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  • The Real History Behind ‘My Lady Jane’

    The Real History Behind ‘My Lady Jane’

    Often called England’s first queen, Lady Jane Grey only reigned for nine days in 1553 at the age of 16. It was rocky from start to finish: When she took the throne, the country was fiercely divided between Protestants and Catholics.

    A new historical fantasy series, My Lady Jane, premiering June 27 on Prime Video, imagines if those divisions were between regular humans—known as verities—and Ethians, humans who can turn into animals and are viewed as the lowest caste in their society. Lady Jane Grey (Emily Bader) frantically spends her short reign trying to promote unity, urging respect for Ethians, especially because her husband Guilford Dudley (Edward Bluemel) is an Ethian who can change into a horse.

    TIME talked to two Lady Jane Grey biographers, Nicola Tallis and Leanda de Lisle, about what to know about the real Lady Jane who inspired the show. 

    Who is Lady Jane Grey?

    A great niece of Henry VIII, she was born in Bradgate, Leicestershire, England, in 1537.

    In the show, she’s depicted as an extremely intellectually curious teenager, always reading up on medicinal uses for herbs for a textbook she wants to write. This is why Guilford wants to marry her—he hopes she can find a cure that will stop him from turning into a horse at unexpected times.

    The real Jane did love reading books, but was more passionate about languages and theology than science. She spoke several languages, including Arabic and Hebrew and relished exchanging letters with other educated people. “She was really, really academic,” says Tallis.

    Lady Jane Grey’s real love life

    My Lady Jane depicts her as fiercely independent, and hell bent on never getting married. In the show, Jane is married off to English nobleman Guilford Dudley against her will. But the show implies they fall in love, depicting Jane and Dudley experiencing an instant attraction when they meet. Biographers say their real marriage was far from a real love story.

    “We know Jane didn’t really want to be married to him,” says Tallis, author of Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey.

    In the show, Jane’s mother Lady Frances Grey (Anna Chancellor) plans the marriage with Dudley’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, to ensure her family will not have to worry about money again. But according to Tallis, “there is a source that says that her mother was also really, really against this marriage to Guilford Dudley. And I think that that’s probably quite true.”

    The Duke of Northumberland was pushing the marriage from the get-go. As one of the King’s chief politicians, he persuaded a dying Edward VI to name Jane his heir in this will so that when she rose to the throne, his son would be King. It is true, as the show depicts, that there was a rumor that the Duke of Northumberland (Rob Brydon) poisoned the king to hasten his son’s ascent to the throne.

    De Lisle argues that Edward VI was a bit of a “misogynist” in that he wanted a married woman to be queen so that a man would at least be doing some of the work of ruling. As she explains Edward VI’s thinking back then, “Jane has a husband and her husband will basically be a king. That’s Edward’s view. [His] sister Mary is not married.”

    What to know about Lady Jane Grey’s reign

    The real Edward VI died of some kind of pulmonary infection like tuberculosis on July 6, 1553. In the show, his sister Mary is in on a plot to slowly poison him so she can get to the throne faster, but that plot line is purely fictional.

    In real life, Edward VI wanted Jane to be his heir because he wanted a Protestant successor, and his elder half sister Mary had become a staunch Catholic.

    Jordan Peters as King Edward VI in Prime Video series ‘My Lady Jane.’Jonathan Prime—Prime Video

    Mary was not “Mrs. Popular with the powers that be because she was a Catholic,” de Lisle explains. “England was a Catholic country. Protestantism was largely being imposed by the king and by the elites.”

    But during Jane’s reign, it was discovered that his will was not legal because it had not been passed by Parliament. That meant Mary was next in line, legally, so that’s why Jane was overthrown after nine days. Mary assumed the throne on July 19, 1553.

    Mary was more popular among the general public than Jane in general because she was a daughter of Henry VIII and raised in the court. “Lots of people are fearful of the idea of a woman bearing power and particularly one who they don’t know,” says Tallis.

    When Jane started speaking out against all of Mary’s Catholic reforms, describing taking communion in a Catholic mass as a satanic form of cannibalism. On top of that, her family started organizing a campaign to depose Mary. While Mary never wanted to execute Jane in the first place, she felt like she had no choice. Mary saw Jane as “a potential lightning rod for a rebellion,” as de Lisle puts it.

    Jane and Guilford Dudley were both executed on February 12, 1554. 

    Olivia B. Waxman

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  • Woman Discovers Fleetwood Mac in Wholesome Viral Tweet

    Woman Discovers Fleetwood Mac in Wholesome Viral Tweet

    One woman’s recent journey through Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 opus Rumors led to a truly wholesome moment online.

    Raven Baxter, who goes by @ravenscimaven on X (formerly Twitter), shared on Tuesday night that she heard one of the hit songs from Rumors, “Go Your Own Way,” and was shocked to learn about the drama behind it and the whole album.

    Rumors, which was an instant hit upon its release, came as multiple interpersonal relationships between Fleetwood Mac’s band members went sour: Stevie Nicks’ relationship with Lindsey Buckingham had ended; the group’s namesake drummer, Mick Fleetwood had learned his wife had cheated on him; and the late Christine McVie and John McVie divorced in 1976 after eight years of marriage, and still worked together on the album. All of this turmoil was channeled into what is regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time, sitting at No. 7 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums of All Time” list.

    Baxter’s post went viral, and she continued to add to the thread as she listened to more of the album. “Wait is this WHOLE album two people in the band breaking up and fighting?!?!” she wrote.

    Her posts about experiencing the great album for the first time endeared her to others, who delighted in her joy of discovery, and responded saying that they wished they could relive learning about the drama of Fleetwood Mac for the first time. The band trended on X on Wednesday, as users chimed in with suggestions for other Fleetwood Mac songs to listen to.

    “If you love “Go Your Own Way” you have you to listen to “The Chain” *especially* after a couple of margaritas lol,” one person wrote. “that whole album is a trip. two couples breaking up and singing their feelings at each other,” another person wrote.

    Moises Mendez II

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  • How Madame Web Connects to the Spider-Man Cinematic Multiverse

    How Madame Web Connects to the Spider-Man Cinematic Multiverse

    Warning: This post contains spoilers for Madame Web.

    Three Spider-Man movies are hitting theaters in 2024, but none of those three movies are actually about Spider-Man—or even feature the friendly neighborhood web-slinger as a character at all. Madame Web, which is now in theaters, is an entry in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, a collection of films that take full advantage of the studio’s ownership of Spidey film rights even as the main character is primarily making live-action appearances in the Disney-owned Marvel Cinematic Universe where Tom Holland plays him.

    And yet, Madame Web, like Morbius before it, and presumably like this year’s upcoming Kraven the Hunter and another Venom sequel after it, does have connections to Spider-Man. Madame Web’s connections to Spider-Man are quite explicit, but the film is not seemingly connected to any established version of Spider-Man that viewers might already be familiar with. Here’s a spoiler-filled explanation of how Madame Web fits in the complex, well, web of Spider-Man movies.

    Read more: Everything You Need to Know About Madame Web

    There’s no Spider-Man, but there is Peter Parker (kind of)

    Johnson, decidedly not an elderly lady, in Madame WebCourtesy of Sony Pictures

    Madame Web’s title character is a woman with the power to see the future who is a blind elderly woman in the comics and is played by Dakota Johnson (neither blind nor elderly) in the movie. (Her comic book origin story and background are hardly required reading for this heavily reimagined version of the character.) A paramedic living in New York City in the year 2003 rather than the present day—which is important—Cassie Webb becomes involved in the world of superheroes when she starts getting visions of the future. She must attempt to save three teenage girls played by Sydney Sweeney, Celeste O’Connor, and Isabela Merced from being murdered by a man named Ezekiel Sims (Tahar Rahim), who has connections to Cassie’s dead mother from her days researching spiders in the Amazon before she died (as infamously referenced in the movie’s trailer). Ezekiel has dreams that these three teens, who will become B-list Spider-Women characters from the comic books in some future, will kill him unless he kills them first.

    Spider-Man does not exist in the world of Madame Web—or, rather, he doesn’t exist yet. Cassie’s best friend is Ben Parker, Peter Parker’s famous father figure. As played by Adam Scott, this Ben is not quite Uncle Ben yet, but his sister Mary (Emma Roberts) is pregnant with Peter. (The woman who will become Aunt May is alluded to as somebody Ben’s started seeing but is not named or seen, and Peter’s dad Richard is similarly unseen, as he’s away on business.)

    The movie ends with Ezekiel’s final confrontation with Cassie and the three teens while Mary is giving birth. The bad guy nearly blows up the car that they’re all in while Ben is driving them to the hospital but Cassie saves the day—and in doing so saves the future Spider-Man. Ben, the man who will eventually raise Peter and teach him about great power and great responsibility, is present for Peter’s birth. Peter’s name is conspicuously, deliberately, never clearly said in the movie, but we all know that’s Peter Parker. 

    When one of the teens notes that Ben’s going to have all the fun of having a baby without any of the responsibility because he’s an uncle rather than a father, Cassie quips that she wouldn’t be so sure of that. It’s a fun little nod to his future, but it also implies that Cassie knows that Peter’s birth parents are going to die. Grim!

    Presumably, in 16 or so years after the end of the movie, baby Peter Parker will have grown up and he’ll get bit by a radioactive spider and Ben will be murdered, leading to his crime-fighting career. Never mind that, according to the fiction of Madame Web, there might already be four spider-themed superheroes already active by the time Peter comes of age. All of the Spider-Women characters (Julia Cornwall, Mattie Franklin, and Anya Corazon) gained their Spidey-like powers through different, unrelated means than Peter Parker did in the comics. But, all of them were so clearly inspired by the original Spider-Man—both in fiction and in reality—that it feels a little odd to have them fighting crime in costumes that resemble Spider-Man’s.

    The future version of Spider-Man, Madame Web suggests, will grow up in a world where his uncle was nearly killed by a villain with spider powers wearing what essentially looks like an evil Spider-Man suit. In Madame Web’s world, Spider-Man—the original Web-Slinger—is derivative. But that doesn’t matter so much because Madame Web is functionally in its own continuity.

    Madame Web is not connected to the MCU or any other Spider-Verse (…kind of)

    MADAME WEB
    Ezekiel (Tahar Rahim) in Madame Web.Courtesy of Sony Pictures Entertainment

    Having Peter Parker appear in the movie but as a baby is hardly the most egregious shoehorning-in of Spider-Man in one of Sony’s Spider-Man-less cinematic universe. The trailer for Morbius features shots of the title character walking by Spider-Man graffiti that is not actually there in the final film and was inserted just to stir up false hope that Morbius would have a real Spider-Man connection. (That film’s post-credits sequence brings the MCU’s Vulture into the Morbius world, and he seems to have a grudge against Spider-Man despite there being no evidence that he really exists in this universe.) Spider-Man doesn’t seem to exist within the world of the Venom movies but the titular Symbiote knows who he is thanks to multiversal connections, and Tom Hardy’s character briefly travels to the MCU due to the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home.

    Madame Web is different because it implies that Spider-Man will indeed exist in this film’s universe, as the film is set in 2003 and Peter Parker has been born. However, while the film’s choice of time period makes it conceivable that it could act as a prequel to another established Spider-Man spin-off universe, the facts don’t quite fit. It’s certainly not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (which, again, is owned by Disney rather than Sony, the studio behind Madame Web). Dakota Johnson is not running around a world in which Captain America and Tony Stark exist. There’s no evidence that Madame Web or the three Spider-Women—none of whom have actually obtained their superpowers by the time the film ends—exist in what would be Morbius or Venom’s past, but there’s not really any evidence they don’t exist, either. That makes Madame Web functionally a standalone film regardless of its theoretical potential to be a prequel.

    And yet, technically Madame Web is part of the larger Spider-Man cinematic multiverse—which is set to continue with a third Venom movie and a Kraven the Hunter film in Sony’s films, another animated Spider-Verse film, and there’s talk that Tom Holland might return for a fourth Spider-Man film in the Disney-owned MCU canon. Madame Web doesn’t directly connect to any other Spider movies, past or future, but it easily could. Between Across the Spider-Verse (which featured a live-action cameo from a Venom actor) and Spider-Man: No Way Home bringing Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire’s Spider-Men into the MCU’s continuity, there’s lots of precedent for any and all Spider-Man content to be just a multiversal portal and a crossover away from being canon. So, while Madame Web doesn’t have any real connections to any other Spider-Man movie, it’s not not connected to them. You don’t need to have Madame Web’s ability to see the future to understand Spider-Man movies, but it would certainly help.

    James Grebey

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  • How Episode 5 of True Detective: Night Country Sets Up the Finale

    How Episode 5 of True Detective: Night Country Sets Up the Finale


    Warning: This post contains spoilers for episode 5 of True Detective: Night Country.

    With just one episode to go, True Detective: Night Country appears to be careening toward a breakneck finale.

    While episode 5—available to stream early on Max beginning Feb. 9 at 9 p.m. ET—answered a litany of questions about what’s really going down in Ennis, the season’s most pressing mysteries remain unsolved. Not to mention that Danvers (Jodie Foster), Navarro (Kali Reis), and Prior (Finn Bennett) are now in a bigger mess than ever.

    What happens in True Detective: Night Country episode 5?

    After Danvers learns from Otis Heiss (Klaus Tange) that he sustained his injuries—similar to those of the dead Tsalal scientists—30 years earlier while mapping the underground ice cave system where Annie K (Nivi Pedersen) was later murdered, she demands that he take her to the caves’ entrance. Still in withdrawal, he insists she get him heroin in exchange for his services, but she refuses.

    Jodie Foster as Liz Danvers in episode 5 of True Detective: Night CountryMichele K. Short—HBO

    Danvers and Navarro try to investigate the caves on their own but find that the entrance—which just so happens to be on Silver Sky mining company property—has been blown shut. We later learn “Night Country” is how locals refer to the underground ice caves and that people used to leave that recurring spiral symbol as a warning at places where “the ice would swallow [you] whole.”

    Danvers is called out to Silver Sky under the guise of meeting with owner Kate McKittrick (Dervla Kirwan) about the protests over the mine. But what McKittrick really wants is to reveal that she has video footage of Danvers and Navarro trespassing on mine property at the entrance to the ice caves. Thanks to Prior, Danvers now knows that Tuttle United, the corporation funding Tsalal, also has deals with a banking company that’s a founding partner of Silver Sky—meaning, in Danvers’ words, that “the mine bankrolls Tsalal and then Tsalal pushes out bogus pollution numbers for them.”

    Captain Connelly (Christopher Eccleston) insists in no uncertain terms that Danvers accept the explanation that the Tsalal deaths were caused by a “weather event” by revealing that he knows there was no suicide in the William Wheeler murder-suicide case and implying that he will use it against Danvers and Navarro if they don’t drop their investigation.

    But McKittrick clearly doesn’t want there to be any loose ends. She secretly meets with Hank (John Hawkes) and not-so-subtly suggests that Hank kill Heiss before he can lead Danvers to the cave where Annie K was killed. We learn that, years earlier, McKittrick bribed Hank to move Annie K’s dead body from the cave to the location where she was found with the promise of money and the position of Ennis Chief of Police. Danvers’ relocation got in the way of his promotion, but McKittrick says things will be different this time around.

    John Hawkes as Hank Prior in episode 5 of 'True Detective: Night Country'
    John Hawkes as Hank Prior in episode 5 of True Detective: Night CountryMichele K. Short—HBO

    Danvers confronts Prior about Hank learning about the Wheeler case—and subsequently telling Connelly about it—from breaking into Prior’s laptop, where Prior had been looking into old files that revealed the truth about Wheeler’s death. She then takes heroin she stole from the evidence room and picks up Heiss from the Lighthouse.

    Back at Danvers’ house, Heiss points out the best point of access to the caves and Danvers hands over the heroin. Suddenly, Hank, who has been following Danvers, shows up and a confrontation ensues during which Hank fatally shoots Heiss. Prior also bursts in and as Hank prepares to kill Danvers, Prior shoots his father in the head and kills him.

    Navarro shows up and the three formulate a plan to cover up the murders: Prior will clean up the mess and take the bodies to Rose Aguineau (Fiona Shaw) while Danvers and Navarro go to the ice caves in hopes of solving both Annie K’s murder and the Tsalal case.

    Read more: What’s Up With the Ghosts in True Detective: Night Country Episode 4?

    What questions does the True Detective: Night Country finale still need to answer?

    Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro in 'True Detective: Night Country'
    Kali Reis as Evangeline Navarro in episode 5 of True Detective: Night CountryMichele K. Short—HBO

    Heading into the season finale, the three biggest questions that True Detective: Night Country still needs to answer are: Who killed Annie K? Who or what killed the Tsalal scientists? And how are the two cases connected?

    Ahead of the premiere, showrunner Issa López told Vanity Fair that “[The character or characters who] committed the deed are right there in front of you through the entire series.”

    That means that, unlike in Season 1—where the killer made a singular, brief appearance before the big reveal— Danvers and Navarro have likely been interacting with whoever is responsible throughout the first five episodes.

    There are also some more secondary (but nonetheless notable) mysteries that the finale will hopefully address. Where is Raymond Clark? What really happened at William Wheeler’s house? Is Navarro actually cursed? What’s going on with all the ghosts?

    Until next week, we’ll just have to keep guessing.



    Megan McCluskey

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  • How Your ‘Digital Body Language’ Affects Your Dating Life

    How Your ‘Digital Body Language’ Affects Your Dating Life


    In dating, body language has always been an essential way of communicating what might not be said aloud—nonverbal communication like a lingering glance, a turn toward another person, or a subtle touching of hands can communicate volumes. But for modern daters in an increasingly online world, these tactics aren’t always available. That’s why experts are making the case that we need to consider digital body language as a crucial part of modern dating.

    Digital body language, or DBL, is communication in which digital interaction, like messaging on a dating app or over text, is used to express or convey contextual information. Like conventional body language, DBL is all about reading what isn’t being said aloud—non-verbal subtext, if you will,—which means that seemingly commonplace aspects of digital communication, like emojis, punctuation, message length, and response time, are now important ways for daters to gauge potential interest. According to a new study by Hinge about the state of dating for Gen Z, 77% of people who use their platform say that DBL reveals a lot about a match’s interests and intentions.

    The report, which surveyed over 15,000 Gen Z daters, also found that 69% of those surveyed rely on DBL to decide if they want to commit to going out with someone. Hinge’s Love and Connection expert, licensed marriage and family therapist Moe Ari Brown, says that Gen Z’s embrace and reliance on DBL should come as no suprise, given the constant presence of technology throughout their lives.

    “Gen Z daters are a digital native generation,” Brown tells TIME. “They were born with technology and don’t know a world without it, but that has made them pretty awesome at interpreting what the online version of verbal and nonverbal cues would be, so they are savvy at reading DBL as a way of understanding someone’s dating intentions.”

    Though interpreting DBL is quickly becoming a necessary part of modern dating, it’s presented some unique challenges for daters. Hinge reports that 56% of those surveyed said that they have overanalyzed someone’s digital body language and stressed over whether or not someone was actually interested in dating them.

    Brown points to the three things Hinge’s research found that Gen Z was most concerned with when it comes to DBL: who initiates conversation, the timing of responses, and message consistency. For him, good DBL boils down essentially to the tenets of good communication, regardless of the mechanism.

    “Good communication [in dating] is being clear about your intentions from the very beginning,” he says. “Good DBL looks like not leaving a lot up to interpretation—so no one-word answers or very short responses. We want to always be thoughtful in our responses and think about how this is going to be received by another person.”

    Brown says it can be as simple as carefully considering what emojis you use or the punctuation at the end of a sentence. He also makes the case that a good rule of thumb is using the golden rule: treat others as you’d like to be treated.

    “Doing a self-check on your digital body language is good—if you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and were on the receiving end of what you send and you feel that your communication is very clear, that will probably lead to more dates,” he says.

    Fluency in DBL has become increasingly important as Gen Z has entered the dating pool. As perhaps the most “online” generation currently dating, Gen Z is 33% more likely than their millennial counterparts, according to Hinge, to say that they feel more comfortable chatting online with a potential partner than they would be in real life. Gen Z daters are also far more concerned with appearing cool to would-be matches. The daters surveyed were 50% more likely than millennials to delay responding to a message, in an effort to “play it cool,” even if they were interested in them.

    “The downside to DBL is that we might not lean in and make the possible connections that we could,” Brown says. “If we’re doing too much interpretation and not enough leaning in, then we’re not being clear ourselves.”

    While DBL can be a great way to gauge if there’s interest in going on a date, Brown says it shouldn’t necessarily be the metric for screening potential partners. He encourages people to use possible differences in communication styles—like if one person texts frequently and the other doesn’t respond—as an incentive to get to know them better. In this particular scenario, Brown says being clear and direct about what makes you feel uncomfortable can help resolve the issue and also hint at possible compatibility.

    He offers up a script for the situation: “‘Hey, I noticed that when we talk sometimes, you stop responding and I don’t know whether to follow up with you. I’d love to to keep our response timing more prompt or would love if you respond within 24 hours, just so I know that we’re going to keep communicating.’” The other person’s response can be quite telling. “If they’re not receptive to that, then they don’t really have the flexibility that is essential for partnership,” he says. “You’re not going to have the same communication to begin with. It’s really about that person’s flexibility and willingness to change it to grow with you. Those are the cornerstones of good partnership.”

    Brown also emphasizes that having conversations like this can be better in person and stresses that good DBL should lead to in-person connection, not replace it. In other words, while the world is increasingly digital, it appears that there’s still nothing quite like getting to know someone IRL.



    Cady Lang

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  • What to Know About the 2024 Grammy Awards

    What to Know About the 2024 Grammy Awards


    The Grammys are taking place on Sunday, Feb. 4, and the competition is stacked this year. The coveted golden gramophones will be handed out at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California. This year, music’s biggest night will focus on many nominated artists vying for a statue. SZA is the night’s most nominated artist, with nine nods, and is poised to win her first solo Grammy (she won her first ever award for her duet with Doja Cat on “Kiss Me More”). Victoria Monet and Phoebe Bridgers follow SZA, tying with seven nominations each.

    The Grammys typically make for an eventful ceremony, with unexpected moments every year. We saw Beyoncé make Grammy history as the most-awarded artist in Grammy history with 31 wins after her 2022 album Renaissance nabbed a statue for Best Dance/Electronic Album. It was a heartwarming moment for Beyoncé, who was in tears as she took the stage to accept her award. And Harry Styles set off the discourse when he won Album of the Year for Harry’s House and said, “This doesn’t happen to people like me very often.” This caused an uproar on social media, as many fans wrote about Beyoncé losing the night’s biggest prize and only being awarded once in the ceremony’s Big Four category.

    Read More: Was SZA’s SOS Worth The Wait? Breaking Down Its Best Songs and Big Themes

    This year will surely come with its surprises and upsets, as the Grammys always do. Here’s everything you need to know about the 2024 Grammy Awards

    When are the Grammy Awards?

    The 66th Annual Grammy Awards will take place on Feb. 4, starting at 8:00 PM EST and lasting until around 11:30 PM EST.

    Where to watch the Grammy Awards

    For those watching at home, the ceremony will be available on the CBS Network and to stream on Paramount+.

    Who is hosting the Grammy Awards?

    Comedian Trevor Noah is slated to host the Grammys ceremony for his fourth consecutive year in the role.

    Who are the major performers this year?

    This year, audiences are being treated to some exciting performances by hitmakers past and present. U2 and Billy Joel are ready to perform at the Grammys. Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, SZA, Olivia Rodrigo, Luke Combs, Burna Boy, and Travis Scott round out the contemporary artists slated to take the stage at Sunday’s award ceremony. Joni Mitchell will perform on the Grammys stage for the first time ever.

    The most anticipated nominations

    Across the musical spectrum, there are some interesting match-ups. SZA is the most nominated artist this year, with Victoria Monet and Phoebe Bridgers trailing behind in the second-most nominated spot. This year, there are eight artists with six nominations, including Miley Cyrus, Jon Batiste, Jack Antonoff, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, Brandy Clark, and Boygenius.

    Read More: Beyoncé’s Album of the Year Snub Fits Into the Grammys’ Long History of Overlooking Black Women

    Before the awards ceremony even takes place on Sunday, Swift already broke the record for most nominations in the Song of the Year category after getting her seventh nod for “Anti-Hero,” although she has yet to win in this category. Eyes are also on her if she wins Album of the Year for Midnights, making her the most awarded artist in this category, beating out Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra, who each have three wins.

    Boygenius could also become the second girl-group to win Record of the Year if they take home a trophy for “Not Strong Enough.”



    Moises Mendez II

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  • True Detective's Spiral Symbol Explained

    True Detective's Spiral Symbol Explained

    Warning: This post contains spoilers for episode 2 of True Detective: Night Country.

    The mystery at the heart of True Detective: Night Country is starting to heat up. Literally.

    After arriving at the site where the missing Tsalal Arctic Research Center scientists were found frozen into a grotesque tableau in the season premiere, Ennis Police Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) decides to have the mass of bodies transported to the town ice rink to slowly thaw. But not before an officer haphazardly snaps off one of the scientist’s hands, prompting a reaction that alerts everyone around that he’s somehow still alive.

    Night Country‘s second episode centers on Danvers and state trooper Evangeline Navarro’s (Kali Reis) search for a connection between Annie K (Nivi Pedersen), a local Indigenous woman who was murdered six years earlier, and Tsalal paleomicrobiologist Raymond Clark (Owen McDonnell), the mysteriously convulsing scientist from the season’s cold open. In the premiere, Danvers discovered that Clark had been photographed wearing what appeared to be a pink parka that once belonged to Annie K. And after learning this episode that he also had a spiral tattoo on his chest that matched both the design drawn on the surviving scientist’s forehead and a tattoo on Annie K’s back, it seems clear they’re onto something.

    Tsalal scientists frozen in the ice in True Detective: Night CountryMichele K. Short—HBO

    Some smart detective work by Navarro leads her to the realization that Annie K and Clark were apparently involved in some level of romantic relationship, which they kept secret by rendezvousing in an old RV parked at a rundown trailer park known as the Nook. When Danvers and Navarro go to investigate the trailer, they discover Annie K’s phone inside alongside a mess of animal bones, a collection of creepy yarn sculptures, a shrine of photos, and—you guessed it—another painting of that same crooked spiral.

    Read more: Breaking Down the True Detective: Night Country Premiere—And Its Possible Supernatural Twist

    What’s the deal with the True Detective spiral?

    Seasoned fans of True Detective will remember the spiral from the series’ first season, in which it became known as a symbol of the sadistic cult at the center of the neo-noir crime saga.

    Detectives Rust Cohle (Matthew McConaughey) and Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) originally encountered the spiral painted on the dead body of Dora Lange, whose murder set in motion their investigation into a string of ritualistic killings in the Louisiana bayou. It then continued to crop up in various forms throughout the season, both as a literal sign of the cult and a more overarching motif representing the series’ occult influences. (The Tuttle United company name-dropped in Night Country as the corporation funding Tsalal also seems to be a reference to the sinister Tuttle family behind Season 1’s cult.)

    While we still don’t know what the spiral means in the context of Night Country, Foster says she believes all the True Detective stories are interconnected in some way. “Whether it’s the Louisiana bayou or the big city of Los Angeles or the Ozarks or northern Alaska, how these extreme settings affect the psyches of the detectives is very important,” she told TIME. “There’s an eerie connection between these places and the detectives’ journeys as human beings.”

    Are there other references to True Detective Season 1 in Night Country?

    Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle in True Detective season 1
    Matthew McConaughey as Rust Cohle in True Detective season 1HBO

    Naturally, the spiral isn’t Night Country‘s only callback to True Detective’s original entry.

    When Rust and Marty examine Dora Lange’s diary in the second episode of Season 1, they find mentions of the “Yellow King”—a title they eventually discover refers to a seemingly mythical figure worshipped by the men responsible for killing Dora and an untold number of other women and children. There are also several lines in Dora’s diary pulled directly from Robert W. Chambers’ 1895 anthology The King in Yellow, in which a fictional play by the same name casts an ominous shadow over the 10 short stories that make up the collection of “weird fiction.”

    In the book, the play is said to lure readers in with an ordinary first act before driving them mad with a second act that reveals unbearable truths about the universe. Nods to the play appear throughout the anthology, but it features most prominently in the collection’s debut story, a tale titled “The Repairer of Reputations” in which an unreliable narrator named Hildred Castaigne reads The King in Yellow while recovering from a head injury in a mental asylum.

    Those familiar with this literary lore may have noticed that the Night Country premiere opens with an epigraph attributed to Hildred Castaigne: “For we do not know what beasts the night dreams when its hours grow too long for even God to be awake.”

    However, that quote never actually appears in Chambers’ work. Instead, Season 4 showrunner Issa López said she made it up to include another “little wink” to Season 1 for the fans. “I was looking for the perfect quote to talk about the things that hide in the dark and I couldn’t find it,” she told Business Insider. “So I wrote it.”

    Megan McCluskey

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  • Ava DuVernay on the Urgency and Artistry of 'Origin'

    Ava DuVernay on the Urgency and Artistry of 'Origin'

    For filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who made Selma, 13th, and When They See Us, the journalist Isabel Wilkerson’s watershed 2020 book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (recommended to her repeatedly by Oprah) was full of seeds. Moments planted throughout the book made her itch to know more.

    Caste is a seminal work that connects the dots between the ancient, entrenched caste system of India, slavery and Jim Crow laws in the U.S., and the Third Reich of Nazi Germany. In deeply researched accounts, Wilkerson posits that the three places are linked by caste, something bigger than racism that explains why humans feel the need to subjugate others, and how they accomplish it.

    DuVernay was drawn to the moments in the book centered on specific people—and as she found out more about them, they grew to form the story of her latest film, Origin, an adaptation of Caste out in theaters on Jan. 19.

    In Caste, Wilkerson mentions August Landmesser, the only man in a 1936 photograph of a crowd of Germans who did not heil Hitler. DuVernay delved deeper and learned Landmesser’s story: a member of the Nazi Party, he was expelled after marrying a Jewish woman named Irma Eckler, imprisoned, and later drafted into penal military service, where he was killed in action. Eckler was forced into a concentration camp and later murdered.

    Landmesser and Eckler become fully realized characters in Origin, which draws out their love story, forbidden by the Nuremberg Laws enacted in 1935. The film also weaves in the story of Elizabeth and Allison Davis, two Black anthropologists who co-wrote the groundbreaking book Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class in 1941. In Caste, Wilkerson writes about their dangerous undercover work studying race in Natchez, Miss., and DuVernay expands that story. The couple, it turns out, had previously been studying in Berlin on the cusp of the rise of Nazism.

    In adapting Wilkerson’s treatise into a deeply human story, brimming with real people full of life on three continents, DuVernay turned the author herself into a character, played in Origin by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who grapples with waves of grief while working on her book.

    Speaking with TIME from a car in a snowy Manhattan in January, DuVernay discussed how turning Caste into a movie allowed her to tap into new modes of storytelling. The conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.

    Isabel Wilkerson (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) arrives in India, where she’s researching the caste system for her book.Atsushi Nishijima—NEON

    TIME: What was going through your head when you finished reading Caste?

    After I read the book, I was ignited by all of these new ideas. I didn’t understand them all. I wanted to wrestle with them more. I wanted to dig a little deeper, so I read it again, and then I read it a third time. And each time, my connection to some of it — things I agreed with, things I disagreed with, things I wanted to know more about — it was all swirling around in my head in a way that was very exciting to me. To learn, to be provoked, just to lean into something new.

    Were there characters that leapt out of the book for you? And what did you add of your own?

    The book is an anthropological thesis that focuses on the distillation and the sharing of a generations-old, deeply entrenched social phenomenon. It’s got facts, it’s got figures, it’s got some anecdotes, with a character or two here or there. But there’s not one character or a character-driven story or even a plot-driven story that you can follow, beginning, middle, and end. That’s the kind of thing that we look for as screenwriters. 

    And then just anything that has to do with Isabel Wilkerson herself: She was generous enough to give me two years’ worth of interviews during the pandemic on Zoom, and hours-long conversations and texts and emails, engaging with me and answering all my questions about her personal life and the losses of her family and the ways in which she triumphed through grief to write this book.

    Ava DuVernay directs on the set of ‘Origin,’ at the Bebelplatz in Berlin.Atsushi Nishijima—NEON

    I really tried to break the boundaries of how I was taught storytelling should go: That this could have historical elements, contemporary elements, surreal elements; that it could blur the line between narrative and documentary; and you could use non-actors with actors with people playing themselves. And that I don’t have to put a lower third on everything and tell you where you are and what year it is; that I can say, “This is all one thing, and it doesn’t matter where it happens or when it happens. It’s caste, and it looks all of these different ways.” And that audiences are smart enough and wise enough to not need those kinds of markers.

    There’s a scene, maybe 30 minutes in, after Isabel loses her husband and her mother within a year of each other. She lies, eyes glazed over, on a bed of dead, dried leaves as more brown leaves fall slowly around her. Where did that personification of grief come from?  

    That’s the personal visual that I brought to the picture from my own experience with grief. I think as an artist, we have to—especially when we’re adapting or chronicling real people, real events—put our fingerprints on it in various ways. That scene is how I feel when I lose someone.

    I know you wanted to get Origin into the world before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Why was that so critical?

    I think that we’re in a state of emergency that not enough people are attuned to. I’m just a filmmaker, all I do is make films. What I can do is make a movie about how I feel and what I want to draw people’s attention to. And the hope is that more and more artists, more and more advocates, more and more people become activists. Activist just means raising your voice in whatever way works for you.

    But this is a time when we need to be alert. We need to be aware of the stripping of freedoms and rights. The intention of certain people to distort history, to say it doesn’t matter, to say it never happened. And books being taken off shelves, information being contorted. This is the time when we have to push through our fatigue and open our eyes and engage. Hopefully this film contributes to that in some way.

    You’ve said that humans “will always figure out how to bifurcate and categorize and create hierarchy,” that they’ll always develop castes. How do we get people to stop doing that?

    I believe that if enough people become interested in civility, if enough people become interested in dignity, human dignity for people who don’t look like you, that there could be a shift, a bend towards justice, towards freedom for more people. I think it’s possible. Will it be in our lifetimes? I’m not sure. But there’s an old proverb that says, “We sit in the shadow of trees we did not plant.” And we have to plant those seeds now for the future. So I hope that this film stirs some of that conversation, some of that thinking.

    What does it mean to let this film be independently financed? What kind of creative freedom did that grant you?

    It gave me the ability to cast Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the lead. This is her first time as a lead in a major picture. A 50-year-old woman, incredibly accomplished, magnificently talented, who’d never been tapped to play the lead. And you look at what studios say the leads of films, what those people need to be like, look like, have done. The popularity, the social media aspect, all the math that’s done to approve someone to be a lead in a picture. And oftentimes [there] is a disconnect between that and the quality and talent needed for the character. So by being independent, it allowed me to cast all of my dream actors for these roles. And this cast would not exist if it was a studio picture.

    Laura Zornosa

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  • Jonathan Majors Dropped By Marvel Following Guilty Verdict

    Jonathan Majors Dropped By Marvel Following Guilty Verdict

    Marvel Studios has dropped Jonathan Majors from the franchise after the actor was convicted on Monday of two misdemeanor charges of assault and harassment. The decision came shortly after after a jury found Majors guilty on charges of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, according to ABC News. A sentencing is set for Feb. 6 and Majors could face up to a year in prison.

    Majors, who played Kang The Conqueror Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and both seasons of Loki, was being set up as the franchise’s major villain post-Thanos villain. Marvel confirmed to TIME that they will no longer be working with Majors on future projects.

    Read More: Jonathan Majors Found Guilty of Two Counts in Assault and Harassment Trial. Here’s What to Know

    The criminal trial for the 34-year-old actor began in early December, after Majors was arrested on Mar. 25 for assault and harassment charges following a physical altercation with his ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. Jabbari accused Majors of physically assaulting her after she took his phone and attempted to read a text message he received from another woman. She said that he hit her in the back of the head, and twisted her arm behind her back as he tried to get his phone back. Majors initially denied these allegations and said that Jabbari was the assailant. On Monday, following a two-week trial, a jury found Majors guilty of third-degree assault and one count of second-degree harassment.

    Marvel parting ways with Majors comes after he had already been dropped by his publicity firm, The Lede Company, as well as his talent agency, Entertainment 360, and was pulled from a film called “The Man in My Basement.”

    Read more: What to Know About Jonathan Majors’ Domestic Violence Trial

    Marvel has not yet released any further details on what they plan to do with Kang the Conqueror as a character. Majors was posted to close out the Multiverse Saga in 2025 with Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, which Variety reports was set to begin filming in 2024.

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    Write to Moises Mendez II at moises.mendez@time.com.

    Moises Mendez II

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  • What to Know About Zack Snyder's Action-Packed Space Epic Rebel Moon

    What to Know About Zack Snyder's Action-Packed Space Epic Rebel Moon

    If you’ve ever wanted to watch a movie that could reasonably be described as “intergalactic 300,” then boy does Zack Snyder have the film for you.

    Over the course of the two-hour-and-15-minute runtime of Rebel Moon, which begins a limited theatrical run Dec. 15 before streaming on Netflix Dec. 22, a band of space-traveling revolutionaries join forces to rise up against the brutal and tyrannical Motherworld empire—despite the overwhelming odds stacked against them.

    Born from a one-line pitch for The Dirty Dozen in space” that director and co-writer Snyder came up with in college, the $160-million-plus sci-fi epic has been in development for more than 20 years. At one point in time, Snyder considered re-engineering the project to become an entry in the Star Wars franchise. But following Disney’s 2012 acquisition of Lucasfilm, the filmmaker ultimately decided to set his story in an original universe.

    The final result is an action-packed space opera shaped by cinematic influences ranging from Seven Samurai to Heavy Metal to Dune to—you guessed it—Star Wars. “I don’t think you can make a sci-fi movie now that’s not going to be compared to a Star Wars movie in some way,” Snyder told Screen Rant of Rebel Moon‘s relationship to the galaxy far, far away.

    Friday’s release, Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire, is only the first chapter in a planned two-part saga, with Part Two The Scargiver set to hit Netflix on April 19, 2024.

    What is Rebel Moon – Part One about?

    (L-R): Charlie Hunnam as Kai, Michiel Huisman as Gunnar, Sofia Boutella as Kora, Staz Nair as Tarak, and Djimon Hounsou as Titus in Rebel Moon

    Courtesy of Netflix

    Opening on a peaceful farming colony located on the distant moon Veldt, the first installment of Rebel Moon centers on the reluctant hero’s journey of former Motherworld soldier Kora (Sofia Boutella).

    As a child, Kora was forced to watch as imperial forces murdered her family and destroyed her home world. In the aftermath of the slaughter, she was hand-picked by ruthless warlord Regent Balisarius (Fra Fee) to become his surrogate daughter. Balisarius raised Kora in his image, molding her into the Motherworld’s most formidable warrior. But when her ship crash-landed on Veldt a few years prior to the events of the movie, Kora realized she was tired of killing in the Motherworld’s name and took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy a more harmonious existence among the moon’s settlers.

    “Not only has she been part of the soldier world she was forced into, but she wanted nothing to do with it and there was no chance she would open that door again, at all costs,” Boutella told Hero magazine of Kora’s motivations. “You can see how she’s trying to escape it….It’s interesting to see the reluctance and inner turmoil in a hero.”

    Unfortunately for Kora, when a warship captained by Balisarius’ sadistic emissary Admiral Noble (Ed Skrein) arrives on Veldt seeking to gain control of the moon’s resources, her dreams of living out her life in peace go out the window. With the lives of her settlement’s people hanging in the balance, Kora and her fellow farmer/love interest Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) set out on planet-hopping mission to recruit a band of ragtag rebels to their cause, including former Motherworld general Titus (Djimon Hounsou), master swordswoman Nemesis (Doona Bae), and a brother-sister insurgent duo known as the Bloodaxes (Ray Fisher and Cleopatra Coleman).

    What to expect from Rebel Moon – Part 2

    Ed Skrein as Atticus Noble in <em>Rebel Moon</em> (Courtesy of Netflix)

    Ed Skrein as Atticus Noble in Rebel Moon

    Courtesy of Netflix

    Following the getting-the-gang-together-style journey of the first movie, The Scargiver will see Kora and her allies attempt to bring down the almighty Motherworld.

    “The second movie is really a war movie,” Snyder told Screen Rant. “At the beginning they harvest the crops, and we have a bunch of stuff in the village, sort of the ‘Why We Fight’ aspect of the movie. We have time for relationships. Then the next thing is the big battle. It’s really fun.”

    As for Kora’s personal story arc, Boutella told Hero that Part 2 will reveal more about Kora’s life as a solder and why she was given the nickname Scargiver.

    “We find out something quite tumultuous about Kora in the second movie and I wonder how the audience will react to that,” Boutella said. “It took me a little bit to come to terms with Kora, it took me a while to understand her, forgive her and not judge her because I wanted it to come from a place of full compassion and forgiveness for the character.”

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    Write to Megan McCluskey at megan.mccluskey@time.com.

    Megan McCluskey

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