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  • Why celebrities are on strike: Not every actor makes Tom Cruise money | CNN Business

    Why celebrities are on strike: Not every actor makes Tom Cruise money | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    On Friday, the SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors, officially went on strike after failing to reach a deal with Hollywood’s biggest studios.

    That means Hollywood actors and writers are on strike simultaneously for the first time in more than 60 years, bringing most film and television productions to a halt.

    Among other demands, actors on strike are calling for increased pay and a rethinking of residuals, which union members say has significantly diminished amid the rise of streaming services. Residuals are financial compensation paid out to actors whenever TV shows or movies they’ve appeared in are replayed.

    Here are some significant numbers:

    The union’s 160,000 members join the 11,000 Writers Guild of America members who have been striking since May.

    While many of the world’s highest-paid celebrities, including Meryl Streep and Matt Damon, have voiced their support for the strike, the concerns about higher pay and residuals affect thousands of actors who perform in hundreds of films and TV shows.

    SAG-AFTRA’s president, Fran Drescher, pushed back on the notion that all actors are wealthy, saying that a vast majority “are just working people just trying to make a living just trying to pay their rent, just trying to put food on the table and get their kids off to school.”

    “Everything that you watch, that you enjoy, that you’re entertained by are scenes filled with people that are not making the big money,” she added.

    That’s how much the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported as the average pay for California actors in 2022. However, the BLS noted in the data that actors aren’t paid full-time year-round due to the nature of the job.

    Before the contract between actors and movie studios officially expired this week, SAG-AFTRA members had negotiated specific minimum rates for performers. For example, an actor who worked on a television show for one week was paid a minimum of $3,756.

    However, Kellee Stewart, an actress who has performed for more than 20 years and has appeared on the television series “All American” and “Black-ish,” noted that performers traditionally don’t get to take home the number that appears as their rate.

    “You don’t get to keep it all when you get a paycheck,” she said.

    “You have to pay taxes, plus commissions. For me, that would include an agent, a manager, and a lawyer that negotiates your deals. Right away, when you’re giving a quote for what you’re going to get paid, you already know that’s really going to be 35% less, give or take,” she added.

    Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was the highest paid actor of 2022, raking in $270 million, according to Forbes’ list of highest paid entertainers. Johnson received hefty paydays from his roles in “Jungle Cruise” and “Red Notice,” but, according to Forbes, the majority of his earned income in 2022 came from his tequila brand, Teremana.

    Tom Cruise made headlines last year for reportedly making $100 million from his deal to star in “Top Gun: Maverick,” for which he received a cut of ticket sales, according to Variety.

    On CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday, IAC Chairman Barry Diller called on both top-paid actors and movie executives to take 25% pay cuts.

    “You have the actors union saying, ‘How dare these 10 people who run these companies earn all this money and won’t pay us?’ While, if you look at it on the other side, the top 10 actors get paid more than the top 10 executives,” Diller said. “I’m not saying either is right. Actually, everybody’s probably overpaid at the top end.”

    The minimum amount of money a performer must take home in one year to qualify for health insurance is $26,470.

    However, while well-known actors are paid millions of dollars to star in movies and TV shows, many members of SAG-AFTRA don’t bring in enough income each year to meet the union’s minimum requirement.

    According to Shaan Sharma, an actor and SAG-AFTRA board member, just 12.7% of SAG-AFTRA members qualify for the union’s health plan.

    Actor Rod McLachlan, who has appeared in television shows such as “Blue Bloods,” said it’s “a constant struggle” to meet the health insurance threshold.

    “If you think about it, $26,000 isn’t a middle-class wage,” he said.

    “The thing about the life of an actor is that you have good years and bad years,” he added.

    Due to the unpredictable nature of TV acting and the competitive nature of landing roles, actors traditionally rely on residual payments, paid out when films or movies are replayed, as a form of steady income when work is hard to come by.

    “If you were in a popular episode of a popular show, the income streams could last for quite some time. You have almost 18 months on one level or another where you are receiving income that was significant enough to help you until the next time you did a network show,” McLachlan said.

    Actors say that the calculation around residuals has changed. As more shows and movies have moved to streaming services, where it isn’t always clear how often content is replayed, actors say they’re making significantly less money.

    Striking writers and actors take part in a rally outside Paramount studios in Los Angeles on Friday, July 14, 2023. This marks the first day actors formally joined the picket lines, more than two months after screenwriters began striking in their bid to get better pay and working conditions.

    “The residuals that I get when it’s on network television versus what I would get on Netflix are night and day,” Stewart said.

    On Twitter, Stewart shared a screengrab of 5 residual payments totaling 13 cents from replays on streaming services.

    “There’s not just a difference between traditional residual television and streaming; they’re not even in the same conversation,” she told CNN.

    On Thursday, Disney CEO Bob Iger said striking actors’ and writers’ demands are “just not realistic.”

    “They are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing, that is quite frankly, very disruptive,” he told CNBC.

    When Iger rejoined Disney as CEO in November 2022, he agreed to an annual base salary of $1 million with a potential annual bonus of $2 million dollars. The agreement also includes stock awards from Disney totaling $25 million.

    On Wednesday, Iger agreed to remain in his post as CEO of Disney through 2026 while the company’s board searches for a successor. In his new agreement, Iger is now eligible for a bonus of up to $5 million, according to a company filing, meaning his total pay may reach $31 million per year.

    Walt Disney Studios is part of The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), the trade group that negotiates with currently striking writers and actors. Other major movie studios, such as Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures, along with streaming services like Netflix and Apple TV+ are members, as well. Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, is also a member.

    Netflix’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters made $50 million and $28 million respectively in 2022, according to a company filing.

    In a statement to CNN, the AMPTP said they were “deeply disappointed” with the union’s decision to strike.

    “Rather than continuing to negotiate, SAG-AFTRA has put us on a course that will deepen the financial hardship for thousands who depend on the industry for their livelihoods,” the AMPTP said.

    SAG-AFTRA did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

    The potential economic impact of the combined writers’ and actors’ strike could cause $4 billion or more in damage, Kevin Klowden, the chief global strategist for the economic think tank, the Milken Institute, told CNN.

    Klowden said the double strike, which has brought Hollywood projects to a grinding halt, may affect more than just the US economy.

    “London and the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and other places, which either have studios or even do post-production, will face a real impact,” he said.

    – CNN’s Natasha Chen contributed reporting to this story

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  • The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

    The fight for the sacred Black Hills of South Dakota takes center stage in the documentary ‘Lakota Nation vs. United States’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Jesse Short Bull grew up a mile from an Indian reservation in South Dakota not realizing the ground he was stepping on was once soaked with the blood of his ancestors.

    Less than a century ago, the Indigenous people of the Lakota Dakota Nakota Nation were killed defending themselves from the United States government, which broke a treaty that vowed the sacred lands, including the Black Hills, would belong to the tribes forever.

    “I was like any other kid in America. The real history didn’t exist to me. I had no clue, and the truth was never taught to us,” Short Bull, whose Lakota name is Mni Wanca Wicapi (Ocean Star), told CNN. “When I became older, I wanted to understand what happened and why, and I started to fill in all the missing pieces.”

    These missing pieces, which led to Short Bull’s revelation of the violent injustices that led to the creation of South Dakota, is the topic of his documentary, “Lakota Nation vs. United States,” which was released Friday.

    The documentary, co-produced by actor Mark Ruffalo, is an in-depth and seldom-heard account of American history – a history that begins with the theft of land and the sacrifice of the Indigenous people who refused to surrender it.

    “This film is very much a push for land back, for the return of land, there’s no misunderstanding that’s what they’re looking for,” said film co-director Laura Tomaselli.

    Woven together by interviews with community leaders and activists, historical footage and racist Hollywood film depictions, the IFC Films documentary is split into three parts: extermination, assimilation and reparations.

    “It’s not about being angry, it’s not about being bitter. It’s about a lot of people appreciating this country and its constitution. Not realizing our treaty, which was bound to that constitution, is negated to being an old dusty antique that has no meaning,” Short Bull said. “Nothing exists to them from our country or our land or our people. But to us, it exists. We’re real.”

    The documentary, elegantly narrated by Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier, begins with a string of broken treaties by the federal government.

    Within the land legally protected by these treaties are the Black Hills, a holy site described in the film by Milo Yellow Hair, an Oglala Lakota elder and activist, as “our cradle of civilization, the heart of everything that is.”

    The Black Hills are a place of emergence, the birthplace of dozens of Indigenous tribes who consider it to be the most sacred place in the world.

    “It is one of the oldest places on the Earth, over 5 billion years old,” Yellow Hair said. “So we say from the Black Hills and the Wind Cave is that place, that opening on this mother Earth that breathes.”

    When gold was discovered on this land in 1851, war broke out for 17 years, forcing Indigenous leaders to fight gun-holstered soldiers with bows and arrows.

    In 1868, in efforts to make peace after consistently losing battles against Indigenous tribes, the US government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie. The treaty designated millions of acres west of the Missouri River for the absolute and undisturbed use and occupation of the Great Sioux Nation, which encompasses over a dozen tribes.

    The treaty says the US government “solemnly agrees that no person, except those herein designated and authorized so to do…shall ever be permitted to pass over, settle upon, or reside in the territory described in this article.”

    But it became another broken promise.

    In 1980, the US Supreme Court ordered over $100 million to be paid to the Great Sioux Nation because of the broken treaty. But the nation hasn’t taken the money. Since 1980 that original $100 million has accrued interest and grown to more than $2 billion.

    The Black Hills of South Dakota, a holy site for dozens of Indigenous tribes who are fighting to see the land returned to them.

    But despite the poverty they face, the Great Sioux Nation still refuses the money. Because the land was never for sale.

    “We are nothing without the Black Hills, that’s why the Black Hills are not for sale, because we are not for sale,” Sicangu Lakota historian Nick Estes says in the documentary. “How can you sell your very identity of what makes you an Indigenous person?”

    The documentary also offers in-depth analysis into forced assimilation tactics deployed by the US government to weaken Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes who were still fighting back. One method was killing off their buffalo and depleting their resources, so they began to starve and had no choice but to depend on the government, according to the film.

    Another method was taking away their children and enrolling them in boarding schools, stripping them of their Indigenous names and clothing, banning them from speaking their languages and forcing them to cut their hair. If they resisted, they were punished, often violently.

    With the intention of conquering their people by destroying their culture, says Oglala Lakota activist Nick Tilsen, “they outlawed our language, they made our ceremonies illegal, they criminalized us for living our way of life.”

    After premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2022, “Lakota Nation vs. United States” has played on the screens at Indigenous reservations where the tragic story takes place.

    At Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, nearly 200 people, including elders who still carry stories of dark days, attended the screening, and many were in tears, says Hunkpapa Lakota elder Cedric Good House.

    “We were impressed with Jesse and everybody else because it took real bravery to do this, a lot of courage,” Good House told CNN. “It’s coming at a time when people think they can know it all in a matter of a minute. They’ll read a little clip on Facebook and that’s it.”

    “But here is this lengthy documentary and people are getting captivated by the truth, and after they finish watching they can see this is still applicable to us today. We can point it out for them,” he continued. “Look what’s happening today here and here and here, we are still fighting.”

    The Standing Rock Sioux have been recently entangled in another battle against the federal government, mainly the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency responsible for approving the Dakota Access Pipeline.

    A violation of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, the pipeline is a 1,172-mile underground conduit that would transport some 470,000 barrels of crude oil a day – stretching across North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Illinois.

    The Standing Rock Sioux, whose reservation resides near where the pipeline runs, say it will not only endanger their main source of drinking water – the Missouri River – but also their sacred tribal grounds.

    “This movie is about our history, but here in the present we see nothing has changed,” Good House said. “This is our sacred land, and we try to get ourselves into the process, but the process still doesn’t address us.”

    In a desperate fight to protect their land and Unci Maka, or Mother Earth, Native tribal members alongside non-Indigenous allies and environmentalists demonstrated for years against the construction of the oil pipeline until they were forcibly removed from the protest site in 2017.

    “We’re not here to chase people off land. We’re not here to take over their farms and ranches and start charging people for crossing our territory,” Good House said. “We are protecting this Earth, we’re not here to do what the government has done to us.”

    In the land where ceremonies were once held and their ancestors bones now lay, Indigenous holy sites are still being exploited for profit, elders and activists say in the film.

    After killing those who attempted to protect it, the US government has turned stolen land into tourist attractions, Short Bull says, making money off the ongoing pain and suffering of Lakota Dakota Nakota tribes.

    Deep in the Black Hills stands a mountain known as the Six Grandfathers, or Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, whose peaks were blown up to carve the faces of four presidents – now known as the Mount Rushmore National Memorial.

    Mt. Rushmore, in Keystone, South Dakota, is carved into the Black Hills, which had been occupied by Lakota Sioux Natives.

    “Mount Rushmore represents and is the ultimate shrine to White supremacy,” activist Krystal Two Bulls of the Northern Cheyenne and Oglala Lakota says in the film. “Our sacred mountain, the Six Grandfathers, of course they carved four racist White men into our sacred mountain, who believed in slavery, who actually removed us from our lands.”

    Today the children of the Indigenous leaders who died to preserve whatever land they could continue their ancestors’ purpose: demanding their land back.

    And as the world suffers a climate crisis where Indigenous traditions, like controlled burning, are now being used to fight it, “it’s a no brainer” to return the land to those who can actually care for it, says Tomaselli, the film’s co-director.

    “If you are a non Indigenous person and you’re concerned about the climate, it should be obvious to throw all of your energy behind people that were living here before any of our ancestors showed up, tribes who have been taking care of this environment better than anyone has before,” Tomaselli said.

    As calamities happen around them for the sake of money, Short Bull says – gold mining, coal mining, the pipeline development, deforestation – the Indigenous people living there still have no say.

    But with their demand for land back comes a warning.

    “I want people to remember that there is bloodshed on Earth and our relatives’ blood is on this ground,” Short Bull said. “This planet was not created for you to just take, take, take. The Earth is an extension of you, and if you’re not going to take care of it, disaster is coming.”

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  • How Barbie made a surprising comeback | CNN Business

    How Barbie made a surprising comeback | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    The name “Barbara Millicent Roberts” may not ring a bell, but say her nickname — Barbie — and people of all ages know her. Created by Mattel in 1959, Barbie doesn’t look a day over 19.

    And now she is getting new life in “Barbie” the movie, distributed by CNN’s parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. The movie, out next Friday starring Margot Robbie, allows Barbie to question her own reality. Something consumers have been doing for decades.

    “Back in 2014 and 2015, we hit a low and it was a moment to reflect in the context of, ‘Why did Barbie lose relevance?’” said Ricard Dickson, president and chief operating officer of Mattel. “She didn’t reflect the physicality, the look, if you will, of the world around us. And so we then set a course to truly transform the brand with a playbook around reigniting our purpose.”

    Mattel was slow to diversify Barbie and friends. As a result, sales at Mattel started to slump in 2014. But during the pandemic Barbie saw a resurgence as parents looked for ways to keep kids busy at home. In the first quarter of this year, Mattel’s sales fell 22% from last year’s first quarter, primarily due to declines in Barbie and Enchantimals dolls and merchandise.

    “There’s been a lot of decline in that differentiation and that relevance that keep a brand fresh and top of mind from a purchase perspective. And when that happens, brands go into a place of fatigue,” said Katie Mancini, general manager of Landor & Fitch — a branding, strategy and design agency.

    Now Barbie and friends have many different skin tones and shapes. Mattel produces Barbies in wheelchairs and Ken dolls with the skin condition vitiligo.

    Mattel hopes the new movie, which was 4 ½ years in the making, will give the brand and Barbie the boost they’re looking for.

    That may already be happening. AMC Theatres reports they’ve sold more than 20,000 pre-sale tickets to Barbie and the new movie Oppenheimer. And at HomBom Toys in New York City, ‘movie Barbie’ is sold out.

    “I think I had 24,” said Ilene Gayer, owner of HomBom Toys. “They were gone within 48 hours.”

    But even a new movie may not be enough to draw up enough nostalgia for Barbie.

    “I wouldn’t want my granddaughters to grow up and be like Barbie,” said Patty Steffen from Fort Wayne, Indiana, who played with Barbies as a child. “I don’t know how much she has evolved – does she have a college degree now?”

    Carol Spencer is too old to have played with Barbie as a child, but she’s arguably spent more time with Barbie than anyone.

    Spencer became a clothing designer for Barbie in 1963. She spent 53 years transforming Barbie’s looks throughout the years.

    “I grew to think of her as my muse. I thought of every child who played with a Barbie doll as my child. So let me tell you, I have a big family. And I love it!,” said 90-year-old Spencer, surrounded by Barbies in her Los Angeles home.

    Spencer says Barbie was more successful in some years than others and it was often hard to keep up with the times. But she says Barbie has always been a steady brand.

    “Barbie really carried Mattel for great many years,” she said.

    Spencer was so influential at Mattel the company made a Barbie in her honor. And she still has “Barbie #1” in her dining room. She says plans to see the new movie with her Barbie Club — wearing pink, of course. She’s thrilled to see Barbie break out of Barbie Land and out of her heels, a sign Barbie may be keeping up with the times.

    “The new audience is Barbiecore pink. And that introduced a lot of fun and introduced I think people into the world of Barbie that hadn’t been there before,” she said.

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  • As SAG strike brings Hollywood to a standstill, which favorite UK-filmed shows could still go ahead? | CNN

    As SAG strike brings Hollywood to a standstill, which favorite UK-filmed shows could still go ahead? | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    As a host of Hollywood actors join film and TV writers in a strike against major studios and streaming services, filming and production of some popular shows – including “House of the Dragon” and “Industry” – could continue, due to UK strike laws.

    Though British acting union Equity said it would “stand in unwavering solidarity” with Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), it advised “SAG-AFTRA members currently working under an Equity UK collective bargaining agreement should continue to report to work.”

    This, the 47,000-member union noted, was due to the UK’s “draconian” industrial relations legislation, which it called “a national disgrace” in need of reform.

    A large portion of filming for HBO’s “Game of Thrones” spinoff “House of the Dragon” took place in England, with the show’s base being Leavesden Studios in Watford, near London. HBO announced in April that production had begun on season 2, which is slated for next year.

    Another HBO show, “Industry,” which was renewed for a third season last year, was filmed in London and Cardiff, Wales. In March, Joseph Charlton, writer and consulting producer on “Industry” season 3, told Digital Spy that casting had begun for the season.

    A source with knowledge of the productions confirmed to CNN that both are Equity contract shows.

    HBO, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.

    Paul Fleming, General Secretary of Equity, said in a statement: “The regrettable consequence of this framework is that what artists working in the United Kingdom – whether SAG-AFTRA and/or Equity members (or both) – can do, may be different from their comrades in the United States and other parts of the world.”

    SAG-AFTRA, which represents about 160,000 actors, began a strike at midnight Pacific time Friday morning after talks with major studios and streaming services failed. It is the first time its members have stopped work on movie and television productions since 1980, after a final day of negotiations on Wednesday did not produce an agreement.

    Actors are calling for increased pay as well as progress on residuals paid for when films or shows are shown again, particularly on streaming services. They join 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, who have been on strike for two months.

    Production of many movies and television shows has already been shut down by the current writers’ strike, and the actors’ strike threatens to bring most remaining productions to a halt, other than on some independent films not associated with studios.

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  • Cormac McCarthy, among America’s greatest authors, dies at 89 | CNN

    Cormac McCarthy, among America’s greatest authors, dies at 89 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Cormac McCarthy, long considered one of America’s greatest writers for his violent and bleak depictions of the United States and its borderlands in novels like “Blood Meridian,” “The Road” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died on Tuesday, according to his Penguin Random House publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He was 89.

    McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Knopf said.

    Over a nearly 60-year career, McCarthy – hailed by the late literary critic Howard Bloom as the “true heir” of Herman Melville and William Faulkner – wrote a dozen novels, many of them critically celebrated if not commercial hits, though he would eventually achieve both. For years, he wrote while living on grants, most notably the MacArthur “genius grant,” which he was awarded in 1981.

    Despite accolades, McCarthy remained relatively obscure for much of his career; as recently as 1992, 27 years after his first book was published, the New York Times Book Review said he “may be the best unknown novelist in America.”

    Both before and since, McCarthy was seen and portrayed in the media as reclusive, eschewing the kind of book tours, signings, interviews and lectures other renowned writers would see as professional obligations. But McCarthy famously abhorred talking about his books, which principally featured male characters and profuse violence, as well as sparse punctuation.

    Still, he was a “writer’s writer,” the Times reported, with a cult following and a reputation “far out of proportion to his name recognition or sales.”

    “I never had any doubts about my abilities,” McCarthy told the Times in one of his few interviews. “I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”

    That obscurity changed with “All the Pretty Horses,” the first installment of his “Border Trilogy,” which became a bestseller and won the 1992 National Book Award, at last marrying the critical acclaim he’d enjoyed with mainstream success.

    His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Road,” which followed a father and son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America, further catapulted McCarthy to popularity, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey selecting the novel for her book club. McCarthy, in turn, granted Oprah his first and only television interview.

    “The Road” was also one of several of McCarthy’s books adapted for film, most notably the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of “No Country for Old Men,” which won four Academy Awards, including best picture.

    The author was born Charles McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island. His family moved when he was still young to Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father was an attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority. His was a relatively comfortable childhood, one that played out on a plot of wooded land in a large white house with maids.

    “We were considered rich,” he told the Times, “because all the people around us were living in one- or two-room shacks.”

    For all his later literary achievements, McCarthy was not a voracious reader in his childhood or adolescence. It wasn’t until he served in the US Air Force after dropping out of the University of Tennessee that McCarthy began reading extensively, in his barracks while stationed in Alaska, he told the Times.

    He would later move to Chicago, where he finished his first novel and in 1961 married his first wife, Lee Holleman, with whom he had a son. They soon divorced.

    That novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” was published in 1965, after shepherding by the famous Random House editor Albert Erskine, who also edited Faulkner. Erskine, who died in 1993, would go on to edit McCarthy for two decades despite the fact, Erskine admitted to the Times, that McCarthy’s books never sold.

    “Outer Dark” followed in 1968 and “Child of God” in 1973, after a stint in Ibiza and McCarthy’s subsequent return to Tennessee with his second wife, Annie DeLisle. But still, they lived in “total poverty,” DeLisle once said, “bathing in the lake.”

    “Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books,” DeLisle told the New York Times. “And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week.”

    But McCarthy didn’t become a writer to make money, instead “maybe simply, because I can do it,” he told the Maryville-Alcoa Times, a Tennessee newspaper, in 1971. “There are a lot of easier ways to make money. I could sell tickets to people and let them watch while I was run over by a truck.”

    His next novel, “Suttree,” was published in 1979. McCarthy was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship two years later, giving him financial security to focus on writing. McCarthy left DeLisle and used the money to abscond to the Southwest, where he spent the next several years steeped in research for “Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West,” published in 1985.

    The historically based novel – widely regarded as McCarthy’s masterpiece – follows a brutal gang of scalp hunters as they journey across the Southwest, massacring Apache and members of the Mexican Army.

    “All the Pretty Horses” was published in 1992 and was followed over years by “The Crossing” and “Cities of the Plain,” which together comprise “The Border Trilogy” – in all a more idyllic ode to the region that recounted the adventures of two young cowboys.

    “No Country for Old Men” in 2005 received a less positive critical reception than McCarthy’s earlier novels, though its standing improved with time. The book, which the author began as a screenplay, did well as a movie under the direction of Joel and Ethan Coen, with the talents of Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin, as well as Javier Bardem as the fearsome but unforgettable killer Anton Chigurh, a role that won Bardem Academy Award for best supporting actor.

    McCarthy’s attention turned away from the American West for 2006’s “The Road.” The book, dedicated to his then-young son – he had by then divorced and remarried again – was conceived on a trip to El Paso, Texas, he told Winfrey, as he looked out the hotel window one night.

    “I just had this image of these fires up on the hill and everything being laid waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy,” he said, and wrote a couple pages. Revisiting the idea several years later, he realized those pages were the beginning of a book about a man and his son traveling through that ashen landscape while staving off the threat of cannibals.

    The book wrote itself, he said, in a few weeks’ time.

    The ensuing years were quiet ones, with little in the way of new material. By this time, McCarthy was spending much of his time at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, an independent research group of mostly scientists where he eventually became a lifetime trustee.

    McCarthy, whose interest in the sciences was well-documented, enjoyed the company of the physicists, biologists and geologists at the institute, and it was there he was often seen writing on his Olivetti typewriter, working on his next novels, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris,” released just six weeks apart in 2022.

    The books dealt with the same story from different perspectives and featured a female main character as McCarthy’s dearth of well-developed women protagonists in his writing had long been a point of criticism. After being married three times, he told Oprah, “I don’t pretend to understand women.”

    But he alluded to the twin novels and their story’s female protagonist in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, saying, “I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years. I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point you have to try.”

    As for the lavish amounts of violence in his work, McCarthy told Vanity Fair in 2005 he didn’t know what resonated with him about that theme, only that he felt death was the principal motif at the heart of all our lives.

    “Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us,” he said. “It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.”

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  • Florida teacher says she is under investigation after showing 5th grade class Disney movie with gay character | CNN

    Florida teacher says she is under investigation after showing 5th grade class Disney movie with gay character | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A fifth-grade teacher said she is being investigated by the Florida Department of Education after she showed her students “Strange World,” a 2022 animated Disney movie featuring a character who is biracial and gay.

    Jenna Barbee is a teacher in Hernando County’s Winding Waters K-8 school. “I am the teacher that’s under investigation with the Florida Department of Education for indoctrination for showing a Disney movie,” Barbee said in a TikTok post over the weekend.

    In the post, Barbee explained she played the Disney movie to a class which was partially full after a day of standardized testing. She also said she had previously-signed permission slips from all the parents, allowing the students to watch a movie rated PG.

    According to Barbee, a parent then complained and reported her to the state Department of Education.

    The parent who reported her, who is also a member of the Hernando County School District Board, complained to the principal about the movie not being appropriate for students, according to Karen Jordan, spokesperson for Hernando County Schools. Jordan also provided CNN with a copy of the announcement from the school district to parents.

    “Yesterday, the Disney movie ‘Strange World’ was shown in your child’s classroom,” the school district said. “While not the main plot of the movie, parts of the story involves a male character having and expressing feelings for another male character. In the future, this movie will not be shown. The school administration and the district’s Professional Standards Dept is currently reviewing the matter to see if further corrective action is required.”

    The complaint is part of Florida’s controversial legislation, signed last year by Gov. Ron DeSantis, banning certain instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom. DeSantis and other supporters pushed the measure as a form of “parental rights,” while opponents said it tried to erase LGBTQ people from schools and dubbed the law “Don’t Say Gay.”

    The law initially banned instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade or in a way deemed not age-appropriate for all other grades, but it has since been expanded to limit such information all through high school. Teachers who violate the state policy can be suspended or have their teaching licenses revoked.

    Disney was among those who spoke out against the law last year, spurring DeSantis and Florida Republicans to retaliate against the entertainment company by targeting their control over the land in and around its theme parks.

    The animated film “Strange World,” released last year, told the story of a family of explorers and starred the voices of Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid and Lucy Liu. The movie also featured Disney’s first-ever out-gay character, voiced by comedian Jaboukie Young-White.

    On May 9, Barbee addressed the school board members during public comment at a meeting. In attendance was the parent who had complained, school board member Shannon Rodriguez, she acknowledged during the meeting.

    “A school board member, an elected official of power, who was supposed to be nonpartisan, is allowed to present to the public that she is Christian and that God appointed her to the board. And yet it is indoctrinated that I showed a Disney movie. I’m a first-year teacher,” said Barbee.

    The teacher told district board members the movie was in no way sexual and was tied to the current lesson plan of the environment and ecosystems.

    Barbee claimed in the meeting Rodriguez “came to my school took me away from my students to tell me how bad and wrong I was.”

    At the end of the school board meeting, Rodriguez said she called the state department of education regarding the incident, which prompted the state investigation. She said her daughter is in Barbee’s class.

    She said at the district meeting Barbee broke school policy because she did not get the specific movie approved by school administration and said the teacher is “playing the victim.”

    “It is not a teacher’s job to impose their beliefs upon a child: religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, any of the above. But allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening a door, and please hear me, they assist teachers in opening a door for conversations that have no place in our classrooms,” Rodriguez said.

    Rodriguez said “as a leader in this community, I’m not going to stand by and allow this minority to infiltrate our schools … God did put me here,” she said.

    CNN has reached out to Rodriguez and Hernando County School District and the Florida Department of Education for comment.

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  • Jennifer Coolidge shows support for writers’ strike in MTV Movie & TV Awards acceptance speech | CNN

    Jennifer Coolidge shows support for writers’ strike in MTV Movie & TV Awards acceptance speech | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Jennifer Coolidge loves two things: popcorn and screenwriters.

    Coolidge made this clear in a pre-recorded speech shown during Sunday’s MTV Movie & TV Awards broadcast, where the “White Lotus” star accepted a special Comedic Genius award.

    After commenting on the irony that the golden popcorn statuette is that of her favorite food (she was later seen snacking on some real popcorn while accepting another award for best frightened performance), Coolidge showed some love to the members of the Writers Guild of America, who are currently on strike.

    “Almost all great comedy starts with great writers and I just think that as a proud member of SAG (the Screen Actors Guild), I stand here before you tonight side by side with my sisters and brothers from the WGA that are fighting right now, fighting for the rights of artists everywhere,” Coolidge said.

    She went to quote William Shakespeare, saying, “the play is the thing.”

    “I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think it’s EVERYTHING,” she concluded, before breaking out in a dance while “Jump Around” by House of Pain played in the background.

    Joseph Quinn, who won best breakthrough performance for his role of Eddie Munson in Season 4 of “Stranger Things,” also referenced the ongoing strike, saying in his pre-recorded speech, “being a writer is a hard job, and it deserves respect.”

    Pedro Pascal gave a shout-out to writers as well, while accepting the best show award for “The Last of Us” on behalf of showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann. “We’re standing in solidarity with the WGA that is fighting very hard for fair wages,” he said.

    Members of the WGA began picketing on May 2 after the guild and the major studios and streamers failed to reach a deal on a new contract. The strike has already affected numerous productions, including the MTV Movie & TV Awards itself.

    Drew Barrymore stepped down from her hosting duties to support the writers, and a pre-taped broadcast aired instead of what was supposed to be a live show after the WGA West announced plans to picket outside the Los Angeles event venue. Pre-recorded bits featuring Barrymore and pre-taped speeches by winners were aired, with clips of past MTV Movie & TV Award moments filling the space in between award handouts.

    Other productions impacted by the strike include all of the network late night shows, which went dark on Tuesday as the strike began, along with “Saturday Night Live,” which canceled this weekend’s show that would’ve seen alum Pete Davidson returning as host.

    Netflix’s “Stranger Things” also announced on Saturday that they’ve halted production on Season 5 due to the strike, further delaying the highly anticipated final season.

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  • Wrexham: An intoxicating tale of Hollywood glamor and sporting romance | CNN

    Wrexham: An intoxicating tale of Hollywood glamor and sporting romance | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    “It’s an underdog story,” says Gene Warman, an Ohio native sitting in a bar with his son in a city neither had heard of this time last year. “It’s a wonderful thing.”

    Warman and his 22-year-old son Andrew are on a four-day trip from the US to watch their new-found love, Wrexham AFC. They flew into London the previous day and embarked on a four-hour, 183-mile drive to the northeast of Wales. Jetlag cannot be countenanced on a sacred trip such as this.

    In an often brutal and bleak world, the recent resurgence of Wrexham, the city as well as the soccer club, lifts the soul. Tourists smile when asked for their thoughts on this small industrial city near the English-Welsh border, brought to the world’s attention by the soccer club’s owners, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney.

    Locals have always loved talking about their club, the beating heart of this working-class community, but now there’s a confidence and, crucially, optimism, when doing so.

    In loaning the club their money – over £3 million ($3.7 million) according to the club’s accounts – and the offshoots of their fame, Reynolds and McElhenney have brought hope to a city and its people. The future is exciting when you’re no longer fighting for survival.

    Grey clouds cocoon the city on the eve of the biggest match in the club’s recent history. The nearby mountains contributing to the rain threat that never materializes. It is not an April day for the outdoors, but a perfect one for what has arguably become the most well-known pub in Wales, the No. 1 stop on the Wrexham tourist trail.

    The Warmans have yet to venture into the center of the city, instead heading first to the Turf, a pub where the club was founded.

    Those who have watched “Welcome to Wrexham,” the TV documentary which follows the owners’ 2021 takeover and first season in charge, need no explanation as to why this pub a few steps away from the main entrance of the stadium is a must-see for visitors.

    From the first episode, landlord Wayne Jones and his customers are held as an example of how Wrexham AFC is woven into the fabric of people’s lives.

    The pub looks much like it does on television: the food van in the parking lot, the painted red-brick wall with fans’ signatures, framed football shirts and other soccer memorabilia hanging from walls and pictures of Reynolds and McElhenney dotted around.

    What has changed, as is the case for a lot of businesses in the city, is that there are more customers than ever. Trade has, Jones says, “practically doubled” since the documentary was first aired. A city that was struggling economically, especially when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, is now, he says, thriving.

    “I dread to think where we would’ve been had Ryan and Rob not come in,” says Jones, a man who has become accustomed to interviews, this being his fourth of a day that has just become afternoon.

    The Turf is full of life, locals mixing with tourists who want to drink at the pub they know from the show. Jones, a season ticket holder, says he scoffed at warnings from McElhenney to prepare for tourists once the documentary was aired. “As much as I love this town, we are just a small industrial town in northeast Wales,” he says. “But they’ve nailed it.”

    Andrew and Gene Warman from Ohio pictured with the Turf landlord Wayne Jones (center).

    Standing at the bar, sipping beers bought for them by a regular, are Los Angeles-based businessmen Rajat Bhattacharya and Arun Mahtani. The pair have tickets to watch Liverpool play the next day and felt they had to visit Wrexham. At a table a few meters away are husband and wife Thania and Jeff LaMirand from Washington, making Wrexham part of a short trip to Europe which will also encompass a few days in Madrid, Spain. There are no longer run-of-the-mill days at the Turf.

    Jones says on a quiet day about 20 to 30 tourists visit the pub. “It’s every day, without fail,” he says, breaking out into a disbelieving smile.

    “It’s a bit bonkers that we’re getting people from Colorado and Texas. There are five chaps just walked in now from Alabama. There’s a guy on the plane over from Alabama.

    “The people that I’ve spoken to have said they fell in love with the documentary.

    “The majority of them said they fell in love with the community, and it’s quite clever from Robert and Ryan because they could have just made another pure football documentary … But they focused on the town and Rob said to me, ‘I knew that if I could get Americans to see the town, they could relate to the people and then they’d want to be a part of it.’ And that’s exactly what’s happened.”

    Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney autographs can be seen on a wall at the Turf.

    Wales was conquered by England in the 13th century, but the two countries would not be united politically until the 16th century.

    It is a long, sometimes bloody history; 200 years of English invasions and Welsh revolts before the country was completely conquered and, though peaceful for hundreds of years, the relationship between the two neighbors is still complicated. They are different countries sharing common laws, friends for the most part despite cultural differences, yet like for many a once conquered nation, the past is not forgotten.

    Aerial view of Wrexham on May 12, 2018.

    For north Walians, there is an added twist. Not only have they often felt a shadow looming over them from the bigger, more powerful neighbor to the east, but a disconnect with compatriots in the south, too.

    There is a sense that the focus has always been on the south, almost everything is there: the capital city (Cardiff), the Senedd (the Welsh Parliament), the national stadium, the country’s two biggest cities and, in fact, most of the population. And there is no major highway from Cardiff to north Wales, just a winding trunk highway – an often-beautiful route, but not a quick one.

    But now, there’s Wrexham with a story that, in hindsight, feels as if it was just waiting for Hollywood. The oldest soccer club in Wales, the third-oldest professional club in the world, saved from the brink by its fans; the club that was once in the higher echelons of the English football league system before it tumbled into the fifth tier of the English game, its fortunes taking a downturn both on and off the pitch. Then came Reynolds and McElhenney, with money, a plan and stardust.

    “The searchlight has changed,” says Elen-Mai Nefydd, head of Welsh medium academic development at the city’s university, named after the medieval Welsh nationalist leader Owain Glyndwr.

    “There hadn’t been much interest in us, to the point where lots of people who live in Wrexham in the past would have preferred to say, ‘I live in northeast Wales, not far from Chester’ … to the point where people would almost bypass the name.”

    Nefydd talks of there being an “energy” among the locality, mainly thanks to the soccer club, but also because of the city status given to Wrexham in 2022, plans to redevelop the city center and the “Wrexham Gateway project,” which aims to regenerate an area of the city that includes building a new stand at the club’s Racecourse Ground, which will increase the stadium’s capacity to over 15,000.

    “There’s a proudness around saying now that you’re from Wrexham and that’s a huge shift, isn’t it, to be in a position where you’ve almost masked where you’re from to being proud of where you live and work,” she says.

    One of Wrexham city center's shopping areas, pictured on April 22.

    A Welsh speaker, Nefydd talks passionately about the language, which is spoken by nearly 30% of the population, according to the 2022 Annual Population Survey (APS), which is around 900,600 people.

    Throughout the documentary, soccer terminology is explained in English, American English and Welsh. One episode solely focuses on Wales’ history, all of which, says Nefydd, has “highlighted the importance of the language” and contributed to an “exceptional” confidence in the country for its language and culture.

    “What Rob and Ryan have done is they’ve opened people’s eyes to the fact that we are not a dying language,” she says. “We’re a language that’s alive. People socialize in Welsh, they are educated in Welsh, we work in Welsh. If it takes two Hollywood stars to do that, then fantastic.”

    Mark Griffiths is an English teacher and for nearly 40 years has been commentating on Wrexham games in his spare time. His voice can be heard on matchdays via the club’s website, and features in the podcast, ‘Final Whistle,’ and the local radio station, Calon FM.

    For years, Griffiths has been overseeing the hashtag ‘Ask Wrexham’ ‘#askwxm’ on Twitter to generate interaction with listeners. For the most part, the same diehard 20 fans would take part, he says, and on matchdays there would be no questions at all because everyone would be at the match. But now, times have changed.

    “The hashtag is completely out of control,” the 54-year-old says, explaining that he struggles to answer all the questions he receives even after introducing a one-hour weekly podcast specifically for that purpose.

    It will come as no surprise to read that Griffiths has featured in “Welcome to Wrexham.” In 18 episodes, the show has managed to get viewers “hooked” on the city, he says, describing the show as McElhenney’s “hymn to the working class.”

    Mark Griffiths, right, says Wrexham used to be a town that lacked confidence.

    “There was a concern … ‘Will we be made to look stupid?’ You know, the big-time guys coming in from civilization and pat the cave dwellers on their heads and save them and we all look like fools, and they haven’t,” he says.

    Griffiths was a member of the Wrexham Supporters’ Trust which helped raise money to stop the club from going out of business. He was one of the 98.4% who overwhelmingly voted in favor of the American-Canadian takeover.

    When Reynolds and McEllhenney put forward their proposal to the trust, Griffiths says they talked about having stewardship of the club, rather than ownership. They used, he says, “the right language.”

    “I’m very cynical,” says Griffiths. “I like the idea of fan ownership. I like the idea that we don’t end up at the whim of one or two wealthy people. But this is that rare occasion that they are just clearly in it for the right reasons.

    “I feel strongly about fans being the only people you can trust with a club, but these guys are for real. They’re amazing.”

    In the shadow of the Racecourse Ground is the city’s university campus and, every Friday evening, its sports center is bustling. Spirits are high tonight and laughter fills the air; coaches are yelling orders, sometimes they tease when a challenge doesn’t go quite to plan. Three coaches scoot around the perimeters of the court, chasing balls which go out of bounds, as the players, who are all in electric wheelchairs, move around at quite some speed.

    These are weekly sessions which have been made possible because of investment from the club.

    Kerry Evans, Wrexham AFC’s disability liaison officer, is on the sidelines every week, overseeing a junior and adult team. When the powerchair teams were formed last August, Evans had intended to play, but there is too much to organize, she says; always a call to make, or a ringing phone to pick up, questions to answer, plans to be made.

    The owners were, Evans says, “very prominent” in setting up powerchair football in the city and it has, she says, transformed lives.

    “We’ve got players that come that say it’s what gets them up on a Friday,” she says.

    Kerry Evans pictured with Reynolds and McElhenney.

    Evans jokes she is the club’s go-to person for media interviews because, she says, her role is wholly positive. She became a full-time employee at the club last March but prior to that had been volunteering for about six-and-a-half years, doing what she does now, which is making the stadium more accessible and welcoming for people with disabilities.

    Wrexham is the first club in Wales to fund a powerchair team, says Evans. Playing on an indoor court, a team consists of four players – a goalkeeper, a defender, a midfielder and an attacker – and they compete using a larger ball than your typical soccer ball, while goalposts are two upright posts six meters apart.

    Caio Jones is a 22-year-old wheelchair user from Bangor, a city in the northwest of the country, about 69 miles from Wrexham, or a 70-minute journey one way. He is one of a few in the group who is ready to play competitively from next season.

    For 12 months, Evans investigated the feasibility of bringing powerchair to Wrexham before making a proposal to the club’s board. Once approved, the club’s community trust coaches had to be trained, and chairs needed to be purchased. New, each chair – which have bumpers at the front to allow players to travel with the ball – costs about $5,000 to $7,500, says Evans.

    “Rob and Ryan offered brand new chairs, which I did turn down in the beginning … I felt we really needed to prove that this was going to take off and be a thing,” she says. “We’re now struggling to keep up with the level of demand with the chairs that we need. It’s grown and grown.”

    It is quite the change from the early 2000s when there were fears the club would be evicted from its stadium, or nearly 12 years ago when the Racecourse Ground and training facilities were sold to the university and fans raised more than £100,000 (almost $162,000 at August 2011’s exchange rate) in a day to save the club.

    “I was around when fans were bringing in deeds to their houses to keep our club alive … without those people many years ago, we wouldn’t have a club now to even be discussed with Hollywood owners,” says Evans.

    King Charles III visited Wrexham AFC last year and met the club's owners and players.

    No one speaks negatively about Reynolds and McElhenney because their investment has made a difference; to the women’s team which was promoted this season to the Welsh first division, to the fans in wheelchairs who can now go to some away games thanks to a wheelchair accessible bus the club provides, to families of children with autism who have a quiet zone in the stadium available to them on matchdays.

    “Wrexham football club would not have survived Covid due to the fan ownership,” says Evans. “Reading about people losing their business all across the UK [because of the impact of the pandemic] and Wrexham suddenly had this hope and excitement about it.

    “We were one of the luckiest towns, as it was then, to come out of Covid with so much to look forward to, and both owners brought that to our town.”

    Finally. Forty-four games into the season, and today is the day Wrexham could get promoted. No club has been stuck in the National League for longer. Fifteen often dreary years in the fifth tier; some nearly-there seasons, some never-come-close seasons.

    Five times Wrexham has qualified for the playoffs since 2011 but each occasion ended in failure, which explains why seeds of doubt are hard for some to rid. But Wrexham should beat its opponent Boreham Wood at home, which would secure automatic promotion and the league title.

    “Being an old-school Wrexham fan, I can’t get too carried away, I’ve seen a lot of disappointments over the years,” says Rob Clarke, the owner of mad4movies and another who features in the documentary.

    Rob Clarke, the owner of mad4movies in Wrexham.

    Clarke’s DVD shop is in the city’s market hall. About 10 stalls are in business – selling dog food, sweets, plastic flowers and such – while the rest are empty. There is a sadness to a silent shopping quarter on a Saturday afternoon. Not everywhere in the city can thrive.

    Clarke says he could make more money in another line of work, but over the last 17 years in business, his shop has become a hub for anyone wanting to talk about Wrexham AFC, and there’s nothing he loves doing more than that. “Usually put the world to rights on a Monday morning after the weekend results,” he says.

    The documentary was first aired last year, and Clarke is still struggling to come to terms with its impact. “It’s crazy,” he says with a shake of the head and a smile.

    “I’ve had people taking pictures of this place … Not even I take a picture of this place!” he says. “People are coming from all over, the American fans coming in and they’ve bought the DVDs. They know they can’t play them over there because it’s a different format, but they want a souvenir or something.”

    Magic can happen under floodlights. A pitch becomes a stage, providing vivid color to a dark night. Bright lights, big emotions. The atmosphere crackles.

    Wrexham is leading 3-1, the silence that greeted Boreham Wood’s first-minute goal long since replaced by over 10,000 delirious, singing fans. One delivers his farewell soliloquy to what he calls this “awful, awful, league,” with a few expletives thrown in for punctuation.

    Five minutes into stoppage time and fans are rising to their feet, increasing the decibels, preparing for the full-time roar. And then the whistle blows.

    Wrexham fans celebrate on the pitch after their team beat Boreham Wood at the Racecourse Ground.

    Thousands pour onto the pitch, even though they were warned not to before kick-off. The heart rules during an intoxicating hit to the senses such as this. Players disappear in the red mist of flares; some are carried on the shoulders of fans, and joyful chaos ensues.

    The pitch is now a metaphorical therapy couch, years of frustration and disappointment released and replaced with ecstasy.

    Cameras capture McElhenney crying in the stands. Reynolds embraces his friend, a moment captured by Paul Rudd, the star of Marvel’s “Ant-Man” franchise, another Hollywood A-lister visiting the city. McElhenney would later say he “blacked out” during that moment.

    The pair later joined the team on the pitch, jumping as if they were on pogo sticks when the trophy was lifted. Promotion to League Two achieved and done in style – over 100 points accumulated in a season for the first time in the club’s history, an unbeaten campaign at home, more than 100 goals scored and a record number of points collected in a single National League season.

    And for the first time since 1988, four Welsh clubs will now play in England’s football league, with these clubs competing in the English system by virtue of the Welsh football league system having not been created when they were founded.

    An end of a chapter, but not the story.

    McElhenney and Reynolds celebrate with the National League trophy.

    In its 158-year existence, the club has experienced nothing quite like these last two years. An unprecedented 24,000 of this season’s shirts sold by last December, turnover soaring, global sales accounting for 80% of merchandise sold. A (now former) National League team with a worldwide following. And not a negative to report, other than the £2.91 million ($3.61m) in losses for the year to June 2022, Reynolds and McElhenney’s first full season in charge.

    Wrexham’s owners have charmed the city and its inhabitants and, in turn, the earthiness of the city’s people and their passion for the club has captivated, seduced almost, the rest of the world.

    Celebrity combined with sporting romance is a heady mix. Season Two and League Two lie ahead.

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  • Michelle Yeoh set to return as Emperor Philippa Georgiou in new ‘Star Trek’ movie | CNN

    Michelle Yeoh set to return as Emperor Philippa Georgiou in new ‘Star Trek’ movie | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Live long and prosper, Michelle Yeoh.

    After winning a best actress Oscar for her role in “Everything Everywhere All At Once” last month, Yeoh is preparing to step back into the Star Trek universe to reprise her role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou in the new “Star Trek: Section 31” movie.

    Yeoh was first introduced as the character in 2017, when the Emmy-winning “Star Trek: Discovery” TV series debuted on Paramount+.

    Paramount+ and CBS Studios announced the news on Tuesday. Yeoh will also serve as an executive producer on the project.

    Yeoh said in a press release that she is “beyond thrilled” to reprise her role in the “Section 31” movie, which she says “has been near and dear to my heart since I began the journey of playing Philippa all the way back when this new golden age of ‘Star Trek’ launched.”

    “To see her finally get her moment is a dream come true in a year that’s shown me the incredible power of never giving up on your dreams. We can’t wait to share what’s in store for you, and until then: live long and prosper (unless Emperor Georgiou decrees otherwise),” she continued.

    It truly has been a year of dreams coming true for Yeoh, who made history as the first woman of Asian descent to win an Oscar in the best actress category in March. “Everything Everywhere All At Once” took home seven Oscars that night, including Yeoh’s big win and the top prize for best picture.

    “Section 31” will showcase Yeoh’s character as she joins a secret division of Starfleet and is “tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets and faces the sins of her past,” according to an official synopsis.

    “Star Trek: Section 31” will begin production later this year.

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  • ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ wins big at the box office with record opening | CNN

    ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ wins big at the box office with record opening | CNN

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    CNN
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    “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” powered up at the box office with an impressive opening.

    The movie ran up the score with more than $200 million in the US and Canada for its five-day opening run, according to a news release, and an estimated $377 million worldwide – the latter topping the box office launch record for an animated movie, previously held by “Frozen 2.”

    It marks the biggest global box office opening of the year, with “Super Mario Bros.” standing ahead of “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which brought in the $225.3 million during its February opening.

    The movie is based on the world of Nintendo’s classic 1985 “Super Mario” video games and stars Chris Pratt as Mario, Charlie Day as Luigi and Anya Taylor-Joy as Princess Peach.

    Jack Black, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, Fred Armisen, Kevin Michael Richardson and Sebastian Maniscalco round out the cast.

    Actor Charles Martinet, Mario’s longtime official voice in the games – who many gamer purists felt should have been cast as the titular character instead of Pratt – makes a special appearance in the movie.

    “Super Mario Bros.” follows Brooklyn plumbers Mario and Luigi as they’re transported down a mysterious pipe while working underground to fix a water main. The brothers wander into a “magical new world” and when they’re separated, “Mario embarks on an epic quest to find Luigi,” according to a synopsis on the movie’s website.

    The solid opening is a healthy sign for movie theaters headed into the summer box office season, with the next “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie, also starring Pratt, kicking off in May.

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  • Chloe Bailey on the blessing of ‘Praise This’ | CNN

    Chloe Bailey on the blessing of ‘Praise This’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    It will indeed be a Good Friday for Chloe Bailey.

    That’s because her new film, “Praise This,” debuts this Friday on Peacock.

    Bailey plays Sam, an aspiring, young singer who must join her cousin’s struggling, praise team in the lead-up to a national competition.

    The role feels tailor-made for Bailey, one half of the sibling singing duo Chlöe x Halle.

    “It’s my first movie I’ve stared in, so to be able to do it with my love of music and God all combined, it’s s been pretty cool and I’m so grateful,” Bailey told CNN.

    The “Grown-ish” star recently stirred conversation for her appearance the Prime drama “Swarm.” But her latest role finds Bailey in a film centered in a message of faith.

    Producer Will Packer told CNN he viewed this project similarly to his 2007 film, “Stomp The Yard.”

    “‘Stomp the Yard,’ while masquerading as a dance movie, was really about telling the story of Black colleges and fraternity and sororities at Black colleges, which was a world I knew well,” he said. “I have an affinity for the church and faith-based stories. Whether you’re somebody that doesn’t even know praise teams exist, I wanted to draw you into this world and then tell this story of a young girl who’s trying to find her voice, who’s trying to find her connection with her spirituality when she feels like she’s lost.”

    Packer said he had Bailey in mind for the lead role from the start.

    “She reminds me of Beyoncé. And by that I mean, not in the ways that other people have compared and other people think about, you know, her and Beyoncé as singers and actresses,” he explained. “I mean in terms of her work ethic. Chloe works very hard. You’re not gonna outwork her.”

    That makes sense given that Bailey and her sister, who is set to star in the live-action “Little Mermaid” film being released in May,” are protégés of Beyoncé.

    Anjelika Washington, who costars in “Praise This” as Sam’s “sister cousin” Jess, told CNN she hopes the film will inspire audiences to be kind to one another.

    “I hope that people remember to just love people,” Washington said. “That’s the greatest command of all, so I hope that people have an open mind for everything.”

    Bailey agreed.

    “I truly believe that God accepts us in every shape and form, and we should come exactly as we are,” Bailey said. “(The movie) shows that in such a positive light with comedy, and I hope audiences love it.”

    Director Tina Gordon also has high hopes for “Praise This” and other projects like it.

    “I’m hoping that family-based projects, faith-based projects have a bigger and bigger home in Hollywood,” she said. “I actually think community is very important and entertainment that sort of fosters family, that multi-generations can watch together. We definitely learned that people want that over the last couple years.”

    “Praise This” also costars Druski, along with Grammy-nominated artists Quavo and Tristan Mack Wilds.

    “Praise This” debuts on April 7 streams on Peacock.

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  • Cineworld shares tank after Regal Cinemas owner ditches plans to sell US and UK businesses | CNN Business

    Cineworld shares tank after Regal Cinemas owner ditches plans to sell US and UK businesses | CNN Business

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    Shares in Cineworld plunged more than 30% Monday, hitting their lowest level since late August, after the owner of Regal Cinemas said it planned to terminate efforts to sell its US, UK and Irish businesses.

    The world’s second-largest movie theater chain also announced a debt restructuring plan with lenders to help it exit bankruptcy. The deal does not provide for any recovery of funds for shareholders, the company said in a statement.

    “This agreement with our lenders represents a ‘vote of confidence’ in our business and significantly advances Cineworld towards achieving its long-term strategy in a changing entertainment environment,” said CEO Mooky Greidinger.

    Cineworld — which, like many cinema operators, was hit hard by the pandemic — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September. Over the past year, the company’s shares have lost more than 93% of their value.

    Under the proposed debt restructuring, lenders will reduce Cineworld’s debt pile by $4.5 billion and receive equity in the reorganized group; provide $1.46 billion in new debt; and backstop a $800 million share issue.

    The company said it had received offers for its businesses in other parts of the world and was considering them. In addition to the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland, Cineworld operates cinemas in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Israel.

    It will abandon plans to sell its US, UK and Ireland arms unless it receives an “all-cash bid” significantly higher than the current value of the businesses.

    The British company continues to operate its theaters around the world. After two rounds of closures in the United States, around 500 Cineworld theaters remain across the country.

    The company said in February that it expected shareholders to be wiped out entirely by the bankruptcy process, even in the event of a sale of some of its businesses.

    The pandemic forced movie theaters around the globe to close, dealing a devastating blow to Cineworld and others in the industry, and it is still affecting visitor numbers. Cineworld lost $2.7 billion in 2020 and another $566 million in 2021. It reported another loss, of $294 million, in the six months ending in June 2022.

    Cinema operators are coming up with creative ways to claw back revenue. Cineworld’s larger rival AMC Theaters announced recently that it would price tickets based on seat location, charging extra for more desirable seats in the middle of a theater.

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  • Freddie Prinze Jr. says it was ‘a struggle to finish work every day’ on ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ set | CNN

    Freddie Prinze Jr. says it was ‘a struggle to finish work every day’ on ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ set | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Freddie Prinze Jr. says that his time on the set of “I Know What You Did Last Summer” – the 1997 slasher film that served as one of his first-ever jobs in Hollywood – was a “miserable” experience.

    The “She’s All That” star appeared in a video interview with TooFab published on Tuesday, in which he revealed that “It was a struggle to finish work every day” while working on the movie.

    Prinze Jr. said the film’s director, Jim Gillespie, didn’t want him in the movie, adding, “when that’s your first job and you hear those words, it just wrecks you, man.”

    The actor said he struggled with overly critical and “disrespectful” notes on his performance, including one he’ll “never forget”: “Don’t leave your mouth open. You look stupid when you do that.”

    “It was very difficult waking up in the morning – or in the afternoon, because we shot a lot of nights – and go to work with the right attitude,” he said.

    Gillespie appeared to have a different recollection when looking back on the production for the film’s 20th anniversary in 2017, telling Digital Spy at the time that he advocated for the actor to get the role.

    “Nobody wanted Freddie; they thought he was too soft, he wasn’t muscular enough, so Freddie probably screen-tested four or five times,” Gillespie told the publication. “He got to the point where he was saying, ‘I’m done’, and I really had to plead with him to stick with it because I wanted him. I thought he was going to be great with it.

    CNN has reached out representatives for Gillespie and Prinze Jr., for comment.

    Nevertheless, Prinze Jr. said he’s glad to have done “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” calling it “the hardest job that I’d ever done, and I’m just glad I got it out of the way that early.”

    He also met his future wife, actress Sarah Michelle Gellar, while working on the film. Gellar played a local beauty queen who gets wrapped up in the murder cover-up at the center of the film.

    “I wouldn’t have any of the things I have without that movie. I wouldn’t have my wife, I wouldn’t have all the other movies I’ve done,” he said.

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  • When China shot down five U-2 spy planes at the height of the Cold War | CNN

    When China shot down five U-2 spy planes at the height of the Cold War | CNN

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    Seoul, South Korea
    CNN
     — 

    When a Chinese high-altitude balloon suspected of spying was spotted over the United States recently, the US Air Force responded by sending up a high-flying espionage asset of its own: the U-2 reconnaissance jet.

    It was the Cold-War era spy plane that took the high-resolution photographs – not to mention its pilot’s selfie – that reportedly convinced Washington the Chinese balloon was gathering intelligence and not, as Beijing continues to insist, studying the weather.

    In doing so, the plane played a key role in an event that sent tensions between the world’s two largest economies soaring, and shone an international spotlight on the methods the two governments use to keep tabs on each other.

    Until now, most of the media’s focus has been on the balloon – specifically, how a vessel popularly seen as a relic of a bygone era of espionage could possibly remain relevant in the modern spy’s playbook. Yet to many military historians, it is the involvement of that other symbol of a bygone time, the U-2, that is far more telling.

    The U-2 has a long and storied history when it comes to espionage battles between the US and China. In the 1960s and 1970s, at least five of them were shot down while on surveillance missions over China.

    Those losses haven’t been as widely reported as might be expected – and for good reason. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was responsible for all of America’s U-2s at the time the planes were shot down, has never officially explained what they were doing there.

    Adding to the mystery was that the planes were being flown not by US pilots nor under a US flag, but by pilots from Taiwan who, in a striking parallel to today’s balloon saga, claimed to be involved in a weather research initiative.

    That the CIA would be tight-lipped over what these American-built spy planes were doing is hardly surprising.

    But the agency’s continued silence more than 50 years later – it did not respond to a CNN request for comment on this article – speaks volumes about just how sensitive the issue was both at the time and remains today.

    The US government has a general rule of 25 years for automatic declassification of sensitive material. However, one of its often-cited reasons for ignoring this rule is in those cases where revealing the information would “cause serious harm to relations between the US and a foreign government, or to ongoing diplomatic activities of the US.”

    Contemporary accounts of what the planes were doing – by the Taiwan pilots who were shot down, retired US Air Force officers and military historians among them – leave little doubt as to why it would have caused a stir.

    The planes – according to accounts by the pilots in a Taiwan-made documentary film and histories published on US government websites – had been transferred to Taiwan as part of a top-secret mission to snoop on Communist China’s growing military capabilities, including its nascent nuclear program, which was receiving help from the Soviet Union.

    The newly developed U-2, nicknamed the Dragon Lady, appeared to offer the perfect vessel. The US had already used it to spy on the Soviet’s domestic nuclear program as its high-altitude capabilities – it was designed in the 1950s to reach “a staggering and unprecedented altitude of 70,000 feet,” in the words of its developer Lockheed – put it out of the range of antiaircraft missiles.

    Or so the US had thought. In 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA-operated U-2 and put its pilot Gary Powers on trial. Washington was forced to abandon its cover story (that Powers had been on a weather reconnaissance mission and had drifted into Soviet airspace after blacking out from oxygen depletion), admit the spy plane program, and barter for Powers to be returned in a prisoner swap.

    “Since America didn’t want to have its own pilots shot down in a U-2 the way Gary Powers had been over the Soviet Union in 1960, which caused a major diplomatic incident, they turned to Taiwan, and Taiwan was all too willing to allow its pilots to be trained and to do a long series of overflights over mainland China,” Chris Pocock, author of “50 Years of the U-2,” explained in the 2018 documentary film “Lost Black Cats 35th Squadron.”

    A mobile chase car pursues a U-2 Dragon Lady as it prepares to land at Beale Air Force Base in California in June 2015.

    Like the U-2, Taiwan – also known as the Republic of China (ROC) – seemed a perfect choice for the mission. The self-governing island to the east of the Chinese mainland was at odds with the Communist leadership in Beijing – as it remains today – and at that time in history had a mutual defense treaty with Washington.

    That treaty has long since lapsed, but Taiwan remains a point of major tensions between China and the United States, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping vowing to bring it under the Communist Party’s control and Washington still obligated to provide it with the means to defend itself.

    Today, the US sells F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan as part of that obligation. In the 1960s, Taiwan got the US-made U-2s.

    The island’s military set up a squadron that would officially be known as the “Weather Reconnaissance and Research Section.”

    But its members – pilots from Taiwan who had been trained in the US to fly U-2s – knew it by a different name: the “Black Cats.”

    The author Pocock and Gary Powers Jr., the son of the pilot shot down by the Soviets and the co-founder of the Cold War Museum in Washington, DC, explained the thinking behind the squadron and its mission in the 2018 documentary film.

    The other CIA unit in Taiwan

  • Coinciding with the Black Cat Squadron, the Black Bat Squadron was formed under the cooperation of the Central Intelligence Agency and Taiwan’s air force, according to a Taiwan Defense Ministry website.
  • While the Black Cats were in charge of high-altitude reconnaissance missions, the Black Bats conducted low-altitude reconnaissance and electronic intelligence gathering missions over mainland China from May 1956. It also operated in Vietnam in tandem with the US during the Vietnam War.
  • Between 1952 to 1972, the Black Bats lost 15 aircraft and 148 lives, according to the website.

“The Black Cats program was implemented because the American government needed to find out information over mainland China – what were their strengths and weaknesses, where were their military installations located, where were their submarine bases, what type of aircraft were they developing,” said Powers Jr.

Lloyd Leavitt, a retired US Air Force lieutenant general, described the mission as “a joint intelligence operation by the United States and the Republic of China.”

“American U-2s were painted with ROC insignia, ROC pilots were under the command of a ROC (Air Force) colonel, overflight missions were planned by Washington, and both countries were recipients of the intelligence gathered over the mainland,” Leavitt wrote in a 2010 personal history of the Cold War published by the Air Force Research Institute in Alabama.

One of the first men to fly the U-2 for Taiwan was Mike Hua, who was there when the first of the planes arrived at Taoyuan Air Base in Taiwan in early 1961.

“The cover story was that the ROC (air force) had purchased the aircraft, that bore the (Taiwanese) national insignia. … To avoid being confused with other air force organizations stationed in Taoyuan, the section became the 35th Squadron with the Black Cat as its insignia,” Hua wrote in a 2002 history of the unit for the magazine Air Force Historical Foundation.

At the Taiwan airbase, Americans worked with the Taiwan pilots, helping to maintain the aircraft and process the information. They were know as Detachment H, according to Hua.

“All US personnel were ostensibly employees of the Lockheed Aircraft Company,” Hua wrote.

The ROC air force and US representatives inked an agreement on the operation, giving it the code name “Razor,” Hua wrote.

He described the intelligence gained by the flights as “tremendous” and said it was shared between Taipei and Washington.

“The missions covered the vast interior of the Chinese mainland, where almost no aerial photographs had ever been taken,” he wrote. “Each mission brought back an aerial photographic map of roughly 100 miles wide by 2,000 miles long, which revealed not only the precise location of a target, but also the activities on the ground.”

Other sensors on the spy planes gathered information on Chinese radar capabilities and more, he said.

Between January 1962 and May 1974, according to a history on Taiwan’s Defense Ministry’s website, the Black Cats flew 220 reconnaissance missions covering “more than 10 million square kilometers over 30 provinces in the Chinese mainland.”

When asked for further comment on the Black Cats, the ministry referred CNN to the published materials.

“The idea was that black cats go out at night, and the U-2 would usually launch in the darkness. Their cameras were the eyes, and it was very stealthy, quiet, and hard to get. And so combining the two stories, they became known as the Black Cats,” the author Pocock said in the documentary.

The squadron even had its own patch, reputedly drawn by one of its members, Lt. Col. Chen Huai-sheng, and inspired by a local establishment frequented by the pilots.

But the Black Cats, like Powers Sr. two years before, were about to find out their U-2s were not impervious to antiaircraft fire.

On September 9, 1962, Chen became the first U-2 pilot to be shot down by a People’s Liberation Army antiaircraft missile. His plane went down while on a mission over Nanchang, China.

Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, Feb. 5, 2023. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Tyler Thompson)

See photos showing US Navy recovering spy balloon from water

In the following years, three more Black Cat U-2 pilots were killed on missions over China as the PLA figured out how to counter the U-2 missions.

“The mainland Chinese learned from their radars where these flights were going, what their targets were, and they began to build sites for the missiles but move them around,” Pocock said.

“So they would build a site here, occupy that site for a while but if they thought the next flight would be going over here, they would move the missiles. It was a cat-and-mouse game, literally a black cat and mouse game between the routines from the flights from Taiwan and those air defense troops of the (Chinese) mainland, working out where the next flight would go.”

In July 1964, Lt. Col. Lee Nan-ping’s U-2 was shot down by a PLA SA-2 missile over Chenghai, China. According to the Taiwan Defense Ministry he was flying out of a US naval air station in the Philippines and trying to gain information on China’s supply routes to North Vietnam.

In September 1967, a PLA missile hit the U-2 being flown by Capt. Hwang Rung-pei over Jiaxin, China, and in May 1969, Maj. Chang Hsieh suffered a “flight control failure” over the Yellow Sea while reconnoitering the coast of Hebei province, China. No trace of his U-2 was ever found, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

A U-2 Dragon Lady, from Beale Air Force Base, lands at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, in 2017.

Two other Taiwanese U-2 pilots were shot down but survived, only to spend years in Communist captivity.

Maj. Robin Yeh was shot down in November 1963 over Jiujiang, Jiangxi province.

“The plane lost control when the explosion of the missile took out part of the left wing. The plane spiraled down. Lots of shrapnel flew into the plane and hit both of my legs,” Yeh, who died in 2016, recalled in “The Brave in the Upper Air: An Oral History of The Black Cat Squadron” published by Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

He said that following his capture Chinese doctors removed 59 pieces of shrapnel from his legs, but couldn’t take it all out.

“It didn’t really affect my daily life, but during winter my legs would hurt, which affected my mobility. I guess this would be my lifelong memory,” Yeh said.

Maj. Jack Chang’s U-2 was hit by a missile over Inner Mongolia in 1965. He, too, suffered dozens of shrapnel injuries and bailed out, landing on a snowy landscape.

“It was dark at the time, preventing me from seeking help anyway, so I had to wrap myself up tightly with the parachute to keep myself warm … After ten hours when dawn broke, I saw a village of yurts afar, so I dragged myself and sought help there. I collapsed as soon as I reached a bed,” he recalled in the oral history.

Neither Yeh nor Chang, who were assumed killed in action, would see Taiwan again for decades. The pilots were eventually released in 1982 into Hong Kong, which at the time was still a British colony.

However, the world into which they emerged had changed greatly in the intervening years. The US no longer had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan and had formally switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.

Though the Cold War US-Taiwan alliance was no longer, the CIA brought the two pilots to the US to live until they were finally allowed to return to Taiwan in 1990.

Members of the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron

Indeed, by the time of their release CIA control of the U-2 program had long since ceased. It had turned the planes over to the US Air Force in 1974, according to a US Air Force history.

Two years later, the Air Force’s 99th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron and its U-2s moved into Osan Air Base in South Korea. Commander Lt. Col. David Young gave the location the “Black Cat” moniker.

Today, the unit is known as the 5th Reconnaissance Squadron.

But US U-2s continue to be involved in what might be characterized as “cat-and-mouse” activities and their activities continue to make waves occasionally in China. In 2020, Beijing accused the US of sending a U-2 into a no-fly zone to “trespass” on live-fire exercises being conducted by China below.

The US Pacific Air Forces confirmed to CNN at the time that the flight had taken place, but said it did not violate any rules.

Meanwhile, for those involved in the original Black Cats, there are few regrets – even for those who were captured.

Yeh told the documentary makers he had fond memories of life at 70,000 feet.

“We were literally up in the air. The view we had was also different; we had the bird’s eye view. Everything we saw was vast,” he said.

Chang too felt no bitterness.

“I love flying,” he said. “I didn’t die, so I have no regrets.”

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  • South Korean diplomats dance into Indian hearts in ‘Naatu Naatu’ viral video | CNN

    South Korean diplomats dance into Indian hearts in ‘Naatu Naatu’ viral video | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Dancing South Korean diplomats have won the hearts of millions of Indians with their viral video performance of Oscar-nominated song “Naatu Naatu,” reinforcing Seoul’s soft power diplomacy and even earning a nod of approval from India’s leader.

    In a video clip posted to Twitter on Sunday, staff from South Korea’s embassy in India’s capital New Delhi – many wearing traditional clothing from both countries – dance to the popular song from Telugu-language movie “RRR.”

    The 53-second clip, which features South Korean Ambassador Chang Jae-bok, has gone viral on social media, garnering more than 4 million views on Twitter as of Tuesday – and much praise in India.

    “Lively and adorable team effort,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

    “Love you for this!” author Kulpreet Yadav wrote, while another fan of the clip, Bhargav Mitra, called it “an excellent initiative.”

    “A fitting tribute to bilateral relations. How well can a song & dance sequence unite,” he wrote on Twitter.

    India’s positive response to the video reflects the growing popularity of South Korean culture in the country, where millions have embraced K-pop and K-dramas in recent years.

    Indians are also making inroads in South Korea’s entertainment industry. Singer Shreya Lenka became India’s first homegrown K-pop star when she joined girl group Blackswan last year, while Indian actor Anupam Tripathy starred in award-winning South Korean Netflix show, “Squid Game.”

    “Naatu Naatu,” which translates to “dance dance,” is composed by M.M. Keeravani, with lyrics from Chandrabose.

    Praised for its buoyant choreography and catchy tune, “Naatu Naatu” won India’s first ever Golden Globe in the best original song category last month and is favorite to win best original song at the 95th Academy Awards on March 12.

    The original song features Telugu superstars Ram Charan and N. T. Rama Rao Jr., known as Jr NTR, who dance in perfect synchronization to the lyrics. The video has more than 122 million views on YouTube.

    The Indian film industry produces tens of thousands of movies every year in multiple languages, and “RRR,” which stands for Rise Roar Revolt, is the country’s fourth-highest grossing picture, according to IMDb, earning nearly $155 million worldwide.

    It is set during India’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule and became Netflix’s most watched non-English movie last June.

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  • Search of BBC offices by Indian government enters third day | CNN Business

    Search of BBC offices by Indian government enters third day | CNN Business

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Indian tax officials continued their search of the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai for the third consecutive day, two sources with knowledge of the matter told CNN, weeks after the country banned a documentary from the British broadcaster that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago.

    BBC employees have been told not to disclose information about the searches. A spokesperson for the broadcaster said it was cooperating with authorities.

    Some staff members were asked to remain at the offices overnight on Tuesday, the BBC said. But the offices are now open for people to enter and leave as needed.

    The searches come nearly a month after the Indian government said it banned the two-part documentary, “India: The Modi Question,” from being aired in the country and used “emergency powers” to block clips of the film from circulating on social media domestically. Twitter and YouTube complied with the order, the government said.

    The documentary revives the most controversial chapter of the Indian leader’s political career, when he was the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in 2002.

    Modi was accused of not doing enough to stop some of the most heinous violence in India’s post-indpendence history, when riots broke out between the state’s majority Hindus and minority Muslims.

    More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the violence and at least 220 more went missing, according to government figures.

    Modi has denied accusations that he failed to stop the violence. A special investigation team appointed by India’s Supreme Court in 2012 found no evidence to suggest he was to blame.

    Two years later, Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party rose to power in India, riding on a wave of Hindu nationalism in the country of 1.3 billion, where nearly 80% of the population follow the faith.

    The government’s move to block the documentary polarized opinion in the world’s largest democracy. Critics decried it as an assault on press freedom, while Modi’s supporters rallied to his defense.

    India’s main opposition Congress party described the ongoing tax searches at the BBC offices as a “brazen attack” on India’s free press.

    “If someone tries to shed light on the prime minister’s past, or dig out details of his past…the present and future of that media house will be destroyed by his agencies. That is the reality,” the party’s media department head, Pawan Khera, told reporters Wednesday. “India is the mother of democracy but why is India’s prime minister the father of hypocrisy?”

    The BJP has tried to justify the move by saying nobody in the country is above the law.

    Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, the party’s spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said companies, including media agencies, must “follow and respect Indian law.”

    “Anyone, any agency, whether tied to the media, a company, if they are working in India, they must follow and respect Indian law. If they follow the law, then why should they be scared or worried? Let the Income Department do its job,” he said.

    The raids raised fears of censorship in India, with several media organizations issuing statements condemning the government’s actions.

    Now ranked between Turkey and Sudan, India dropped eight places to 150 out of 180 nations in last year’s World Press Freedom Index published by the Paris-based group, Reporters Without Borders.

    The Press Club of India said in a Tuesday statement the raids “will damage the reputation and image of India as the world’s largest democracy.”

    “It is deeply unfortunate as this latest instance appears to be a clear cut case of vendetta, coming within weeks of a documentary aired by the BBC,” it said, urging the government to “restrain its agencies from misusing its powers in order to intimidate the media.”

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  • Indian authorities raid BBC offices after broadcast of Modi documentary | CNN Business

    Indian authorities raid BBC offices after broadcast of Modi documentary | CNN Business

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    New Delhi
    CNN
     — 

    Indian tax authorities raided the BBC’s offices in New Delhi and Mumbai on Tuesday, weeks after the country banned a documentary from the British broadcaster that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in deadly riots more than 20 years ago.

    BBC News reported on television that people had not been allowed to enter or leave the offices.

    The raids come after the Indian government said it used “emergency powers” to block the documentary from airing in the country, adding that both YouTube and Twitter complied with the order.

    The move polarized reaction in the world’s largest democracy. Critics decried it as an assault on press freedom, while Modi’s supporters rallied to his defense.

    A BBC spokesperson told CNN that the organization was “fully cooperating” with authorities. “We hope to have this situation resolved as soon as possible,” the spokesperson said.

    The two-part documentary “India: The Modi Question” criticized the then-chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in 2002 when riots broke out between the state’s majority Hindus and minority Muslims. It was broadcast in the UK in January.

    More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the violence and at least 220 more went missing, according to government figures. Almost 1,000 women were widowed, while more than 600 children were left orphaned, official figures showed.

    Modi and his ruling ruling Bharatiya Janata Party rose to power in India in 2014, riding on a wave of Hindu nationalism in the country of 1.3 billion, where nearly 80% of the population follow the faith.

    The BBC said Jack Straw, who was British foreign secretary in 2002 and features in the documentary, claims that Modi had “played a proactive part in pulling back the police and in tacitly encouraging the Hindu extremists.”

    Modi has denied accusations that he failed to stop the violence. A special investigation team appointed by India’s Supreme Court in 2012 found no evidence to suggest he was to blame.

    But the riots remain one of the darkest chapters in India’s post-independence history, with some victims still awaiting justice.

    Last month, some university students in Delhi attempting to watch the banned film on campus were detained by police, raising concerns that freedoms were bring throttled under Modi’s government.

    Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia said companies, including media agencies, must “follow and respect Indian law.”

    “Anyone, any agency, whether tied to the media, a company, if they are working in India, they must follow and respect Indian law. If they follow the law, then why should they be scared or worried? Let the Income Department do its job,” he said.

    India was a country that “gives an opportunity to every organization” as long as they are “willing to abide” by the country’s constitution, Bhatia added.

    The raids have raised fears of censorship in India.

    In a statement Tuesday, the Editor’s Guild of India said it was “deeply concerned” by the development.

    The raids were a “continuation of a trend of using government agencies to intimidate and harass press organisations that are critical of government policies or the ruling establishment,” it said. “This is a trend that undermines constitutional democracy.”

    The statement gave examples of similar searches carried out at the offices of various English-language local media outlets, including NewsClick and Newslaundry, as well as Hindi-language media organizations including Dainik Bhaskar and Bharat Samachar.

    The Press Club of India said in a Tuesday statement the raids “will damage the reputation and image of India as the world’s largest democracy.”

    “It is deeply unfortunate as this latest instance appears to be a clear cut case of vendetta, coming within weeks of a documentary aired by the BBC,” it said, urging the government to “restrain its agencies from misusing its powers in order to intimidate the media.”

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  • Super Bowl LVII: Who scored and who fumbled on TV’s biggest stage | CNN

    Super Bowl LVII: Who scored and who fumbled on TV’s biggest stage | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Big celebrities, but often, not-so-great ads.

    The Super Bowl presents a formidable challenge to advertisers, trying to justify the giant price tag for 30-second spots (as much as $7 million each, per Variety, for ads between kickoff and the final gun) by coming up with campaigns that feel as big as the game.

    This year, the scales tipped heavily toward celebrity talent – in several cases, thrown together in incongruous bunches – in commercials that were loud but frequently didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

    For starters, it helps when the talent has some kind of logical connection to the product, or at least figures into the creative in a way that advances that message. Being cute for its own sake can be fine, but it’s seldom particularly memorable.

    Using that logic, bravo to Rakuten, a shopping site, for enlisting Alicia Silverstone to reprise her “Clueless” role as the shopping-obsessed Cher, which she slid into like an old private-school uniform; and thumbs down to a celebrity-studded spot for Michelob Ultra featuring Serena Williams, Brian Cox and a host of others in an odd tribute to “Caddyshack.”

    Then again, this year’s crop of beer ads were mostly flat, especially given the high bar that Budweiser has customarily set for Super Bowls past. The main exception would be the Miller-Coors-Blue Moon spot, which was fun, if a little confusing.

    As was noted before the game, crypto ads that sought to make a splash at Super Bowl LVI sat out this year’s showcase, a reminder that newer product categories brave entering the Super Bowl derby at their own peril.

    Where were the other highlights, which were outnumbered (as usual) by the middling or low ones? Here’s a snap-decision breakdown of who scored and who fumbled on TV’s biggest stage. While this doesn’t include every spot that aired, if an ad featured four or more celebrities, assume it leaned toward the “loser” column.

    Movies: The movie business hasn’t rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, but the number of ads for upcoming blockbusters (and hoped-for blockbusters) felt like a collective vote of confidence in theatrical movie-going. Hollywood will likely never completely bounce back in the streaming age, but the studios appeared to serve notice that they’re not giving up without a fight.

    Of that roster of titles, give the nod to “The Flash,” which should stoke enormous interest in that Warner Bros. title (like CNN, a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery), and put the focus on the film instead of star Ezra Miller’s off-screen issues. Give honorable mention to “Indiana Jones” and “Creed” among the sequels, which also included pregame spots for “Transformers” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.” Also featured: “Air,” based on Michael Jordan’s Nike deal.

    Ram: There were again several electric-car ads, but give Ram the gold medal for its cheeky double-entendre about “premature electrification.”

    Rakuten: Would Silverstone waste this kind of opportunity to bask in a little of that “Clueless” nostalgia? As if.

    T-Mobile: Bradley Cooper and his mother were pretty adorable, especially when she told him that while he’s been nominated for stuff, he hasn’t won anything. Much better, alas, than its John Travolta “Grease” homage.

    Pepsi Zero Sugar: Steve Martin and Ben Stiller gave mini-classes on acting. So, do they really drink this stuff? Probably not, but it was fun to watch them pretend, and enhanced by the one-two punch of it.

    PopCorners: Just the idea of a “Breaking Bad” reunion gets high marks (plus the line “We don’t eat our own supply”), even if the snack-food product might not have been the ideal vehicle for it.

    Farmer’s Dog and Amazon: Two winners about our canine companions: Watching a dog’s life unfold, and thinking about losing one, served as one of the few genuine tearjerkers of the day; and on a lighter note, getting a destructive pooch a pal, via Amazon.

    CrowdStrike: If only the cyber-security company had been around during the Trojan War. A great visual idea.

    Google: Another spot that brought together unlikely celebrities – Amy Schumer, Doja Cat and NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo – but in a clever demonstration of how its pixel product can “fix” old photos.

    Kia. If you forget your baby’s binky, this is definitely the car for you.

    Disney: Marking its 100th anniversary, the studio ran a spot to demonstrate the sweeping depth of its content, and its intricate hold on childhood memories.

    Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen: After the histrionics of Fox’s pregame show (never mind the issues with the sound being off), the announcers – handling their first Super Bowl – rose to the occasion, with a solid call that identified the problems with the field, debated a “game-altering penalty” at the end; didn’t get in the way of the action and reminded everyone this was, after all, a football game.

    General Motors and Netflix: GM teamed with Netflix shows to push its EV cars, with Will Ferrell as the guide through shows like “Bridgerton” and “Stranger Things.” Not great, but at least it felt big and inventive.

    Dunkin’: Ben Affleck (mostly) and Jennifer Lopez brought some celebrity sizzle to the idea of a star moonlighting at a donut store.

    Paramount+: The advantage of featuring Sylvester Stallone in a streaming show, apparently, is one more star to help promote “Paramount Mountain.”

    Alicia Silverstone (left) reprised her

    HeGetsUs.com. The ads for this evangelical campaign were certainly arresting in reminding people, say, that Jesus was a refugee, and to love everyone. Yet despite being one of the few ads about something that played Sunday, the goal of its message seemed muddled, a perception reinforced by details about the group behind it.

    Workday: Rock stars differentiate between calling someone a rock star and actually being one. A fun idea, indifferently executed.

    Etrade: Nobody ever went wrong with talking babies, but that said, talking babies is a pretty tired gimmick.

    Weather Tech: A solid “Made in America” pitch.

    Beer ads: Miles and Keleigh Sperry Teller seem like a cute couple to have a beer with. What the ad didn’t do is make a case for that being a Bud Light. Ditto for Budweiser connecting a six-pack of Bud to “Six Degrees of Separation” (or Kevin Bacon), which had the right vibe to it but felt like a bit of a stretch.

    Booking.com: Hey, who couldn’t use a vacation? But why are we watching Melissa McCarthy sing about it?

    Doritos: Jack Harlow, Missy Elliott and Elton John pushing triangles? Another case of trying to be too hip and just looking square.

    Downy Unstoppables: Danny McBride likes it so much he’d change his name. But the whole thing was pretty McSilly.

    DraftKings: Kevin Hart and a host of celebrities appeared, but will it be remembered as a great Super Bowl ad? Don’t bet on it.

    Hellmann’s: Jon Hamm and Brie Larson in a refrigerator? Yes, mayonnaise goes with ham and Brie, but as Hamm said at the end, “That’s weird.”

    Remy Martin: Serena Williams’ speech was stirring, but the product was a complete afterthought.

    Planters: A Friars Club-style celebrity roast of Mr. Peanut felt like a weak attempt to butter up consumers.

    Jeep: The “Freedom is electric” tag line worked. The CGI dancing animals, not so much.

    Pringles: Another version of the hand stuck in the can campaign? That just feels like their creative is stuck in the ’90s.

    Squarespace: Adam Driver is already pretty overexposed, but that commercial – featuring dozens of him – made him really overexposed.

    Tubi: Someone should have talked the ad agency and marketing team out of going down that bizarre rabbit hole.

    M&Ms: The only real comment to that Maya Rudolph spot was “???”

    Limit/Break: Yes, saw the bar code. No, did not scan now.

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  • Elizabeth Banks knows risk of new movie ‘Cocaine Bear’ could come back and bite her | CNN

    Elizabeth Banks knows risk of new movie ‘Cocaine Bear’ could come back and bite her | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    With her bonkers new movie “Cocaine Bear,” Elizabeth Banks knew she wanted “to make something muscular and masculine.”

    In a new interview with Variety published on Wednesday, Banks – who directed and coproduced the film about a drug-fueled bear on a killing rampage – shared how difficult it was to convince some Hollywood power players that a woman could helm such a movie.

    “I wanted to break down some of the mythology around what kinds of movies women are interested in making,” Banks said. “For some bizarre reason, there are still executives in Hollywood who are like, ‘I don’t know if women can do technical stuff.’ There are literally people who are like, ‘Women don’t like math.’ It just persists.”

    She acknowledged that the new movie – which is based on a true story from the 1980s about a drug drop gone wrong that resulted in a bear ingesting cocaine – is “a ginormous risk,” adding that it “could be a career ender for me.”

    Part of the trepidation is the lackluster box office performance of original comedies, which has caused the industry to cool around the genre.

    But Banks is hopeful that the sheer zaniness of the concept – plus the bloody horror aspect of a cocaine-addled bear ripping people to shreds – will get people in the movie theater.

    “I love gore. I grew up on ‘Evil Dead,’” Banks told Variety. “The gore is part of the fun of the ride.”

    “Cocaine Bear” is set for release on February 24.

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  • ‘Rust’ will be completed and still star Alec Baldwin as he faces involuntary manslaughter charges in death of crew member, attorney says | CNN

    ‘Rust’ will be completed and still star Alec Baldwin as he faces involuntary manslaughter charges in death of crew member, attorney says | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Alec Baldwin, who is set to face involuntary manslaughter charges in the death of a crew member during a “Rust” film rehearsal, will continue starring as the lead role, a production attorney told CNN on Friday.

    As the film proceeds, operations will include “on-set safety supervisors and union crew members and will bar any use of working weapons or any ammunition,” said Melina Spadone, attorney for Rust Movie Productions.

    Spadone’s remarks come a day after prosecutors announced plans to charge Baldwin and the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez Reed, in the on-set shooting death of Halyna Hutchins in October 2021 at a ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

    Hutchins, the film’s director of photography, was struck and killed by a live round of ammunition Baldwin fired from a prop gun, and director Joel Souza was wounded in the right shoulder. Souza will continue directing the film as production moves forward, Spadone said.

    Baldwin, who is also a producer of the film, did not answer reporters’ requests for comment on the charges while walking into his Manhattan home on Friday. A source close to Baldwin told CNN on Friday that he plans to complete the movie.

    Despite the fatal shooting being ruled an accident by the New Mexico chief medical investigator, prosecutors believe a crime was committed.

    “Just because it’s an accident doesn’t mean that it’s not criminal,” First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies said Thursday as she explained the charging decision. “Our involuntary manslaughter statute covers unintentional killings.”

    Carmack-Altwies said she will charge Baldwin and the film’s armorer with involuntary manslaughter, accusing them of failing to perform safety procedures that could have prevented the accident.

    Formal charges are expected to be filed by month’s end, Carmack-Altwies told CNN.

    “Every person that handles a gun has a duty to make sure that if they’re going to handle that gun, point it at someone and pull the trigger, that it is not going to fire a projectile and kill someone,” Carmack-Altwies said.

    Still, prosecutors face immense challenges in attempting to try a case centering around a prominent Hollywood figure in addition to the legal thresholds they must prove to obtain a conviction.

    Baldwin has been a major film, Broadway and TV star for decades, winning Emmys for TV’s “30 Rock” and an Oscar nomination for 2003’s “The Cooler.”

    The two trials Baldwin and the film’s armorer could potentially undergo would take weeks to a month and would require expert testimony, Carmack-Altwies said.

    The district attorney requested $635,000 in “emergency” funds “to prosecute such a high-profile case,” she wrote to state officials last August.

    “I need funding for an attorney, investigator, media contact person, paralegal, expert witnesses, and general trial expenses,” she said.

    And even before any trial could be held, each defendant will attend a preliminary hearing to determine if probable cause for trial exists.

    “These hearings will take weeks to complete and will happen rather quickly once charges are filed,” Carmack-Altwies explained.

    But the case will be difficult to prosecute given that it’s unclear how live rounds got on set, according to CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig, adding that experts have varying opinions regarding the on-set responsibilities of actors and crew members.

    “Remember, this is a criminal case. You need all 12 jurors to find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. So I’m not saying that there’s no chance here, but this is a really difficult case for the prosecution,” Honig said.

    santa fe district attorney

    Santa Fe DA explains decision to charge Alec Baldwin over ‘Rust’ shooting

    Baldwin faces charges in both capacities as the person who’s accused of firing the gun and as the producer of the film, Carmack-Altwies said, arguing that Baldwin as a producer had a responsibility to ensure the set was safe.

    Gutierrez Reed, the film’s armorer who loaded the prop gun, is also responsible for not ensuring the gun’s safety, prosecutors say. Her attorney has said she believed the rounds were dummy ammunition.

    “Nobody was checking those or at least they weren’t checking them consistently,” Carmack-Altwies said. “And then they somehow got loaded into a gun handed off to Alec Baldwin. He didn’t check it. He didn’t do any of the things that he was supposed to do to make sure that he was safe or that anyone around him was safe. And then he pointed the gun at Halyna Hutchins and he pulled the trigger.”

    Baldwin has maintained that he never pulled the trigger and was not aware the gun contained live rounds.

    Gutierrez Reed and Baldwin each will face two counts of involuntary manslaughter, but each count carries a different level of punishment, Carmack-Altwies said when she announced the charges.

    A jury would decide which count would be more appropriate, and if convicted, they will only be sentenced to one count, the prosecutor said.

    Conviction for both defendants carries up to 18 months in jail and a $5,000 fine. But one charge carries an additional firearms enhancement – because a gun was involved – and would require a mandatory punishment of five years in jail, Carmack-Altwies said.

    Regarding the charges, Gutierrez Reed’s attorney Jason Bowles said Thursday, “We’re expecting the charges but they’re absolutely wrong as to Hannah – we expect that she will be found not guilty by a jury and she did not commit manslaughter. She has been emotional about the tragedy but has committed no crime.”

    Meanwhile, Baldwin’s attorney Luke Nikas said the actor was “blindsided” by the charges.

    “Mr. Baldwin had no reason to believe there was a live bullet in the gun – or anywhere on the movie set. He relied on the professionals with whom he worked, who assured him the gun did not have live rounds.”

    When prosecutors announced the charges Thursday, Hutchins’ family praised their decision.

    “It is a comfort to the family that, in New Mexico, no one is above the law,” the family said in a statement released by attorney Brian J. Panish.

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