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Steve Pond's Blog, page 2031
December 26, 2019
‘How I Met Your Mother’ Creator Carter Bays Remembers ‘Feverish, Fast’ Friendship With Ari Behn
“How I Met Your Mother” creator Carter Bays paid tribute to the late writer Ari Behn on Twitter on Thursday, recalling a chance meeting in Morocco in 1997 and a week-long whirlwind friendship.
“He had knocked on my door just to be friendly and introduce himself,” Bays wrote, describing their first meeting at Hotel El Muniria in Tangier. “And by the way, who does that? Who knocks on a stranger’s door in a hotel? He wasn’t trying to rob me, or sleep with me, or convert me to some religion. He just wanted to make a friend, because that was his way.”
Behn, an author, artist and playwright best known for his short-story collection “Sad as Hell,” died by suicide on Christmas Day.
Also Read: Ari Behn, Kevin Spacey Accuser and Ex-Husband of Norwegian Princess, Dies at 47
Bays described how he and Behn bonded over being writers and staying in the hotel frequented by the likes of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. At the hotel bar, Behn proclaimed themselves the “Red Generation,” set to write the next great American/Norwegian novels.
“I know it’s corny, but in the moment, it was intoxicating,” Bays wrote. “He named our generation and canonized the two of us right there on the spot. I have no idea why he picked “Red.” Maybe there was a red curtain or lampshade in the bar? Red cushions? There’s lots of red in Moroccan decor.”
“We hung out for a week, and it was one of the most romantic weeks of my life. We drank G&Ts. We stumbled down alleyways. We met Paul Bowles! It was a feverish, fast friendship,” he said. “Then we parted ways. I got on the ferry back to Spain, and he headed south to Marrakesh.”
The duo reconnected one more time, in New York City, later that year, and then never saw each other again.
“Ari was a person who would talk to and befriend anybody,” he wrote. “Every woman he met fell in love with him. He was one of those magical characters who had no limits. And when I knew him, he was only 24 years old. There was no question, a great story lay ahead of him.”
Read Bays’ full thread here.
My heart goes out to his children. I hope they know how cool their dad was. I bet they do.
RIP Ari Behn. The Red Generation remembers. pic.twitter.com/6dUjsxPsms
— Carter Bays (@CarterBays) December 27, 2019
Related stories from TheWrap:
Ari Behn, Kevin Spacey Accuser and Ex-Husband of Norwegian Princess, Dies at 47
Kevin Spacey Posts Another Bizarre Video as Frank Underwood: 'Kill Them With Kindness'
How Many Votes Does It Take to Get an Oscar Nomination in 2020?
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has grown quickly over the last four years, topping the 9,000 mark in total members and approaching 8,500 in Oscar voters after inviting 3,227 more people to join.
That means it’ll take more votes to secure an Oscar nomination in 2020 than it did in 2016, before the #OscarsSoWhite protests spurred the drive for a larger, more inclusive Academy. But the numbers are still lower than you might think: 424 votes to get a Best Picture nomination, 221 in the acting categories and fewer than 100 in 11 of the 24 categories, all the way down to 26 votes for Best Costume Design.
That’s because the entire Academy votes only to nominate in the Best Picture category – in other categories, nomination voting is restricted to members of the appropriate branch. (After nominations, every member is eligible to vote for the winners in every category.)
Also Read: Oscars Gain 567 Voters as Academy Membership Tops 9,000
But the important thing to understand is that when we say it only takes 424 votes for a Best Picture nomination or 26 votes for a costume design one, we’re talking about first-place votes. Under the Oscars preferential or ranked-choice system, a voter typically lists his or her top five choices in order of preference — but the vote only goes to the film ranked first on each ballot, unless that film has already secured a nomination or been eliminated from contention.
In that case, the ballot will count for the voter’s second choice, or for the highest-ranked film on the ballot that’s still in the running. In most categories apart from Best Picture, the redistribution continues until the field is narrowed to the final five nominees.
To figure out the magic number for each category, you take the number of potential voters in that category and divide by the number of nominees, plus one. (In almost every case, that means 5+1=6.) You round the result up to the next highest number, and that gives you a “magic number” that ensures a film or achievement will be in the top five.
Here’s the breakdown of what it’ll take to land a nomination in each category when voting begins on Jan. 2.
Best Picture
If all 8,469 eligible voters cast ballots in this category, it would take 770 No. 1 votes to guarantee a nomination after the initial round of counting.
But Best Picture uses a unique method that can result in anywhere from 5 to 10 nominees. It requires the accountants from PwC to redistribute ballots whose first choice received significantly more than 770 votes, and also ones whose first choice received fewer than 84 votes.
After that redistribution, any film with more than five percent of the vote — which is to say, any film with at least 424 votes — will become a nominee.
Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress
If every one of the 1,324 voters in what is by far the Academy’s largest branch cast ballots, it’ll take 221 votes to land a nomination in the Oscars’ four acting categories.
Best Animated Feature
The Short Films and Feature Animation Branch has 740 members, making it the second-largest Academy branch. Normally that would mean that 124 votes would secure a nomination.
But voting in this category is open not only to all members of the branch, but to all Academy members outside the branch as well. To vote, a member must see “a minimum percentage of submitted eligible films,” which this year was 16 of the record 32 eligible films – 12 of them specifically assigned and the others up to the discretion of each member.
The number required to land a nomination will depend entirely on how many members participate in that process.
Also Read: 344 Films Qualify for Best Picture at Oscars in 2020
Best Cinematography
The branch has 273 current members. That means 46 first-place votes lands a nomination.
Best Costume Design
With 154 members, costume designers make up the smallest Academy branch that votes for its own award. (The Casting Directors Branch is smaller, but there’s no casting award at the Oscars — so like members of the Executives, Marketing and Public Relations and Producers Branches, as well as Members-at-Large, that branch’s members can only vote to nominate Best Picture.) So a costume-design nomination can be secured with only 26 votes, fewer than any other category.
Best Director
There are now 526 voters in the Directors Branch, which means that 88 votes will guarantee a nomination if they all vote.
Best Documentary Feature
After a first round of voting narrowed the field of 159 qualifying films to a 15-film shortlist, the 486 members of the Documentary Branch pick their five favorites. If they all cast ballots, it’ll take 82 votes to be nominated. (It took 61 votes last year, making this the largest increase of any category apart from Best Picture.)
Also Read: Hey, Oscars: Your Vote-Counting System Is Suddenly a Hot Trend in Political Elections
Best Documentary Short
The same 486 members of the doc branch are eligible to vote now that the 96 doc-short contenders have been narrowed to a 10-film shortlist. It’s highly unlikely that everyone in the branch will watch the eligible shorts and vote — but if they were to do that, the magic number would again be 82.
Best Film Editing
With 345 members of the Film Editors Branch, you need 58 votes to secure a nod.
Best Foreign-Language Film
This category is also open to volunteer members from all branches of the Academy, and it’s impossible to determine how many will participate. The first round of voting was open mostly to members in the Los Angeles area and is typically thought to include a few hundred voters. But the second round, with the 91 contending films narrowed to a shortlist of 10, is now open to any member who sees the 10 shortlisted films in theaters or on the Academy’s members website. The magic number will depend entirely on how many participate.
Also Read: 'Parasite' and 'Pain and Glory' Advance on Oscars Best International Film Shortlist
Best Makeup and Hairstyling
The branch has only 206 members. Voting is restricted to members who attend a special presentation of clips, or members who have seen all 10 shortlisted films. If every member of the branch participates in one of those ways, it would take 35 votes to secure a nomination, down significantly from the 48 that would have been required last year.
The smaller number is not because the branch got smaller, but because the number of nominees was increased from three to five.
Best Original Score, Best Original Song
The Music Branch consists of 345 members. The 170 eligible scores and 75 eligible songs went through initial rounds of voting in which 22 votes were enough to secure a spot on the shortlists of 15 scores and 15 songs. In the second round of voting, the magic number to land a nomination will be 58.
Also Read: The Oscars Original Song Race: Beyonce, Taylor Swift, Elton John and a Whole Lot of Big Ballads
Best Production Design
The branch has 343 members, so 58 votes will be enough for a nomination.
Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing
With 503 members in the Sound Branch, three fewer than last year, the nomination threshold has dropped from 85 to 84 votes.
Best Visual Effects
There are 545 members of the branch, which would mean a magic number of 91 if the VFX branch calculated nominations the way most of the other branches do. But it doesn’t.
An executive committee first narrows the field down to 20 films, and then to a shortlist of 10. Clips from those films are then screened for members of the branch, followed by brief discussions with the VFX artists responsible for the work.
Members who attend this Oscars “bakeoff” then cast ballots to select the five nominees – but instead of the preferential system, the branch uses reweighted range voting, which divides each individual score by the total score given to all candidates on that ballot. The idea is to identify the films that score strongest against the rest of the field, but at no point in the count does a magic number come into play.
Also Read: Academy Allows 'Cats' to Submit Its New, Improved Version to Oscars
Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay
The Writers Branch has 485 members, meaning it requires 81 votes to guarantee a writing nomination.
Best Animated Short, Best Live-Action Short
The Short Films and Feature Animation Branch has 740 members, all of whom were eligible to score the qualifying films on a scale of 6-to-10 to determine two 10-film shortlists, one drawn from the 92 eligible animated shorts and one from the 191 eligible live-action shorts. Members of the branch who see all the shortlisted films can then vote for the final five nominees, and members of the Directors Branch are also invited to participate in voting in the Best Live-Action Short category.
In the unlikely event that the entire branch (and the entire Directors Branch) participates, that would mean a magic number of 124 votes in animation and 211 in live-action. But in reality, it’s likely far lower.
Nomination voting will begin on Thursday, Jan. 2, and close on Jan. 7 after the shortest nominating period ever.
Nominations will be announced on Monday, January 13.
Related stories from TheWrap:
10 Highest-Rated TV Specials of 2019: From Hostless Oscars to 'Little Mermaid Live' (Photos)
Beyoncé and Thom Yorke Make Oscars Original Song Shortlist, Taylor Swift Doesn't
Why the Oscars Could Be Walking Into a Diversity Minefield This Season
Henry Cavill Reveals His Favorite ‘Witcher’ Monster Fight
(Warning: This post contains spoilers for “The Witcher” Season 1)
Geralt of Rivia has many a badass monster fight during the first season of Netflix’s “The Witcher,” battling it out with a kikimora, striga, hirikka, Torque, golden dragon, roach hound, djinn and doppler. But when TheWrap asked Cavill to pick his favorite among those beasties, the actor decided none of them compared to the real monsters in the show: humans.
“I’m going to give a bit of a truly backwards answer here,” he told us. “My favorite monster fights were probably the human monsters I got to fight in Episode 1.”
To be fair, that was a pretty cool fight. But we pressed him again to find out what actual monster he enjoyed sparring with best.
Also Read: 'The Witcher' Star Anya Chalotra Breaks Down Yennefer's Transformation - and Its 'Brutal' Cost
“OK, OK. I would say the striga fight would probably be my favorite monster fight out of the show,” Cavill said.
Here’s the striga (that was actually princess), in case you don’t remember it from Episode 3:
Cavill broke down what shooting the fight was like for us.
Also Read: 'The Witcher' Star Henry Cavill Explains Geralt's Accent
“Well, the funny thing is with anything you shoot is what ends up on screen may be very different from what you see on screen,” he said. “There’s always the editing process, which is where storytellers get to express their vision for the story and that means the whole thing you shoot may end up looking very, very different. But as far as that actual fight went, I was fortunate enough to be working with a stunt performer in a suit for parts of it. So I had a fairly good idea of what it would look like. And we were doing practical stunts for both me and the performer. I know they added the effects after the fact, but everything that was happening there on the day was a version of what you see on screen.”
“The Witcher” Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'The Witcher' Star Anya Chalotra on Yennefer's Transformation – and Its 'Brutal' Cost
‘You’ Season 2 Star Breaks Down Character’s Tragic Finale Death
(Warning: This post contains major spoilers for the “You” Season 2 finale.)
Whether you want to admit it or not, Forty Quinn was doomed to die from the start of “You” Season 2. Because, well, that’s what co-creator Sera Gamble and her writers decided would happen. Even though the pain of his tragic demise will probably haunt you longer than Beck’s ghost followed Joe (Penn Badgley) around, actor James Scully made peace with his character’s death long ago — when he first signed on to the show, actually.
“They were about as lovely with me as people can be with an actor and I knew going into the second season where I was headed,” Scully told TheWrap. “They still called me before they put out the script to be like, ‘Hey, this is happening. It’s not cause we don’t love you.’ But I appreciated it because I feel like by that point in the season, I feel like they’d made Forty such a character and the relationships had gotten so complicated that it’s like, he has to die, right? There’s no way for the show to keep going forward, otherwise it’s gonna be like ‘The Forty and Joe Show’ and that’s not what the show is about.”
Also Read: 'You' Showrunner on Season 2, Reviving Candace and Introducing Joe to Jonathan Gold's LA
Netflix
Forty’s death comes toward the very end of the Season 2 finale, when he’s pointing a gun at Joe/Will and trying to reveal Joe’s dark past to his twin sister, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti), who, unbeknownst to him, has already discovered it and accepted Joe, her boyfriend — and baby daddy! — for who he is. This is also after Joe and the audience finds out Love is actually a killer herself and possibly even more screwed up in the head than Joe. But Forty’s attempts to “save” his sister from the murderous Joe are futile. The scene cuts away from him just as he’s shot and killed by the cop (Danny Vasquez).
Scully told TheWrap that this scene was shot on the second season’s last day of filming and took 15 hours to lock down due to the number of elements involved and the fact they wanted it to “feel very cinematic.”
“It’s quite a wordy and quite an emotionally charged scene,” Scully said. “We did it over and over and over and over again. And it’s funny because when I originally read the scene, I was sort of disappointed that we don’t really see it happen and then he’s just sort of gone, right? That there wasn’t some sort of beautiful reconciliation moment between me and Love. But when we finally got to the moment where they were like, ‘OK, James you can lay down on the floor now, you’re dead.’ I was like, ‘Thank goodness. Let me just take a nap and let Victoria act beautifully.”
Love then cries beautifully over her twin brother’s body, “pulling on everyone’s heartstrings,” as Scully puts it, while he “had to just lie there quietly sniffling and not moving at all.”
As much as you may have thought Forty was a jerk at the beginning of the season, the over-privileged, extremely troubled, wannabe screenwriter definitely became a fan favorite by the end. While that makes it so much harder to accept his death, it makes it much easier to see why Gamble decided he had to go.
“That’s sort of part of the job of a writer is that — it sounds really sadistic — but it’s actually just kind of our job for those who are writing dramas,” she told TheWrap. “You’ve got to kind of — some people meet ends in shows that are tragic. But our job is to, ourselves, also fall in love with these characters. I have never seen so many pitches in the room as I did with Forty. Every writer gave me a really good reason why he had to live and James had to be, like, the new star of the show.”
Also Read: 45 Most Shocking TV Character Deaths of 2019, From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Stranger Things' (Photos)
“The thing I really loved about James, the thing that made us all want to have him was that, he both is a perfect douchebag and then also very lovable and has a vulnerability underneath,” Gamble added. “Obviously James is not a douchebag, but his way of playing Forty is a very convincing douchebag. And then the vulnerability underneath was so profound.”
For Scully, all that matters to him, in the end, is that Forty’s death “means something to people and does something for the story.”
And based on how it appears to affect Love — and Joe, for that matter — it certainly looks like it will do something for the story in a possible Season 3.
Readers can find more from TheWrap’s interviews with Gamble here and Scully here.
“You” Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'You' Showrunner on Season 2, Reviving Candace and Introducing Joe to Jonathan Gold's LA
45 Most Shocking TV Character Deaths of 2019, From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Stranger Things' (Photos)
10 Most Epic Fails in Hollywood This Decade, From Qwikster to the ‘Dark Universe’
If you’re in the entertainment industry, failure is a constant. For every “Avengers: Endgame” there is a “Howard the Duck.” It’s just the nature of the business.
As Yoda put it to Luke Skywalker in “Last Jedi,” though, failure can be a good thing. “The greatest teacher, failure is.” After all, sometimes it takes finding out what doesn’t work in order to have success later down the road.
As we end the 2010s, lets look at those who we sure hope learned some good hard lessons this decade:
1. Netflix tries to launch Qwikster — which gets compared to “New Coke”
Netflix did a lot of things right this decade (which you read about here), but the streaming powerhouse did have one misstep, albeit briefly.
Back in 2011, when Netflix was still primarily known as the DVD-by-mail company, the company was just branching out into streaming. In a bid to separate the two businesses, Netflix announced that it would spin-off its DVD side into a new product called “Qwikster,” requiring customers to pay a separate fee and set up separate profiles.
The only thing that was “quick” about it was the reaction, which was swift and harsh, with many comparing it to Coke’s failed launch of “New Coke” in the 1980s. Netflix gets credit for quickly realizing its mistake, and just three short months after it announced it,” Qwikster” was dead. “It is clear that for many of our members two websites would make things more difficult, so we are going to keep Netflix as one place to go for streaming and DVDs,” wrote CEO Reed Hastings, when announcing the decision to kill Qwikster.
2. Tom Cruise fails to launch Universal’s Dark Universe
In 2012, Marvel Studios assembled The Avengers, bringing together characters from four separate film franchises into one mega-franchise. That kick-started the era of the Shared Universe, with rival studios like Warner Bros and Sony attempting to mimic Marvel’s successful formula.
The results were mostly uninspiring, but nothing face-planted worse than Universal’s attempt at a “Dark Universe” filled with its famous monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula and The Invisible Man.
It began with “The Mummy” which featured both Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe. It also ended with it, because the box office performance was so bad, and the film was clearly more interested in setting up future plotlines than its own (this would be a recurring theme in other misfires). And then there was that photo.
While Universal wasn’t the only studio to have trouble in building its own cinematic universe, it’ the one that failed the most spectacularly at it.
3. “Fantastic 4” (sorry, “Fan4stic”) is anything but
But Fox gave them a run for their money. Even Josh Trank would agree that his version of “Fantastic 4” was a disaster of world-ending proportions.
Nobody saw this coming. Trank, fresh off the indie-superhero film “Chronicle” was set to direct an intriguing new take of the classic Marvel comic with an all-star cast that featured Michael B. Jordan, Miles Teller and Kate Mara. But the production was beset by numerous behind-the-scenes troubles and interference from Fox. All too often, the stories about production troubles were more interesting than the movie itself.
It was so bad that Trank, just ahead of the film’s release, slammed his own movie. That followed stories about his behavior on set, which effectively stalled his career — he was supposed to direct a “Star Wars” spinoff, but he and Disney/Lucasfilm ended up parting ways — just as it was getting started.
4. MoviePass thinks its crazy like a fox… ends up just being crazy
MoviePass redefined the phrase “in over its head” this decade. The subscription movie-going service told the industry to hold its beer in 2017 when it slashed the monthly price of the service to $10 from as much as $50 for access to unlimited movies a month in theaters. The business plan was essentially: Attract as many subscribers as possible for $10 a month, subsidize their movie going, try to leverage their data, and hope most of them don’t use the service more than once a month.
Shocker, it didn’t work, at least not for MoviePass. It was a tumultuous year and change for MoviePass and ultimately a slow death. The company burned through millions of dollars, suffered from what it said was a significant fraud problem, continually frustrated customers and struggled to keep its head above water. And in September 2019 the service shut down with no plans to relaunch. MoviePass did, however, usher in a change in how people go to the movies. All of the biggest cinema chains in the U.S. either launched or solidified subscription services in the aftermath of MoviePass’s initial rise.
5. Yahoo’s Tumblr acquisition flames out
That didn’t go according to plan. Verizon bought Tumblr in 2013 for $1.1 billion, thinking it had just acquired a trendy, go-to digital spot that was especially popular among Millennials. But instead of working out like Facebook’s $1 billion buyout of Instagram, it went in the complete opposite direction.
Tumblr’s active users peaked in early 2014 at about 100 million people. It’s decline was later exacerbated in late 2018, when Tumblr’s decision to ban porn contributed to a 33% drop in first-time mobile users. The user exodus, coupled with an inability to earn revenue from the platform, ultimately spelled doom for Yahoo, and later Verizon, after it purchased most of Yahoo’s media assets.
Verizon ended up selling off Tumblr for $20 million — or about 2% of its 2013 purchase price.
6. Oscars most popular category gets a very un-popular response
Faced with declining TV ratings, the Film Academy attempted to overhaul the Oscars for its 2019 edition, which was already having issues in getting a host (it would eventually go host-less, kicking off a potentially new trend for the 2020s). These included keeping the show to three-hours tops — which mostly succeeded — moving some awards to the commercial breaks (this didn’t), and the introduction of a new, Most Popular Film award (this really didn’t).
The new category was made in an attempt to get more popular blockbuster films, which are routinely snubbed for any major awards consideration, into the show. But it was so confusingly ham-fisted in there it received nearly universal pushback. It was believed the move was done so Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther,” among the biggest cultural touchstones of 2018, could get an Oscar. But the detractors of the award argued that the “popular” award would be seen as a way to give the film an Oscar while shutting it out of other categories.
Less than a month after announcing the new category, the Academy pulled it back. “Black Panther” still managed to snag a Best Picture nomination.
7. Tribune gets “Tronc’d” over its new name
In 2016, in a bid to stay relevant to millennials, Tribune Publishing gave itself a new name. Three years later, we’re still not sure what “Tronc” was supposed to mean.
It was apparently supposed to be a mashup of the words “Tribune Online Content”. But, as The Verge put it, it sounded instead like “a millennial falling down the stairs.” Tronc, according to its leaders, would serve as a “content curation and monetization engine,” which is exactly the kind of nonsensical mumbo jumbo you would expect from out-of-touch newspaper executives.
The name change also came during a particularly turbulent time for the company, including its disastrous last few years running the LA Times and the departure of chairman Michael Ferro following sexual harassment accusations.
The name “Tronc” was eventually scrapped in 2018, after Tribune Publishing sold the Los Angeles Times to Patrick Soon-Shiong. But some things will never be forgotten, even if we’d all like to.
8. Fox’s “Utopia” experiment was more of a dystopia
The broadcast TV season is littered every year with failed shows (the less said about ABC’s “Work It” the better), but none of them cost as much as Fox’s pricey misfire on “Utopia.” The reality series featured a cast of 15 men and women who were placed in isolation and filmed 24-hours a day for a planned one year, was scrapped after two months.
From day one, the show suffered from internal bickering at the network’s highest levels and a heavy-handed execution by producers and Fox’s then-alternative chief Simon Andreae.
Andreae bought the Dutch format from producer John de Mol’s Talpa Media, which is also behind hits like “Big Brother” and “The Voice.” Then Fox’s alternative programming chief, Andreae made the bold buy just three months after being announced to the position , to avoid a bidding war on the show that was performing well in The Netherlands.
But as the price of the show soared to a $50 million price tag, some executives within Fox began to wonder if the series was worth it. It turns out, it wasn’t.
9. “Megyn Kelly Today”…. but gone tomorrow
Megyn Kelly’s move from Fox News to NBC was a big risk for both parties. Could Kelly — who was known just as much for being the moderate presence on the heavily-conservative channel as she was for proclaiming that “Santa Claus is white” — appeal to NBC’s more liberal viewers?
That answer was a resounding no. It got off to a bad start when Kelly interviewed Infowars leader Alex Jones on her short-lived newsmagazine. Then she took over the 9 a.m. hour of “Today,” which led Tamron Hall seeking greener pastures elsewhere.
The ratings weren’t good. From September 2017 to September 2018, Kelly’s 9 a.m. ET show fell 13% from its predecessor, which was just a third hour of the “Today” show. But that was just the beginning.
In October 2018, Kelly defended using “Blackface” for Halloween costumes during a segment on her show. “What is racist?” she asked. “You get in trouble if you’re a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. When I was a kid that was OK as long as you were dressing up as a character.”
Obviously, that did not go over well. She was quickly yanked from the timeslot, and finalized her exit from NBC a few weeks into 2019. Kelly barely made it halfway through her $69 million contract. It not only hurt NBC’s ratings and image, but also its wallet.
10. Sony gets hacked over a James Franco-Seth Rogen comedy
Blame James Franco and Seth Rogen?
In 2014, Sony was target of a coordinated attack by a hacker group “The Guardians of Peace.” Millions of confidential data, including emails to and from studio executives (most notably former Sony Pictures chief Amy Pascal), were leaked.
It ended as an international incident, with the White House accusing North Korea of perpetrating the hack and unleashing the embarrassing leaks of confidential studio emails because of Kim Jong-un’s displeasure with being ridiculed in the Sony comedy “The Interview.” The film was a frequent target by the hackers, who demanded it get pulled. It was eventually shelved in theaters but released online instead.
Pascal, in particular, was targeted, and it led to her eventual ouster from the studio. Her reputation took a damaging hit, which included making racist jokes about Barack Obama (joking that he only liked African-American films) and slamming Angelina Jolie as “a minimally talented spoiled brat.”
But the hack also included emails that showed that Sony, fresh off the disappointment of the two Andrew Garfield-led “Spider-Man” films, was considering doing the one thing every Marvel fan wanted: Bring the web-crawler in the MCU. That’s worked out quite well for Sony.
Jamie Foxx to Receive Palm Springs Film Festival Award for ‘Just Mercy’
Jamie Foxx will receive the Spotlight Award, Actor at the Palm Springs International Film Festival’s 2020 Awards Gala, PSIFF organizers announced on Thursday.
Foxx will receive the award for his performance in Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Just Mercy,” a fact-based drama in which he plays Walter McMillian, a man falsely convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama in 1987. Michael B. Jordan co-stars in the film as Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and worked to free McMillian and many other convicts denied justice because of their race and poverty.
Foxx was recently nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for the film.
Also Read: The Echoes of 'Just Mercy' in Montgomery, Alabama - and Beyond
Other honorees at this year’s gala are Antonio Banderas, Laura Dern, Adam Driver, Cynthia Erivo, Zack Gottsagen, Jennifer Lopez, Joaquin Phoenix, Martin Scorsese, Charlize Theron and Renee Zellweger.
The gala will take place on Thursday, Jan. 2 in the Palm Springs Convention Center. The festival will continue until Jan. 13 in the desert resort east of Los Angeles.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'Just Mercy' Film Review: Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx Power Solid Racism Drama
'Clemency,' 'Just Mercy' Shed Light on Prisoners' Plights (Guest Column)
Michael B. Jordan on Importance of Civil Rights Drama 'Just Mercy': 'I Don't Want to Mess This Up'
December 25, 2019
‘Million Dollar Listing’ Host Ryan Serhant to Pay Someone’s Rent Next Year: ‘We Do as Much as We Can’
“Million Dollar Listing” host Ryan Serhant and YouTuber Casey Neistat announced Wednesday evening they’re teaming up to pay someone’s New York City rent for one year.
“Had I not been in New York City, I would have never then followed the weird career trajectory that has taken me to where I am today, you know, a lot of which I credit to New York City,” Serhant told TheWrap ahead of the announcement. “New York City allows all the apartments and homes that I sell to be worth what I sell them for and allows me to have my own beautiful home. It’s where I met my wife, where we had our first baby… like, my career was made in New York City.”
Still, he acknowledged he saved up before his big move to the city back when he wanted to be an actor. Serhant and Neistat both know New York can be prohibitively expensive — especially for creatives.
“I try to give back as much as I physically and financially can, like every year we do as much as we can,” Serhant told TheWrap, though he was quick to point out the year’s rent won’t come without expectations. After filling out an application and being selected, the winner will be mentored by Serhant at a distance, expected to work on their dreams and goals, not just use the year to save money or explore the city. They’ll have public check-ins with Serhant and Neistat, too, so viewers will stay updated on their progress.
“How can I help somebody, right, like… New York has given me a lot,” he said. “I got a great career today and I’ve only just started and it’s important that I give back as much as I possibly can.”
Related stories from TheWrap:
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‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Actually Makes ‘The Last Jedi’ and ‘The Force Awakens’ Worse
(This article contains a large number of spoilers for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” You have been warned.)
You’d be hard-pressed to argue the Disney’s new trilogy of “Star Wars” movies was in any way harmonious. “The Force Awakens” kicked this whole thing off with a pretty chaotic redo of the original 1977 “Star Wars” film. Then “The Last Jedi” tried to take a hard left turn with some of the mysteries that had been set up with this new trilogy. And then “The Rise of Skywalker” seems to kinda disregard all but the bare minimum plot stuff from the first two movies and just does a whole trilogy of storytelling in one movie.
And by doing that, director JJ Abrams managed to actually retroactively make both “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi” worse movies. That’s not easy to do. But “The Rise of Skywalker” has managed to pulled off this feat, and it’s thanks in large part to the crazy reveal that Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) was behind everything all along.
From the moment last summer that it was announced, I had a feeling bringing back Palpatine was probably a bad idea. We’ve seen that story before, in the old “Dark Empire” comics from the early ’90s, and that certainly didn’t go well. And there were no hints whatsoever in “The Force Awakens” or “The Last Jedi” that there was some secret other power out there. But I figured it would all depend on how JJ Abrams and friends handled it. Maybe they could make this scenario complement the other movies, and add some extra layers to future viewings of this new trilogy. Hell, the original trilogy managed to make “from a certain point of view” not sound like an insult to your intelligence.
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Unfortunately, that’s not how it went at all.
Palpatine’s presence, as it turns out, is super jarring, and makes so much of what happened in the previous two movies either meaningless or nonsensical. Watching the first two movies in this trilogy after seeing “The Rise of Skywalker” is a bizarre experience now. I’m not sure the “Star Wars” movies have ever been this much of a mess — the prequels are terribly made movies, but at least they have an over-arching plot that more or less makes sense. This new trilogy is pure madness.
A lot of that is just due to the sheer scale of what the Emperor does in “The Rise of Skywalker.” We’re told that Palpatine orchestrated the rise of the First Order after the Empire’s defeat at the end of “Return of the Jedi,” and that he literally created Snoke (Andy Serkis) to lead it. Created, as in physically made him — in the that big temple on Exogol we see a big tube with a half-made Snoke body in it. So we can, in theory, say that everything Snoke ever did was because Emperor Palpatine told him to do it. I don’t see any other way to interpret this turn of events with the minimal explanations we’re given in this movie.
Not only that, but as it turns out, while the First Order was out there building an army and a big fleet, Palpatine was hanging out on Exogol with a huge fleet of his own buried in the ice, each equipped with a planet-killing Death Star superlaser. The Emperor has had a thousand Death Stars, basically. And none of them were ever even used until one of them blew up a planet in “The Rise of Skywalker.”
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This basic premise really messes up basically everything from “The Force Awakens” and “The Last Jedi.” The entire conflict between the Resistance and the First Order becomes weirdly kinda low stakes with the Emperor lurking out there with his thousand Death Stars. Why would the First Order do all that work to hollow out a planet and build Starkiller Base, their own new and improved Death Star, when Palpatine could have just given them a few of the Death Stars he already had?
Maybe more problematic is the issue of Rey’s (Daisy Ridley) lineage. It’s not necessarily a problem that she’s Palpatine’s granddaughter. It is extremely an issue that, as we’re told practically as an afterthought, Luke (Mark Hamill) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) knew about it. That little tidbit makes everything Luke has done in this trilogy seem extra bizarre and stupid.
Let’s break it down real quick. When Lando shows up in “The Rise of Skywalker” on the desert planet Pasaana, he tells the gang that he originally came there more than a decade before with Luke. The two of them were searching for Exogol, which that snow planet where Palpatine is hanging out in the movie.
They came to Pasaana because they were chasing an old Jedi hunter from the before times. But they just found an empty ship and no clues. Now, the reason this Jedi hunter was on Pasaana was because he had been pursuing Rey on Palpatine’s behalf. But the hunter only found her parents, because they had left her on Jakku. So he killed the parents and bailed before Luke and Lando got there. And I guess Luke and Lando gave up on the search since Lando is still there many years later.
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Left unsaid is why Luke and Lando were trying to find Exogol, but there are a couple of easy guesses I could make. The option that looks best for “The Rise of Skywalker” is that Luke knew there was a Sith temple there and wanted to check it out, but didn’t know that anything further was going on. But that doesn’t seem like a likely story, because they aren’t looking for clues — they’re looking for people who are alive and know things about Exogol. And since Luke in the present knew about Rey’s family, then this whole adventure looking for Exogol has to be where he learned about her.
So Luke knew about Exogol, and he knew that a Jedi hunter came out of retirement to actively hunt some folks. He probably, given his knowledge of Rey’s family in the present, knew that Palpatine had had a family and at least one grandkid, and that that family was running around the galaxy to get away from Palpatine’s agents, even though Palpatine was already long dead by then. The only possible takeaway from that collection of evidence is that something weird and probably bad is happening. Something that Luke, as the only Jedi at the time, would need to be wary of.
So fast forward to Luke was training Ben Solo (Adam Driver) and a bunch of others to become Jedi a few years before “The Force Awakens,” he and Leia both sensed the existence of Snoke (Andy Serkis). And they knew that Snoke was trying to turn Ben to the dark side by some means — the how of that situation has not been made clear in any movies or books thus far. But a new comic released this week, “The Rise of Kylo Ren #1,” appears to reveal that not only did Luke know about Snoke by that time, but they actually had fought before and Luke was responsible for Snoke looking all messed up in the movies.
It always felt like kind of a stretch that Luke would exile himself and cut himself off from the Force — let alone be cool with doing extrajudicial murder on his nephew — as explained in “The Last Jedi,” but when I’m in a generous mood I can allow for the idea that Luke thought he would do more harm than good after the stuff with Ben happen. But this new information makes that impossible to justify, unless you wanna argue that Luke is too dumb to put these pieces together. He had to have known, for decades before the emergence of the First Order, that there was some big shadowy threat out there.
Hopefully, when we eventually get a novel or comic book that tells the story of this little adventure he had with Lando, this will make more sense. But right now, it does not.
That’s the consequence of this weird, completely random addition of Emperor Palpatine to this trilogy. The fact that he was out there, orchestrating the creation of the First Order and hoarding a bunch of Death Stars, really alters the plot of the previous two movies in ways that those movies simply cannot support. This retcon just does not work.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – How Exactly Did Emperor Palpatine Return From the Dead?
Whose Voices Were Those at the End of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?
‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker': What Was Finn Going to Tell Rey?
(This post contains spoilers for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)
There’s a lot to take in in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and it can be easy to forget half of what happened in that movie just because there’s just too many things to remember. It’s a lot! It’s a lot. Most of the things we really struggle with take place in the early parts of the film — like the one this article is about, which involves something Finn (John Boyega) wanted to say but then never actually said.
Early on in “The Rise of Skywalker,” Finn, Rey (Daisy Ridley), Poe (Oscar Isaac) and droids BB-8 and C-3PO visit the desert planet Pasaana (aka the desert planet that looked exactly like Tatooine but was not actually Tatooine) in search of an important clue that will help them find the location of somehow-still-alive Emperor Palpatine. After some minor adventures, the group ends up trapped in what appears to be quicksand, at which point Finn turns to Rey and says he has something very important to tell her. However, they sink below the surface before Finn can say whatever it is he needed to say.
Luckily it turns out that what looked like deadly quicksand was just the ground sitting above a submerged spaceship where the clue the heroes need just happens to be hidden. While they’re milling about the ship, Rey brings up Finn’s aborted confession, but they drop the subject after Finn essentially says he doesn’t want to talk about it in front of Poe.
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Later on in the film, Finn and Poe end up (briefly) captured by First Order forces and sentenced to summary execution. As it looks like they’re about to be shot, Poe tries to get Finn to tell him whatever it was Finn intended to tell Rey, but Finn once again refuses. They’re saved at the last minute, but the matter is again dropped since they have to fight their way past a lot of First Order troops in order to escape.
Unfortunately, whatever it was Finn needed to say is never brought up again. Lots of absolutely crazy things happen — including the out-of-nowhere reveal that Rey is, somehow, Palpatine’s granddaughter — but we never actually get to find out what the hell Finn wanted to tell her. It’s weird to set up a mystery that will never be solved, since this is apparently the final installment in what Disney/Lucasfilm retroactively calls the “Skywalker Saga,” and it had fans speculating like crazy after the movie’s launch last week.
And, seriously, what the hell was Finn going to say? Well, thanks to some characteristically (and frustratingly) vague comments by director JJ Abrams over the weekend, we have one possible answer. Yes, possible. Twitter user @ar1aster, also known as “Kaila Ren,” reported Friday that she attended an Academy screening of “The Rise of Skywalker,” and afterward asked Abrams about it. Of course, Abrams’ response was typically in full mystery box mode.
“JJ said it meant to him that he wanted to tell Rey he was Force-sensitive, but purposely left it open-ended,” Kaila Ren said.
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Representatives for Abrams and Disney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from TheWrap, but based on this report, it seems even the director and co-writer of the film has not taken a definitive stance on what Finn wanted to say. Which, OK, but also weird.
But it turns out there might be an actual answer to the question, or at least, we might have an answer to the question of what Finn was not going to tell Rey. Early Monday morning, Boyega tweeted to no one in particular that “No… Finn wasn’t going to say I love you before sinking!” Sorry, #FinnRey shippers.
So there you have it. Kind of. Maybe. Sort of. Hope that helps!
Related stories from TheWrap:
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10 Best Films of 2019, From ‘Parasite’ to ‘The Irishman’ (Photos)
Between the internet and impeachment hearings, there were certainly plenty of reasons to stay home in 2019, but those who ventured out to movie theaters (and enough people are still doing that to keep the industry alive, if somewhat besieged) were rewarded with a fascinating array of work, even if some of those films were produced by and destined for one streaming service or another. And while #FilmTwitter might have argued over the effects of Netflix on the filmgoing experience, several observers noted that the back-and-forth discussions about “The Irishman” and “Marriage Story” meant that the service was doing a lot to put adult-aimed dramas in front of viewers and into the public discourse. (The taking of sides in the Martin Scorsese vs. Marvel conflict, alas, continues with no end in sight.)
11-20 (alphabetically): “Charlie Says,” “Dolemite Is My Name,” “The Farewell,” “Fast Color,” “Long Shot,” “The Nightingale,” “Non-Fiction,” “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” “Wild Nights with Emily”
10. “High Life”
Director Claire Denis’ bleak vision of the future posits that mankind’s journey into outer space will be little more than an extension of the prison-industrial complex, with society’s “undesirables” shot out into the deep recesses of the universe where they can more easily be forgotten and neglected. It’s a dismal prospect that she nonetheless turns into captivating cinema.
9. “Her Smell”
Elisabeth Moss devours the screen as a bad-girl rocker whose eventual implosion doesn’t rule out the possibility of redemption. Teaming once again with writer-director Alex Ross Perry, they create a lived-in vision of the ups and downs of stardom, with a low-key buzz of optimism that’s been missing from Perry’s brilliant and blistering previous films.
8. “Booksmart”
There have been many one-crazy-night movies about high-schoolers going wild, but none of them have been quite like this witty and empathetic coming-of-age tale, directed by first-timer Olivia Wilde and featuring indelibly funny performances from Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever.
7. “3 Faces”
Still technically under house arrest and forbidden to make films, Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi nonetheless continues to craft powerful tales about lives lived in repression, like this story of a director and a well-known star (Panahi and Behnaz Jafari play versions of themselves) who travel to a rural community to track down a young actress they fear may have committed suicide.
6. “Marriage Story”
Noah Baumbach’s scenes-from-a-divorce drama starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson (both giving searing performances) was insightful, funny, poignant, powerful and devastating in ways that felt human-sized and relatable, even as they played out in the LA/NYC nexus of showbiz life.
5. “Diane”
Legendary character actor (and writer and director and musician) Mary Kay Place makes the most of a rare starring role, giving an unforgettable performance as a woman grappling with regrets and responsibilities. Writer-director Kent Jones makes an auspicious debut with this ice-flecked, intuitive drama, but it’s Place’s show all the way.
4. “Parasite”
Bong Joon Ho’s blistering examination of lives pushed to extremes in late-stage capitalism takes one unpredictable turn after another, but winds up placing viewers squarely in Where We All Live Now.
3. “The Irishman”
Martin Scorsese’s gangster sagas have always been stealth morality plays, in which the wages of sin are death or obsolescence, and he plunges into those ideas with this tale of a mob flunky (Robert De Niro is searing in the title role) who sacrifices his relationships (particularly with his daughter) for a warped sense of honor and duty.
2. “Pain and Glory”
Visionary filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar looks inward at his own physical strife and fear of having to give up the work that he loves in this semi-autobiographical portrait of a director (Antonio Banderas, doing career-defining work) so hemmed in by physical, mental and emotional ailments that he’s unable to create.
1. “Little Women”
Writer-director Greta Gerwig goes deep into an oft-adapted chestnut of American literature and crafts a tale of art and obsession, love and family, resilience and determination and, yes, feminism, finding new avenues of expression and artistry within the pages of the Louisa May Alcott novel. It’s the kind of sweeping film experience that feels grandly traditional and breathlessly contemporary, all at the same time.
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