ReportWire

Tag: Animation and comics

  • Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is No. 1 at the box office, a first for the Japanese anime master

    Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is No. 1 at the box office, a first for the Japanese anime master

    NEW YORK — For the first time in Hayao Miyazaki’s decades-spanning career, the 82-year-old Japanese anime master is No. 1 at the North American box office. Miyazaki’s latest enchantment, “The Boy and the Heron,” debuted with $12.8 million, according to studio estimates.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” the long-awaited animated fantasy from the director of “Spirited Away,” “My Neighbor Totoro” and other cherished anime classics, is only the third anime to ever top the box office in U.S. and Canadian theaters and the first original anime to do so. The film, which is playing in both subtitled and dubbed versions, is also the first fully foreign film to land atop the domestic box office this year.

    Though Miyazaki’s movies have often been enormous hits in Japan and Asia, they’ve traditionally made less of a mark in North American cinemas. The director’s previous best performer was his last movie, 2013’s “The Wind Rises,” which grossed $5.2 million in its entire domestic run.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” which earlier collected $56 million in Japan, for years was expected to be Miyazaki’s swan song. But just as it was making its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Junichi Nishioka, Studio Ghibli vice president, said the previously retired Miyazaki is still working toward another film.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” has been hailed as one of the best films of the year. The film, featuring an English dub voice cast including Robert Pattinson, Christian Bale, Dave Bautista and Mark Hamill, follows a boy who, after her mother perishes in World War II bombing, is led by a mysterious heron to a portal that takes him to a fantastical realm. In Japan, its title translates to “How Do You Live?”

    Last week’s top film, “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” dropped steeply in its second weekend. The concert film, the second pop star release distributed by AMC Theatres following Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” collected $5 million in its second weekend, a decline of 76% from its $21 million opening.

    That allowed Lionsgate’s still-going-strong “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” to take second place, with an estimated $9.4 million in its fourth weekend of release. The “Hunger Games” prequel has a domestic haul of $135.7 million.

    “The Boy and the Heron” wasn’t the only Japanese film that ranked among the top movies in theaters over the weekend. “Godzilla Minus One” followed up its stellar debut last weekend with $8.3 million for Toho Studios. Takashi Yamazaki’s acclaimed kaiju movie dipped just 27% in its second weekend of release, bringing its total to $25 million.

    Several potential awards contenders got off to strong starts in limited release. Yorgos Lanthimos’ warped fantasy “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, opened with $644,000 from nine theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, Texas. “Poor Things” expands in more theaters next week.

    Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” played an Oscar-qualifying run in two theaters in New York and Los Angeles with a per screen average of $58,532 for Neon. It stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the author Isabel Wilkerson while she investigates race and inequality for her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” “Origin” opens wide Jan. 19.

    “Wonka,” one of the holiday season’s most anticipated releases, kicked off its overseas run with $43.2 million from 37 international markets. The film, starring Timothée Chalamet and directed by “Paddington” filmmaker Paul King, is expected to lead U.S. and Canada ticket sales next weekend.

    Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

    1. “The Boy and the Heron,” $12.8 million.

    2. “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes,” $9.4 million.

    3. “Godzilla Minus One,” $8.3 million.

    4. “Trolls Band Together,” $6.2 million.

    5. “Wish,” $5.3 million.

    6. “Renaissance, A Film by Beyoncé,” $5 million.

    7. “Napoleon,” $4.2 million.

    8. “Waitress: The Musical,” $3.2 million.

    9. “Animal,” $2.3 million.

    10. “The Shift,” $2.2 million.

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    Source link

  • Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is No. 1 at the box office

    Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is No. 1 at the box office

    NEW YORK — For the first time in Hayao Miyazaki’s decades-spanning career, the 82-year-old Japanese anime master is No. 1 at the North American box office. Miyazaki’s latest enchantment, “The Boy and the Heron,” debuted with $12.8 million, according to studio estimates.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” the long-awaited animated fantasy from the director of “Spirited Away,” “My Neighbor Totoro” and other cherished anime classics, is only the third anime to ever top the box office in U.S. and Canadian theaters and the first original anime to do so. The film, which is playing in both subtitled and dubbed versions, is also the first fully foreign film to land atop the domestic box office this year.

    Though Miyazaki’s movies have often been enormous hits in Japan and Asia, they’ve traditionally made less of a mark in North American cinemas. The director’s previous best performer was his last movie, 2013’s “The Wind Rises,” which grossed $5.2 million in its entire domestic run.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” which earlier collected $56 million in Japan, for years was expected to be Miyazaki’s swan song. But just as it was making its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Junichi Nishioka, Studio Ghibli vice president, said the previously retired Miyazaki is still working toward another film.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” has been hailed as one of the best films of the year. The film, featuring an English dub voice cast including Robert Pattinson, Christian Bale, Dave Bautista and Mark Hamill, follows a boy who, after her mother perishes in World War II bombing, is led by a mysterious heron to a portal that takes him to a fantastical realm. In Japan, its title translates to “How Do You Live?”

    Last week’s top film, “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” dropped steeply in its second weekend. The concert film, the second pop star release distributed by AMC Theatres following Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” collected $5 million in its second weekend, a decline of 76% from its $21 million opening.

    That allowed Lionsgate’s still-going-strong “Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” to take second place, with an estimated $9.4 million in its fourth weekend of release. The “Hunger Games” prequel has a domestic haul of $135.7 million.

    “The Boy and the Heron” wasn’t the only Japanese film that ranked among the top movies in theaters over the weekend. “Godzilla Minus One” followed up its stellar debut last weekend with $8.3 million for Toho Studios. Takashi Yamazaki’s acclaimed kaiju movie dipped just 27% in its second weekend of release, bringing its total to $25 million.

    Several potential awards contenders got off to strong starts in limited release. Yorgos Lanthimos’ warped fantasy “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, opened with $644,000 from nine theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin, Texas. “Poor Things” expands in more theaters next week.

    Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” played an Oscar-qualifying run in two theaters in New York and Los Angeles with a per screen average of $58,532 for Neon. It stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the author Isabel Wilkerson while she investigates race and inequality for her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” It opens wide Jan. 19.

    Source link

  • Review: Swan song or not, Hayao Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is a master surveying his empire

    Review: Swan song or not, Hayao Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' is a master surveying his empire

    When Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the filmmaker Guillermo del Toro said in his introductory remarks: “We are privileged enough to be living in a time where Mozart is composing symphonies.”

    You might be tempted to call that hyperbole, but — this being Miyazaki, the legendary anime filmmaker of “Spirited Away,” “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service” — it’s closer to fact. The occurrence of a new film from Miyazaki deserves to be treated like the coming of a seldom-seen comet or something rarer still, like a winning New York Jets season.

    Ten years ago, Miyazaki released the profoundly personal “The Wind Rises.” It was then expected to be his swan song. But the 82-year-old filmmaker — known for his propensity for retiring again and again — soon announced that he would make one more. A decade of anticipation followed. Then, just as “The Boy and the Heron” finally debuted, word came that Miyazaki is pondering yet another movie.

    As long as he keeps extending, so does our chance to keep returning to some of the most magical realms of animation. Watching “The Boy and the Heron,” which opens nationwide Friday, is like returning to a faintly familiar dreamland. Only, since the only location here is really Miyazaki’s boundless imagination, it’s less the feeling of stepping back into a recognizable place than it is revisiting a well-remembered sense of discombobulation and wonder.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” loosely adapted from Genzaburō Yoshino’s 1937 novel “How Do You Live?,” first feels like a familiar setup for Miyazaki. A young protagonist is harboring an inexpressible grief while traveling to a new home. In the film’s indelible, nightmarish opening scenes, a boy’s mother dies in a Tokyo hospital fire amid bombing late in World War II. Flames fill the frame.

    A year later, the boy, Mahito (voiced by Soma Santoki in the subtitled version I saw) is sent to live in a country estate by his father, who has already found a new wife, Natsuko (Yoshino Kimura). She’s also the younger sister of Mahito’s deceased mother. The basic framework of the story has personal echoes for Miyazaki. As a three-year-old, he was evacuated with his family to the countryside during the war.

    Mahito is miserable in his new home. He doesn’t like his stepmother-to-be and the kids at school are unkind. To escape going to school, he gives himself a head wound. Not unlike the 10-year-old Chihiro of “Spirited Away,” who’s transported into a fantastical world from an abandoned amusement park en route to her family’s new home, Mahito finds a portal to a surreal dimension while ambling around the estate’s grounds.

    He’s prodded toward an old tower, built by Mahito’s great-uncle, by an ornery gray heron (Masaki Suda) who won’t leave him alone. Think of herons and you might picture elegant, long-legged creatures, but this one is more of an annoying pest. It’s also a kind of disguise, because a big-nosed man peels back the bird’s head like a child momentarily taking off a Hollywood costume. He becomes something of a mischievous guide to Mahito. In Miyazaki films, guardian angels seldom look the part. (The English dub versions includes a voice cast of Christian Bale, Gemma Chan, Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson.)

    Once Mahito makes his way into the tower, he lands in a fantasy world that, for its pure vividness, rivals anything Lewis Carroll ever dreamed up. There are armies of giant parakeets who protect a Parakeet King and little balls of sprites called the Waruwaru that float serenely to the sky. Almost like a Miyazaki greatest hits, “The Boy and the Heron” is filled with little fluffy orbs and fantastical oversized creatures, with drips of blood and drops of tears. It is, though, more avian than any previous Miyazaki movie, which tended to lead into wooded forests or watery seas. “The Boy and the Heron” will be, certainly, a hit among psychedelic-loving bird watchers.

    But just as in the world above, there is violence and cruelty here, too. (Gird yourself now for the fate of the Waruwaru.) This is less a fantasy to escape to than a parallel world, populated with childlike versions of some of the people in Mahito’s life, including his mother. It’s a dizzying place that seems just as directly pulled from Miyazaki’s subconscious as any other realm he’s conjured before. You’ll leave “The Boy and the Heron” in disbelief that this, supposedly, is a filmmaker in autumn. It’s just as uncompromising a vision, and just as attuned to the experience of childhood.

    “The Boy and the Heron” eventually drifts toward an aged, long-haired wizard (voiced by Shōhei Hino) who’s spent his years holding this strange world together. As it teeters on the brink of collapse, he offers to bequeath his creation and all its responsibilities to Mahito, who instead decides to return to his own world. It’s a parting sentiment from Miyazaki, a great sorcerer himself. Here, Miyazaki makes his peace with seeing his own tower crumble, while imploring his legion of followers: Go and create your own worlds, dream your own dreams.

    Whether it’s a final goodbye or not, it’s among the most poignant partings of recent cinema. It’s a grand culmination of both Miyazaki’s extraordinary body of work and of a film that gathers, like a flock, or a symphony, so many of his trademark obsessions.

    “The Boy and the Heron,” a Studio Ghibli release is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for some violent content/bloody images and smoking. Running time: 124 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

    ___

    Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Dolly Parton rocks out, ‘The Crown’ returns, ‘Rustin’ creates a march

    What to stream this week: Dolly Parton rocks out, ‘The Crown’ returns, ‘Rustin’ creates a march

    Colman Domingo’s incredible performance in the civil rights biopic “Rustin” and Dolly Parton’s rock music album are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a series where Godzilla, King Kong and other monsters are real, the fifth Persona video game and return of “The Crown.”

    — A powerhouse performance by Colman Domingo fuels the Netflix drama “Rustin,” streaming Friday Nov. 17, about the civil rights pioneer and March on Washington architect Bayard Rustin. The film, directed by George C. Wolfe, chronicles the run-up to the indelible 1963 march where Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. “Rustin,” the first narrative feature from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground, is a portrait of grassroots activism and of the often under-sung Rustin, an openly gay man combating injustice on numerous fronts. In his review, the AP’s Mark Kennedy praised Domingo’s “debonair, frisky, droll, passionate and utterly captivating” performance.

    — The shorts by the “Saturday Night Live” trio Please Don’t Destroy – Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy – have for several years been a highlight on the NBC sketch show. In “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” they, like “SNL” standouts before them, get their first feature-film shot. In the film, directed by Paul Briganti and produced by Judd Apatow, the trio embark on a ludicrous adventure that nevertheless preserves their relaxed surrealism. “SNL” castmate Bowen Yang drops in, too, though it’s Conan O’Brien who nearly steals the show as Marshall’s disapproving father. Streaming Friday, Nov. 17, on Peacock.

    — November is the month for noir on the Criterion Channel (which is hosting a series of favorites) and on TCM, which will marathon classics like “Detour” (1945) and “The Narrow Margin” (1952) on Friday, Nov. 17. But also seek out the Criterion Channel’s “Women of the West” series, streaming this month. The western may be a predominantly male genre, but some of the best ever made are centered on strong frontier women who back down from no one. Among them here are Marlene Dietrich (“Rancho Notorious”) and Barbara Stanwyck (“Forty Guns,” “The Fluries”), but nothing beats Nicholas Ray’s 1954 Technicolor masterpiece “Johnny Guitar.” Joan Crawford as saloon owner Vivienne remains one of the most raging, smoldering performances you’ll ever seen.

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Last year, Dolly Parton politely asked to be removed from consideration for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. She thought that as a country musician, not a rock ‘n’ roll one, she didn’t deserve the honor. Of course, her musical legacy is undeniable, and they brought her in anyway. The move inspired “Rockstar,” her first release in the rock genre. Out Friday, Nov. 17, it is 30-tracks of star-studded covers, from “Let It Be” with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to “What’s Up?” with Linda Perry and Lizzo lending her flute-chops to “Stairway to Heaven.” There are also nine originals, written across the last few decades. Now, surely only Parton herself would doubt that she’s earned a spot in the Hall and then some — but the fact that it produced a leather-clad, anthemic, barn-burnin’ record? That’s gold.

    — Danny Brown is one of the most inventive, at times, absurdist contemporary rappers in the game – so when he releases a new full-length record, there’s no telling which direction he’s moving in. “Quaranta,” named after the Italian word for “40” — though it certainly sounds similar to a less attractive “qu-“ word in “quarantine” — is Brown’s sixth solo studio album, a highly-anticipated follow-up to 2019’s “Uknowhatimsayin¿” via Warp Records. He considers it a “spiritual sequel” to “XXX,” his 2011 break out album. On “Quaranta,” the lead single “Tantor” teeters is skonk-y avant-rap, a track that plays like an unearthed recording captured decades in some techno-future. He’s called the album his more personal to date, written and recorded before long stint in rehab. “It was almost like, if I died, this is what I have to say,” he told Rolling Stone.

    — Twenty years ago, a mall goth battle cry rung out across the world: “Bring Me to Life,” the lead single from nu-metal alt-rock band Evanescence’s debut album “Fallen” connected with an apathetic audience searching for dooming catharsis – frontwoman Amy Lee’s airy soprano challenged traditional images of the genre. Then, of course, were the other Myspace-ready records on “Fallen”: “My Immortal,” “Everybody’s Fool,” and “Going Under.” Now, two decades removed, “Fallen” is getting a remastered release — and it sounds as immediate as ever.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — Season 21 of “NCIS” is delayed due to the actors’ strike but fans can get their fix with the franchise’s first international spin-off, “NCIS: Sydney.” Debuting Tuesday on CBS, the series follows a task force of U.S. and Australian law enforcement investigating naval crimes in waters connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans known as Indo Pacific. Episodes will also stream on Paramount+.

    — The new limited series “A Murder at the End of the World” has a “Knives Out” vibe but with Emma Corrin as the detective. When a reclusive billionaire (Clive Owen) hosts a retreat in a remote location and one of the guests ends up dead, Corrin’s character Darby launches an investigation. The show also stars Brit Marling, who co-created, wrote and directed the series with Zal Batmanglij. The first two episodes drop Tuesday on FX on Hulu.

    — The first half of the sixth and final season of “The Crown” returns to Netflix on Thursday. The episodes begin with Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) connecting with Dodi Fayad as Dominic West’s Prince Charles seeks the Queen’s (Imelda Staunton) blessing of his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

    — Swizz Beatz isn’t just a music producer, he’s also an avid car enthusiast and collector. In his new Hulu docuseries “Drive with Swizz Beatz”, Beatz and his son, Nasir Dean, travel to destinations near and far (such as Atlanta, Houston, Japan and Saudi Arabia) to experience their car culture and learn about what inspires, or drives, their communities. “Drive with Swizz Beatz” debuts Thursday on Hulu.

    — Sarah Lancashire returns as Julia Child for season two of the Max series “Julia.” In the new episodes, Julia and Paul (David Hyde Pierce) return to Boston from a sojourn in France and she’s ready to resume her popular cooking show, “The French Chef.” As Julia’s profile rises, the personal and professional demands on her increase too. “We need new content yesterday,” declares the station manager in a scene that seems very timely. Can this chef maintain her joie de vivre? The first three episodes drop Thursday.

    — Kurt and Wyatt Russell star in the new MonsterVerse series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” but the real-life father and son don’t have scenes together. That’s because they play the same character at different ages. Wyatt plays army officer Lee Shaw in the 1950s and Kurt steps in as the character in present day. The live-action series takes place in world where Godzilla, King Kong and other monsters are real, and a secret multi-government agency known as Monarch tracks and studies them. In the series, Monarch becomes threatened by Shaw’s monster knowledge. “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” premieres Friday, Nov. 17 on Apple TV+

    — An eight-episode anime series inspired by the 2010 movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is coming to Netflix on Friday, Nov. 17. “ Scott Pilgrim Takes Off ” features the voices of the film cast including Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Brie Larson and Anna Kendrick.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — Atlus’ Persona 5 dazzled role-playing game fans back in 2016, and its characters are so beloved that they’ve branched out into three spinoffs. In the latest, Persona 5 Tactica, Joker, Morgana and the rest of the Phantom Thieves are summoned to an oppressive dystopia and tasked with leading an “emotional revolution.” As usual, our teenage heroes can fight with standard weaponry like swords and firearms — or they can conjure up mythical beasts to get the job done more quickly. Tactica takes P5’s flashy animation and puts it in colorful, 3D battle arenas, and it looks quite a bit more challenging than the flagship’s dancing spinoff. While we’re all waiting for Persona 6, it’s still nice to see the gang reunite, starting Friday, Nov. 17, on Xbox X/S/One, PlayStation 5/4, Nintendo Switch and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Dolly Parton rocks out, ‘The Crown’ returns, ‘Rustin’ creates a march

    What to stream this week: Dolly Parton rocks out, ‘The Crown’ returns, ‘Rustin’ creates a march

    Colman Domingo’s incredible performance in the civil rights biopic “Rustin” and Dolly Parton’s rock music album are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you.

    Also among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a series where Godzilla, King Kong and other monsters are real, the fifth Persona video game and return of “The Crown.”

    — A powerhouse performance by Colman Domingo fuels the Netflix drama “Rustin,” streaming Friday Nov. 17, about the civil rights pioneer and March on Washington architect Bayard Rustin. The film, directed by George C. Wolfe, chronicles the run-up to the indelible 1963 march where Rev. Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. “Rustin,” the first narrative feature from Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company Higher Ground, is a portrait of grassroots activism and of the often under-sung Rustin, an openly gay man combating injustice on numerous fronts. In his review, the AP’s Mark Kennedy praised Domingo’s “debonair, frisky, droll, passionate and utterly captivating” performance.

    — The shorts by the “Saturday Night Live” trio Please Don’t Destroy – Ben Marshall, John Higgins and Martin Herlihy – have for several years been a highlight on the NBC sketch show. In “Please Don’t Destroy: The Treasure of Foggy Mountain,” they, like “SNL” standouts before them, get their first feature-film shot. In the film, directed by Paul Briganti and produced by Judd Apatow, the trio embark on a ludicrous adventure that nevertheless preserves their relaxed surrealism. “SNL” castmate Bowen Yang drops in, too, though it’s Conan O’Brien who nearly steals the show as Marshall’s disapproving father. Streaming Friday, Nov. 17, on Peacock.

    — November is the month for noir on the Criterion Channel (which is hosting a series of favorites) and on TCM, which will marathon classics like “Detour” (1945) and “The Narrow Margin” (1952) on Friday, Nov. 17. But also seek out the Criterion Channel’s “Women of the West” series, streaming this month. The western may be a predominantly male genre, but some of the best ever made are centered on strong frontier women who back down from no one. Among them here are Marlene Dietrich (“Rancho Notorious”) and Barbara Stanwyck (“Forty Guns,” “The Fluries”), but nothing beats Nicholas Ray’s 1954 Technicolor masterpiece “Johnny Guitar.” Joan Crawford as saloon owner Vivienne remains one of the most raging, smoldering performances you’ll ever seen.

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Last year, Dolly Parton politely asked to be removed from consideration for Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction. She thought that as a country musician, not a rock ‘n’ roll one, she didn’t deserve the honor. Of course, her musical legacy is undeniable, and they brought her in anyway. The move inspired “Rockstar,” her first release in the rock genre. Out Friday, Nov. 17, it is 30-tracks of star-studded covers, from “Let It Be” with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to “What’s Up?” with Linda Perry and Lizzo lending her flute-chops to “Stairway to Heaven.” There are also nine originals, written across the last few decades. Now, surely only Parton herself would doubt that she’s earned a spot in the Hall and then some — but the fact that it produced a leather-clad, anthemic, barn-burnin’ record? That’s gold.

    — Danny Brown is one of the most inventive, at times, absurdist contemporary rappers in the game – so when he releases a new full-length record, there’s no telling which direction he’s moving in. “Quaranta,” named after the Italian word for “40” — though it certainly sounds similar to a less attractive “qu-“ word in “quarantine” — is Brown’s sixth solo studio album, a highly-anticipated follow-up to 2019’s “Uknowhatimsayin¿” via Warp Records. He considers it a “spiritual sequel” to “XXX,” his 2011 break out album. On “Quaranta,” the lead single “Tantor” teeters is skonk-y avant-rap, a track that plays like an unearthed recording captured decades in some techno-future. He’s called the album his more personal to date, written and recorded before long stint in rehab. “It was almost like, if I died, this is what I have to say,” he told Rolling Stone.

    — Twenty years ago, a mall goth battle cry rung out across the world: “Bring Me to Life,” the lead single from nu-metal alt-rock band Evanescence’s debut album “Fallen” connected with an apathetic audience searching for dooming catharsis – frontwoman Amy Lee’s airy soprano challenged traditional images of the genre. Then, of course, were the other Myspace-ready records on “Fallen”: “My Immortal,” “Everybody’s Fool,” and “Going Under.” Now, two decades removed, “Fallen” is getting a remastered release — and it sounds as immediate as ever.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — Season 21 of “NCIS” is delayed due to the actors’ strike but fans can get their fix with the franchise’s first international spin-off, “NCIS: Sydney.” Debuting Tuesday on CBS, the series follows a task force of U.S. and Australian law enforcement investigating naval crimes in waters connecting the Indian and Pacific oceans known as Indo Pacific. Episodes will also stream on Paramount+.

    — The new limited series “A Murder at the End of the World” has a “Knives Out” vibe but with Emma Corrin as the detective. When a reclusive billionaire (Clive Owen) hosts a retreat in a remote location and one of the guests ends up dead, Corrin’s character Darby launches an investigation. The show also stars Brit Marling, who co-created, wrote and directed the series with Zal Batmanglij. The first two episodes drop Tuesday on FX on Hulu.

    — The first half of the sixth and final season of “The Crown” returns to Netflix on Thursday. The episodes begin with Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) connecting with Dodi Fayad as Dominic West’s Prince Charles seeks the Queen’s (Imelda Staunton) blessing of his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles.

    — Swizz Beatz isn’t just a music producer, he’s also an avid car enthusiast and collector. In his new Hulu docuseries “Drive with Swizz Beatz”, Beatz and his son, Nasir Dean, travel to destinations near and far (such as Atlanta, Houston, Japan and Saudi Arabia) to experience their car culture and learn about what inspires, or drives, their communities. “Drive with Swizz Beatz” debuts Thursday on Hulu.

    — Sarah Lancashire returns as Julia Child for season two of the Max series “Julia.” In the new episodes, Julia and Paul (David Hyde Pierce) return to Boston from a sojourn in France and she’s ready to resume her popular cooking show, “The French Chef.” As Julia’s profile rises, the personal and professional demands on her increase too. “We need new content yesterday,” declares the station manager in a scene that seems very timely. Can this chef maintain her joie de vivre? The first three episodes drop Thursday.

    — Kurt and Wyatt Russell star in the new MonsterVerse series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” but the real-life father and son don’t have scenes together. That’s because they play the same character at different ages. Wyatt plays army officer Lee Shaw in the 1950s and Kurt steps in as the character in present day. The live-action series takes place in world where Godzilla, King Kong and other monsters are real, and a secret multi-government agency known as Monarch tracks and studies them. In the series, Monarch becomes threatened by Shaw’s monster knowledge. “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” premieres Friday, Nov. 17 on Apple TV+

    — An eight-episode anime series inspired by the 2010 movie “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” is coming to Netflix on Friday, Nov. 17. “ Scott Pilgrim Takes Off ” features the voices of the film cast including Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Brie Larson and Anna Kendrick.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — Atlus’ Persona 5 dazzled role-playing game fans back in 2016, and its characters are so beloved that they’ve branched out into three spinoffs. In the latest, Persona 5 Tactica, Joker, Morgana and the rest of the Phantom Thieves are summoned to an oppressive dystopia and tasked with leading an “emotional revolution.” As usual, our teenage heroes can fight with standard weaponry like swords and firearms — or they can conjure up mythical beasts to get the job done more quickly. Tactica takes P5’s flashy animation and puts it in colorful, 3D battle arenas, and it looks quite a bit more challenging than the flagship’s dancing spinoff. While we’re all waiting for Persona 6, it’s still nice to see the gang reunite, starting Friday, Nov. 17, on Xbox X/S/One, PlayStation 5/4, Nintendo Switch and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    Source link

  • Japan’s Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on its hit video game ‘The Legend of Zelda’

    Japan’s Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on its hit video game ‘The Legend of Zelda’

    TOKYO — Nintendo is developing a live-action film based on its hit video game “The Legend of Zelda,” the Japanese company behind the Super Mario franchise said Wednesday.

    The film, with financing from Sony Pictures Entertainment as well as its own investment, will be directed by Wes Ball, the American director of the upcoming “Planet of the Apes” film. It’s being co-produced by Nintendo and Arad Productions Inc., which is behind the live-action Spider-Man films and headed by Avi Arad.

    The move highlights Kyoto-based Nintendo’s strategy to leverage various aspects of its business, including theme parks, merchandising and movies, to boost machine and software sales, and vice versa.

    That strategy has met success. Its animation film “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” released earlier this year, has raked in more than $1.3 billion and drew nearly 170 million people worldwide.

    President Shuntaro Furukawa, briefing reporters online, said the company was pleased with the success of the Super Mario animation film, the first movie of which Nintendo was a direct producer.

    The planned release date of the Zelda movie was not announced. Shigeru Miyamoto, the Nintendo executive who has spearheaded the creative innovations at the company for decades, said it will be released only when it’s ready, while stressing that work on the project has been going on for a decade.

    “I realize there are so many Zelda fans, and we cannot betray their expectations. That is a big hurdle. But we are ready,” said Miyamoto.

    Nintendo reported Tuesday an 18% rise in net profit for its first fiscal half, totaling nearly 271.3 billion yen ($1.8 billion), up from 230 billion yen a year earlier.

    Nintendo officials said the success of the Super Mario film has translated into bigger sales for its Switch machines, as well as for game software with Super Mario themes.

    The “Super Mario Bros. Wonder” game software, on sale since last month, has been selling at a record brisk pace, they said, totaling 4.3 million games sold in just two weeks.

    The latest Zelda game called “Tears of the Kingdom,” has been selling well, and Nintendo is hoping the planned movie will benefit from the popularity of the game, which stars a hero and a princess fighting against evil.

    The Switch machine, already in its seventh year after its debut, is still doing well in sales, according to Nintendo.

    Nintendo is banking on having more people come in contact with its intellectual property through official stores, including pop-ups, theme parks and special events, and now movies.

    In the U.S., Nintendo World has opened in Universal Studios in Hollywood, and the company is planning another in Orlando. The area for the park it already has in Japan will grow next year to include a section devoted to Donkey Kong, another Nintendo character, officials said.

    Nintendo is also opening a museum devoted to its history and legacy in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto in March next year.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on X, formerly Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Annette Bening, Jason Aldean, Awkwafina, NKOTB and ‘Blue Eye Samurai’

    What to stream this week: Annette Bening, Jason Aldean, Awkwafina, NKOTB and ‘Blue Eye Samurai’

    Awkwafina starring as a game-show-obsessed woman in “Quiz Lady” and the animated historical drama “Blue Eye Samurai” about a mixed-race, revenge-seeking female samurai in Japan are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

    Also among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a studio album from Jason Aldean, a new Hulu series made from Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel “Black Cake” and Annette Bening portrays a real-life hero who swam the treacherous passage from Cuba to Key West in 2013.

    — It took Diana Nyad more than 30 years and five tries to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys. “Free Solo” filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Nyad,” streaming Friday, Nov. 3 on Netflix, dramatizes her feat of endurance, along with the perseverance of her closest friends and collaborators. Bening plays Nyad, who was 60 when she began training herself again for the open-ocean swim. In a stand-out supporting performance, Jodie Foster plays her friend and trainer Bonnie Stoll. In my review, I wrote that there is enough here to help the film “if not swim against the tide of sport-biopic convention then at least ride a swift current to the finish line.”

    — In “Quiz Lady,” a 30-something accountant named Anne (Awkwafina) has devotedly watched every episode of “Can’t Stop the Quiz” since she was 4-year-old. After her pug is kidnapped and held for ransom, Anne and her estranged sister Jenny (Sandra Oh) embark on a mission to get Anne on “Can’t Stop the Quiz,” a “Jeopardy!”-like show in which Will Ferrell plays an Alex Trebek-like host. “Quiz Lady” debuts Friday, Nov. 3, on Hulu.

    — The formidable trio of Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and James Allen White anchor director Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails,” a sci-fi drama set in a near-future where couples can use science to determine if they’re meant to be together. In the film, which debuts Friday, Nov. 3 on Apple TV+, Buckley and White play a couple with a 100% positive score, proving that they’re soulmates. But things get complicated when Buckley’s character hits it off with a colleague (Ahmed).

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Last month, the singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who turned his unique brand of beach bum soft rock and “Margaritaville” escapism into a lifestyle and movement, died. As the music world continues to mourn the loss of a giant, Mailboat and Sun Records have teamed up to release his final album, a posthumous release titled “Equal Strain on All Parts,” recorded earlier this year. It features Paul McCartney, Emmylou Harris, Lennie Gallant, Angelique Kidjo, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Buffett’s light-hearted, goodtime jams live on, as evidenced on the previously released tracks, “My Gummie Just Kicked In” and “Bubbles Up.”

    — “Highway Desperado” is the 11th studio album from mainstream country juggernaut Jason Aldean, released on the heels of his first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single, the controversy-creating “Try That in a Small Town.” Produced by Michael Knox, Aldean says “Highway Desperado” takes inspiration from his live show. “I think when I look back on it, I built my career early on my live show, and have been on the road touring since I was 18 years old,” Aldean said in a press release. “For us, touring is our favorite part. Getting on the bus and going town to town and playing our shows and doing our thing and seeing the fans… the title for the tour and album was really inspired from that.”

    — In 2008, after having been on a hiatus as a group for 12 years, Boston boy band New Kids on the Block returned with a new album, “The Block.” This year, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the album responsible for the second chapter of their career, NKOTB will release “The Block: Revisited.” It includes four previously unreleased tracks as well as a new remix of their single “Dirty Dancing,” this time featuring a new generation of boy band: Dino, DK, and Joshua of the best-selling K-pop group SEVENTEEN.

    — For some, Australian-via-Zimbabwe rapper-singer Tkay Maidza ’s unique vocal tone might be most closely associated with her cover of the 1988 Pixies’ song “Where Is My Mind?” as utilized in an Apple AirPods commercial. (She recasts the song in a style all her own — quite the feat for a track frequently covered and tethered to the final scene in “Fight Club.”) But it’s her original work that deserves attention. “Sweet Justice,” her sophomore album that follows 2016’s self-titled debut and a 2020 EP series — is an eclectic collection of soulful electronics and psychedelic production elevated by her playful flow and smooth vocal tone.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — Before Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel “Black Cake” was published in 2022, Oprah Winfrey secured the TV rights in a bidding war and it’s now a new Hulu series. The first three episodes of “Black Cake” drop Wednesday, with new episodes released weekly. It follows Benny and Byron, adult estranged siblings whose mother has died and left them a mysterious flash drive with the details of her family history, explaining how she arrived in California from the Caribbean in the 1960s. The story also connects to a Caribbean Black cake from their heritage.

    — Another popular novel, the WWII-themed “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr, has also been turned into a series. Shawn Levy directs the story of Marie (played by newcomer Aria Mia Loberti) as a blind, young woman in hiding in German-occupied France and a Nazi solder named Werner (Louis Hoffman). He’s an orphan who was drafted against his will and the show explores how they’re linked by a radio broadcast, despite their different backgrounds. The four-episode series also stars Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie and premieres Thursday on Netflix.

    — The animated historical drama “Blue Eye Samurai” about a mixed-race, revenge-seeking female samurai in Japan is already getting praise for its use of 2D and 3D artistry. Maya Erskine voices the lead character, Mizu, alongside Masi Oka, George Takei, Randall Park, Kenneth Branagh, Brenda Song, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Darren Barnet. “Blue Eye Samurai” drops Friday, Nov. 3 on Netflix.

    — Naturalist Sir David Attenborough narrates a long-awaited third installment of the “Planet Earth” series. The new episodes use modern technology including drones, submersibles, and high-speed cameras to capture both awe-inspiring views of nature and the heartbreaking struggles of wildlife because of climate change. “Planet Earth III” debuts Saturday, Nov. 4 on BBC America and AMC+.

    — In 2021, National Geographic premiered the limited series called “9/11: One Day in America,” to critical acclaim. A second installment called “JFK: One Day in America” premieres Sunday, Nov. 5. The three-part series has previously unseen testimony from surviving witnesses to create an oral history of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Nov. 22 marks the 60th anniversary of his death. “One Last Day: JFK” will also stream on Disney+ and Hulu a day later.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — The bad news: Humanity is extinct. The good news: Our robot descendants are fans of human culture. In The Talos Principle II, you are an artificial intelligence on a mission to figure out how people screwed it all up, and maybe avoid repeating their mistakes. The 2014 original, from the Croatian developer Croteam, was one of the more challenging puzzle games of its generation. The studio is promising a wider array of 3D brainteasers in the sequel, with new techniques like gravity manipulation and mind transference — not to mention “questions about the nature of the cosmos and the purpose of civilization.” If you dig mind-benders like Portal and The Witness, you probably already have Talos II on your wish list for Thursday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Another highly regarded European studio, France’s Don’t Nod, is back with another intriguing puzzle game, Jusant. The goal here is to climb to the top of a gigantic, mysterious tower, but as you ascend, you’ll discover different environments and artifacts from a lost civilization. I found it exhausting to just watch the preview, but the developer — best known for the time-twisting adventure Life Is Strange — describes Jusant as “a meditative journey.” And you have an adorable companion, a watery blob named Ballast, to ask for clues when you get stuck. The conquest begins Tuesday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Annette Bening, Jason Aldean, Awkwafina, NKOTB and ‘Blue Eye Samurai’

    What to stream this week: Annette Bening, Jason Aldean, Awkwafina, NKOTB and ‘Blue Eye Samurai’

    Awkwafina starring as a game-show-obsessed woman in “Quiz Lady” and the animated historical drama “Blue Eye Samurai” about a mixed-race, revenge-seeking female samurai in Japan are some of the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

    Also among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are a studio album from Jason Aldean, a new Hulu series made from Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel “Black Cake” and Annette Bening portrays a real-life hero who swam the treacherous passage from Cuba to Key West in 2013.

    — It took Diana Nyad more than 30 years and five tries to swim from Cuba to the Florida Keys. “Free Solo” filmmakers Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Nyad,” streaming Friday, Nov. 3 on Netflix, dramatizes her feat of endurance, along with the perseverance of her closest friends and collaborators. Bening plays Nyad, who was 60 when she began training herself again for the open-ocean swim. In a stand-out supporting performance, Jodie Foster plays her friend and trainer Bonnie Stoll. In my review, I wrote that there is enough here to help the film “if not swim against the tide of sport-biopic convention then at least ride a swift current to the finish line.”

    — In “Quiz Lady,” a 30-something accountant named Anne (Awkwafina) has devotedly watched every episode of “Can’t Stop the Quiz” since she was 4-year-old. After her pug is kidnapped and held for ransom, Anne and her estranged sister Jenny (Sandra Oh) embark on a mission to get Anne on “Can’t Stop the Quiz,” a “Jeopardy!”-like show in which Will Ferrell plays an Alex Trebek-like host. “Quiz Lady” debuts Friday, Nov. 3, on Hulu.

    — The formidable trio of Jessie Buckley, Riz Ahmed and James Allen White anchor director Christos Nikou’s “Fingernails,” a sci-fi drama set in a near-future where couples can use science to determine if they’re meant to be together. In the film, which debuts Friday, Nov. 3 on Apple TV+, Buckley and White play a couple with a 100% positive score, proving that they’re soulmates. But things get complicated when Buckley’s character hits it off with a colleague (Ahmed).

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Last month, the singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett, who turned his unique brand of beach bum soft rock and “Margaritaville” escapism into a lifestyle and movement, died. As the music world continues to mourn the loss of a giant, Mailboat and Sun Records have teamed up to release his final album, a posthumous release titled “Equal Strain on All Parts,” recorded earlier this year. It features Paul McCartney, Emmylou Harris, Lennie Gallant, Angelique Kidjo, and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Buffett’s light-hearted, goodtime jams live on, as evidenced on the previously released tracks, “My Gummie Just Kicked In” and “Bubbles Up.”

    — “Highway Desperado” is the 11th studio album from mainstream country juggernaut Jason Aldean, released on the heels of his first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single, the controversy-creating “Try That in a Small Town.” Produced by Michael Knox, Aldean says “Highway Desperado” takes inspiration from his live show. “I think when I look back on it, I built my career early on my live show, and have been on the road touring since I was 18 years old,” Aldean said in a press release. “For us, touring is our favorite part. Getting on the bus and going town to town and playing our shows and doing our thing and seeing the fans… the title for the tour and album was really inspired from that.”

    — In 2008, after having been on a hiatus as a group for 12 years, Boston boy band New Kids on the Block returned with a new album, “The Block.” This year, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the album responsible for the second chapter of their career, NKOTB will release “The Block: Revisited.” It includes four previously unreleased tracks as well as a new remix of their single “Dirty Dancing,” this time featuring a new generation of boy band: Dino, DK, and Joshua of the best-selling K-pop group SEVENTEEN.

    — For some, Australian-via-Zimbabwe rapper-singer Tkay Maidza ’s unique vocal tone might be most closely associated with her cover of the 1988 Pixies’ song “Where Is My Mind?” as utilized in an Apple AirPods commercial. (She recasts the song in a style all her own — quite the feat for a track frequently covered and tethered to the final scene in “Fight Club.”) But it’s her original work that deserves attention. “Sweet Justice,” her sophomore album that follows 2016’s self-titled debut and a 2020 EP series — is an eclectic collection of soulful electronics and psychedelic production elevated by her playful flow and smooth vocal tone.

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — Before Charmaine Wilkerson’s novel “Black Cake” was published in 2022, Oprah Winfrey secured the TV rights in a bidding war and it’s now a new Hulu series. The first three episodes of “Black Cake” drop Wednesday, with new episodes released weekly. It follows Benny and Byron, adult estranged siblings whose mother has died and left them a mysterious flash drive with the details of her family history, explaining how she arrived in California from the Caribbean in the 1960s. The story also connects to a Caribbean Black cake from their heritage.

    — Another popular novel, the WWII-themed “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr, has also been turned into a series. Shawn Levy directs the story of Marie (played by newcomer Aria Mia Loberti) as a blind, young woman in hiding in German-occupied France and a Nazi solder named Werner (Louis Hoffman). He’s an orphan who was drafted against his will and the show explores how they’re linked by a radio broadcast, despite their different backgrounds. The four-episode series also stars Mark Ruffalo and Hugh Laurie and premieres Thursday on Netflix.

    — The animated historical drama “Blue Eye Samurai” about a mixed-race, revenge-seeking female samurai in Japan is already getting praise for its use of 2D and 3D artistry. Maya Erskine voices the lead character, Mizu, alongside Masi Oka, George Takei, Randall Park, Kenneth Branagh, Brenda Song, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa and Darren Barnet. “Blue Eye Samurai” drops Friday, Nov. 3 on Netflix.

    — Naturalist Sir David Attenborough narrates a long-awaited third installment of the “Planet Earth” series. The new episodes use modern technology including drones, submersibles, and high-speed cameras to capture both awe-inspiring views of nature and the heartbreaking struggles of wildlife because of climate change. “Planet Earth III” debuts Saturday, Nov. 4 on BBC America and AMC+.

    — In 2021, National Geographic premiered the limited series called “9/11: One Day in America,” to critical acclaim. A second installment called “JFK: One Day in America” premieres Sunday, Nov. 5. The three-part series has previously unseen testimony from surviving witnesses to create an oral history of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Nov. 22 marks the 60th anniversary of his death. “One Last Day: JFK” will also stream on Disney+ and Hulu a day later.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — The bad news: Humanity is extinct. The good news: Our robot descendants are fans of human culture. In The Talos Principle II, you are an artificial intelligence on a mission to figure out how people screwed it all up, and maybe avoid repeating their mistakes. The 2014 original, from the Croatian developer Croteam, was one of the more challenging puzzle games of its generation. The studio is promising a wider array of 3D brainteasers in the sequel, with new techniques like gravity manipulation and mind transference — not to mention “questions about the nature of the cosmos and the purpose of civilization.” If you dig mind-benders like Portal and The Witness, you probably already have Talos II on your wish list for Thursday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Another highly regarded European studio, France’s Don’t Nod, is back with another intriguing puzzle game, Jusant. The goal here is to climb to the top of a gigantic, mysterious tower, but as you ascend, you’ll discover different environments and artifacts from a lost civilization. I found it exhausting to just watch the preview, but the developer — best known for the time-twisting adventure Life Is Strange — describes Jusant as “a meditative journey.” And you have an adorable companion, a watery blob named Ballast, to ask for clues when you get stuck. The conquest begins Tuesday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    Source link

  • Movie Review: Her voice is lower, but Joan Baez has songs to sing and secrets to tell in new doc

    Movie Review: Her voice is lower, but Joan Baez has songs to sing and secrets to tell in new doc

    Bob Dylan called it her “heart-stopping soprano,” and it’s true that when Joan Baez unleashed that pure, angelic voice on the protest song “We Shall Overcome,” you could believe we would, indeed, overcome.

    The celebrated folk singer and activist was singing about civil rights, of course. But what we learn in the thoughtful, thorough and sometimes harrowingly intimate “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” is that Baez was also seeking to overcome much on a personal scale: anxiety, depression, loneliness and, late in life, troubling repressed memories about her own father.

    If that sounds like a lot to cover in 113 minutes, it is — especially because the new documentary, directed by Maeve O’Boyle, Miri Navasky and Karen O’Connor, also recaps a 60-year performing career, with the singer telling her story through interviews and an incredible wealth of archival material. We see Baez entering for the very first time a storage unit filled to the ceiling by her late mother with photos, home films, audio recordings, letters, drawings and even tapes of therapy sessions.

    And she gave her directors the key. The film was originally intended simply to cover Baez’s last, 2018 “Fare Thee Well” tour, but Baez decided to leave a more thorough legacy.

    The film begins with novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s quote about how everyone has three lives: public, private and secret. Well, this is certainly apt for Baez, who emerged as a sudden star in 1959, an 18-year-old with a guitar and that bell-like voice, and went on to make some 40 albums, with a 2017 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. As we see from her own anguished drawings and letters beginning in youth, her intensely public life masked both a difficult private one and some dark secrets as well.

    And then there was Dylan, the same age as Baez, that inscrutable genius who stole her heart and then broke it. It was intoxicating being together, recounts Baez, who introduced him lovingly to her audiences, until a painful UK tour when his fame blossomed and “it was horrible.” Then, staring into the camera, she says: “Hi, Bob!” It’s a welcome and rare opportunity to laugh with her.

    But back to the beginning, where Baez, on the cusp of 80, is preparing for the tour, rehearsing at home in northern California. Her hair is fully gray; her face has not changed much. “I know I look good for my age, but there is a limit,” she quips of upcoming retirement. As for her voice, it’s there, but definitely lower and more ragged.

    Amid concert footage, we toggle to scenes of Baez’s youth. We also hear, on and off, a strange (and rather distracting) male voice sounding like a hypnotist. It turns out to be her therapist.

    The story begins with lovely, black-and-white footage of Joan as a child, dancing in a field with her parents and sisters. Her Mexican-born father was dashing. The scenes look idyllic, but there are signs of trouble ahead when, in an interview from the present, Joan notes mysteriously: “I’m way too conflicted to just have a bunch of happy memories.”

    We see pages from young Joan’s journal, its copious sketches brought to life by wonderfully inventive animation, and hear how white kids called her “the dumb Mexican” in school. Panic attacks and anxiety set in. Even when she becomes a star, breaking out at the Newport Folk Festival in 1959, her self-image doesn’t seem to thrive. Nestled among the many letters to her parents is a drawing of a very small girl: “This is how I felt on the Carnegie Hall stage.”

    And then a charismatic singer-songwriter invades her life.

    ”I was just stoned on that talent,” she says of Dylan. One of the best moments of the film has Baez at the mic, during good times, imitating Dylan imitating her.

    But later, on that tour to Britain, he leaves her in his wake. “Dylan broke my heart,” she says.

    A new phase sees Baez deeply engaged in protests against the Vietnam War – even going to jail. There, young activist David Harris visits her. The two will marry, she’ll become pregnant, and then HE will go to jail. When he comes out, the marriage is troubled and doesn’t last. “He was too young and I was too crazy,” she says. Gabriel, her son, plays drums in his mother’s band on the farewell tour.

    Later scenes have Baez discussing a phase of reliance on Quaaludes, which cause her to make some questionable decisions, including posing for an album cover in huge aviator goggles.

    The final act deals with accusations against her father of inappropriate sexual behavior with Joan and one of her sisters, Mimi. Her parents, both deceased, denied it, and Joan’s own memories lack detail. She has said she could not have told this story while her parents were still alive.

    There’s an excruciating tape of a phone message from her accused dad, and then a tender scene where Baez comforts her aging and dying mother.

    And then, after footage of a final concert at New York’s Beacon Theater, we see the now-retired Baez dancing in a field near her home. A nod perhaps to the childhood scenes — but also maybe a statement that while she hasn’t overcome it all, she’s overcome a heckuva lot.

    “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise,” a Magnolia Pictures release, is unrated by the Motion Picture Association. Running time: 113 minutes. Three stars out of four.

    Source link

  • James Dolan’s sketch of the Sphere becomes reality as the venue opens with a U2 show in Las Vegas

    James Dolan’s sketch of the Sphere becomes reality as the venue opens with a U2 show in Las Vegas

    LAS VEGAS — It started as a crude sketch — a circle with a stick person inside. Seven years later, that drawing has been made real: A $2.3 billion massive spherical venue, standing 366 feet (111 meters) high and lighting up the Las Vegas skyline.

    The drawing was initially made by James Dolan, the executive chair of Madison Square Garden and owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers. He and MSG Ventures CEO David Dibble were trying to create a plan to give the entertainment venue industry a facelift in Las Vegas.

    Both experimented with different shapes for the structure — such as a muffin, a box and even a pyramid — until Dolan drew the circle and stick person on a notebook. At that moment, the Sphere was born.

    Now, Dolan’s vision will come to fruition when U2’s “UV Achtung Baby” residency kicks off the opening of his high-tech, globe-shaped venue Friday night.

    “It really is a new medium,” said Dolan, speaking to the media during a walkthrough Thursday. “When you’re in the Sphere, you don’t get told what to look at. The audience decides what they want to focus on.”

    Inside the 516-foot-wide (157-meter-wide) Sphere, a high-resolution LED screen wraps halfway around the 17,500-seat audience. The venue is equipped with thousands of speakers that will deliver a “crystal-clear,” multi-layered experience.

    The venue features an array of technology attractions, including five interactive humanoid robots named Aura.

    “Necessity is the mother of invention,” said Dibble, who framed Dolan’s original drawing after carrying the picture in his backpack. “Everything from our audio and networking system, visual displays, camera systems stored — it’s all required to deliver an effective Sphere experience.”

    The state-of-the-art venue has become a traffic stopper — especially at night. It drew immediate attention on the Fourth of July with a digital fireworks display, an eyeball that appeared to scan the horizon with the words “Hello World.”

    Along with U2’s 25-show residency, the venue will next week offer a custom production titled “Postcard from Earth” by film director Darren Aronofsky.

    Tourists and air travelers have also seen the orb light up with the likeness of the Earth or Moon, bouncing basketballs and art designs. The characters from the upcoming animated film “Trolls Band Together” have appeared on its LED exterior and it trumpeted the release of NSYNC’s new single “Better Place,” a song on the movie’s soundtrack.

    “That’s cool,” said Glenn NP Nowak, an architecture professor at the nearby University of Nevada, Las Vegas. “It’s like words don’t do it justice.”

    The Sphere resembles the Spaceship Earth attraction at Walt Disney World’s Epcot theme park in Florida. Its design also draws comparisons to the Montreal Biosphere museum in Canada and Avicii Arena in Sweden.

    It doesn’t tower over the Strip like the 520-foot (158-meter) High Roller observation wheel that casino giant Caesars Entertainment opened in 2014, or the 1,149-foot (350-meter) tower at the Strat Hotel & Casino that opened in 1996.

    However, the Sphere is the most expensive entertainment venue built in Las Vegas, eclipsing the approximately $1.9 billion, 65,000-seat Allegiant Stadium sports facility that opened in 2020.

    “There is hype around this,” added Nowak, who toured the structure with his students at various phases while it was being built. “I think that’s part of the reason people don’t necessarily understand what they’ve just seen.”

    Beyond a structure that Nowak called an “engineering marvel,” he noted its cutting-edge position as an attraction in an emerging Las Vegas “experience economy.”

    Each year, Las Vegas has lured more than 40 million people into an area known for gambling, nightlife, spas, entertainment shows and fine dining. Most normally arrive by air at Harry Reid International Airport, which handled nearly 53 million passengers in 2022.

    “This was the perfect market,” Dolan said. “This marketplace is about growth. They welcome the notion of putting a big, huge spherical light bulb thing in the middle of it. This market loves light, it loves shows, the entertainment. The Sphere is all about those things. The government here was welcoming and encouraging.”

    The project started as a partnership with casino company Las Vegas Sands, the then-owner of the Venetian and Palazzo resort towers on the Las Vegas Strip. Now the 35-story Venetian and 50-story Palazzo, with more than 7,000 rooms combined, advertise bird’s-eye guest room views of the Sphere.

    Dolan said casino owners initially thought the venue would be a “regular ol’ arena.”

    “The casino owners were concerned about getting boxed out of entertainment, so they had to have their own venue,” he said. “Somewhere along the line, we told them it’s not going to be a regular arena. They really embraced the concept.”

    Dolan believes many others will embrace the Sphere, and hopes to expand the concept all over the world. He believes London could be the next landing spot, with the dreams of someday building one in New York.

    But for now, Dolan is focused on proving that the Sphere is the real deal.

    “I feel good about what we built,” he said. “I feel like it’s going to be a success. The people are going to love it. I’m not as anxious as I used to be.”

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Olivia Rodrigo, LaKeith Stanfield, NBA 2K14 and ‘The Little Mermaid’

    What to stream this week: Olivia Rodrigo, LaKeith Stanfield, NBA 2K14 and ‘The Little Mermaid’

    Olivia Rodrigo’s much-anticipated sophomore album and LaKeith Stanfield starring in the eight-part horror fantasy series “The Changeling” are among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” starring Halle Bailey, the video game NBA 2K14 pays tribute to Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and the popular comfort show “Virgin River” returns for its fifth season on Netflix.

    NEW MOVIES TO STREAM

    — The latest Disney live-action remake, “The Little Mermaid,” lands on Disney+ on Wednesday. Not everyone has been a fan of the studio’s regular retreads of animation classics. But they’ve been dependable box-office successes; earlier this year, “The Little Mermaid” grossed $568.6 million worldwide. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr called this “Mermaid” “a somewhat drab undertaking with sparks of bioluminescence” that “doesn’t really sing.” But one element of Rob Marshall’s film has been more widely hailed: the breakthrough performance of Halle Bailey as Ariel.

    — “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” goes the other way, taking a usually live-action franchise into animation. (The first Ninja Turtles movie, in 1990, came out a year before the original “Little Mermaid”; one born in ooze, the other the sea.) The track record of the films that have followed has been pretty poor. But “Mutant Mayhem,” director Jeff Rowe (co-director of “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” ) and co-written by co-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is a vibrant, hip-hop spin for the turtles. In my review of the film, which arrives on VOD and digital on Tuesday, I praised it for some good gags and clever innovations but “one brilliant idea: casting Ice Cube as the voice of the movie’s mutant insect supervillain Super Fly.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    NEW MUSIC TO STREAM

    — Olivia Rodrigo breathed new life into the angsty power ballad when she dropped “Drivers License” back in January 2021, the lead single on her debut LP, “SOUR.” One-hit wonder she was not: then came the fiery power pop-punk of “Good 4 U” and “Brutal.” In 2023, “GUTS,” her highly anticipated sophomore release, builds off the life experiences of a pop superstar now in the throes of fame — and her early 20s. The first two tracks released from the album — the blood-sucking piano ballad “Vampire” and cheeky backslide anthem “Bad Idea Right?” — are miles away from each other and undeniable partners; the perfect tease for a punk-y album unafraid of taking dynamic swings.

    — The K-pop behemoth BTS aren’t active as a group right now; it’s seven members are taking turns fulfilling South Korea’s mandatory military service ( Jin and J-hope have enlisted; Suga has begun the process ). In that absence, the remaining members have taken turns releasing solo material. It’s a bit of brilliant business and fan service: Can you miss a boy band that never really went away? The latest to charm the public with his singular star power is V, on his forthcoming solo release, “Layover.” His rich baritone slides over the retro R&B production of his mournful bilingual singles “Love Me Again” and “Rainy Days.”

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    NEW SERIES TO STREAM

    — A new series on PBS demonstrates how animals are adapting to climate change in surprising and even inspiring ways. “Evolution Earth,” premiering Wednesday, shows animal migration and behavior changes in response to our changing planet. Like the Edith’s Checkerspot, a butterfly that is thriving at higher elevations, moving away from the heat. The five-part series is narrated by evolutionary biologist Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton.

    — The popular comfort show “Virgin River” returns for its fifth season on Netflix. Starring Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson, the series follows residents of a small, fictional town in northern California where neighbors help neighbors and the one bar in town also has a gourmet chef. Yes, there’s drama but life seems easier in Virgin River. The first 10 episodes of season five debut Thursday with two additional holiday episodes dropping in November.

    — LaKeith Stanfield (“Judas and the Black Messiah”, “Haunted Mansion”) executive produces and stars in “The Changeling” for Apple TV+. The eight-part horror fantasy series is based on a best-selling book of the same name by Victor LaValle. Stanfield plays Apollo, a rare book dealer in New York whose marriage to a librarian named Emma takes a shocking turn after they welcome a son. The show is a dark mystery that delves into heavy themes including past trauma and parenting fears while also exposing how difficult it is to navigate those things in today’s technology-driven world. The first three episodes of “The Changeling” drop Friday, Sept. 8.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    NEW VIDEO GAMES TO PLAY

    — It’s 2330, and humanity has finally ditched this planet and ventured out beyond the Solar System. In Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield, you’re a new recruit to Constellation, a band of explorers searching for rare artifacts. It’s a huge project, with more than 1,000 planets to visit — some civilized and friendly, others not so much. Against that sprawling background, the developers are promising a vast array of choices, from what your character and spaceship look like to how you want to deal with the various factions spread across the galaxy. Here on Earth in 2023, Microsoft and Bethesda have a lot riding on Starfield: It’s the most ambitious Xbox game of the year, and it’s the first new universe from the studio since it launched The Elder Scrolls in 1994. Liftoff commences Wednesday on Xbox X/S and PC.

    — The real NBA season is still a month and a half away, but 2K Sports knows that virtual basketball fans are itching to get back on the court. NBA 2K14 pays tribute to Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant with “Mamba Moments,” which let you relive some of the most dramatic games of his career. This year’s edition also introduces “ProPlay,” which translates actual NBA footage into gameplay. And 2K says it has revamped and upgraded its offensive moves, delivering tighter control over layups, dunks and even dribbling. Tipoff is Friday, Sept. 8, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    Source link

  • What to stream this week: Olivia Rodrigo, LaKeith Stanfield, NBA 2K14 and ‘The Little Mermaid’

    What to stream this week: Olivia Rodrigo, LaKeith Stanfield, NBA 2K14 and ‘The Little Mermaid’

    Olivia Rodrigo’s much-anticipated sophomore album and LaKeith Stanfield starring in the eight-part horror fantasy series “The Changeling” are among the new television, movies, music and games headed to a device near you

    Among the offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists are Disney’s live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid” starring Halle Bailey, the video game NBA 2K14 pays tribute to Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and the popular comfort show “Virgin River” returns for its fifth season on Netflix.

    — The latest Disney live-action remake, “The Little Mermaid,” lands on Disney+ on Wednesday. Not everyone has been a fan of the studio’s regular retreads of animation classics. But they’ve been dependable box-office successes; earlier this year, “The Little Mermaid” grossed $568.6 million worldwide. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr called this “Mermaid” “a somewhat drab undertaking with sparks of bioluminescence” that “doesn’t really sing.” But one element of Rob Marshall’s film has been more widely hailed: the breakthrough performance of Halle Bailey as Ariel.

    — “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” goes the other way, taking a usually live-action franchise into animation. (The first Ninja Turtles movie, in 1990, came out a year before the original “Little Mermaid”; one born in ooze, the other the sea.) The track record of the films that have followed has been pretty poor. But “Mutant Mayhem,” director Jeff Rowe (co-director of “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” ) and co-written by co-producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, is a vibrant, hip-hop spin for the turtles. In my review of the film, which arrives on VOD and digital on Tuesday, I praised it for some good gags and clever innovations but “one brilliant idea: casting Ice Cube as the voice of the movie’s mutant insect supervillain Super Fly.”

    — AP Film Writer Jake Coyle

    — Olivia Rodrigo breathed new life into the angsty power ballad when she dropped “Drivers License” back in January 2021, the lead single on her debut LP, “SOUR.” One-hit wonder she was not: then came the fiery power pop-punk of “Good 4 U” and “Brutal.” In 2023, “GUTS,” her highly anticipated sophomore release, builds off the life experiences of a pop superstar now in the throes of fame — and her early 20s. The first two tracks released from the album — the blood-sucking piano ballad “Vampire” and cheeky backslide anthem “Bad Idea Right?” — are miles away from each other and undeniable partners; the perfect tease for a punk-y album unafraid of taking dynamic swings.

    — The K-pop behemoth BTS aren’t active as a group right now; it’s seven members are taking turns fulfilling South Korea’s mandatory military service ( Jin and J-hope have enlisted; Suga has begun the process ). In that absence, the remaining members have taken turns releasing solo material. It’s a bit of brilliant business and fan service: Can you miss a boy band that never really went away? The latest to charm the public with his singular star power is V, on his forthcoming solo release, “Layover.” His rich baritone slides over the retro R&B production of his mournful bilingual singles “Love Me Again” and “Rainy Days.”

    — AP Music Writer Maria Sherman

    — A new series on PBS demonstrates how animals are adapting to climate change in surprising and even inspiring ways. “Evolution Earth,” premiering Wednesday, shows animal migration and behavior changes in response to our changing planet. Like the Edith’s Checkerspot, a butterfly that is thriving at higher elevations, moving away from the heat. The five-part series is narrated by evolutionary biologist Dr. Shane Campbell-Staton.

    — The popular comfort show “Virgin River” returns for its fifth season on Netflix. Starring Alexandra Breckenridge and Martin Henderson, the series follows residents of a small, fictional town in northern California where neighbors help neighbors and the one bar in town also has a gourmet chef. Yes, there’s drama but life seems easier in Virgin River. The first 10 episodes of season five debut Thursday with two additional holiday episodes dropping in November.

    — LaKeith Stanfield (“Judas and the Black Messiah”, “Haunted Mansion”) executive produces and stars in “The Changeling” for Apple TV+. The eight-part horror fantasy series is based on a best-selling book of the same name by Victor LaValle. Stanfield plays Apollo, a rare book dealer in New York whose marriage to a librarian named Emma takes a shocking turn after they welcome a son. The show is a dark mystery that delves into heavy themes including past trauma and parenting fears while also exposing how difficult it is to navigate those things in today’s technology-driven world. The first three episodes of “The Changeling” drop Friday, Sept. 8.

    — Alicia Rancilio

    — It’s 2330, and humanity has finally ditched this planet and ventured out beyond the Solar System. In Bethesda Game Studios’ Starfield, you’re a new recruit to Constellation, a band of explorers searching for rare artifacts. It’s a huge project, with more than 1,000 planets to visit — some civilized and friendly, others not so much. Against that sprawling background, the developers are promising a vast array of choices, from what your character and spaceship look like to how you want to deal with the various factions spread across the galaxy. Here on Earth in 2023, Microsoft and Bethesda have a lot riding on Starfield: It’s the most ambitious Xbox game of the year, and it’s the first new universe from the studio since it launched The Elder Scrolls in 1994. Liftoff commences Wednesday on Xbox X/S and PC.

    — The real NBA season is still a month and a half away, but 2K Sports knows that virtual basketball fans are itching to get back on the court. NBA 2K14 pays tribute to Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant with “Mamba Moments,” which let you relive some of the most dramatic games of his career. This year’s edition also introduces “ProPlay,” which translates actual NBA footage into gameplay. And 2K says it has revamped and upgraded its offensive moves, delivering tighter control over layups, dunks and even dribbling. Tipoff is Friday, Sept. 8, on PlayStation 5/4, Xbox X/S/One and PC.

    — Lou Kesten

    ___

    Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/entertainment.

    Source link

  • Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

    Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

    TOKYO — Kazutaka Yonekura dreams of a world where everyone will have their very own digital “clone” — an online avatar that could take on some of our work and daily tasks, such as appearing in Zoom meetings in our place.

    Yonekura, chief executive of Tokyo startup Alt Inc., believes it could make our lives easier and more efficient.

    His company is developing a digital double, an animated image that looks and talks just like its owner. The digital clone can be used, for example, by a recruiter to carry out preliminary job interviews, or by a physician to screen patients ahead of checkups.

    “This liberates you from all the routine (tasks) that you must do tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that,” he told The Associated Press as he showed off his double — a thumbnail video image of Yonekura on the computer screen, with a synthesized version of his voice.

    When his digital clone is asked “What kind of music do you like,” it pauses for several seconds, then goes into a long-winded explanation about Yonekura’s fondness for energetic rhythmical music such as hip-hop or rock ‘n’ roll.

    A bit mechanical perhaps — but any social gaffes have been programmed out.

    Yonekura, 46, argues that the technology is more personal than Siri, ChatGPT or Google AI. Most importantly, it belongs to you and not the technology company that created it, he said.

    For now, having a digital double is expensive. Each Alt clone costs about 20 million yen ($140,000), so it will likely take some time before there’s a clone for everyone.

    In creating a digital double, information about a person is skimmed off social media sites and publicly available records in a massive data collection effort, and stored in the software. The data is constantly updated, keeping in synch with the owner’s changing habits and tastes.

    Yonekura believes a digital clone could pave the way for a society where people can focus on being creative and waste less time on tedious interactions.

    For many Japanese — the nation that gave the world Pokemon, karaoke, Hello Kitty and emojis — the digital clone is as friendly as an animation character.

    But Yonekura acknowledges cultures are different and that Westerners may not like the idea of a digital clone as much.

    “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked: Why does it have to be a personal clone, and not just a digital agent?” he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

    Yonekura’s company has drawn mostly domestic investments of more than 6 billion yen ($40 million), including venture capital funds run by major Japanese banks, while also building collaborative relationships with academia, including the University of Southern California and the University of Tokyo.

    But large-scale production of digital doubles is a long way off — for now, the company offers more affordable voice recognition software and virtual assistant technology.

    Matt Alt, who co-founded AltJapan Co., a company that produces English-language versions of popular Japanese video games and who has written books about Japan, including “Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World,” says the digital clone idea makes more sense culturally in Japan.

    Ninjas, the famous feudal Japanese undercover warriors, were known for “bunshin-jutsu” techniques of creating the illusion of a double or a helper in battle to confuse the opponent. The bunshin-jutsu idea has been adopted and is common in modern-day Japanese video games and manga comic books and graphic novels.

    “Who wouldn’t want a helping hand from someone who understood them intimately?” Alt said but added that in the West, the idea of an existing double is “more frightening.”

    “There is the ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ for instance, or even the brooms that multiply like a virus in Disney’s ‘Fantasia’,” he said.

    INCS toenter Co., another Tokyo-based startup, has been successful as a production company of computerized music for animation, manga, films, virtual realities and games that uses so-called Vocaloid artists. The synthesized singers or musical acts known as Vocaloid are often paired up with anime- or manga- style characters.

    Like Yonekura’s digital clone, Vocaloids are an example of Japanese technology that uses computer software to duplicate human traits or likeness.

    Among INCS toenter’s hits is “Melt,” created on a single desktop in 2007 and performed by a group called Supercell, which has been played 23 million times on YouTube.

    A more recent hit is “Kawaikute gomen,” which means “Sorry for being so cute,” by HoneyWorks, a vocaloid unit. Another is Eve, who performs the theme song of megahit animation series “Jujutsu Kaisen,” and has 4.6 million subscribers on his YouTube channel.

    Some wonder whether digital clones or Vocaloids could become popular outside Japan. Digital assistant and voice software, as well as computerized music exist in the West, but they are not clones or Vocaloids.

    Yu Tamura, chief executive and founder of INCS toenter, says he is encouraged by the increasing global popularity of Japanese animation and manga but that one thing to watch out for is the “Galapagos syndrome.”

    The term, referring to the isolated Pacific islands where animals evolved in unique ways, is widely used in Japan to describe how some Japanese products, while successful at home, fail to translate abroad.

    Overseas consumers could see it as quirky or too cutesy, except for Japanophiles, Tamura said.

    “They simply won’t get it,” he said.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    Source link

  • Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

    Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

    TOKYO — Kazutaka Yonekura dreams of a world where everyone will have their very own digital “clone” — an online avatar that could take on some of our work and daily tasks, such as appearing in Zoom meetings in our place.

    Yonekura, chief executive of Tokyo startup Alt Inc., believes it could make our lives easier and more efficient.

    His company is developing a digital double, an animated image that looks and talks just like its owner. The digital clone can be used, for example, by a recruiter to carry out preliminary job interviews, or by a physician to screen patients ahead of checkups.

    “This liberates you from all the routine (tasks) that you must do tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that,” he told The Associated Press as he showed off his double — a thumbnail video image of Yonekura on the computer screen, with a synthesized version of his voice.

    When his digital clone is asked “What kind of music do you like,” it pauses for several seconds, then goes into a long-winded explanation about Yonekura’s fondness for energetic rhythmical music such as hip-hop or rock ‘n’ roll.

    A bit mechanical perhaps — but any social gaffes have been programmed out.

    Yonekura, 46, argues that the technology is more personal than Siri, ChatGPT or Google AI. Most importantly, it belongs to you and not the technology company that created it, he said.

    For now, having a digital double is expensive. Each Alt clone costs about 20 million yen ($140,000), so it will likely take some time before there’s a clone for everyone.

    In creating a digital double, information about a person is skimmed off social media sites and publicly available records in a massive data collection effort, and stored in the software. The data is constantly updated, keeping in synch with the owner’s changing habits and tastes.

    Yonekura believes a digital clone could pave the way for a society where people can focus on being creative and waste less time on tedious interactions.

    For many Japanese — the nation that gave the world Pokemon, karaoke, Hello Kitty and emojis — the digital clone is as friendly as an animation character.

    But Yonekura acknowledges cultures are different and that Westerners may not like the idea of a digital clone as much.

    “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked: Why does it have to be a personal clone, and not just a digital agent?” he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

    Yonekura’s company has drawn mostly domestic investments of more than 6 billion yen ($40 million), including venture capital funds run by major Japanese banks, while also building collaborative relationships with academia, including the University of Southern California and the University of Tokyo.

    But large-scale production of digital doubles is a long way off — for now, the company offers more affordable voice recognition software and virtual assistant technology.

    Matt Alt, who co-founded AltJapan Co., a company that produces English-language versions of popular Japanese video games and who has written books about Japan, including “Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World,” says the digital clone idea makes more sense culturally in Japan.

    Ninjas, the famous feudal Japanese undercover warriors, were known for “bunshin-jutsu” techniques of creating the illusion of a double or a helper in battle to confuse the opponent. The bunshin-jutsu idea has been adopted and is common in modern-day Japanese video games and manga comic books and graphic novels.

    “Who wouldn’t want a helping hand from someone who understood them intimately?” Alt said but added that in the West, the idea of an existing double is “more frightening.”

    “There is the ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ for instance, or even the brooms that multiply like a virus in Disney’s ‘Fantasia’,” he said.

    INCS toenter Co., another Tokyo-based startup, has been successful as a production company of computerized music for animation, manga, films, virtual realities and games that uses so-called Vocaloid artists. The synthesized singers or musical acts known as Vocaloid are often paired up with anime- or manga- style characters.

    Like Yonekura’s digital clone, Vocaloids are an example of Japanese technology that uses computer software to duplicate human traits or likeness.

    Among INCS toenter’s hits is “Melt,” created on a single desktop in 2007 and performed by a group called Supercell, which has been played 23 million times on YouTube.

    A more recent hit is “Kawaikute gomen,” which means “Sorry for being so cute,” by HoneyWorks, a vocaloid unit. Another is Eve, who performs the theme song of megahit animation series “Jujutsu Kaisen,” and has 4.6 million subscribers on his YouTube channel.

    Some wonder whether digital clones or Vocaloids could become popular outside Japan. Digital assistant and voice software, as well as computerized music exist in the West, but they are not clones or Vocaloids.

    Yu Tamura, chief executive and founder of INCS toenter, says he is encouraged by the increasing global popularity of Japanese animation and manga but that one thing to watch out for is the “Galapagos syndrome.”

    The term, referring to the isolated Pacific islands where animals evolved in unique ways, is widely used in Japan to describe how some Japanese products, while successful at home, fail to translate abroad.

    Overseas consumers could see it as quirky or too cutesy, except for Japanophiles, Tamura said.

    “They simply won’t get it,” he said.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    Source link

  • Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

    Digital clones and Vocaloids may be popular in Japan. Elsewhere, they could get lost in translation

    TOKYO — Kazutaka Yonekura dreams of a world where everyone will have their very own digital “clone” — an online avatar that could take on some of our work and daily tasks, such as appearing in Zoom meetings in our place.

    Yonekura, chief executive of Tokyo startup Alt Inc., believes it could make our lives easier and more efficient.

    His company is developing a digital double, an animated image that looks and talks just like its owner. The digital clone can be used, for example, by a recruiter to carry out preliminary job interviews, or by a physician to screen patients ahead of checkups.

    “This liberates you from all the routine (tasks) that you must do tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the day after that,” he told The Associated Press as he showed off his double — a thumbnail video image of Yonekura on the computer screen, with a synthesized version of his voice.

    When his digital clone is asked “What kind of music do you like,” it pauses for several seconds, then goes into a long-winded explanation about Yonekura’s fondness for energetic rhythmical music such as hip-hop or rock ‘n’ roll.

    A bit mechanical perhaps — but any social gaffes have been programmed out.

    Yonekura, 46, argues that the technology is more personal than Siri, ChatGPT or Google AI. Most importantly, it belongs to you and not the technology company that created it, he said.

    For now, having a digital double is expensive. Each Alt clone costs about 20 million yen ($140,000), so it will likely take some time before there’s a clone for everyone.

    In creating a digital double, information about a person is skimmed off social media sites and publicly available records in a massive data collection effort, and stored in the software. The data is constantly updated, keeping in synch with the owner’s changing habits and tastes.

    Yonekura believes a digital clone could pave the way for a society where people can focus on being creative and waste less time on tedious interactions.

    For many Japanese — the nation that gave the world Pokemon, karaoke, Hello Kitty and emojis — the digital clone is as friendly as an animation character.

    But Yonekura acknowledges cultures are different and that Westerners may not like the idea of a digital clone as much.

    “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked: Why does it have to be a personal clone, and not just a digital agent?” he said, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

    Yonekura’s company has drawn mostly domestic investments of more than 6 billion yen ($40 million), including venture capital funds run by major Japanese banks, while also building collaborative relationships with academia, including the University of Southern California and the University of Tokyo.

    But large-scale production of digital doubles is a long way off — for now, the company offers more affordable voice recognition software and virtual assistant technology.

    Matt Alt, who co-founded AltJapan Co., a company that produces English-language versions of popular Japanese video games and who has written books about Japan, including “Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World,” says the digital clone idea makes more sense culturally in Japan.

    Ninjas, the famous feudal Japanese undercover warriors, were known for “bunshin-jutsu” techniques of creating the illusion of a double or a helper in battle to confuse the opponent. The bunshin-jutsu idea has been adopted and is common in modern-day Japanese video games and manga comic books and graphic novels.

    “Who wouldn’t want a helping hand from someone who understood them intimately?” Alt said but added that in the West, the idea of an existing double is “more frightening.”

    “There is the ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers,’ for instance, or even the brooms that multiply like a virus in Disney’s ‘Fantasia’,” he said.

    INCS toenter Co., another Tokyo-based startup, has been successful as a production company of computerized music for animation, manga, films, virtual realities and games that uses so-called Vocaloid artists. The synthesized singers or musical acts known as Vocaloid are often paired up with anime- or manga- style characters.

    Like Yonekura’s digital clone, Vocaloids are an example of Japanese technology that uses computer software to duplicate human traits or likeness.

    Among INCS toenter’s hits is “Melt,” created on a single desktop in 2007 and performed by a group called Supercell, which has been played 23 million times on YouTube.

    A more recent hit is “Kawaikute gomen,” which means “Sorry for being so cute,” by HoneyWorks, a vocaloid unit. Another is Eve, who performs the theme song of megahit animation series “Jujutsu Kaisen,” and has 4.6 million subscribers on his YouTube channel.

    Some wonder whether digital clones or Vocaloids could become popular outside Japan. Digital assistant and voice software, as well as computerized music exist in the West, but they are not clones or Vocaloids.

    Yu Tamura, chief executive and founder of INCS toenter, says he is encouraged by the increasing global popularity of Japanese animation and manga but that one thing to watch out for is the “Galapagos syndrome.”

    The term, referring to the isolated Pacific islands where animals evolved in unique ways, is widely used in Japan to describe how some Japanese products, while successful at home, fail to translate abroad.

    Overseas consumers could see it as quirky or too cutesy, except for Japanophiles, Tamura said.

    “They simply won’t get it,” he said.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    Source link

  • ‘Barbie’ joins $1 billion club, breaks another record for female directors

    ‘Barbie’ joins $1 billion club, breaks another record for female directors

    Greta Gerwig should be feeling closer to fine these days. In just three weeks in theaters, “Barbie” is set to sail past $1 billion in global ticket sales, breaking a record for female directors that was previously held by Patty Jenkins, who helmed “Wonder Woman.”

    “Barbie,” which Gerwig directed and co-wrote, added another $53 million from 4,178 North American locations this weekend and $74 million internationally, bringing its global total to $1.03 billion, according to studio estimates on Sunday. The Margot Robbie-led and produced film has been comfortably seated in first place for three weeks and it’s hardly finished yet. It crossed $400 million domestic and $500 million internationally faster than any other movie at the studio, including the Harry Potter films.

    “As distribution chiefs, we’re not often rendered speechless by a film’s performance, but Barbillion has blown even our most optimistic predictions out of the water,” said Jeff Goldstein and Andrew Cripps, who oversee domestic and international distribution for the studio, in a joint statement.

    In modern box office history, just 53 movies have made over $1 billion, not accounting for inflation, and “Barbie” is now the biggest to be directed by one woman, supplanting “Wonder Woman’s” $821.8 million global total. Three movies that were co-directed by women are still ahead of “Barbie,” including “Frozen” ($1.3 billion) and “Frozen 2” ($1.45 billion) both co-directed by Jennifer Lee and “Captain Marvel” ($1.1 billion), co-directed by Anna Boden. But, “Barbie” has passed “Captain Marvel” domestically with $459.4 million (versus $426.8 million), thereby claiming the North American record for live-action movies directed by women.

    Warner Bros. co-chairs and CEOs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy also praised Gerwig in a statement and said the milestone, “is testament to her brilliance and to her commitment to deliver a movie that Barbie fans of every age want to see on the big screen.”

    New competition came this weekend in the form of the animated, PG-rated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and the Jason Statham shark sequel, “Meg 2: The Trench,” both of which were neck-in-neck with Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” also in its third weekend, for the second-place spot.

    “Meg 2” managed to sneak ahead and land in second place. It overcame its abysmal reviews to score a $30 million opening weekend from 3,503 locations. The Warner Bros. release, directed by Ben Wheatley, currently has a 29% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a B- CinemaScore from audiences. The thriller was released in 3D, which accounted for 22% of its first weekend business.

    Third place went to “Oppenheimer,” which added $28.7 million from 3,612 locations in North America, bringing its domestic total to $228.6 million. In just three weeks, the J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic starring Cillian Murphy has become the highest grossing R-rated film of the year (ahead of “John Wick Chapter 4”) and the sixth-biggest of the year overall, surpassing “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”

    “Oppenheimer” also celebrated a landmark, crossing $500 million globally in three weeks. Its worldwide tally is currently $552.9 million, which puts it ahead of “Dunkirk,” which clocked out with $527 million in 2017, and has become Nolan’s fifth-biggest movie ever. It’s also now among the four top grossing biographies ever (company includes “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “The Passion of the Christ” and “American Sniper”) and the biggest World War II movie of all time.

    Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” was close behind in fourth place with an estimated $28 million from 3,858 theaters in North America. Since opening on Wednesday, the film, which is riding on excellent reviews (96% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience scores, has earned $43.1 million.

    “This is one of those movies that is a multigenerational joy,” said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. “I think the enduring popularity of ‘Turtles’ is showing its true colors. And there hasn’t been an animated film in eight weeks and there won’t be another for eight weeks which is great for us.”

    “Turtles” cost $70 million to produce and features a starry voice cast that includes Jackie Chan, Ice Cube, Paul Rudd, Ayo Edebiri and Seth Rogen, who produced and co-wrote the film, which leans into the “teenage” aspect of the turtles.

    “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and even the surprise, anti-trafficking hit “Sound of Freedom” (now at $163.5 million and ahead of “Mission: Impossible 7”) have helped fuel a boom at the box office, bringing in many millions more than was expected and helping to offset pains caused by some summer disappointments.

    “After ‘The Flash,’ ‘Indiana Jones’ and, to a certain extent, ‘Mission: Impossible,’ people were saying the summer was a disappointment. But it’s not over yet,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “We’re going to have a summer that is going to go out on a high note.”

    But the moment of triumph for the industry will likely be short lived if the studios can’t reach an agreement with striking actors and writers soon. The fall release calendar has already gotten slimmer, with some studios pushing films into 2024 instead of trying to promote them without movie stars.

    Sony had planned to release its PlayStation-inspired true story “Gran Turismo” in theaters nationwide next Friday, but will now be rolling it out slowly for two weeks before going wide on Aug. 25. The thinking? If movie stars can’t promote the film, maybe audiences can.

    “We have to be realistic,” Dergarabedian said. “We’re on this emotional high of movies doing so well, but we have to temper our enthusiasm and optimism with the fact that the strike is creating a lot of uncertainty. The longer it goes on the more profound the issues become. But the audience has spoken and they love going to the movie theater.”

    Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

    1. “Barbie,” $53 million.

    2. “Meg 2: The Trench,” $30 million.

    3. “Oppenheimer,” $28.7 million.

    4. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” $28 million.

    5. “Haunted Mansion,” $9 million.

    6. “Sound of Freedom,” $7 million.

    7. “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part I,” $6.5 million.

    8. “Talk to Me,” $6.3 million.

    9. “Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani,” $1.5 million.

    10. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” $1.5 million.

    Source link

  • Nintendo’s profit jumps as Super Mario franchise gets a boost from hit film

    Nintendo’s profit jumps as Super Mario franchise gets a boost from hit film

    Nintendo is reporting a 52% increase in profit for the first fiscal quarter following the success of its Super Mario movie and the new Zelda video game

    ByYURI KAGEYAMA AP Business Writer

    FILE – A traveler walks past an advertisement featuring a Nintendo character at Narita airport in Narita near Tokyo on June 10, 2022. Nintendo reported Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023, a 52% increase in net profit for the first fiscal quarter on the back of the success of its Super Mario movie and the new Zelda video game.(AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama, File)

    The Associated Press

    TOKYO — Nintendo reported a 52% increase in net profit for the first fiscal quarter on Thursday following the success of its Super Mario movie and the new Zelda video game.

    Demand was strong for Nintendo Switch game software, which received a boost from the release earlier this year of the film about the jumping plumber called “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” according to Nintendo Co.

    The film has so far drawn more than 168 million people globally, grossing $1.3 billion.

    That makes it one of the top-selling animation films on record, second only to “Frozen II,” and the top animation film based on a video game. The “Lion King” 2019 remake, while it uses computer graphics and was an even a bigger hit, isn’t categorized as an animation film.

    Also helping lift Nintendo’s results was the popularity of “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom” game, released in May, the latest in the hit action-adventure series.

    The Japanese video game maker’s April-June net profit totaled 181 billion yen ($1.3 billion), up from nearly 119 billion yen a year ago. Quarterly sales surged 50% to 461.3 billion yen ($3.2 billion).

    Hardware sales jumped nearly 14% to 3.9 million Nintendo Switch machines, while software sales also grew, increasing 26% to 52 million games sold.

    Nintendo also got a healthy boost in revenue from its intellectual property business, exemplified by the Super Mario film but also other royalties.

    Nintendo has been pushing the idea of having several Nintendo Switch consoles per household, not just one, with family members each working a machine to play together.

    Among the popular games for such playing was “Pikmin 4,” which went on sale last month. That also came in a downloadable version, an area that’s a growing source of income for Nintendo.

    Nintendo, based in the ancient Japanese capital of Kyoto, is planning more games in coming months including “Super Mario Bros. Wonder,” set to go on sale in October.

    Nintendo kept its full year profit forecast unchanged at a 340 billion yen ($2.4 billion), down 21% on year.

    ___

    Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

    Source link

  • Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers

    Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers

    NEW YORK — Even during a year of sobering economic news for media companies, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a gut punch.

    The firings of the cartoonists employed by the McClatchy newspaper chain last week were a stark reminder of how an influential art form is dying, part of a general trend away from opinion content in the struggling print industry.

    Losing their jobs were Jack Ohman of California’s Sacramento Bee, also president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists; Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Ohman and Siers were full-time staffers, while Pett worked on a free-lance contract. The firings on Tuesday were first reported by The Daily Cartoonist blog.

    “I had no warning at all,” Ohman told The Associated Press. “I was stupefied.”

    McClatchy, which owns 30 U.S. newspapers, said it would no longer publish editorial cartoons. “We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the chain said in a statement.

    There’s a rich history of editorial cartooning, including Thomas Nast’s vivid takedowns of corrupt New York City politicians in the late 1800s and Herbert Block’s drawings of a sinister-looking Richard Nixon in The Washington Post.

    At the start of the 20th century, there were about 2,000 editorial cartoonists employed at newspapers, according to a report by the Herbert Block Foundation. Now, Ohman estimates there are fewer than 20.

    The last full-time editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer was Jim Morin of the Miami Herald in 2017. Since then, owing to the diminishing number of employed cartoonists, the Pulitzers have broadened the category in which they compete and renamed it “Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.”

    While written editorials can sometimes be ponderous and intimidate readers, the impact of a well-done cartoon is instantaneous, Pett said.

    “Usually when you look at an editorial cartoon, it’s (done by) some guy like you who is pissed who can draw,” he said. “It’s just relatable.”

    While economics is clearly a factor in an industry that has lost jobs so dramatically that many newspapers are mere ghosts of themselves, experts say timidity also explains the dwindling number of cartoonists. Readers are already disappearing, why give them a reason to be angry?

    Pett has been involved in a battle with Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general and a Republican candidate for governor. Cameron, who is Black, has accused Pett of being a race-baiter in his cartoons and called for his firing at a news conference — not knowing that hours earlier, his wish had been granted, said Pett, a Pulitzer winner in 2000.

    His bosses never told him to avoid cartoons about Cameron, but gave him a series of guidelines, Pett said. For instance, he was told not to depict Cameron wearing a MAGA hat backward.

    “There’s a broader reluctance in this political environment to make people mad,” said Tim Nickens, retired editorial page editor at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. “By definition, a provocative editorial cartoonist is going to make somebody mad every day.”

    Pett agrees.

    “I could have looked at the guy who fired me and said, ‘I’ll do it for free,’ and they would have said no,” he said.

    McClatchy insists that local opinion journalism remains central to its mission. The Miami Herald, a McClatchy newspaper, won a Pulitzer this year for “Broken Promises,” a series of editorials about a failure to rebuild troubled areas in southern Florida.

    In the current atmosphere, however, opinion is less valued. Gannett, the nation’s largest chain with more than 200 newspapers, said last year the papers would only offer opinion pages a couple of days a week. Its executives reasoned that these pages were not heavily read, and surveys showed readers did not want to be lectured to.

    That also meant less room for cartoons.

    The reasoning is there are plenty of places to find opinion online, particularly on national issues. Political endorsements are more infrequent at newspapers. In 2020, only 54 of the nation’s top 100 newspapers endorsed a presidential candidate, down from 92 in 2008, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    “When publications really don’t stand for anything in an editorial sense, that’s damaging, whether the pieces are widely read or not,” said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at The Poynter Institute.

    While the idea may be to steer clear of polarizing national issues to concentrate on local concerns, the irony is that newspapers that still want to use cartoons will be forced to turn more to syndicated services, whose pieces primarily deal with national or international issues.

    That’s what Pett draws for his contract with the Tribune Media Co., not cartoons about Kentucky.

    “This isn’t a crisis of cartooning particularly,” said Mike Peterson, a blogger at The Daily Cartoonist. “This is a crisis of newspapers failing to connect with their community.”

    Like newspaper owners, some cartoonists themselves fear there is less taste now for political satire, and more for inoffensive, funny drawings of the type popular in the New Yorker magazine.

    “At the end of the day, I think people like cartoons,” said Ohman, who won his Pulitzer in 2016. “But it’s hard for a cartoon to be ecumenical.”

    Source link

  • Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers

    Editorial cartoonists’ firings point to steady decline of opinion pages in newspapers

    NEW YORK — Even during a year of sobering economic news for media companies, the layoffs of three Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonists on a single day hit like a gut punch.

    The firings of the cartoonists employed by the McClatchy newspaper chain last week were a stark reminder of how an influential art form is dying, part of a general trend away from opinion content in the struggling print industry.

    Losing their jobs were Jack Ohman of California’s Sacramento Bee, also president of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists; Joel Pett of the Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky and Kevin Siers of the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina. Ohman and Siers were full-time staffers, while Pett worked on a free-lance contract. The firings on Tuesday were first reported by The Daily Cartoonist blog.

    “I had no warning at all,” Ohman told The Associated Press. “I was stupefied.”

    McClatchy, which owns 30 U.S. newspapers, said it would no longer publish editorial cartoons. “We made this decision based on changing reader habits and our relentless focus on providing the communities we serve with local news and information they can’t get elsewhere,” the chain said in a statement.

    There’s a rich history of editorial cartooning, including Thomas Nast’s vivid takedowns of corrupt New York City politicians in the late 1800s and Herbert Block’s drawings of a sinister-looking Richard Nixon in The Washington Post.

    At the start of the 20th century, there were about 2,000 editorial cartoonists employed at newspapers, according to a report by the Herbert Block Foundation. Now, Ohman estimates there are fewer than 20.

    The last full-time editorial cartoonist to win a Pulitzer was Jim Morin of the Miami Herald in 2017. Since then, owing to the diminishing number of employed cartoonists, the Pulitzers have broadened the category in which they compete and renamed it “Illustrated Reporting and Commentary.”

    While written editorials can sometimes be ponderous and intimidate readers, the impact of a well-done cartoon is instantaneous, Pett said.

    “Usually when you look at an editorial cartoon, it’s (done by) some guy like you who is pissed who can draw,” he said. “It’s just relatable.”

    While economics is clearly a factor in an industry that has lost jobs so dramatically that many newspapers are mere ghosts of themselves, experts say timidity also explains the dwindling number of cartoonists. Readers are already disappearing, why give them a reason to be angry?

    Pett has been involved in a battle with Daniel Cameron, Kentucky’s attorney general and a Republican candidate for governor. Cameron, who is Black, has accused Pett of being a race-baiter in his cartoons and called for his firing at a news conference — not knowing that hours earlier, his wish had been granted, said Pett, a Pulitzer winner in 2000.

    His bosses never told him to avoid cartoons about Cameron, but gave him a series of guidelines, Pett said. For instance, he was told not to depict Cameron wearing a MAGA hat backward.

    “There’s a broader reluctance in this political environment to make people mad,” said Tim Nickens, retired editorial page editor at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida. “By definition, a provocative editorial cartoonist is going to make somebody mad every day.”

    Pett agrees.

    “I could have looked at the guy who fired me and said, ‘I’ll do it for free,’ and they would have said no,” he said.

    McClatchy insists that local opinion journalism remains central to its mission. The Miami Herald, a McClatchy newspaper, won a Pulitzer this year for “Broken Promises,” a series of editorials about a failure to rebuild troubled areas in southern Florida.

    In the current atmosphere, however, opinion is less valued. Gannett, the nation’s largest chain with more than 200 newspapers, said last year the papers would only offer opinion pages a couple of days a week. Its executives reasoned that these pages were not heavily read, and surveys showed readers did not want to be lectured to.

    That also meant less room for cartoons.

    The reasoning is there are plenty of places to find opinion online, particularly on national issues. Political endorsements are more infrequent at newspapers. In 2020, only 54 of the nation’s top 100 newspapers endorsed a presidential candidate, down from 92 in 2008, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

    “When publications really don’t stand for anything in an editorial sense, that’s damaging, whether the pieces are widely read or not,” said Rick Edmonds, media business analyst at The Poynter Institute.

    While the idea may be to steer clear of polarizing national issues to concentrate on local concerns, the irony is that newspapers that still want to use cartoons will be forced to turn more to syndicated services, whose pieces primarily deal with national or international issues.

    That’s what Pett draws for his contract with the Tribune Media Co., not cartoons about Kentucky.

    “This isn’t a crisis of cartooning particularly,” said Mike Peterson, a blogger at The Daily Cartoonist. “This is a crisis of newspapers failing to connect with their community.”

    Like newspaper owners, some cartoonists themselves fear there is less taste now for political satire, and more for inoffensive, funny drawings of the type popular in the New Yorker magazine.

    “At the end of the day, I think people like cartoons,” said Ohman, who won his Pulitzer in 2016. “But it’s hard for a cartoon to be ecumenical.”

    Source link

  • As 1,500 Disneyland collectibles go up for auction, that Dumbo car — or trash bin — can be yours

    As 1,500 Disneyland collectibles go up for auction, that Dumbo car — or trash bin — can be yours

    BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — Fans who agree Disneyland is indeed the happiest place on Earth will soon be able to take home more than a souvenir.

    A passionate collector has brought Disney magic to a sprawling 30,000-square-foot (2,800-square-meter) building in Burbank, California, where fans can hear birds chirping in the Enchanted Tiki Room section or giggle at the animated ghosts from the Haunted Mansion ride as they preview more than 1,500 items up for auction later this month.

    Joel Magee has been building his collection of more than 6,000 items — including costumes, rare posters, and life-size vehicles from rides like Dumbo and Peter Pan — for 30 years, and he’s finally ready to share some of it with the public.

    Torrential rain has been pounding southwestern Japan, triggering floods and mudslides and leaving at least six people missing.

    Monsignor Victor Manuel Fernandez, archbishop of La Plata, smiles after a Mass at the Cathedral in La Plata, Argentina, Sunday, July 9, 2023. Fernandez was appointed by Pope Francis to head the Holy See's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

    An Argentine archbishop chosen by Pope Francis to head the Vatican office that ensures doctrinal orthodoxy concedes he made mistakes in handling a 2019 case of a priest accused of sexual abuse of minors.

    Allisen Corpuz poses with the winner's trophy after the U.S. Women's Open golf tournament at the Pebble Beach Golf Links, Sunday, July 9, 2023, in Pebble Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

    Allisen Corpuz picked the right time and the right place for her first big win. She won the first U.S.

    FILE - PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan speaks during a news conference before the Travelers Championship golf tournament at TPC River Highlands, June 22, 2022, in Cromwell, Conn. Monahan is returning to work just over a month after he stepped away for a “medical situation” during a tumultuous time of working out a surprise commercial agreement with the Saudi backers of LIV Golf. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

    The Washington Post is reporting former AT&T Chairman Randall Stephenson has resigned from the PGA Tour policy board.

    “I’m one of those guys — go big or go home. And if you don’t have the biggest, then it ain’t the best,” Magee told The Associated Press in a recent interview, as fans milled about the exhibit. Magee’s is the largest individually owned Disneyland/Disney Park collection in the world.

    “It’s really kind of exciting. This is the first time that all of my things have been in the same room at the same time,” he said.

    Magee is known in the collectible industry as “the toy scout,” and has amassed a huge collection of toys and Disney items. He says he watched “The Wonderful World of Disney” on TV every week as a kid but had never been to the park and never thought about collecting until he was at a toy show where he met a man selling Disneyland artifacts and got hooked.

    “At the time, I couldn’t afford too much. I bought a couple of pieces, but that’s where it all began,” Magee said. “In my travels as ‘the toy scout,’ I meet people all over the country and for the last 25 years, they’ve just been bringing me all their stuff and here it is today.”

    The items for sale are as small as a trading card and as large as a 1917 Model T moving van from Disneyland’s original Main Street that Magee says Walt Disney created himself.

    Mike Van Eaton is the co-owner of Van Eaton Galleries, which is running the auction. He says among the most sought-after items are those from the Haunted Mansion attraction, including original stretch paintings from the elevator in the iconic ride, and a “doom buggy” — the vehicle guests ride on.

    “Joel also has one of the most amazing Disney attraction poster collections in the world. He has every attraction poster ever in the park. And those are also going to do very well,” Van Eaton said.

    There are items for every price point, with some starting as low as $50 — but most go way up from there.

    “Some of these items, such as the Dumbo ride vehicle, may go for $200,000 to $300,000. We have trash cans from the park that may go for $5,000 or $6,000, and posters that could reach $50,000 to $60,000,” Van Eaton said.

    Magee says it’s hard to choose his favorites in such a large collection but he is partial to the static props he’s brought to life.

    “The Tiki birds, oh my gosh, they were piles of junk when we got them! They were worn out, pieces were missing,” Magee said. “Some good friends of mine that do a lot of work … in that field brought them all back to life better than you could ever imagine. And … people look at that and you can just see the magic in their eyes when they see them.”

    The exhibition is at the Burbank Town Center Mall and runs through July 16. The auction will be held July 17 through 19.

    ___

    Lefferts reported from New York.

    Source link