Culture

Christopher Nolan’s latest film, Oppenheimer, is about the second biggest bang in history. Yet at its London premiere on Thursday, there was another explosion that, in its own way, was no less seismic than anything put on screen. Its star-studded cast, including Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr., assembled dutifully on the red carpet for interviews and selfies, but by the time that the film itself was about to screen, none of the actors were anywhere to be seen.  As Nolan said of his “incredible cast” in his introductory talk, “You’ve seen them here earlier on the red carpet.

You’d think that British-Japanese singer Rina Sawayama would muster up some new material for her concerts. Instead, for the second time in a month, she took the opportunity to “call out” 1975 frontman Matty Healy on stage, for laughing at a joke somebody else made months ago. How 2023! During her set at NOS Alive in Portugal on Saturday, Sawayama went on a rant during her performance of “STFU!,” her song about “dealing with microaggressions.”  “So I’ve been thinking a lot about apologies. Isn’t it funny how some people get away with not apologizing ever?” she said. “For saying some racist shit, for saying some sexist shit? So let’s try this: why don’t you apologize for once in your life without making it about your fucking self?

The trailer for Ridley Scott’s eagerly awaited magnum opus Napoleon has finally arrived — and it does not disappoint. Boasting what looks like another Oscar-worthy performance from Joaquin Phoenix, the trailer teases an intoxicating mixture of full-throttle battle scenes, executed and shot on a scale unparalleled in modern cinema, as well as insight into the complex psyche of the French emperor, to say nothing of his often-tortuous relationship with his wife Josephine (played here by Vanessa Kirby.)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?

For the past several days, the internet has been focused on the astounding Independence Day failure of Indiana Jones: The Dial of Destiny, which was beaten on its opening day by an anti-human trafficking indie movie starring Jim Caviezel, Sound of Freedom. Of course Indy 5 will, and already has, raked in far more than the Christian-themed film based on the true story of OUR Rescue founder Tim Ballard, but the latter film already made its $14 million budget back while going toe to toe with a $300 million CGI-laden Disney-Lucasfilm picture. But the real question people should be asking is: will this embarrassment finally be the end of Kathleen Kennedy?

Adam Devine, the star of the hit television series Workaholics and new Netflix movie The Out-Laws, recently gave some insight as to why comedies are hardly ever made by movie studios anymore. Devine appeared on the most recent episode of comedian Theo Von's podcast, This Past Weekend, where the pair discussed the downfall of comedy in movies. Devine, who also appeared in the Pitch Perfect series, surmised that high-budget superhero movies made comedies and other low-budget films less attractive to viewers spending money on theater tickets. He and Von also pointed out how movie executives try to force political and moral messages into their content — and that there is no longer "funny for funny's sake." "There's no hidden message," Devine said of his new movie.

At first glance, Sound of Freedom sounds as if it’s a Donald Trump re-election slogan for next year’s presidential battle. Yet, despite the presence of Jesus himself — The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel — in the lead role, Alejandro Monteverde’s new film has nothing to do with US politics. Instead, it revolves around that most hot button of controversial topics: child sex trafficking and the evils thereof. Caviezel stars as a real-life figure, Tim Ballard, who founded something called Operation Underground Railroad to rescue children from Latin American cartels and traffickers.

New DC head honcho James Gunn has found his Superman and Lois Lane, casting David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan in the iconic roles for his reboot of the franchise, Superman: Legacy. The choices seem surprisingly predictable for the off-the-wall Gunn, who reportedly had considered Nicholas Hoult for the cape. Instead, we get a rising star who has the physical look of Henry Cavill Jr. and an established actress in the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning Brosnahan, who seems tailor-made to portray a wisecracking stronger Lois type. Cavill's tenure as Superman was frustrating for many fans and the actor as well. He seemed hampered by the movies built around him — Man of Steel with its controversial death toll, Batman v.

One of the few certainties about the second season of And Just Like That... is that the Sex and the City reboot is as heavy-handedly woke as the first. Gender-nonbinary podcaster Che Diaz is back, in all of their jargony groansome-ness. Quota-filling black folk are magically incanted with Afropunk-inspired names like Nya and Toussaint. Historically black colleges are blithely name-checked; the requisite trans high-schooler is given equitable airtime; and we even encounter an upcycled wedding dress that carries Carrie Bradshaw to the Met Ball with eco-friendly aplomb.

In just one short year, Amber Heard has transformed from arguably the most hated woman on the planet to some kind of new and improved Spanish celebrity. Amber moved to Madrid months after she was sued by her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, for defamation. In a viral TikTok video, Heard answers questions from reporters, saying in Spanish, "I love Spain so much."  When they asked if she plans on staying, she replied, "Yes, I hope so. Yes, I love living here." After being asked if she has movie projects on the horizon, she says yes and adds, "I move on. That's life." It turns out that exiling yourself to a new country for privacy can be an effective PR strategy. Take note, Harry and Meghan.

Kamala Harris wants you to know how much she loves Tina Turner. She loves her so much that she has wonderfully unique and joyous memories of listening to the Queen of Rock ’n’ Roll’s most famous hits growing up. “When I was a child, my mother would play “Proud Mary” on repeat as I danced around our living room, singing along into my toy microphone at the top of my lungs,” Harris wrote. Harris revealed this moment of rare vulnerability in a tribute to Turner published in Rolling Stones Tuesday. And reading Kamala’s tribute, Cockburn can’t help but think she considers herself the heir to Turner’s legacy. The constant sexism and racism that Turner overcame in the music industry must have inspired a young Harris’s calls for “Fweedom.

The year was 2007. The Bush administration was launching bombs in the Middle East, the economy was collapsing and pop songstress Britney Spears was standing in a recording booth at Sony’s New York City office. As Spears waited to lay down vocals, producers Ezekiel Lewis and Christian “Bloodshy” Karlsson discussed the latter’s condo in Bangkok, Thailand. “Oh, Thailand,” Spears said, according to Lewis’s recollection. “Why don’t we go and do the songs in Thailand? Let’s go to Thailand. I have the plane coming tonight.” Lewis looked across the studio at Karlsson and mouthed, “What the fuck? Is she serious?” She was dead serious. “Well, why don’t we get this one down first, and then maybe let’s think about it tomorrow?” he said.

The success of the late Cormac McCarthy reached new heights in the spring of 2007, when mainstream audiences became familiar with his work through the Coen Brothers' film adaptation of No Country for Old Men, which would go on to win Best Picture, followed by the surprising choice of McCarthy's post-apocalyptic book The Road as the next selection in Oprah Winfrey's vaunted Book Club. The reclusive McCarthy did his first television interview ever with her that summer, to the shock of long-standing fans of his work.

When The Flash opens at cinemas this week, its production company DC Studios and distributor Warner Brothers will no doubt be hoping that attention is diverted away from its troubled, pronoun-wielding star Ezra Miller and towards its multiverse qualities. To the uninitiated, this sounds simply as if the studio has rounded up every actor who ever played Batman (save Christian Bale, who has wisely moved onto other things), chucked a Supergirl into the mix and even produced a truly bizarre Nicolas Cage cameo as Superman. Even Christopher Reeve appears, from beyond the grave. But to its now-desperate makers, mindful of the massive financial success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film has to succeed.

Pat Sajak has been a staple of American television for forty years as the host of The Wheel of Fortune. The seventy-six-year-old announced this week that the next season of Fortune will be his last. Then what? Will Sajak go quietly into retirement, cashing in on one of those Margaritaville family vacation giveaways his show contestants scream about wildly and jump up and down over? Sajak himself has — with the humor he’s known for — shed little light on his next move, tweeting, “It’s been a wonderful ride, and I’ll have more to say in the coming months. Many thanks to you all. (If nothing else, it’ll keep the clickbait sites busy!

The Sign in Sidney Brunstein’s Window — set in the blustering world of 1960s New York bohemia — deals with so many hot-button issues it is hard to keep up. Patriarchy, anti-Semitism, gay rights, slavery, sex work, suicide, drugs, adultery, racism. It’s all there.  But as I watched Anne Kauffman’s superb, and at times transcendent, Broadway revival, it dawned on me that one theme unites them all: corruption.  The play’s moment of truth hangs on the revelation that a local Manhattan politician who preaches progress is actually a crook. But on a smaller, equally devastating level, it is also about the corruption of marriage, of bodies, of values, of morals and of hope.

Georgia O’Keeffe is beloved for her oil paintings on canvas showing flowers and animal skulls: the first all soft, sensual openings; the second, spiky points and hardness.  Her works on paper are less well known. Yet, as MoMA’s exhibition, Georgia O’Keeffe: To See Takes Time, argues, paper played a key role in her early experimentation and art. As she told Alfred Stieglitz, the influential art gallerist and photographer who became her husband, “Why — it’s just like scrap paper. I throw it in the scrap heap and go on to something else.”  Paper is the beating heart of this retrospective, which shows 120 of O’Keeffe’s works from fifty-eight separate lenders, and which range from charcoal sketches to candy-colored pastels, rich watercolors to grainy graphite.

For anyone of a certain age who grew up in the Eighties and Nineties, there was always a wistful feeling that persisted whenever a big-budget blockbuster came out. The likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis were often seen slaughtering (usually foreign) villains and dispensing manly quips. But why did they never team up to do so together? Was there not the possibility that, one day, a veritable Dirty Dozen of Hollywood hard men could be assembled to kick ass, take names and (perhaps) compare notes on agents’ fees, too? Well, Stallone himself was not deaf to the pleas of action-loving cineastes, and so his 2010 film The Expendables was an honorable attempt to make exactly this sort of film.

Here’s the kind of guy I am: my musical taste is small-c catholic and runs about 30,000 albums. (All CD and digital, no vinyl. I’m not a hipster prone to dropping thirty-five bucks on a picture disc of Ghost in the Machine or a “junkyard swirl”-colored 2-LP edition of Out of State Plates.) If you make good music, no matter the genre, I’m probably going to like it. On any given day I might alternate listening to some Webb Pierce records with the Annie Get Your Gun original cast recording, and then follow those up with some Pantera, and then some Dandy Livingstone, and then some Bananarama, and then some Albert King, etc. etc.

It must seem very strange to Armie Hammer — once a successful, if not quite an A-list actor, who has latterly been reduced to selling timeshares in the Cayman Islands — that his career has taken such a decisive dive into the dumpster. Not very long ago, he was appearing in leading roles in the likes of Death on the Nile and Rebecca, and then his life went into a nosedive because of allegations of everything from cannibalism to sexual abuse. In present-day Hollywood, there is no such thing as a presumption of innocence until guilt is proved, and Hammer was fired from various projects, as well as being dropped by his agency and management company. His days of fame appeared to be over.

Is The Idol a stunning piece of trash, or a trashy masterpiece? Whatever the answer, the HBO show, debuting Sunday, is sure to make an impression. It’s set to be 2023’s Spring Breakers; a lurid spectacle of Hollywood by blacklight, as Lily-Rose Depp’s Britney-inspired pop vamp Jocelyn falls for a manipulative cult leader, played by musician The Weeknd. And critics hate it. They cry it’s “toxic,” “grim, gross and vulgar,” “degrading and hollow.” The Idol is the latest show from Euphoria’s Sam Levinson, and fills the prestige 9 p.m. slot previously occupied by the high-brow Murdoch satire Succession. Succession was subtle, witty and emotionally rich, and became a perennial obsession of the writerly class.

The complaints about the Marvel Cinematic Universe are by now widely known. Their films follow predictable formulas and story beats. Characters become increasingly indistinguishable quip machines. The stakes are never high. The streaming content is overwhelmingly forgettable. Other than the death of Tony Stark onscreen and the sad passing of Chadwick Boseman offscreen, emotional moments are few and far between, as it's hard to care about characters when everything can be reset with a bit of multiverse mumbo jumbo. And then there's the problem of, well, as the Critical Drinker refers to it, THE MESSAGE. Expect a lot of that in the already twice-postponed production of The Marvels, girlbossing into theaters this winter.

The newest entry in the Legend of Zelda series, Tears of the Kingdom, was recently released to rave reviews.   Much like in its predecessor, Breath of the Wild, gamers make their way through the vast and boundless ruins of the Kingdom of Hyrule, playing as the hero Link on his epic quest to save Princess Zelda and defeat the evil wizard Ganondorf.  The game is an instant classic and highlights the action and intensity the Zelda series is known for. Thankfully, that intensity seems to be limited to the game itself and hasn’t bled into the real world.