Steve Pond's Blog, page 2035
December 20, 2019
Cynthia Erivo to Receive Breakthrough Award at Palm Springs Film Festival
“Harriet” star Cynthia Erivo will receive the Breakthrough Performance Award at the 2020 Palm Springs International Film Festival’s Awards Gala on Jan. 2, PSIFF organizers announced on Friday.
Erivo currently stars in the Kasi Lemmons film as pioneering abolitionist and freedom fighter Harriet Tubman. She also co-wrote and sings the film’s closing-credits song, “Stand Up,” which recently made the shortlist in the Oscars’ Best Original Song category.
Erivo made her initial mark on the stage, where she won a Tony Award for the 2015 Broadway revival of “The Color Purple.” She has also won a Grammy Award for the “Color Purple” cast album and a Daytime Emmy for a televised performance from the show. In 2018, she appeared on screen in “Widows” and “Bad Times at the El Royale.”
She joins fellow PSIFF honorees Antonio Banderas (International Star Award, Actor), Laura Dern (Career Achievement Award), Zack Gottsagen (Rising Star Award), Jennifer Lopez (Spotlight Award), Joaquin Phoenix (Chairman’s Award), Martin Scorsese (Sonny Bono Visionary Award), Charlize Theron (International Star Award, Actress) and Renée Zellweger (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress). Additional honorees will be announced in coming days.
The 2020 Palm Springs International Film Festival Awards Gala will take place on Thursday, Jan. 2 in the desert resort town east of Los Angeles, with the film festival itself running through Jan. 13.
Related stories from TheWrap:
Why 'Harriet' Star Cynthia Erivo Insisted on Writing a Song for the Film Too
Watch Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman 'Be Free or Die' in 'Harriet' Trailer (Video)
The 20 Worst Parts of ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’
(This post contains basically all possible spoilers for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)
The wait is over, and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is here take over the discourse for a couple weeks. So far, the responses are all over the place with both critics and fans. We’re getting the full spectrum of opinions on this one. In our opinion, however, the so-called conclusion to the Skywalker Saga — the numbered episodes — is not up to par. And we’ve made a list of 20 things we don’t like about it for you to read. If you like the movie, you probably should not put yourself through reading this.
1. One thousand Death Stars
Late in the movie it’s revealed that this massive fleet of Star Destroyers that Emperor Palpatine pulled out of the ice on Exogol at the beginning of the movie was equipped with Death Star lasers. The reveal is made when one of them blows up a planet for no particular reason. The Resistance folks then briefly huddle up and decide that probably all those ships can do that. That seems like an illogical conclusion to draw, because that would mean the bad guys have an entire fleet of Death Stars, which would be easily the most ludicrous thing that has ever happened in a “Star Wars” movie. But since the issue is never mentioned again we aren’t sure what other conclusion we could come to.
Also Read: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Actually Makes 'The Last Jedi' and 'The Force Awakens' Worse
2. The Rebel fleet from nowhere
To challenge all those Death Stars, the Resistance launches an attack on Exogol with only a Corellian Corvette and like one single fighter squadron and one carrier ship full of troops. Fortunately for them, Lando spent a couple hours flying around the galaxy and casually assembling the biggest fleet we’ve ever seen in any of these movies. That’s absolutely crazy. Lando was not even gone that long.
3. The Emperor returns before the movie starts
There’s a lot of creative decisions on this movie I can’t even begin to understand, and the most confusing of those is the decision to have Emperor Palpatine make his big return to the galactic stage between movies. How do you bring back a dead character and not even let us see characters reacting to that revelation as it happens? This one actually makes me mad. If you’re gonna cram a whole trilogy of stories in one movie, you still have to start at the beginning.
4. Rey is the Emperor’s granddaughter
The climax of the “Skywalker Saga” was about two Palpatine family members fighting each other. Incredible.
Also Read: Nothing About Emperor Palpatine's Return in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Makes Sense
5. Luke and Leia knew about Rey’s lineage the whole time
This is just a confusing bit. When did they learn this important fact? Why had they never done anything with that tidbit of key info? There’s a lot of weird ramifications to their possession of this knowledge, and “The Rise of Skywalker” has no interest in exploring any of them.
6. Leia died for no reason
They decided to kill off Leia in the strangest and low-key way: by calling out through the Force. It took Luke physically projecting himself across the galaxy and doing a lightsaber fight before the effort killed him. How weak are we supposed to think Leia is?
7. The Knights of Ren
Photo credit: Walt Disney Studios
Late in the film, Ben Solo/Kylo Ren is forced to fight his former bros the Knights of Ren in order to earn his redemption. It’s a powerful scene, the culmination of a character arc stretching back three films… is what we’d say if the Knights had like, any role before “The Rise of Skywalker.” They’re in this trilogy for less than 5 minutes, none of them speaks or has any personality, and they don’t even use lightsabers. They basically existed only so we’d know the origin of Kylo Ren’s dorky last name, and when we finally saw them up close, it turns out they dress like the corniest nu metal band of 1996. PASS.
8. The Resurrection
So Rey kills Palpatine, and then dies. Kylo Ren climbs out of the hole he fell into, and somehow uses the Force to revive her corpse. They can just resurrect people now! OK!
9. The Kiss
So Rey is alive again, and the first thing she does is make out with Kylo Ren. They haven’t had an ounce of romantic chemistry in these movies, but some “Star Wars” nerds shipped them so I guess they had to do it.
Also Read: Whose Voices Were Those at the End of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?
10. The Death
Immediately after this kiss, Ben rolls over and dies, apparently having given all of his life force to Rey to bring her back to life in what was supposed to be the film’s most dramatic and emotionally poignant scene. At that precise moment in our screening, the entire theater burst into hysterical laughter. Whoops.
11. The Force can do literally anything
All wounds are trivial now because Force users can easily heal them. If they’re too late and the person died, they can just bring them back from the dead. Need to ship a package? Just use the Force to teleport it! Wanna have a lightsaber duel with somebody a hundred miles away? The Force has online multiplayer. Rey is just a god now, the most powerful being who ever lived. But Leia died from yelling.
12. Chewie died but actually he didn’t
This whole sequence is strange. Chewie gets captured by the First Order when he’s like 30 yards from the rest of our heroes. Then Rey accidentally blows up the ship they were taking him away on. Except actually Chewie was on a different but identical ship because “The Rise of Skywalker” wanted to pull a stupidly manipulative misdirect.
Also Read: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' - We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
13. C-3PO got his memory wiped but then got it back
So our heroes need to read something in the Sith language, which it turns out 3PO can read. Unfortunately, his programming forbids him from translating it. (Who did this? Doesn’t matter. It just is.) This forces them to reboot 3PO to override that programming, which will erase his memory and effectively kill him as he’s been known. It sounds sad, and 3PO even gets an emotional farewell out of it. Then the film pulls a movie length JK because not only is it played for laughs from there out, at the end 3PO gets his memories restored thanks to a backup on R2D2’s hard drive.
14. Poe has Han Solo’s backstory now
One of the 57 new planets we visit in “The Rise of Skywalker” is Kijimi, where we meet Poe’s ex-girlfriend, who reveals that Poe was a spice runner before becoming a Resistance fighter. Because for some reason they needed a new Han I guess.
15. General Hux
Speaking of criminally underdeveloped characters, Hux is revealed to be a mole within the First Order, feeding information to the Resistance, uh Rebellion two movies after his Reichstag speech on Starkiller base, because he hates Kylo Ren more than he loves the First Order. And then, literally the next scene after we learn this, he’s unceremoniously killed by his commanding officer who announces “we found the mole.” Hux joins Boba Fett and Captain Phasma in the pantheon of Star Wars bad guys whose deaths are as pointless as, it turns out, the characters themselves were. At least he got more lines than Rose Tico.
16. The Force told those stormtroopers to rebel
Finn meets a woman name Jannah, who was also a former First Order stormtrooper who had been stolen from her parents when she was a kid and then rebelled as an adult. And they have this fun moment where they talk about how they decided to rebel because they had this weird feeling that they should. And they decide that feeling was the Force. Not, you know, their conscience. Or guilt about helping out a fascist government. They’d have happily done state-sponsored murder had the Force not pinged them, I guess.
17. Ghost Luke
So Luke died, and is a ghost. But he can still pick up physical objects with his non-physical hand. And he can use the Force to lift his X-Wing out of the ocean. Sounds like being dead is all upside.
18. Pretending Rose wasn’t a main character
Photo credit: Walt Disney Studios
Congratulations racist, sexist harassers: Your complaints were heard.
19. Maz Kanata
They got the amazing Lupita Nyong’o to play maybe the most pointless character in this whole trilogy. The only thing of note she does in this movie is give Chewbacca a medal in an egregiously annoying bit of fan service.
20. Chewbacca gets a medal
I’m not sure how Maz giving Chewie a medal for no reason whatsoever is supposed to make up for his snub in the original “Star Wars” film. This bit feels so shameless.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Actually Makes 'The Last Jedi' and 'The Force Awakens' Worse
'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' – We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
Nothing About Emperor Palpatine's Return in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Makes Sense
‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Actually Makes ‘The Last Jedi’ and ‘The Force Awakens’ Worse
(Major spoilers ahead for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)
There is a lot going on in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and it moves at a super fast pace in hopes that you won’t have enough time to think about how the pieces fit together. Because they don’t. But it’s not frustrating just because it’s internally a mess. It’s because that mess is so, well, messy that it actually manages to tangibly affect its predecessors, “The Last Jedi” and “The Force Awakens.” Because this movie makes mistakes that retroactively makes those movies worse.
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.
Also Read: 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' - We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
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.”
Also Read: Nothing About Emperor Palpatine's Return in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Makes Sense
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.
Also Read: Whose Voices Were Those at the End of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?
Left unsaid is why Luke and Lando were trying to find Exogol, but there are a couple 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
Nothing About Emperor Palpatine's Return in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' Makes Sense
Whose Voices Were Those at the End of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?
‘Witcher’ Showrunner, Henry Cavill Say Series Shouldn’t Be Confusing If You Didn’t Read the Books
(Warning: This post contains mild spoilers for Episodes 1-4 of Netflix’s “The Witcher.”)
Netflix’s “The Witcher” launched Friday, and if you are a fan of the best-selling fantasy book series the show is based, then much of the plot should be familiar enough to allow you to dive into this whole new world fairly quickly.
But if you haven’t read Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s works about Geralt of Rivia, showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich and star Henry Cavill are still confident you won’t be confused by ‘The Witcher,” despite the fact the show has three different timelines running at once, which is s) a serious departure from the novels and stories and b) something that is not immediately obvious to the viewer.
Actually, Hissirch is hoping this will help more than hurt, seeing as the different timelines allowed her to introduce main characters monster hunter Geralt of Rivia (Cavill), sorceress Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) and young princess Ciri (Freya Allan) all at once, which is also a serious departure from the books.
Also Read: 'The Witcher' Gets Early Season 2 Renewal at Netflix
“What was important to me is starting off and making sure that we understood who Geralt was and who Ciri was, and then, in Episode 2, who Yennefer was,” Hissirch told TheWrap. “And one of our early decisions we made was actually just to introduce Geralt and Ciri in Episode 1 and to hold Yennefer for Episode 2 for that exact reason. There’s only so much you can take in. And I want to make sure that what I call the ‘bells and whistles of fantasy’ — the monsters and the magic and the violence and battles and sexuality — all of those things we expect from high fantasy, that those don’t take up the room of actual character development. We need to let the characters live and breathe in this world a little bit. That was one of the reasons we structured the story that way.”
Hissirch says she chose to use multiple timelines without explaining there were multiple timelines because she “wanted viewers who weren’t familiar with ‘The Witcher’ to be able to watch the first episode and believe they could be happening on the same timeline.”
“There’s a couple of hints in the first episode that we’ve got some interesting things happening with time, but unless you’re paying a lot of attention or know what you’re looking for, they could easily pass you as little bits of dialogue,” she said. “Because I didn’t want to force a viewer, especially a new fan, to be working that hard, I just want them to enjoy the first episode. It’s sort of as if you’re thrown into the deep end already with all the characters and all the places, I didn’t want to have to enforce that they were working on different timelines, too.”
Also Read: 'The Witcher' Showrunner Says Netflix Series Will Never Adapt the Video Games
“To me, it becomes really evident, obviously, by Episode 4,” she continued. “This is the place where I think all audiences will go, ‘Oh my god. OK, now this is making a little bit more sense,’ where Queen Calanthe — who we see kill herself in Episode 1 — is younger and back to life in Episode 4. And hopefully, god, if I was watching this, I would want to go back to the beginning and see how they’ve been telling me this from the beginning. And I hope people will go back and rewatch and see what other little Easter eggs are planted in there.”
Cavill — a self-professed huge fan of “The Witcher” novels — told TheWrap that he thinks what Hissirch has done “fantastically well” in bringing the origin stories of Yennefer and Ciri into the show immediately might actually help a non-reader viewer understand things quicker.
“In the first book, it’s all a collection of Geralt’s short stories, which originally were written as separate short stories, and have been collected in the first book and a narrative string is between each story which travels all the way through and you actually meet Yennefer at the end of this book,” the “Justice League” star said. “But in this case, Lauren has done an amazing job and Anya has done an extraordinary job of of bringing Yennefer to life before we meet her in the books.”
Also Read: 45 Most Shocking TV Character Deaths of 2019, From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Stranger Things' (Photos)
The book series is certainly not structured in the sort of neat and tidy way a television show is — the early stories that Cavill mentions are basically a series of episodes that focus entirely on Geralt. We learn things about Yennefer’s past, for example, through Geralt’s perspective, rather than because there’s a story in that collection about her origin. So the show is taking that sort of information to build an actual present narrative for Yennefer instead of essentially having her only exist when she’s near Geralt. It’s probably a helpful way to do this in the long run just because it lets viewers get to know her better this way.
“I think the people that haven’t read the books, that’ll actually be a lot easier for them to get into because they have the Yennefer and Ciri storylines, which are amazingly performed, from the get-go,” Cavill added. “With the Geralt storyline, it’s a slower burn. If you’ve read the books, then yes, you have the privilege of knowing the why, the what and the how. But with his storyline, it’s a slower burn and you discover him bit by bit, more and more over the season and through future seasons.”
Still, Hissirch is prepared for viewers who know nothing about “The Witcher” franchise to have the experience of “being thrown into the deep end” — but says that “is part of the experience of entering a fantasy world, which is it is a world that doesn’t resemble ours.”
“The place names aren’t familiar, the people’s names sound weird. Nothing is really familiar,” she said. “The most important thing to me in Episode 1 is that you understand what a witcher is, once you have that knowledge, then you can kind of be along for the ride and things that seem confusing in Episode 1, hopefully, by the time you get to Episode 2 and Episode 3, you go ‘Oh my god, I totally understand what these things are now — but I understand why it wasn’t told to me immediately up front.’ I think the journey is definitely part of that experience.”
Also Read: 'Watchmen' Finale Tops Series Premiere With 1.6 Million Multiplatform Viewers
Now when it comes to you viewers who did read the books and want to see the strictest adaptation possible, Hissirch has this message: “What I would say to people is, we’re adapting the source material, we’re going back to the books, we’re trying to honor the books — but it is an adaptation.”
“For purely logistical reasons, we can’t go page through page of the book and put it on screen,” she said. “We only have eight hours in this first season and we have to pick and choose the best ways to introduce these characters and the stories we tell about them — and also keep in mind what we’re hoping to set up for the future. We’re in a lucky enough position now that we know there is going to be a Season 2 of ‘The Witcher,’ so some of what we’re doing is laying down the building blocks for future seasons of stories we know we want to tell. And I always hate the losing from source material, that’s the hardest thing. Adding things can be fun and I think we do a lot of them, but there are certain complications to stories that we did have to lose on screen, usually for time and to make space to be with characters as they are growing and changing and developing.”
“Really, the biggest change we make to the source material is making sure that Ciri and Yennefer are also well-represented in this story,” she added. “It was really important to me to establish ‘The Last Wish,’ which was the first book that I read and the book I really fell in love with, but Ciri’s not alive yet during that book. So I didn’t want to wait until Season 2 or Season 3 to wait to introduce her, I wanted her to be a part of Season 1. So we made the decision to play with time and have these three different timelines so that we could tell each of their stories in a really thorough and full way.”
“The Witcher” Season 1 is streaming now on Netflix.
Related stories from TheWrap:
'The Witcher' Gets Early Season 2 Renewal at Netflix
'The Witcher' Showrunner Says Netflix Series Will Never Adapt the Video Games
45 Most Shocking TV Character Deaths of 2019, From 'Game of Thrones' to 'Stranger Things' (Photos)
December 19, 2019
The 6 Most Memorable Moments From the Sixth Democratic Debate, From Wine Caves to Age
Seven candidates appeared at Loyola Marymount University on Thursday evening for the final Democratic debate of 2019. Here are six memorable quotes and moments from the debate.
Wine Caves vs. Wind Caves
Pete Buttigieg was a magnet for criticism this time out, as several candidates on the stage went after him over his ties to big donors, exemplified by the private fundraising event he held at an exclusive winery in Napa.
Elizabeth Warren started it off when she quipped that “Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.”
Though Warren’s point had nothing to do with his personal income, Buttigieg attempted to shift the conversation in that direction when he shot back that “I am the only person who is on this stage who is not a millionaire or a billionaire. This is the problem with issuing purity tests you yourself cannot pass. … Senator, your net worth is 100 times mine.”
Things got tense for a couple of minutes as Warren and Buttigieg sparred over fundraising, until Amy Klobuchar chimed in to defuse things. “I have never even been to a wine cave. But I have been to a wind cave,” she quipped.
Wine Cave 2020 #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/Q7tjf36wq2
— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) December 20, 2019
Wind Cave, South Dakota, vs Wine Cave, Buttigieg pic.twitter.com/WkHwjwzSOw
— Bill Grueskin (@BGrueskin) December 20, 2019
Later even Andrew Yang got in on it, hyping his proposed national basic income by saying it would allow more people in politics “so they wouldn’t have to go shake the money tree at the wine cave.”
Andrew Yang Calls Out Lack of Diversity
“It’s both an honor and a disappointment to be the only person of color on this stage,” Yang said. “I miss Kamala [Harris], I miss Cory [Booker] — though I think Cory will be back.”
“Do you know what you need to donate to political campaigns? Disposable income,” he continued. “I guarantee if we had a freedom dividend, … I would not be the only candidate of color on this stage tonight.”
It’s both an honor and disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on this debate stage tonight. #DemDebate #YangGang pic.twitter.com/QmvtyqLKfG
— Andrew Yang???? (@AndrewYang) December 20, 2019
Elizabeth Warren Shuts Down Moderator’s Question About Age
Politico’s Tim Alberta asked Warren to talk about being the oldest president if she were to be inaugurated.
“I’d also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated,” Warren clapped back.
“I’d also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated.” -@ewarren ???? #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/kSpThcLcjQ
— Team Warren (@TeamWarren) December 20, 2019
Tom Steyer Doesn’t Hold Back Against “Racist” Trump’s Immigration Policies
“This president is not against immigration. He is against immigration by non-white people,” Steyer said. “We have a racist president who is trying to divide us.”
This president is not against immigration. He's against immigration by non-white people. This is a racial argument by a racist president who's trying to divide us #DemDebate
— Tom Steyer (@TomSteyer) December 20, 2019
Bernie Sanders Calls for a Bigger Picture Look at Climate Change
Moderator Tim Alberta asked candidates if they would support a government-funded program that would relocate families impacted by climate change.
“Tim, in all due respect, your question misses the mark,” the Vermont senator said to Alberta. “It is not an issue of relocating people in towns. The issue now is whether we save the planet for our children and our grandchildren.”
Rejoining the Paris Agreement ain't enough.
The issue now is whether we save the planet for our children and grandchildren.
We need a Green New Deal. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/UFtTkH2z2w
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 20, 2019
Joe Biden Says He’ll Try Working With Republicans Despite Their Attacks on His Family
Biden responded to a question about how he would work with Republicans and said he refused to “accept the notion” that Democrats and Republicans could not cooperate again.
If anyone has reason to be angry with the Republicans and not want to cooperate it's me, the way they've attacked me, my son, my family. I have no love. But the fact is we have to be able to get things done and when we can't convince them, we go out and beat them. #DemDebate
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) December 20, 2019
Related stories from TheWrap:
Andrew Yang Criticizes Cable Network News: 'Americans Around the Country Know Different'
ViacomCBS Close to Deal to Buy Minority Stake in Miramax
ViacomCBS is close to finalizing a deal to purchase a minority stake in Miramax, an individual with knowledge of the matter tells TheWrap.
Representatives for ViacomCBS declined to comment, but the company’s investment in the film studio could be close to $100 million, Variety reported Thursday morning.
If the deal goes through as expected, ViacomCBS would have access to Miramax’s film library, which includes films such as “Pulp Fiction,” “The Crying Game” and “Good Will Hunting,” which could be distributed through Paramount Pictures and CBS. Paramount and ViacomCBS would also fund the development of new projects, including reboots of existing IP.
Also Read: Bob Bakish Gives First Hints of How Viacom and CBS Will Work Together
Founded by Bob Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein in 1979, Miramax was sold to Disney in 1993 with the Weinstein brothers remaining in charge until 2005. They left to form The Weinstein Company, which collapsed in 2018 after more than 100 women accused Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault and misconduct. The company became an indie film powerhouse in the 1990s and 2000s, producing many of the defining films of the era. Disney sold Miramax to a joint venture consisting of Colony NorthStar, Tutor-Saliba Corporation, and Qatar Investment Authority in 2010. That consortium sold Miramax to the beIN Media Group in 2016.
Other hits produced or co-produced by Miramax include the “Bridget Jones” trilogy, “There Will Be Blood,” and “No Country for Old Men.”
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Andrew Yang Criticizes Cable Network News: ‘Americans Around the Country Know Different’
Andrew Yang came out swinging during Thursday’s Democratic debate by criticizing the ways cable news networks have covered the Trump administration.
“If you turned on cable network news today, you would think [Trump’s] our president because of some combination of Russia, racism, Facebook, Hillary Clinton, and emails all mixed together. But Americans around the country know different,” Yang said.
His statement came after an awkward on-stage interaction with moderator Judy Woodruff.
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As candidates were asked about their response to President Donald Trump’s impeachment, Woodruff began to address a question to Yang but was looking toward the opposite end of the stage toward billionaire Tom Steyer.
“I’m over here,” Yang said, while clapping at Woodruff to get her attention.
Woodruff apologized and said she meant to address her question to Steyer, not Yang. And after Steyer finished his response, Yang offered a differing stance on the impeachment news.
“The more we act like President Trump is the cause of all our problems, the more Americans lose trust that we can see what’s going on in our communities,” Yang said. “We need to stop being obsessed with impeachment and start actually digging in and solving the problems that got Donald Trump elected in the first place.”
Yang is one of the seven Democratic candidates who qualified for this month’s debate, co-hosted by PBS NewsHour and Politico.
Andrew Yang on loss of manufacturing jobs: "If you turned on cable network news today, you would think (Trump's) our president because of some combination of Russia, racism, Facebook, Hillary Clinton and emails all mixed together. But Americans around the country know different." pic.twitter.com/jcHJm8mXdG
— Axios (@axios) December 20, 2019
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‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ – We Need to Talk About This Rose Tico Situation
(Spoilers ahead for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” and Rose Tico’s role in it in particular)
There are so many strange things that happen in “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” and it’s rife with odd creative decisions. And while the way the movie treats Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) is not even remotely the weirdest thing about this movie, it’s certainly one of the most blatantly obvious bits of pandering that JJ Abrams’s film does.
When Rose was first introduced back in “The Last Jedi,” it wasn’t necessarily the cleanest fit. She spent most of the movie with Finn (John Boyega) going on a side adventure that had no real bearing on the main plot and thus, unlike the characters who were in “The Force Awakens,” never actually got to establish herself as part of the new trilogy’s ensemble. She never got to be part of the group, and thus felt kinda extraneous.
That’s not an unfixable problem. John Boyega promised that the main crew of this new trilogy would spend a lot more time together in “The Rise of Skywalker,” so really all that needed to be done was to include Rose in that crew. After all, extraneous or not she was inarguably one of the film’s main characters and even got to deliver a line of dialogue summing up what amounts to the moral of the story. And at the end of “The Last Jedi,” Rose and Finn have basically become a couple, so it would make sense to bring her along on Finn’s adventures with Poe and Rey.
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Except that doesn’t happen, like at all. In TROS, Rose basically gets the same treatment Jar Jar received in “Attack of the Clones” and “Revenge of the Sith.” Relegating her to a very minor role — barely more than a cameo — the film tries to present her like she was never actually one of the main characters in this new trilogy. And her interactions with Finn suggest nothing more than professional courtesy, an especially weird thing to do considering the last time we saw them, they were kissing.
I can’t pretend to know exactly what the thought process was behind this decision, but there are not all that many reasons why they would push Rose out of frame like this. The big one, as we all know, is that a bunch of freakin’ nerds conducted a months-long harassment campaign that drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media after “The Last Jedi” came out. Actually, that’s the only reason I can think of. That doesn’t mean it is the only possible reason, obviously. “The Rise of Skywalker” is full of shockingly inexplicable creative decisions — we’re talking about a movie with a huge fleet of Death Stars here. But if there’s some other reason why she’s only in a handful of scenes, it’s not something we could intuit.
There a feeling that “The Rise of Skywalker” is trying to undo the setup provided by “The Last Jedi,” sort of like how that film set out to defy your expectations based on how “The Force Awakens” kicked off the trilogy. Abrams and co. will insist that’s not the case, but Rose serves as pretty solid evidence.
Also Read: Whose Voices Were Those at the End of 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker'?
And that’s annoying! I can understand, in a general sense, criticisms of how her character was handled in “The Last Jedi.” What I can’t understand, in the third movie of a trilogy and ninth movie of a series, is simply refusing the play the cards you’re dealt. You can’t just toss one of the main characters aside just because a couple dozen angry internet nerds didn’t like her in the last movie.
Or I guess you can, since that’s exactly what happened with Rose in “The Rise of Skywalker.” And that’s not great, Bob.
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Nothing About Emperor Palpatine’s Return in ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ Makes Sense
(Be warned that we’ve got some huge spoilers ahead for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”)
There’s really been one major thing that’s been on everyone’s mind since the first trailer for “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” made its debut back in April: Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid). That trailer revealed that the big bad of the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy would be in this movie somehow. We were all so excited to find out how that would work, since it’s not as though either “The Force Awakens” or “The Last Jedi” had given any hints that he was still around. His laugh at the end of the trailer was completely out of left field.
It was definitely a big mystery of the type JJ Abrams loves — we’ve all been cracking jokes about his whole mystery box concept since the “Lost” days. And this one was a doozie, because we’ve all thought for the past several decades that Palpatine definitely for sure died at the end of “Return of the Jedi.” And as we learned in the prequels, it was extremely Anakin Skywalker’s destiny to kill him. So it was hard to guess how this would work, but it seemed like it would make the most sense for him to be a Force ghost who had been influencing events.
And now we’ve seen the movie, and it turns out that, uh, I’m still not really sure how Emperor Palpatine ended up in this movie. He’s not a ghost — he’s just still alive. And he claims that he “made” Snoke, as we see a shot of a cloning tube containing another Snoke body. And he’s got a huge fleet of Star Destroyers that have been hidden under the Exogol ice. And each of those Star Destroyers, apparently, is equipped with a planet-killing Death Star superlaser.
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None of this is explained in any way. I guess we’re just not supposed to think about it too much.
This is strange because back in “Return of the Jedi,” Palpatine was tossed into the Death Star’s reactor and appeared to actually explode. But even assuming he somehow survived that, just a few moments later the entire Death Star blew up, which seems like it would be a difficult thing to survive when you’re literally at the center of it. But as we see in “The Rise of Skywalker,” apparently folks who have talent with the Force can use it to do basically anything they want, no problem — including resurrection, which we saw Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) do for Rey (Daisy Ridley) at the very end of the movie. So anything and everything is possible if you think of it that way.
But he’s definitely still alive and not a ghost, though barely. The Emperor would be over 110 years old at this point, and it shows because he looks pretty gross, with his dead eyes and rotting fingers and all that stuff. And, of course, the whole point of his plan in this movie is to have Rey kill him, and she wouldn’t be able to kill him if he were presently dead.
So I have so many questions about this and no answers. I don’t know how he got a fleet of Death Star Destroyers or whatever you wanna call them. I don’t know why, when he was arranging for the rise of the First Order, he wouldn’t make use of some of them. Or why he would need the First Order at all when he has a fleet of Death Stars.
And I really don’t understand the Snoke thing. Since Snoke was literally a fake person, can we assume that everything he did can be attributed to Palpatine? If so, why would he direct the First Order to build Starkiller base instead — beating a dead horse here — using those Death Stars they already have? Or did he just let Snoke loose to do whatever and not really actively engage?
I also don’t understand what Luke knew or when he knew it about Palpatine. A couple decades before this new trilogy, Luke and Lando went searching for Exogol themselves. And in the present Luke and Leia both know about Rey’s family before she does, but we aren’t told how they know or when they learned it.
This is, I think, the big picture of why “The Rise of Skywalker” is so frustrating — crazy things happen, and there’s no way to figure out why those things happened just from watching the movie. Someday we will get answers, maybe from the finale of “The Mandalorian” next week, or from some novel or comic book. But right now, we have no meaningful answers.
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‘The Vampire Chronicle’ Series From Anne Rice No Longer in the Works at Hulu
Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Chronicles” series is no longer in the works at Hulu, an individual with knowledge of the situation tells TheWrap.
We’re told the streaming service passed on the potential series and that the rights deal between the Rices and Anonymous Content and Paramount Television, the production companies behind the project, has expired.
The long-gestating series from Anne Rice and her son Christopher Rice landed at Hulu in July 2018, with the two set to executive produce alongside Anonymous Content’s David Kanter and Steve Golin.
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Paramount Television and Anonymous Content optioned the rights to 11 of Rice’s “Vampire Chronicles” books for adaptation in 2017, one year after Rice began developing the project.
The author previously revealed the series will begin with the story told in “The Vampire Lestat” and be an entirely open-ended tale that could span multiple seasons.
Rice is a New York Times best-selling author of over 30 titles. Her first novel “Interview with the Vampire” was published in 1976 and has become one of the bestselling novels worldwide and was the basis for the 1994 film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas.
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Representatives for Rice, Hulu, Anonymous Content and Paramount TV did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment.
Variety first reported the news that the series had been dropped by Hulu.
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