (Paris Branda). But as the years go by, The Don demands more and more, forcing Vinny to sacrifice his love (Milly-May McLaughlin) and his soul. Can a murdering drug pusher working for a violent psychopath find redemption?
Bless Me Father may not tread new ground, but it is certainly engaging. McLaughlin clearly has a love for the epic crime dramas that used to ignite the box office. As such, he knows what does and does not work when spinning a yarn involving the mafia. To that end, there’s very little fat on these bones. The setup is done in two minutes, while only a handful of scenes involving the Don himself. This puts the focus squarely on Vinny and his actions. This focused character study makes the flick feel very intimate.
“…The Don demands more and more, forcing Vinny to sacrifice his love…”
Plus, McLaughlin is a good actor. He sells every anguished moment authentically and (of course) shares excellent chemistry with his real-life wife. Their interactions bring a spark of humanity to Vinny, making him more than just a simple hitman.
Also not to be discounted is the music by Dexter Dine, Allen Lynch, and Randy Lynch. The score is romantic, tense, and thrilling. It fits the mood of every scene perfectly and really ratchets up the audience’s investment.
Bless Me Father is an engaging crime drama with some outstanding performances. It is undoubtedly one of the more fully formed feature-length films based on a prior short. While the plot isn’t the most original, the characters are well-developed and will keep all watching invested.
The search for Madeleine McCann at a remote reservoir in Portugal is expected to enter a third day, local police sources have said, after investigators cut down tree branches and brought in sniffer dogs to scour a secluded woodland spot.
It was claimed today that the search for evidence connecting the toddler’s 2007 disappearance to chief suspect Christian Brueckner was launched following a tip from a ‘very credible’ German police informer.
Respected Portuguese media outlet Expresso said the informant gave detectives ‘details’ they took ‘very seriously.’ The flagship weekly publication named Rainer Grimm as the man leading the probe for Germany’s central criminal investigation agency the BKA, saying he was among the officers at the site.
It is now understood that the search will continue into a third day, Portuguese media have reported. Police sources suggested the same, with several outlets saying the thunderstorm that hit the area on Tuesday night had delayed activity.
Investigators hunting for signs of Madeleine McCann cut down tree branches and brought in sniffier dogs today (pictured) as they investigated a secluded woodland spot next to a remote Algarve reservoir said to be linked to chief suspect Christian Brueckner
Pictured: Personnel at Barragem do Arade reservoir, in the Algave, Portugal, as searches continue as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. The area is around 50km from Praia da Luz where Madeleine went missing in 2007
This morning police appeared to be focusing on a valley (pictured) slightly north of a secluded clearing behind trees near to where three tents were put up on Monday
Pictured: A boat is seen ready to launch on to the reservoir in Portugal today as searches continue of the area for evidence linking Brueckner to Madeleine McCann’s disappearance
Madeleine (left) was aged three in May 2007 when she vanished from her bedroom in the apartment her family were staying at in the Praia da Luz resort on the Algarve coast. German prosecutors believe Christian Brueckner (right) is behind her disappearance
A no-fly zone over the area is due to end at 10pm local time on Wednesday but by mid-afternoon this has not been extended.
It is not yet clear if they will continue on Friday, although the current operation was initially earmarked as a two to three day search.
The hunt is focusing on the foreshore as the water level in the reservoir is considerably lower due to low rainfall last few months. This may explain why no divers have been seen operating in the area although they are on standby.
Photos and footage of the search operation today showed a group of Portugal’s National Republican Guard (GNR) being led by sniffer dogs to a small grove close to the water’s edge. Officers were seen clearing branches shortly after.
According to Expresso, the operation was launched because of a ‘very credible tip’.
‘Expresso knows that these searches have their origin in a tip from a BKA informant who that police force considers very credible,’ it reported on its website. ‘This informant told investigators details that the German police took very seriously.’
It added: ‘The searches were requested by the German police after receiving this information.’ The media outlet said it had obtained its information from a ‘source close to the investigation.’
Emergency services with brush cutters to clear the search area arrived at the temporary camp set up on the shores of the Arade reservoir early on Wednesday.
Portuguese police, assisted by German and British counterparts, had focused their search on Tuesday on the reservoir’s shoreline.
This morning police appeared to be focusing on a valley slightly north of a secluded clearing behind trees near to where three tents were put up on Monday.
The dense vegetation meant they had to use tools including chainsaws to remove trees to access it properly.
Meanwhile, a fire service vehicle and rigid-hull inflatable boat were again on the banks of the reservoir, and appeared ready to launch on to the water.
Later in the day, emergency services brought in a remote-controlled tractor-mounted tree cutter to clear what appeared to be a new search area, a few hundred yards away from a temporary camp set up on Tuesday on the shores of the Arade reservoir by Portuguese police, assisted by German and British counterparts.
Madeleine was aged three in May 2007 when she vanished from her bedroom in the apartment her family were staying at in the Praia da Luz resort on the Algarve coast. The reservoir is about 31 miles inland from the resort.
The first major search for the toddler in nine years comes after German police discovered photos of Brueckner at his self-described ‘little paradise’ in the Portuguese region, it is understood.
German prosecutors last year named convicted child abuser and drug dealer Brueckner as the prime suspect in McCann’s disappearance.
He is currently behind bars in Germany for raping a 72-year-old woman in the same area of the Algarve region from where McCann went missing.
The case, unsolved for the past 16 years, remains a mystery as no body has ever been found. It sparked a media frenzy in Britain, with developments also followed by outlets around the world and celebrities joining appeals to help find Madeleine.
Pictured: Investigators are seen with hedge trimmers as they search the reservoir today
Pictured: An investigator is seen with a large strimmer near the reservoir today
Pictured: Investigators carry tools up a slope near to the water’s edge today
Reports have said officers, who are acting on ‘credible information’, are seeking any fragments of clothing and old rags that could be related to her disappearance – particularly the pink pyjamas she was wearing the night she vanished. Pictured: investigators load up a car ahead of the second day of searching for signs of missing toddler Madeleine McCann
Pictured: White police tents are seen near the bank of the reservoir in the Algarve region in southern Portugal. They are part of a temporary base camp set up by investigators
On Wednesday, the German prosecutor leading the country’s investigation into Brueckner’s suspected link to Madeleine’s disappearance said they do not have a confession from the convict.
Braunschweig prosecutor Christian Wolters said that while investigators have ‘indications’ that evidence could be found at the reservoir, this has not come from Brueckner himself.
‘We have indications that we could find evidence there. I don’t want to say what that is exactly, and I also don’t want to say where these indications come from,’ Wolters told German public broadcaster NDR today.
‘The only thing that I would clarify is that it doesn’t come from the suspect – so we don’t have a confession or anything similar now, or an indication from the suspect of where it would make sense to search, ‘ Wolters said, adding that ‘it was other indications that prompted us to conduct this search.’
However, Wolters appeared to calm expectations of what might be found, saying, ‘We never said that the girl disappeared where we are now searching.’
Tuesday saw about 20 officers with rakes and hoe-like tools spread out in a line, poking and raking the soil close to the Arade dam. Police also used a drone to scan the area from above and searched with sniffer dogs on both sides of the water.
Footage from the site showed officers taking bags away from the reservoir yesterday afternoon but it was not clear what was inside them. One video showed an officer being handed a bag by a colleague as they drove by in a black Ford SUV.
Last night a Portuguese source close to the investigation told The Sun: ‘The search is being taken very seriously and is being controlled totally by the Germans.
‘They asked Portuguese officers assisting them to look for any evidence – but especially rags.’
The Times reported that Madeleine’s pyjamas, which were pink and decorated with images of Eeyore from Winnie The Pooh, were a focus of the hunt.
A similar pair of pyjamas was held up by Kate and Gerry McCann during a press conference in June 2007, the month after their daughter vanished, in the hope of prompting witnesses who may have seen her that night to come forward.
Also last night the McCann’s former spokesman Clarence Mitchell told the Mirror the couple were being kept updated.
‘Until a body is found and proved to be Madeleine’s, Kate and Gerry are not giving up hope. They will be kept informed every step of the way of any development. It leaves Kate and Gerry on tenterhooks. It is another incredibly difficult time for them.’
Pictured: Investigators in Portugal bring in grass strimmers to cut back the undergrowth to aid in their search today for Madeleine McCann
Pictured: A police search team walk on the shore of the Arade dam near Silves, Portugal, Wednesday May 24. A police truck is seen parked on a peninsula that jets out into the lake
Pictured: A group of investigators are seen today walking down the bank of the reservoir
Pictured: A blue police tent is seen today set up near the reservoir
Pictured: Kate (right) and Gerry McCann, parents of missing 4-year-old British girl Madeleine McCann hold pyjamas similar to those of their daughter during a press conference in Berlin on June 6, 2007. Police are believed to be searching for signs of her pyjamas
Police are aiming to build up a picture of sole suspect Christian Brueckner’s life on the Algarve and the places he frequented as they search the Barragem reservoir in Silves, Portugal
According to Portuguese outlet Correio da Manha, excavations were carried out at two different spots around the water’s edge on Tuesday.
The reservoir is currently less than half full owing to a drought affecting Portugal and neighboring Spain. Much of the area being searched would be below water level in years of normal rainfall.
In the afternoon police appeared to be concentrating their efforts on a peninsula of land jutting into the reservoir.
Officers using sticks were beating back undergrowth as they inched their way through the woods before fanning down onto the beach to carry on the search.
However, just before 5.30pm, a violent thunderstorm and driving rain struck the search area and the operation was abandoned after it became clear the weather would not improve. The search was meant to continue until 9pm.
A no fly zone has been set up around the area extending for six miles.
This is due to expire at 10pm on Wednesday night fuelling suggestions the search will only be short.
The Portuguese police are expected to give an update on the operation once it has been completed later this week.
A picture taken on 24 May, 2023 shows a general view of the Arade dam, in Silves, on the second day of a new search operation amid the investigation into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
Portuguese Judicial Police (PJ) criminal investigation unit members work in the Arade dam area, in Silves, on 24 May
Portuguese Judicial Police (PJ) criminal investigation unit members work in the Arade dam area, in Silves, on 24 May
Two sides of the area have gently sloping banks towards the water, while the third is a sheer cliff, where three white police tents could be seen set back from the edge.
The reservoir is popular with tourists, particularly campervan users, and has BBQ stands and sun loungers scattered around.
Brueckner is known to have driven there frequently in his VW campervan, and is understood to have described it as his ‘little paradise’.
Sources close to the investigation have said they had evidence the clearing in the trees – where the white tents have been set up – was the spot Brueckner used to spend time at after parking up his campervan nearby.
A local who asked not to be named, but knows the area well, said: ‘It’s pretty well-hidden by the trees and you don’t realise it’s there until you’re almost upon it.
‘People wild camp there overnight from time to time which is why you’ll find the remains of fires inside small walls of stone.
‘It’s got old sun loungers in it and makeshift benches that visitors use to rest on. It’s very out-of-the-way and very peaceful but at the same time it’s got a slightly eerie feel about it,’ they said.
Local Portuguese reports, partly confirmed by police sources, claimed the searches were requested and authorised after German police obtained videos and photos of Brueckner by the planned dig site.
They are thought to have been found buried in the paedophile’s ‘secret lair’ in a dilapidated factory site in the German village of Neuwegersleben 65 miles south-east of Hanover.
Police raided the site in February 2016 in search of the body of missing five-year-old Inga Gehricke, who vanished while on a family outing in Saxony-Anhalt in May 2015 and has been dubbed the ‘German Maddie.’
Reports at the time said German detectives had discovered more than 8,000 images and videos on USB sticks and hard drives filled with child abuse images.
They were said to have been buried under the body of Brueckner’s dead dog.
Pictured: Journalists are seen as Portuguese Judicial Police (PJ) criminal investigation unit members work in the Arade dam area, in Silves, May 24
Officials have been tight-lipped about the search.
In a statement on Tuesday, German prosecutor Wolters said: ‘Criminal proceedings are currently taking place in Portugal as part of the investigation into the Madeleine McCann case. Wolters said German officers are investigating in Portugal ‘on the basis of certain tips.’
He said he was unable at this stage to give more detail on what prompted the search, and what officials were hoping to find, but said that such details would be released ‘if we… think the results are publishable’.
‘Yes, the measures in Portugal are connected with the Madeleine McCann proceedings, which means that we are investigating there in Portugal on the basis of certain tips (tip-offs),’ Wolters said on Tuesday.
‘There is a major search operation taking place that is being implemented by the Portuguese authorities. But there are also German officers from the Federal Criminal Police Office on site who are supporting the whole thing.’
He added: ‘I can’t disclose the background at the moment, i.e. why we are searching there and what we hope to find there. That shall remain our secret for the moment.’
‘If we find something and we think the results are publishable, then we will certainly inform you about it. But give us a little bit of time. The action itself will also take a bit of time. It will not be completed within two hours or so. And whether we then find something and what we find, of course, we have to see that first.’
The Metropolitan Police has said officers are present in Portugal so they can inform Madeleine’s family if there are any developments.
Detective Chief Inspector Mark Cranwell said: ‘The Met continues to work with and support colleagues in Portugal and Germany, with their investigations into the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
‘Met officers will be in Portugal and I am grateful to the Policia Judiciaria and Bundeskriminalamt for allowing us to be present whilst their work is ongoing, so that we can inform Madeleine’s family of any developments.’
Pictured: Officials are seen on the peninsula that jets out into the reservoir today
The reservoir was searched by divers hired by a Portuguese lawyer in February and March 2008. Back then, the diving team leader described the ‘long process’ his team faced navigating the ‘black’ waters.
Marcos Aragao Correia organised the privately-funded operation after claiming he had been tipped off by underworld contacts that Madeleine had been murdered and her body thrown into the reservoir within 48 hours of her disappearance.
Two bags containing small bones were found during the second search after divers had earlier recovered several lengths of cord, some plastic tape and a single white cotton sock.
Portuguese police were alerted following the discovery but subsequently ruled out the possibility the bones were human because of their size.
Madeleine’s parents Gerry and Kate McCann had previously dismissed Mr Correia as a self-publicist and said there was no evidence suggesting any link between their daughter and the reservoir.
The dam, near the town of Silves where a lorry driver says he saw a woman handing a child like Madeleine over to a man two days after she went missing from her Praia da Luz holiday apartment on May 3 2007, is not thought to have been searched since March 2008 as part of the ongoing investigation into her disappearance.
The search is the first major operation of its kind since June 2014 when British police were given permission to do digs in Praia da Luz that involved sniffer dogs trained in detecting bodies and ground-penetrating radar.
The Scotland Yard digs nearly nine years ago in Praia da Luz were linked to the leading UK police theory at the time Madeleine died during a break-in and burglars dumped her body nearby.
The searches failed to find any trace of the missing youngster.
In a smaller operation in July 2020 Portuguese police and firefighters searched three wells for Madeleine’s body but failed to find any trace of her.
The abandoned wells are a 15 minute drive from a cottage Brueckner rented on the outskirts of Praia de Luz, on a narrow road leading down to a beach where the paedophile used to park his VW camper van.
German prosecutor Wolters has consistently said he is convinced Madeleine is dead and caged paedophile Brueckner has been named as the sole suspect.
The deviant, currently serving time for the September 2005 rape of an American OPA in the resort where Madeleine vanished, has yet to face any formal accusation over the youngster’s disappearance.
Last April he was made an official suspect or arguido in Portugal over Madeleine’s disappearance, although his defence lawyer Friedrich Fulscher labelled it a ‘procedural trick’ linked to statute of limitations legislation at the time.
Last autumn Bruecker was charged in Germany with several sex crimes on the Algarve against women and children including the rape of an Irish holiday rep in 2004 and the sexual abuse of a 10-year-old girl on a beach near Praia da Luz in 2007.
Brueckner’s lawyer revealed in April those charges had been dropped against him in a bombshell development after successfully arguing prosecutors had no jurisdiction over him in Braunschweig where the Madeleine case was being brought.
Portuguese media outlets reported yesterday that excavations at the reservoir had begun, with video appearing to show police officers digging at the site
The case could end up with prosecutors in Saxony-Anhalt instead but an appeal lodged by the Braunschweig public prosecutor’s office has yet to be decided.
Braunschweig prosecutor Mr Wolters has insisted they are still in control of the Madeleine McCann investigation and Brueckner, who denies any involvement in Madeleine’s disappearance, remains in custody.
The Arade Dam, the Barragem do Arade in Portuguese, is fed by the watercourse of the Arade River whose source lies to the southwest of the Serrra do Caldeirao mountain range and runs through the municipalities of Silves, Lagoa and Portimao before reaching the ocean.
Construction was completed in 1955 and it began operating the following year.
Kourtney Kardashian has been open about her journey to have a child with Travis Barker on The Kardashians, and she continued that vulnerability during the season 3 premiere on May 25. After previously revealing that she’d stopped IVF, Kourtney and Travis were now trying to have a baby naturally. Khloe Kardashian popped by Kourtney’s house for a visit, and Kourt revealed that she was ovulating. “Do you mind giving us five minutes to do something really fast?” she asked Khloe, laughing.
Khloe agreed to wait while Kourtney and Travis did what they had to do. “The fact that you’d want to have another baby just blows my mind,” Khloe admitted. “It’s your time to be free and have fun. You’re a newlywed and in your honeymoon stage. This is the prime time of you being obsessive with each other.”
Kourtney and Travis at the Met Gala. (Carl Timpone/BFA.com/Shutterstock)
Kourtney already has three kids with ex, Scott Disick, while Travis has two children and a stepdaughter from his relationship with Shanna Moakler. However, since they got together in 2020, they’ve wanted a baby of their own. “Whatever is God’s plan,” Kourtney responded. “Whatever’s meant to be will be. We also have a full, blessed life and I’m happy.”
In a confessional, Kourtney opened up about her and Travis’ decision to not undergo another round of IVF. “I just really believe in what God has in store for us,” Kourtney shared. “If that’s a baby, then I believe it will happen. I had 7 frozen eggs from years ago, before Travis. When I was 38 or 39, everyone was pushing me to do that. And most of mine didn’t survive the thaw. Eggs are one cell. They never made it to an embryo [with Travis’ sperm].”
Kourtney and Travis with their kids at ‘The Kardashians’ premiere. (Chelsea Lauren/Shutterstock)
She explained that she was being open about her situation because the possibility of frozen eggs not becoming a viable pregnancy is something that she wanted to raise awareness about. “The freezing of eggs isn’t guaranteed,” Kourt pointed out. “I think that’s a misunderstanding. People do it thinking it’s a safety net and it’s not.”
Because Kourtney dealt with a lot of physical changes during IVF, she decided it wasn’t worth it to go through the process again. “The things that came along with IVF took a toll on me physically,” she explained. “My health is still impacted because it’s hormones, and also, mentally, it definitely took a toll. I think just being happy is most important and being a good parent to my kids. We are just embracing that whatever’s meant to be will be.”
“Jeopardy! Masters” host and all-time winnings leader Ken Jennings had some fun with one of correct responses on Wednesday’s episode, thanks to the show’s cheeky decision to make it focus on a very well-known, scandal-plagued member of Congress.
During the episode, one of the answers in the category of “recent events” read, “Subheads in a piece on this N.Y. Rep.: ‘Lied about where he went to…college’; ‘Allegedly Swindled a disabled vet whose dog was dying.’”
The correct question, of course, concerns the infamous serial liar from New York: “Who Is George Santos?” And it was contestant Mattea Roach who gave it to Jennings.
In a tone that implied he’d been waiting all night to drop the line, Jennings replied, “I don’t get to say this very much, but George Santos is correct.” Cue the laughter and applause from the contestants and studio audience.
Check out the video above.
For those that aren’t aware, Santos falsified nearly all of his resume, from his education to his work history to his ethnicity and religion. He even falsely claimed his mother died on 9/11. So yes, Jennings is right: Santos being correct is a bit of a rarity.
Santos was charged by the U.S. government earlier this month with 13 counts of fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and yes, false statements. On Wednesday, Santos secured three unnamed guarantors for his $500,000 release bond, according to Bloomberg. Way to stay topical, “Jeopardy!”
Sure, she is Elvis Presley’s granddaugher and Lisa Marie Presley’s daughter, but Riley Keough has in the past few years established herself with a solid acting career in her own right and her own name, one that continues to shine right up to her current starring role in as Daisy Jones in Amazon’s limited series, Daisy Jones & The Six, playing a 70’s style rock star ala Stevie Nicks and others of the era. Despite acclaim for her acting roles in the likes of American Honey, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Devil All The Time, The Terminal List, Zola, Magic Mike, and of course her breakout performance in the series, The Girlfriend Experience, she has never faced the challenge she does in this hit limited series which was not only a huge hit on Amazon, generated Emmy buzz, but also has produced a hit album, “Aurora” putting her right in the musical league with her mother and grandfather she never thought possible, or even attempted. This business works in unexpected ways I am sure Riley Keough will be the first to agree.
Riley joins me this week for my Deadline video series, The Actor’s Side for a deep dive into her career and how this actor who had never before professionally sung suddenly summoned the ability to not only do it, but knock it out of the park. It wasn’t always easy, was helped by pandemic delays, and involved a lot of training but both she and co-star Sam Claflin pull it off in style. She talks about every aspect of it including even that sex scene in the show she has to do with her real life husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, one she says was actually “awkward”. In addition to all this she talks about her directorial debut with War Pony, the highly acclaimed movie that won her the much prized Camera d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival ( as I write this today I am still at THIS year’s Cannes fest).
To watch our conversation just click on the link above.
Join me every Wednesday during Emmy season for another episode of The Actor’s Side.
“What’s going on? You guys have gotten so little. Breakup diets?” Disick, 39, asked Kim, 42, and Khloé, 38, during the season 3 premiere of The Kardashians, which started streaming on Thursday, May 25.
“So, this is how it went down with me and Pete. I did Saturday Night Live [in October 2021] and then when we kissed in a scene it was just a vibe. I was like, ‘Oh s–t. Maybe I just need to try something different,’” the Skims founder detailed during a June 2022 episode of the hit series. “So, a few days later I called the producer at SNL and was like, ‘Hey do you have Pete’s number?’ I text him. I wasn’t even thinking, ‘I am going to be in a relationship with him.’ I was just thinking, ‘Heard about this BDE, I need to get out there.’ I was basically DTF (down to f–k).”
The same month the episode about the comedian aired, the California native, who filed for divorce from ex-husband Kanye West in February 2021, opened up about how her outlook on dating had changed amid her connection with Pete, 29.
“I believe in love [and] I would never not believe in love. So no matter what you have been through, it is actually something me and my sisters have been talking about, you can get hard,” Kim said on Today With Hoda & Jenna in June 2022. “I think I might have been that way for 10 months [before Pete], and then after that I was like, ‘OK, I am ready.’ It was so pleasantly unexpected.”
Less than two months later, Us Weekly confirmed in August 2022 that Pete and Kim had called it quits. The comedian was later spotted spending time with Emily Ratajkowski before going public with his Bodies Bodies Bodies costar Chase Sui Wonders earlier this year.
“Ever since December, it’s been this dark cloud looming over me,” the Strong Looks Better Naked author said in the episode which aired one month after her son’s arrival. “Every single day, I’ve been feeling depressed and sad, and now that my son is here, I get to move on, and I get to enjoy. It’s almost like I get to close that chapter and be done with this trauma and put it behind me. Now I finally get to start the healing process. Now I get to start enjoying my life with two kids in it and figuring this out. This is gonna be day one, and this is gonna be the start of something positive, and happy and beautiful.”
Hulu releases new episodes of The Kardashians every Thursday.
“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.
Geena Davis and her family were returning from dinner in their small Massachusetts town when her great-uncle Jack, 99, began drifting into the oncoming lane of traffic. Ms. Davis was about 8, flanked by her parents in the back seat. Politeness suffused the car, the family, maybe the era, and nobody remarked on what was happening, even when another car appeared in the distance, speeding toward them.
Finally, moments before impact, Ms. Davis’s grandmother issued a gentle suggestion from the passenger seat: “A little to the right, Jack.” They missed by inches.
Ms. Davis, 67, relayed this story in her 2022 memoir, “Dying of Politeness,” an encapsulation of the genially stultifying values that she had absorbed as a child — and that a great many other girls absorb, too: Defer. Go along to get along. Everything’s fine.
Of course the two-time Academy Award-winning actress ditched that pliability long ago. From “Thelma & Louise” and “A League of Their Own” to this year’s coming-of-age drama, “Fairyland,” back-seat docility just wasn’t an option. Indeed, self-possession was her thing. (Or one of her things. Few profiles have failed to mention her Mensa membership, her fluency in Swedish or her Olympic-caliber archery prowess.) But cultivating her own audaciousness was only Phase 1.
Next year will mark two decades since the creation of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. When her daughter was a toddler, Ms. Davis couldn’t help noticing that male characters vastly outnumbered female characters in children’s TV and movies.
“I knew everything is completely imbalanced in the world,” she said recently. But this was the realm of make-believe; why shouldn’t it be 50/50?
It wasn’t just the numbers. How the women were represented, their aspirations, the way young girls were sexualized: Across children’s programming, Ms. Davis saw a bewilderingly warped vision of reality being beamed into impressionable minds. Long before “diversity, equity and inclusion” would enter the lexicon, she began mentioning this gender schism whenever she had an industry meeting.
“Everyone said, ‘No, no, no — it used to be like that, but it’s been fixed,’” she said. “I started to wonder, What if I got the data to prove that I’m right about this?”
Amid Hollywood’s trumpeted causes, Ms. Davis made it her mission to quietly harvest data. Exactly how bad is that schism? In what other ways does it play out? Beyond gender, who else is being marginalized? In lieu of speechifying and ribbons, and with sponsors ranging from Google to Hulu, Ms. Davis’s team of researchers began producing receipts.
Ms. Davis wasn’t the first to highlight disparities in popular entertainment. But by leveraging her reputation and resources — and by blasting technology at the problem — she made a hazy truth concrete and offered offenders a discreet path toward redemption. (While the institute first focused on gender data, its analyses now extend to race/ethnicity, L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+, disability, age 50-plus and body type. Random awful finding: Overweight characters are more than twice as likely to be violent.)
Even when braced for it, the institute’s findings are staggering: In the 101 top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2005, just 28 percent of speaking characters were female. Even in crowd scenes — even in animated crowd scenes — male characters vastly outnumber female ones. In the 56 top grossing films of 2018, women portrayed in positions of leadership were four times more likely than men to be shown naked. (The bodies of 15 percent of them were filmed in slow motion.) Where a century ago women had been fully central to the budding film industry, they were now a quantifiable, if sexy, afterthought.
“When she started to collect the data, it was kind of incredible,” said Hillary Hallett, a professor of American studies at Columbia University and the author of “Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood.” “This wasn’t a vague feeling anymore. You couldn’t claim this was just some feminist rant. It was like, ‘Look at these numbers.’”
Ms. Davis is by turns reserved and goofy offscreen — a thoughtful responder, an unbridled guffawer. (At one point she enunciated the word “acting” so theatrically that she feared it would be hard to spell in this article.) On a recent afternoon in Los Angeles, she took a break from illustrating the children’s book she had written, “The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page.”
“I grew up very self-conscious about being the tallest kid — not just the tallest girl — in my class,” she said. “I had this childhood-long wish to take up less space in the world.”
In time she began to look beyond her height — six feet — to the insidious messages reinforcing such insecurity.
“Hollywood creates our cultural narrative — its biases trickle down to the rest of the world,” she said in “This Changes Everything,” the 2018 documentary she produced about gender inequity in the film industry. The documentary takes its name from the incessant refrain she kept hearing after the success of “Thelma & Louise,” and later “A League of Their Own.” Finally the power and profitability of female-centric movies had been proven — this changes everything! And then, year after year, nothing.
It was here that Ms. Davis planted her stake in the ground — a contention around why certain injustices persist, and how best to combat them. Where movements like #MeToo and Times Up target deliberate acts of monstrosity, hers would be the squishier universe of unconscious bias. Did you unthinkingly cast that doctor as a male? Hire that straight white director because he shares your background? Thought you were diversifying your film, only to reinforce old stereotypes? (Fiery Latina, anyone?)
It’s a dogged optimism that powers Ms. Davis’s activism — a faith that Hollywood can reform voluntarily. When she goes to a meeting now, she’s armed with her team’s latest research, and with conviction that improvement will follow.
“Our theory of change relies on the content creators to do good,” said Madeline Di Donno, the president and the chief executive of the institute. “As Geena says, we never shame and blame. You have to pick your lane, and ours has always been, ‘We collaborate with you and want you to do better.’”
If a car full of polite Davises can awaken to oncoming danger, perhaps filmmakers can come to see the harm they’re perpetuating.
“Everyone isn’t out there necessarily trying to screw women or screw Black people,” said Franklin Leonard, a film and television producer and founder of the Black List, a popular platform for screenplays that have not been produced. “But the choices they make definitely have that consequence, regardless of what they believe about their intent.”
He added: “It’s not something people are necessarily aware of. And there’s no paper trail — it can only be revealed in aggregate. Which gets to the value of Geena’s work.”
Unique to the institute’s efforts is its partnership with the University of Southern California’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory, which uses software and machine learning to analyze scripts and other media. One tool born of that collaboration, Spellcheck for Bias, employs AI to scan scripts for stereotypes and other problematic choices. (Janine Jones-Clark, the executive vice president for inclusion for NBCUniversal’s global talent development and inclusion team, recalled a scene in a television show in which a person of color seemed to be acting in a threatening manner toward another character. Once flagged by the software, the scene was reshot.)
Still, progress has been mixed. In 2019 and 2020, the institute reported that gender parity for female lead characters had been achieved in the 100 highest-grossing family films and in the top Nielsen-rated children’s television shows. Nearly 70 percent of industry executives familiar with the institute’s research made changes to at least two projects.
But women represented just 18 percent of directors working on the top 250 films of 2022, up only 1 percent from 2021, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film; the percentage of major Asian and Asian American female characters fell from 10 percent in 2021 to under 7 percent in 2022. A 2021 McKinsey report showed that 92 percent of film executives were white — less diverse than Donald Trump’s cabinet at the time, as Mr. Leonard of the Black List noted.
“I think the industry is more resistant to change than anybody realizes,” he added. “So I’m incredibly appreciative of anyone — and especially someone with Geena’s background — doing the non-glamorous stuff of trying to change it, being in the trenches with Excel spreadsheets.”
Ms. Davis has not quit her day job. (Coming soon: a role in “Pussy Island,” a thriller from Zoe Kravitz in her directorial debut.) But acting shares a billing with her books, the diversity-focused Bentonville Film Festival she started in Arkansas in 2015 — even the roller coasters she rides for equity. (Yes, Thelma is now Disney’s gender consultant for its theme parks and resorts.)
“We’re definitely heading in the right direction,” she said. “Bill Gates called himself an impatient optimist, and that feels pretty good for what I am.”
Marvel also reportedly has plans to highlight past X-Men stars on a new level in Avengers: Secret Wars, with rumors indicating that the studio wants as many X-Men stars as possible to come back for the biggest Marvel crossover event ever.
Halle Berry Teasing X-Men Comeback?
Former Storm actress Halle Berry sparked speculation about a potential return to her X-Men role thanks to a new picture she posted to Twitter.
Holding her cat in one arm, Berry boasts a layer of white hair as she gazes into the camera in a candid photo.
Halle Berry
While it isn’t an exact match to the hairstyle she used as Ororo Munroe in four separate X-Men movies, the similarity in color is too pertinent to ignore.
Halle Berry, Storm
This photo sparked conversation amongst fans on Twitter hoping to see Berry make her MCU debut as the weather-based mutant.
@thedanholo asked if anybody would mention Berry’s hairdo, convinced that she will appear in theDeadpoolthreequel:
“Ummm, nobody gonna talk about the hair? She has a cameo in Deadpool 3 doesn’t she???”
@mattoska made the same connection between Berry’s white hair and Deadpool 3 starting production, expressing excitement to potentially see Berry’s Storm in the MCU:
“Her hair is white!!!!! Deadpool 3 started filming today. I can’t wait to see Storm again.”
@elicatweets took a different superhero movie route with Berry’s picture, asking if the picture was a “Catwoman 2 tease” rather than it being for her X-Men role.
Of course, these pictures from Halle Berry don’t serve as any kind of confirmation that she’ll join the MCU as Storm, and she hasn’t offered any comment on whether she’s interested in coming back to the franchise.
Some rumors pointed to Deadpool 3 revisiting other Fox franchises via the Multiverse, with this being the film where the Multiverse is used more fully than any Marvel Studios production to date.
With production in its early stages right now, there’s no telling which past X-Men stars could join this threequel, especially considering how many stars have been asked about joining the MCU since the X-Men fell under Marvel’s purview.
As for Berry herself, her hairdo only opens the door to a possible comeback as the mutants finally take their place alongside Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Despite other versions of the hero appearing, Ray Fisher’sCyborg from Justice League was omitted from the profile roster on the newly-launched Max.
Fisher has not had the best relationship with Warner Bros. since his time playing the DCU character.
Since the Justice League actor accused DC director Joss Whedon of “gross, abusive, unprofessional” behavior on the set of the super-powered team-up film, he has continued to show his dismay toward the studio and franchise.
Ray Fisher’s Cyborg has been left off the roster of Justice League profile avatars on Warner Bros.’ (WB) new streaming service, Max.
Fans of WB’s super-powered cinematic universe can represent themselves on the platforms with every other major player from the DCEU’s Justice League film – specifically Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Flash, and Aquaman; however, Fisher’s DC character remains absent.
Warner Bros.
This comes despite Joivan Wade’s take on the character from Doom Patroland Teen Titans‘ animated version of the hero being present.
Warner Bros.
There is no apparent reason why Fisher’s Cyborg did not make the cut, but it is likely due to the actor’s ongoing dispute with Warner Bros. and DC.
Update: An icon for Ray Fisher’s Cyborg has now been added to the Max profile picture options, possibly in response to the actor’s omission from the initial roster.
Warner Bros.
Why Was Cyborg Left Out by WB?
This omission is sure to turn some heads, and with the inclusion of other takes on the Cyborg character appearing on the service, it is hard to deny that Ray Fisher’s commission was an intentional move on the part of Warner Bros.
To say the Fisher-WB relationship is prickly would be an understatement. Long before there was word of a DCU reboot on the way, the Justice League actor was primed and ready to retire from the franchise because of his alleged mistreatment while working with the studio.
That is not the case with Fisher. There is no love lost between the two parties here. While Warner Bros. looks to be actively keeping Fisher’s Cyborg off their streaming platform, it feels as though Fisher would not be too worried about the exclusion after all the bad blood.
Microsoft has moved to inform players that a dozen of the games featured during Wednesday’s PlayStation Showcase are also coming to Xbox.
Sony’s big product showcase included plenty of new game reveals, as well as release date announcements and fresh trailers.
As is the norm for these types of events, the trailers Sony released to accompany each announcement advertised the games as coming to PlayStation systems and sometimes to PC, but omitted if they’d also be available on rival consoles.
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In a tweet following the show, Microsoft made it clear that many of the games featured are multiplatform and headed to Xbox too. These include:
First-party PlayStation games announced on Wednesday that look set to be exclusive to PS5 and PC include Fairgame$, an original heist IP from Haven Studios, and Concord, a PvP multiplayer first-person shooter that’s in development at Firewalk Studios.
It’s 11 years since Anurag Kashyap’s electrifying five-hour crime opus “Gangs of Wasseypur” jolted Cannes audiences, triggering renewed global interest in Indian genre cinema and vaulting Kashyap to auteur status with several subsequent films granted A-list festival premiere status — even if none quite matched his breakout feature for ambition or execution. Following a run of lower-profile potboilers in a range of genres that saw him through the pandemic era, Kashyap’s elaborately conceived, brashly violent policier “Kennedy” aims to return him to the art-pulp elite, starting with an obliging premiere slot in Cannes’ Midnight section.
The result is a declarative but somewhat disappointing return to underworld territory. Enlivened by some propulsive action, a hip-hop-inflected song score and a combative streak of anti-institutional protest — in a COVID-era context that proves one of the script’s more interesting specifics — “Kennedy” is ultimately weighed down by hit-or-miss performances and convoluted plotting that isn’t always ahead of its own twists. Internationally, the film is likely too lurid for crossover arthouse interest, though it would be a good fit for major streaming platforms.
It begins, improbably enough, with a Wordsworth quote spread across the screen: “We Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.” One might debate how apposite a selection it is, given the film effectively substitutes policemen for poets in the sentiment — either way, any gladness in the title character is largely confined to memory, with despondency and madness having settled in long ago. Uday (Rahul Bhat) is a former cop, believed by most (including his family) to have been killed in action years before, now operating in the shadows as a contract killer who never sleeps and goes by the name of Kennedy. (“You could have chosen Donald Trump,” observes a confidante. “You’d be a certified asshole then.” Kashyap’s political commentary, like his filmmaking, rarely takes the quiet option.)
We first see Uday at work as he efficiently slits the throat of a well-off businessman in his luxury apartment, taking one of the victim’s sleek suit coats during the cleanup to replace his own blood-spattered one, before masking up, heading downstairs and slipping behind the wheel of the car he drives for a high-end Uber-style service. We’re in the midst of the global pandemic, with much audible talk about how certain capitalist enterprises and government departments are monetizing the crisis — and so we begin to connect the dots between this social disorder and Uday’s assassination targets.
Some are at the instruction of corrupt police chief Rasheed (Mohit Takalkar), now using his supposedly dead orderly to do his dirty work without trace. But Uday is also working his own revenge angle, exposing a high-places conspiracy that gradually reveals itself as the narrative flashes spottily back and forward across a seven-year timeframe. It takes a few more pivots before we glean exactly how Canadian femme fatale Charlie (an unfortunately stiff Sunny Leone), resident in the same apartment building as Uday’s aforementioned victim, figures into proceedings, or indeed the otherworldly figure who pops up at inopportune moments to give him snide pep talks; the personal backstory that bookends proceedings is rather more obvious.
Amid the film’s narrative clutter, Uday himself never quite comes into focus as a character. Exuding burly, haunted menace, Bhat gives a physically commanding performance in the role, but there’s little sense of transition between insomniac Uday and his Kennedy persona — and Kashyap’s script is too busy keeping its spiraling story in check with clunky explication (“Now I’m asking for help from the man who killed him… do you see the irony?” a character asks at one point) to offer more nuanced assistance.
“Kennedy” is thus best enjoyed on a setpiece-to-setpiece basis, as the director’s genre smarts show themselves best in energized individual action sequences: a pounding chase by foot across the rooftops and walkways of crumbling Mumbai apartments, a joltingly short-tempered sidewalk shootout, a grisly execution with a cast-iron chapatti pan. Though the film’s visual design doesn’t make good on the kitsch comic-noir styling of its opening credits, it’s nonetheless shot with varnished verve by Sylvester Fonseca, while Tanya Chhabria and Deepak Kattar’s agitated editing ensures the film always feels busy, even when it’s sometimes running in place.
The big finish is coming in the fifth season of the Mayans MC TV show on FX? As we all know, Nielsen ratings typically play a big role in determining whether a TV show like Mayans MC is cancelled or renewed for season six (in this case, we know season five is the end). Unfortunately, most of us do not live in Nielsen households. Because many viewers feel frustrated when their viewing habits and opinions aren’t considered, we invite you to rate all of the fifth season episodes of Mayans MC here.
An FX gritty biker drama, the Mayans MC TV show stars JD Pardo, Clayton Cardenas, Edward James Olmos, JR Bourne, Danny Pino, Carla Baratta, Michael Irby, Emilio Rivera, Sarah Bolger, Frankie Loyal, Joseph Lucero, Vincent Vargas, Gino Vento, Emily Tosta, and Vanessa Giselle. The story follows the life of Ezekiel “EZ” Reyes (Pardo), president of the Mayans M.C. charter on the Cali/Mexi border. EZ has now risen to lead his brother Angel and the Santo Padre M.C. in a bloody war against their rival Sons of Anarchy. Defending the California territory and patch begins to claim lives within the club and causes strain between EZ and Angel.
What do you think? Which season five episodes of the Mayans MC TV series do you rate as wonderful, terrible, or somewhere between? Do you believe that Mayans MC should end with season five or be renewed for a sixth season on FX?
Check out our status sheets to track new TV series pickups, renewals, and cancellations. You can find lists of cancelled shows here.
Plenty of fans make art inspired by their favorite pop culture, but few end up getting the seal of approval from the original work’s creator. That’s what happened to one fan of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” who recreated the movie’s trailer entirely in Lego form and got a huge thumbs up from the film’s co-writer and co-producer, Phil Lord.
In fact, Lord liked the clip so much he admits “regretting” he didn’t do it himself. See what he liked so much at the top of the page now.
He should know, because he’s the expert on literally every aspect of the thing. Not only did he co-write the original “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “Across the Spider-Verse” and next year’s “Beyond the Spider-Verse,” he also co-directed and co-wrote 2014’s “The Lego Movie,” co-wrote “The Lego Movie 2,” and produced “The Lego Batman Movie.”
“Regret not making the whole movie this way,” Lord said when he shared the clip on Twitter.
Check out the full video above.
The video was made by a YouTuber by the name of LegoMe_TheOG, who says in his bio he’s just 14 years old, and that he animates “CGI Lego stuff for fun.” His channel is filled with Lego recreations of various pop-culture properties, from “Breaking Bad” to “Super Mario” to “Stranger Things” and more. The videos look stunning with shots recreated impeccably, right down to the lighting and framing.
“My man you have outdone yourself,” Lord tweeted in response to the fan’s “Across the Spider-Verse” video on Twitter. Christopher Miller, Lord’s longtime collaborator and other co-director of “The Lego Movie,” also retweeted the fan’s video.
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” hits theaters June 2. The film was made in tandem with the upcoming third installment of the trilogy, “Beyond the Spider-Verse,” which is set to be released March 29, 2024.
The late Tina Turner had a river deep connection with Australia, one that was built on hits, touring, connections and a unique sporting alliance.
Turner’s extraordinary solo comeback in 1984 was engineered by Roger Davies, the great Australian artist manager who has guided the careers of Pink, Olivia Newton-John, Janet Jackson, Cher and many others. For bonus points, Davies was portrayed by one of his clients, James Reyne, frontman of Australian Crawl, in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It, the award-winning autobiographical film based on Turner’s life.
The rocker also starred as Auntie Entity in 1985’s Beyond Thunderdome, the third in George Miller’s Mad Max action movie franchise.
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The “Nutbush City Limits” singer, however, would tackle something no other U.S pop artist had done, when she committed to a series of much-loved campaigns for Australia’s premier rugby league competition.
From 1989 to 1995, Turner was the face of the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) competition, now rebranded the National Rugby League (NRL), appearing alongside the game’s most famous athletes in national commercials, and sometimes on the ground for the sport’s showpiece events, including a set during the 1993 grand final at the Sydney Football Stadium.
Those campaigns included Turner’s hits “What You Get Is What You See” and “The Best,” and, for many sports fans and athletes in these parts, she represents a golden era for the code.
Thanks to her contribution as the competition expanded out of New South Wales, “The Best” is today recognized as the unofficial anthem of rugby league in Australia, a sport for only the knuckliest, toughest types in society.
Turner, who in one memorable promotional video pushes those he-men around in the dressing room, was a perfect fit, her sass, style and songs offsetting the brawn. She became the unlikely Queen of League.
Those Aussie connections played a part. Because her manager Davies was Australian, “we were able to make contact,” John Quayle, then head of the NRL, recounts in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The sport’s administrators presented to Davies while on a visit to his homeland. A partnership seemed unlikely, then an opportunity materialized.
“He rang and said you’ve got one day in London to film and if you can do it, we can have a look at it and go from there.” Working in “freezing conditions,” the team taught Turner the finer points of the game, she warmed to it, and a slice of marketing magic was created.
On Wednesday (May 24), Turner died at 83 years old, prompting both fans, fellow musicians and friends to express their condolences on social media — including one particular sporting code in the land Down Under.
“Vale Tina Turner, the Queen of Rugby League,” reads one post from the official NRL account.
Another post reads, “Tina Turner provided the soundtrack for a golden era of rugby league. Today we reflect on her immense contribution to the game.”
Watch some of Tina Turner’s classic campaigns for Australia’s professional rugby league competition below.
NOW ON TUBI! Terrence Green’s directorial debut, Summer With The Guys, is a comedy focusing on a few down-on-their-luck football players. Written by Brashaad Mayweather, Marquese ‘Kese’ Deese, and Heidi Weitzer, the film stars Green as DC, a college football player whose real passion is dance. Mayweather is his friend and fellow athlete Bmore. Their other two roommates are Jay (Brannon B. Watts Watson) and Dan (James Hal Hardy), both of who are also on the team.
These pals have a fun dynamic on and off the field. Unfortunately, bad news hits when they are informed that due to some changes in the department, all four of them are losing their scholarships when the fall semester starts. So the foursome becomes desperate to pay their bills, save for tuition, and have enough for a little bit of fun. Lucky then that they are young, good-looking, and in shape. Ms. Cash (Lina Outler) also notices this, and soon DC, Bmore, Jay, and Dan are strippers. Unfortunately, Ms. Cash forces them to take drugs before going on to “loosen” them up. And then DC starts selling drugs on the side to make even more money. Are these friends in over their heads, or can they finish their education flush with cash?
Summer With The Guys shows its indie budget in a few ways. For starters, the sound is all over the place. Sometimes the entire soundtrack drops out for a few seconds, then the person speaks. Other times, the music and dialogue are on the same level, making it difficult to make out one or the other. The editing is similarly awkward at points. Near the end, a supporting character is walking toward the leads. He notices DC isn’t there. DC speaks up as he’s behind this man. The editing shows the man talking and then turning to listen to DC. Then there’s a shot of DC, followed by a quick insert of that man turning again. Mind you, not mid-turn or anything, a follow 180 again. But this time, from the other side of the axis. It’s awkward. While this is the biggest offender, such editing confusion occasionally happens throughout the hour and 28-minute runtime.
“…due to some changes in the department, all four of them are losing their scholarships…”
However, the film works overall due to the swagger and looks of its male leads. The central performers are all a lot of fun. Now and then, there’s a line that isn’t too convincing, but often this happens when the soundtrack drops entirely (as already mentioned), implying it is some sort of ADR problem more than an acting one. Green is sweet and easy to like, and Hardy has excellent comedic timing. Mayweather is very charismatic, while Watson is fun. Outler is threatening but fun as the conniving madam of the strip joint.
Plot-wise, Summer With The Guys is straightforward, though some story beats do not work at all. For example, the landlord gives the four footballers a 24-hour eviction notice, as the school has stopped paying their rent. 1. It’s summer, so why would the college be doing that? 2. That is illegal, as a minimum required days of notice is required. Aside from such unrealistic turns, the narrative breezes along at a decent pace. What carries audiences through are the characters. They are fun, and viewers want the best for the four leads.
Summer With The Guys is very low budget, and it shows. It’s also the director’s first feature, which is also evident. However, despite some strange story beats, the film still works. The cast all have that little something, and the pacing is excellent. A lot of the jokes go for broke, especially at the end, making them land more often than not.
Revelers headed to Canada Place to celebrate Canada Day won’t be taking in a fireworks display this year — or any year going forward.
The Port of Vancouver, which co-hosts the city’s Canada Day festival with the federal government, confirmed that a decision not to produce the display in 2022 is permanent.
July 1 celebrations return to Canada Place
It’s been nearly four years since a pyrotechnic display lit up Coal Harbour to mark modern Canada’s founding.
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Festivities were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic due to restrictions on public gatherings.
While the Canada Day event returned in 2022, Port of Vancouver spokesperson Alex Munro said the organization decided to cancel the display “primarily due to rising costs.”
The 2023 event will focus more on daytime events and will continue with a new theme launched in 2022 that Munro described as a “huge success,” drawing about 150,000 people.
Canada Day 2022 features truth and reconciliation
“We also decided last year to take our July 1 event at Canada Place in a new direction, following national conversations about how to best celebrate Canada Day in light of the tragic findings at residential schools,” Munro said.
“The event was re-named Canada Together and is planned collaboratively with representatives from the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations under the theme of ‘weaving together the fabric of a nation.’”
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An events lineup for the 2023 festivities has yet to be released.
Locals looking for a fireworks experience will still be able to head to Surrey, where a Canada Day festival headlined by Broken Social Scene and Crown Lands is scheduled for the Bill Reid Millennium Amphitheatre.
The fireworks at that event kick off at 10:15 p.m. with a display scheduled for 10:15 p.m. July 1.
More than five months after Stephen “tWitch” Boss died at age 40 in December 2022, a new autopsy and police report is providing more details about his death.
Shortly after the So You Think You Can Dance alum’s death, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner confirmed that he died by suicide via a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. According to the new autopsy and police report, obtained by Us Weekly on Wednesday, May 24, no drugs or alcohol were found in Boss’ system at the time of his death.
The documents also revealed that Boss’ widow, Allison Holker, who married the Alabama native in 2013, told officers that “to her knowledge, [Boss] does not have a history of suicide attempts or suicidal ideation.” Holker, 35, also told law enforcement at the time that her husband did “not have any mental health problems [and] does not have any financial issues or marital problems.”
Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
The Ellen DeGeneres Show DJ was found dead on December 13, 2022, at the Oak Tree Inn in Encino, California. Earlier this month, Holker gave her first televised interview since losing her husband.
“I still feel like the rest of the world where I’m still shocked,” the dancer told Hoda Kotbduring an emotional Today show appearance. “No one’s ready for that moment and there’s no one that saw this coming. No one — and that breaks my heart too.”
The Minnesota native said it was “so sad” that none of her late husband’s loved ones knew he was suffering. “He wanted to be the strong one for everyone, and I think that was a little scary for him to think that he might need to ask for help,” she explained. “He was so much love and light. He really wanted to be everyone’s Superman and he said that a lot.”
In addition to managing her own grief, Holker has been struggling to explain Boss’ death to their three children. The duo shared son Maddox, 7, and daughter Zaia, 3. Boss also adopted Holker’s 14-year-old daughter from a previous relationship, Weslie, after they exchanged vows.
Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
“There’s been some really hard conversations. To us, Daddy’s in the stars. So, we can go outside and talk to him whenever we want. … They just ask, ‘When is Daddy coming back?’ and that’s a really hard one,” she shared.
The choreographer admitted that she initially wondered whether she had “missed” a clue to how much her husband was struggling. “I eventually had to tell myself, I can’t change anything that’s happened,” she said. “I don’t allow myself to be in a place of anger or sadness, though I allow myself to feel it. I’m feeling this much pain because I’ve had so much love.”
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or considering suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Once upon a time, a tiny paper clip with eyes would ask whether you needed help writing letters in Microsoft Word.
Decades later, in an age when innovations such as Apple’s Siri became a big deal, Microsoft built a software assistant called Cortana for its ill-fated Windows phones, and then for Windows 10.
Microsoft has long had a soft spot for “assistants,” seemingly approachable bits of software meant to help you get more out of your Windows devices. And now that the company is leaning into its position as a major AI player, it’s gearing up to bring a new kind of assistant, called Copilot, to Windows 11 PCs later this year.
It’s not cute like Clippy, and it can’t speak back to you the way Cortana could.But it could make working on a Windows computer — and figuring out how to take full advantage of Windows tools and settings — a little easier.
Microsoft unveiled the feature at its Build developer conference this week, where much of the conversation around Copilot centered around helping professionals and software creators be more productive. Maybe more important, though, is how Copilot might be able to help demystify Windows for regular people.
“It would be a way to command your device to do what it should have always done,” said Shilpa Ranganathan, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows.
In other words, the days of wading through a sea of endless (and sometimes arcane) PC settings may soon be over.
If you’re feeling up to it, Microsoft is opening access to a preview version of Copilot for Windows 11 in June. You’ll be able to try it out for yourself free if you’re a member of the company’s Windows Insider program, but here’s what you should know about Copilot before you take the plunge.
A tech support agent that doesn’t judge you
You can ask Copilot the usual AI chatbot things — it’ll unpack complex topics and try to handle factual questions when prompted. And with the help of plug-ins some companies have designed, Copilot can also do things like fire up Spotify playlists.
Unlike the last time Microsoft talked up an AI integration for Windows, though, Copilot hooks more deeply into your computer. That means — among other things — it can more easily interact with some of your files.
If you dragged and dropped an audio file into the sidebar Copilot lives in, it’ll offer to transcribe the contents. Trying the same with, say, a document yields an option to summarize it.
Unless you’re a power user, there’s also a pretty good chance Copilot knows the ins and outs of Windows better than you do.
Through written messages, for example, you can prompt it to set a focus timer — a oft-overlooked Windows feature I rely on — or switch your PC’s visual theme to dark mode. Ask it to organize the many open windows on your desktop, and it’ll offer to walk you through using virtual desktops, or Windows 11’s Snap Windows feature.
That’s right: If there’s something you need your Windows PC to do and you don’t know how to make that happen, you can ask Copilot. And while Ranganathan concedes Copilot may not always get the answer right, this still feels like a step toward computing clarity that some users could really benefit from.
“Let’s face it, traditional help functionality in Windows has been deficient,” said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “Windows Copilot appears to smooth out the connections, linking users to troubleshooting and Windows functionality faster.”
If Copilot is capable of even more, Microsoft isn’t talking about it yet. Part of that may be because the company itself doesn’t know exactly what users will try to do with the feature. During a Build keynote address Microsoft held Wednesday, chief product officer Panos Panay urged people in the audience to test Copilot for themselves so they and the company could “learn together.”
“I say that from a true point of humility,” he added. “We don’t understand everything yet.”
Because Windows Copilot hasn’t been released to the public — and because all Microsoft has officially shown off is a short sizzle reel — the finer points of how it works aren’t fully clear. But Ranganathan did clarify a few things that could make using Copilot a bit more palatable to some.
By default, ChatGPT — created and operated by OpenAI, Microsoft’s partner in AI — saves what you say to it to further train the large language models that make the chatbot so eloquent. Ranganathan says Microsoft has “not gone down that path” so far, and that it hasn’t been planning to specifically save your interactions with Copilot. That could change, though, and if it does, Ranganathan says “you deserve to know.”
Copilot won’t proactively go snooping around in your files, either. While some of its features — like the ability to transcribe the contents of audio recordings — require Copilot to interact with files on your computer, Ranganathan says any situation like that would require a user’s explicit consent.
“We’re going to actively look for permission and consent,” she said. “I’m not a big believer in doing things with people’s data without their knowledge.”
For now, though, there’s not much more to do beyond take Microsoft’s word for it — it’ll be a few weeks at least before we get the chance to test Windows 11′s new Copilot for ourselves. Still, despite Microsoft’s somewhat rocky history with software “assistants,” some industry observers feel cautiously optimistic.
“We have to be careful about making sweeping claims right now about any of this stuff,” said Forrester’s Gownder. “Based on the limited demos I saw, I think Windows Copilot has a lot of promise.”
The first public screenings of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” were held Wednesday night, which means we’re now also seeing the first public reactions to the film.
And in case you had any doubts, praise for the animated film, the first sequel to 2018’s “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” is effusive. Just shy, in fact, of universally acclaimed by the people who saw it.
“One step above Masterpiece. It’s an actual work of art,” writes Sean O’Connell of Cinemablend.
Reel Blend co-host Jame Hamilton says it’s “darker, more powerful and better in every way” than its predecessor.
TheWrap’s Drew Taylor calls it “a stunning achievement”. Yes, it’s” that is “visually dazzling,” but adds that “the movie’s real superpower is its emotional depth and its beautiful, melancholic tone.”
And Steven Weintraub of Collider said he “wanted to push pause about a hundred times to study the incredible artistry on display.”
About the only dissenter among those who saw it was Eze Baum, editor-in-chief of This Week Media, who dinged the film because it “it prioritizes fan service over a strong story. It truly feels like the first entry in a two-part story and gets predictable as it ends.”
“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson and “Soul” co-director Kemp Powers, and written by David Callaham and Christopher Miller & Phil Lord (who also produce).
It stars Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, Hailee Steinfeld as Gwen Stacy (Spider-Gwen version), Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker, who all return from the first film. Also returning are Brian Tyree Henry as Jefferson Davis and Luna Lauren Vélez as Rio Morales, Miles’ parents.
They’re joined by Jorma Taccone as the Vulture, Shea Whigham as Gwen Stacy’s dad George Stacy, Oscar Isaac as Spider-Man 2099, Issa Rae as Spider-Woman, Daniel Kaluuya as Spider-Punk and Karan Soni as Spider-Man India. Meanwhile, Jason Schwartzman voices the film’s villain, The Spot.
It comes out June 2. But you can pass the time waiting by seeing more first reactions below.
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE is not surprisingly terrific. It’s a bigger story, spread out over this movie and next, but it’s still about Miles just wanting to be accepted for who he is. (There are *a lot* of Spider-People in this movie.) I laughed out loud like 8 times
#SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse is yet another resounding win for the Lord Miller-produced universe. Hailee Steinfeld really comes into her own as Gwen Stacy, and her scenes with Shea Whigham’s Captain Stacy are truly special. It’s darker and sadder than I expected, but necessary. pic.twitter.com/BekW4nVAyv
Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse raised the bar with its unique animation style & way of storytelling. Minds were blown when it was released & fans thought there was no way it could be topped. Think again. #SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse raises its own bar which seemed impossible pic.twitter.com/F1Tay5Aif6
— Tessa Smith – Mama’s Geeky (@MamasGeeky) May 25, 2023
The moment SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE ended, I knew I’d experienced a cinematic moment I’d cherish forever.
If INTO is A NEW HOPE, this is EMPIRE – darker, more powerful and better in every way.
#SpiderManAcrossTheSpiderVerse is a stunning achievement. Yes, it’s visually dazzling, with expansive, expressive new realms (Gwen’s world is my favorite). But the movie’s real superpower is its emotional depth and its beautiful, melancholic tone. I love this movie so, so much ?️ pic.twitter.com/ofHvWCrNqy
Hands down, #AcrossTheSpiderVerse is real deal. Visually unlike anything you will see in a theater this year – it very much feels like the BACK TO THE FUTURE II of the series. A middle chapter that’s weird & funky & shocking, but also the ultimate #SpiderMan experience. It rocks! pic.twitter.com/TNvoIF6Wio
The hype is real! Every frame of #SpiderMan#AcrossTheSpiderVerse is gorgeous. I didn’t want to blink because I didn’t want to miss anything. You can watch this film over & over & finds something new to enjoy. There are some surprises in this film that I truly wasn’t expecting. pic.twitter.com/8UpTCXzyCM
— Joseph Deckelmeier (@joedeckelmeier) May 25, 2023
We’re a little over a week out from the release of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” — the highly-anticipated sequel to the 2018 Oscar-winning movie — and the first reactions to the film have arrived on social media. And according to critics who were lucky enough to catch an early screening, “Across the Spider-Verse” is “terrific,” an “incredible accomplishment,” and the “ultimate Spider-Man experience.” As you might’ve expected, everyone is going ga-ga over the work put into the animation, noting how it’s “impossible to see it all [and] experience it all in one sitting.”
Collider’s Steven Weintraub echoed that with his reaction: “Absolutely loved [‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.’] Wanted to push pause about a hundred times to study the incredible artistry on display. Cannot recommend this film enough and already looking forward to seeing it again.” Characters being highlighted include “Get Out” star Daniel Kaluuya’s Hobart “Hobie” Brown/Spider-Punk who uses a guitar as a weapon, and the new villain The Spot, played by Wes Anderson favorite Jason Schwartzman.
This time around, Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales/Spider-Man (Shameik Moore) is reunited with cross-universe love interest Gwen Stacy/Spider-Woman (Hailee Steinfeld) on a mission to defeat The Spot (Schwartzman). Along the way, he meets the Spider Society, a whole group of Spider-People whose job is to protect the existence of the multiverse. We’ll be treated to five new universes, writer-producer Christopher Miller teased back in March — they are “expansive” and “expressive,” The Wrap’s Drew Taylor said, noting Gwen’s world was his favorite.
A Lot More Spider-People!
Everyone is — expectedly — full of praise for the new “Spider-Verse” adventure. Fandango’s Erik Davis said that it’s the “real deal.” Davis continued by saying it’s “Visually unlike anything you will see in a theater this year — it very much feels like the [‘Back to the Future Part II’] of the series. A middle chapter that’s weird [and] funky [and] shocking, but also the ultimate [Spider-Man] experience.” For Davis, Daniel Kaluuya’s Spider-Punk is his favorite new character, calling him a “scene stealer [with] some great lines.”
Kaluuya is one of many new Spider-People in “Across the Spider-Verse.” We also have Issa Rae (“Insecure”) as Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman who’s pregnant, Karan Soni (“Deadpool”) as Pavitr Prabhakar/Spider-Man India who got his powers via magic, Andy Samberg (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) as Ben Reilly/Scarlet Spider who was grown in a lab, and Oscar Isaac (“Moon Knight”) as Miguel O’Hara/Spider-Man 2099 who leads the Spider Society. Alongside, in addition to Moore, Steinfeld, and Schwartzman, there are the returning talents of Brian Tyree Henry as Miles’s police officer father Jefferson Davis, Luna Lauren Vélez as Miles’s nurse mother Rio Morales, and Jake Johnson as Miles’s mentor Peter B. Parker/Spider-Man.
ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis calledit a “stunning achievement [visually]. It’s everything a [Spider-Man] fan could ask for and much more. So good, it’s hard to believe it exists. […] What the [‘Spider-Verse’] movies are doing with their multiverse storytelling visually and thematically is putting every other [superhero movie’s] attempts to shame, with [‘The Flash’] being the closest second but still behind it.”
All Across And Beyond The Spider-Verse
All that said, “Across the Spider-Verse” is the first half of a two-part story. As you might recall, the film was called “Across the Spider-Verse – Part One” for a while. They decided to drop that ultimately, and turned “Part Two” into “Beyond the Spider-Verse.” But that structure hasn’t disappeared, per critics. Uproxx’s Mike Ryan — who called the film “terrific” and Jason Schwartzman’s The Spot the “funniest villain” — noted that it’s a “bigger story, spread out over this movie and next.” Brandon Davis agreed, calling it “very much an unfinished story by its end.”
Still, Davis feels the “Spider-Verse” trilogy has the potential to become the “best [‘Spider-Man’] trilogy by a landslide.” And for what it’s worth, the next chapter — “Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse,” set to debut in March 2024 — is in the same hands as this one. We’ve three new directors at the helm of “Across the Spider-Verse” in Joaquim Dos Santos (“Justice League Unlimited”), “One Night in Miami…” writer Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson, all of them making their feature film directorial debuts.
Christopher Miller joins frequent collaborator Phil Lord — they’ve written and directed “The Lego Movie” and “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” — as the writer, alongside David Callaham (“Wonder Woman 1984”). Miller has described “Across” as “The Empire Strikes Back” of the “Spider-Verse” trilogy.
Full reviews are out Wednesday, May 31. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” releases June 2, 2023, in cinemas in the U.S.
“Reminds me of a different time in America in many ways. Not only for the storylines, however corny and ham-fisted some might have been, but also for the fact that the finale was viewed by almost half of Americans — the kind of communal experience that you just don’t get anymore.”
“It’s my wife’s and my favorite show, and we fall asleep to it almost every night. Even though it’s 50 years old, young people have found it on Hulu. The characters are phenomenal, so even the clunky episodes are mostly rewatchable. It’s incredibly witty and funny (thanks, Larry Gelbart) while often being poignant.”
Think of it as rock ’n’ roll’s original spoiler alert.
Sermonizing in her low, throaty croon as her husband Ike Turner strums an electric guitar, Tina Turner famously introduces the couple’s indelible 1971 recording of “Proud Mary” by informing the listener, “Every now and then, I think you might like to hear something from us, nice and easy. There’s just one thing,” she adds. “You see, we never, ever” — in her telling, the words are more like “nevah, evah” — “do nothing nice and easy. We always do it nice and rough.” Pause for effect. “But we’re gonna take the beginning of this song and do it easy.” Another beat.
“But then we’re gonna do the finish … rough.”
Did this little spiel, a version of which Turner would go on to deliver for decades every time she did “Proud Mary” in concert, ever prevent anyone from being bowled over when she got to the rough part? Unlikely. That’s how volcanic Turner’s performance of “Proud Mary” was, particularly onstage, where she’d turn the Credence Clearwater Revival tune into a shaking, shimmying soul-rock rave-up that made you half-expect the fringe to come flying off her sparkly mini-dress.
Watch any of the dozens of live “Proud Mary’s” on YouTube, and what you’ll be struck by — beyond her mastery of tone and timing — is how gloriously sweaty the singer is by the end, as though the effort she’d put into the song had come as a surprise even to her (or at least to her body). Yet there she’d be the next time she sang it, trying to warn everybody about what was coming before flipping wigs all over again.
Turner, who died Wednesday at age 83, lived a life that defied expectation. She made it through a hardscrabble childhood in rural Tennessee to become a dynamo of ’60s R&B in a duo with Ike, whose horrific abuse she survived to reinvent herself as one of the biggest solo acts of the ’80s; she toured the world until she was almost 70, then retired in 2009 without going back on it like virtually every other pop star in history.
Her story is one of resilience, no doubt — “Basically, the message is determination,” she told The Times in 1996 — yet she wasn’t defined by what she’d endured; instead, she found new ways to thrive.
As she put it night after night in that borrowed song about rolling on the river: “I never lost one minute of sleeping worrying about the way that things might have been.”
Tina Turner onstage in Chicago in 1983.
(Paul Natkin / Getty Images)
Born Anna Mae Bullock and raised in tiny Nutbush, Tenn., Turner made her name — the one Ike gave her without asking — as the electrifying star attraction of her and her husband’s revue. Her first single as lead vocalist, 1960’s “A Fool in Love,” is staggeringly raw: She growls, howls and grunts over a rollicking groove that bounces and thumps like a hand-me-down coach rattling toward the next gig. The voice is powerful but haunted by the knowledge that behind Turner looms her tormentor. Listen to the couple’s “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine,” a No. 2 R&B and top 20 pop hit in 1961, in which she refers to Ike as “thriller,” only to have him correct her: “The killer, honey.”
The vision was Ike’s but the emotional energy derived from Tina — one reason producer Phil Spector (who abused his wife Ronnie Spector much the way Ike did Tina) sought to cut Ike out of the recording of “River Deep — Mountain High,” the quasi-operatic 1966 single that showed a more melodic side of her singing and helped endear Turner to a generation of white British rockers including the Rolling Stones, who promptly took Ike and Tina on the road.
The cross-pollination proved a win-win: Mick Jagger learned to dance, more or less, by observing the full-body physicality of Turner’s movement, while Tina got access to a trove of rock tunes — the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” and the Beatles’ “Come Together” among them — that she’d go on happily to make her own. In 1973, she wrote a great one herself: “Nutbush City Limits,” a stomping and funky soul-rock jam about her rural upbringing.
Turner left Ike three years later but not without the name she’d turned into a brand. “I felt I had earned it,” she told Spin magazine in 1990. “That name Tina opened doors. That name went my on driver’s license and passport. That was my heritage from all the money that was taken away from me.”
The Ike & Tina Turner Revue performs on the British TV program “Ready Steady Go!” in 1966.
(David Redfern/Redferns)
The beginning of her solo career was bumpy; she made records with unclear ideas about where she wanted to fit into the world. But to see Tina Turner in person was still to be wowed by her live-wire intensity. Watch Rod Stewart, another of her admirers, bring her out by surprise to do “Hot Legs” on “Saturday Night Live” in 1981. He’s wearing a shiny pink suit, yet she’s the one you can’t keep your eyes off.
Teamed with a new manager, Roger Davies, Turner found her lane at age 45 with 1984’s “Private Dancer,” which set her gritty vocals against gleaming electro-pop arrangements. That’s not to say the songs were fluff: In the title track, written by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, a sex worker describes the numbing monotony of her job; “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” a Grammy winner for both record and song of the year, wonders, “Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”
Yet the fortitude in Turner’s singing — the sense that here was a woman who’d chosen to look at hard things because she knew was capable of it — made a commercial smash of the album, which sold 5 million copies in the U.S. alone and established Turner’s lion’s-mane hairdo as one of the iconic looks of the 1980s.
If you haven’t seen it in a while, revisit the music video for “What’s Love Got to Do With It”; the extreme close-ups feel almost radical in how unflinching they are, as though she’s daring us to hold her gaze.
That comfort onscreen led to a star acting turn in 1985’s “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” and the hit records continued for the rest of the ’80s. “I’m just using my female attraction on a typical male,” she sang, hilariously, over a thwacking Phil Collins drum beat in “Typical Male”; “The Best” followed a few years later, its inspirational message already destined for countless sports-highlight reels (though, as usual, Turner cut the song’s optimism with a cold splash of reality: “Tear us apart / Baby, I would rather be dead”).
She spent the final decades of her career as a top-grossing live act, thrilling audiences with the routines she’d long since perfected and scooping up lifetime-achievement awards including a Kennedy Center Honor and an induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Her dramatic life story became fodder for, among other things, a biopic starring Angela Bassett, a Broadway stage musical and an HBO documentary for which she was interviewed in Switzerland, where she moved in 1995.
Who might we say has carried on Turner’s musical legacy? Certainly Beyoncé, who’s further explored the indelible ties between singing and dancing and who posted a note to Turner on her website in which she said she was “so grateful for your inspiration and all the ways you have paved the way.” Among the other celebrity testimonials that surfaced Wednesday was one from former President Obama, who said Turner was “unapologetically herself — speaking and singing her truth through joy and pain; triumph and tragedy.”
You could hear that commitment to the truth in the work of Amy Winehouse; you could hear the conversation between rock and soul in Janet Jackson’s music from the late ’80s. But it’s easy to wonder whether Turner’s precise type of pop stardom may have died with her. These days rawness and finesse seem to exist at opposite ends of a spectrum. Turner embodied both for her entire life.
Expanding on the boundaries of the Multiverse more than ever before – which could even lead to appearances by Venom and other Spideys that have been seen in live-action – it’s no surprise to see that fans want to see Miles Morales back in action.
And with potentially emotional deaths in play alongside more Spider-Men than one could fit on a promotional lunchbox, many are wondering what exactly to expect to see on the big screen.
Spider-Verse 2 Winning Critics Over
Sony Pictures
Critics took to social media to share their initial reactions to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
Fandom’s Eric Goldman called the sequel “fantastic,” highlighting the “deeply heartfelt character beats” and expressing his excitement for the sequel in 2024:
“I am very happy to say that ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ is fantastic! Deftly juggles deeply heartfelt character beats with crazy multiverse content just packed with so many delightful Easter eggs. Loved how Gwen’s story is expanded. Can’t wait for the third one.”
Yahoo Entertainment Kevin Polowy couldn’t believe how good Spider-Verse 2 was, even proclaiming it to be possibly better than the original movie:
“It’s honestly absurd how good the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies are. ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ is just as great, if not better than ‘Into the Spider-Verse.’ I really don’t know how.”
ScreenRant’s Joe Deckelmeier exclaimed that “the hype is real” for the Spider-Verse sequel, teasing “some surprises in this film” that he didn’t see coming:
“The hype is real! Every frame of ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ is gorgeous. I didn’t want to blink because I didn’t want to miss anything. You can watch this film over & over & finds something new to enjoy. There are some surprises in this film that I truly wasn’t expecting.”
ComicBook.com’s Brandon Davis described the sequel as “an incredible accomplishment,” teasing that it’s “very much an unfinished story by its end” but also expressing disbelief at how good it is:
“‘Across the Spider-Verse is simply an incredible accomplishment. It’s stunning but also very much an unfinished story by its end. Visually, it’s such a stunning achievement. It’s everything a Spider-Man fan could ask for and much more. So good, it’s hard to believe it exists.
Davis continued to analyze the movie, noting that its Multiverse storytelling puts “every other super hero movies’ attempts to shame” and saying only DC’s The Flash comes close:
“What the ‘Spider-Verse’ movies are doing with their multiverse storytelling visually and thematically is putting every other super hero movies’ attempts to shame, with ‘The Flash’ being the closest second but still behind it.
DiscussingFilm’s Andrew Salazar celebrated Spider-Verse 2 as “yet another milestone for animation,” even saying that it exceeds the first movie “for always putting Miles AND his family front and center:”
“‘Across the Spider-Verse’ is yet another milestone for animation. Yes it’s gorgeous & visually mind-blowing, but this sequel surpasses the first for always putting Miles AND his family front and center. Spider-Gwen also rightfully steps deeper into the spotlight, co-owning the film.”
Salazar continued, noting that this sequel is “a massive celebration for Spider-Man fans everywhere” while highlighting that Miles’ story always comes before everything else:
“This feels like a massive celebration for Spider-Man fans everywhere, whether you love the movies, games, comics, etc. But again, all the cameos and multiversal elements come SECOND to both Miles and Gwen’s story. For my money, this could be the best comic-book movie of 2023.”
Collider’s Steven Weintraub also loved Spider-Verse 2, already looking forward to the chance to “study the incredible artistry on display” in every frame:
“Absolutely loved ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.’ Wanted to push pause about a hundred times to study the incredible artistry on display. Cannot recommend this film enough and already looking forward to seeing it again. Next time in IMAX!”
The Reel Rejects’ Coy Jandreau proclaimed Spider-Verse 2 as “the reason [he loves] comics,” even going so far as to call it one of the best movies he’s ever experienced:
“‘Across the Spider-Verse’ is the reason I love comics. It’s hugely impactful It can only truly be told in this medium. It’s drama & comedy and action and spectacle with the most heart I can imagine put into two hours Call me hyperbolic, one of the best films I have ever experienced.”
The Wrap’s Drew Taylor saw Spider-Verse 2 as “a stunning achievement,” loving the “emotional depth” and “beautiful, melancholic tone” even more than its visual excellence:
“‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ is a stunning achievement. Yes, it’s visually dazzling, with expansive, expressive new realms (Gwen’s world is my favorite). But the movie’s real superpower is its emotional depth and its beautiful, melancholic tone. I love this movie so, so much.”
CinemaBlend’s Sean O’Connell had incredibly high praise for Spider-Verse 2, putting it “one step above Masterpiece” and noting that “every frame deserves to be hung in a museum” for how good it is:
“OK. ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ lives one step above Masterpiece. It’s an actual work of art. Every frame deserves to be hung in a museum. The jokes and nods to Spidey lore are perfect. It’s OUTSTANDING. The best Spider-Man movie. Might be my favorite movie ever. Cherish it.”
The Hollywood Reporter’s Brian Davids heaped specific praise on Hailee Steinfeld and Shea Wingham for their performances as Gwen and Captain Stacy, calling the whole movie “darker and sadder” than he expected:
“‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ is yet another resounding win for the Lord Miller-produced universe. Hailee Steinfeld really comes into her own as Gwen Stacy, and her scenes with Shea Whigham’s Captain Stacy are truly special. It’s darker and sadder than I expected, but necessary.
Will Spider-Verse 2 Land With Fans?
After Into the Spider-Verse won the 2019 Oscar for Best Animated Picture and won fans and critics over across the world, seeing these reviews for Spider-Verse 2 certainly paints a great picture for the franchise.
It’s especially impressive to see that some even rank this new sequel above the original, as Miles Morales leaves Brooklyn for the first time and joins dozens of Spider-people from across numerous alternate dimensions.
Of course, some of the surprises mentioned in these reviews will remain a secret until Spider-Verse 2 debuts in theaters, even with promotional photos spoiling a handful of characters that fans have wanted to see alongside Miles, Gwen, and the rest of the gang.
Stand-up comic Sebastian Maniscalco brings his personal life to the big screen with a talented supporting ensemble. About My Father pokes good fun at his Sicilian roots and immigrant hairstylist father’s stern but lovable guidance. Robert De Niro co-stars as the penny-pinching pops in a reverse Meet the Parents scenario. They get big laughs as a heavily perfumed, working-class famiglia attempting to bond with country club wealthy prospective in-laws. Swift pacing and a lighthearted tone overcomes constant voiceover narration. What’s usually the crutch of a weak script works by establishing warmth and framing wildly different personalities.
MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAYSCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
Sebastian opens the film with a brief history of his father’s journey from Italy. Salvo (De Niro) came to America dirt poor with the same goal as every Maniscalco man for generations: he wanted to give his son the opportunity for a better life. Salvo prides himself as the finest coiffeur on Chicago’s East Side. This meant getting up at the crack of dawn, then working like a rented mule at the beauty salon until bedtime. But don’t forget a spritz of cologne before your weary head hits the pillow. Sebastian had to respect the value of money — order from the middle menu, no appetizers or desserts. Finish your food or foot the bill.
Sebastian attends the gallery opening of his artist girlfriend. Ellie (Leslie Bibb) is the daughter of powerful Senator Tigger Collins (Kim Cattrall) and her hotel magnate husband (David Rasche). She’s pleasantly surprised when her parents invite Sebastian to their Fourth of July celebration. He cries with joy as this gives him the perfect forum to propose marriage. He just has to get his recently deceased mother’s wedding ring from a skeptical Salvo.
The Wealthy Collins Family
Lionsgate
Ellie desperately wants Salvo to come. Sebastian swears that’s a terrible idea, but Ellie insists. How can they all be a family if Salvo has never met her parents? The trip to Maryland has a rocky start with the introduction of Lucky (Anders Holm), Ellie’s spoiled playboy older brother, and the weird Doug (Brett Dier), her sound bowl meditating, liberal leftist younger sibling. An exasperated Salvo thinks Sebastian has no business consorting with these weird rich people.
About My Father plays out similarly to Maniscalco’s popular stage routine. He groans and contorts with exaggerated expressions in a state of constant embarrassment. He’s stuck in the middle of an awkward situation that’s getting progressively worse. Shenanigans compound as Salvo’s attempts at acclimation inherently cause chaos. He’s not mean-spirited or trying to sabotage his son, but is honestly a fish out of water. Maniscalco adds to the goofy antics as the butt of most jokes. The pair have good comedic timing that’s endearing to the audience.
Embracing Italian Values
About My Father never disparages Italian culture or promotes stereotypes. You get the requisite slang, music, and mannerisms but with no ill will or mocking intent. Salvo blows out perms, snips bangs, and colors roots. He’s not a gangster guzzling wine and pizza. Maniscalco treasures his traditional ethnic upbringing and value system. There’s no shame to be had but definitely a few chuckles. Subplots about Ellie’s parents and her career aren’t that interesting. They thankfully don’t detract from the film.
About My Father is a Depth of Field production. It will have a May 26th theatrical release from Lionsgate.
Developer Fairyship Games has announced a new PC and console game called Testament: The Order of High Human, an upcoming first-person Metroidvania action-adventure/RPG set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world. It has no announced release window as of yet.
Players suit up as the guardian of the realm, a man named Aran, who is also the king of High humans in the land of Tessara. A betrayal by his brother Arva has left Aran stripped of his powers and the land plagued by monsters. Check out the debut trailer for Testament above, and the first screenshots in the gallery below.
Testament: The Order of High Human – First Screenshots
Testament promises to offer 15 unique magic abilities, a bow with four different types of arrows, an XP and upgrade system, sword combat, 15 different potions with varying effects, 40+ quests between sidequests and the main story, a non-linear narrative, and more.
You can wishlist Testament on Steam if you’re interested.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
Camera tracking technology is easier and more portable than ever before.
Amongst the many trends revolutionizing film and video technology as we speak, virtual productions are probably getting the least amount of fanfare — but also might ultimately be the most game changing. Because, while AI might optimize our production workflows better than ever before, virtual production technology might remove the need to ever leave the studio.
What a (great or scary) time to be alive, right?
One new product which is vastly making the world of virtual production much easier, simpler and more portable has to be this new VIVE Mars CamTrack which promises to revolutionize Hollywood productions with virtual reality setups which look awesome, but without breaking the bank in terms of cost or setup.
Here’s everything you need to know about this enticing new technology.
Getting Started with Virtual Production
Before we dive into the VIVE Mars CamTrack in particular, let’s talk a bit about virtual production and what it actually promises as a new technology.
In theory, this has been a long time coming. From the very first days of front and rear projection techniques and green screen technology, the concept of shooting outside or in exotic mythical locations from the comfy confines of a studio lot is nothing new.
However, as digital projection technology has advanced at a rapid rate, full-scale projection walls have become the way of the future. As we’ve covered here at No Film School for some time, virtual production is indeed here and for real.
Here are some of the key tenets of virtual production which you can learn more about below:
In general though, while virtual production could always be considered a cost-saving measure if it’s replacing expensive on-location shooting, the barrier for entry for much of this technology has still been pretty high. But things in that arena are also starting to change.
Everything you need to get started with the VIVE Mars CamTrackCredit: VIVE
Meet the VIVE Mars CamTrack
Let’s now take a look at the new VIVE Mars CamTrack, which the company describes as “a professional-class camera tracking solution that makes virtual production extremely portable and easy.” Unlike the more expensive and expansive wall-to-wall setups which you might find on the biggest Hollywood studio sets, this system retails for just around $5,000 and has a higher quality tracking experience than many green screen or LED volume wall setups.
Designed with SteamVR Tracking 2.0 technology and VIVE Trackers, the HTC VIVE can deliver accurate camera tracking solutions optimized for your virtual production setups. It also doesn’t require much setup time at all, averaging around 15-20 minutes to get started.
You can use up to three “Rovers” to track cameras, lights, or props all with built-in features for genlock, timecode sync, and other connection options.
Ultimately, you can find out more from the VIVE Mars site.
What You Should Consider
At the end of the day though, virtual production setups aren’t going to be for everyone. Even at this reduced price point (which is certainly trending down as this technology becomes more and more affordable), it might not be the best investment unless you’re planning to utilize the VIVE Mars CamTrack for at least a handful of projects.
Still, as you can see in the video feature from Andyax, it’s certainly worth checking out and experimenting with if you’re at all interested in exploring virtual production and all of the possibilities that go along with it.
Ultimately the decision will be up to you and your current (and projected future) needs might be.
Let us know your thoughts on the VIVE Mars CamTrack though in the comments below. Do you see yourself trying it out soon, or will you wait for virtual production to become more viable and affordable in the future?
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