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Tag: Stephen Lang

  • Avatar’s Stephen Lang & Eighth Grade’s Elsie Fisher Star in The Optimist Trailer

    Falco Ink and Trafalgar Releasing have released a new trailer for The Optimist, a new movie starring Stephen Lang and Elsie Fisher. The Optimist will release in theaters on March 11, 2026.

    “For more than sixty years, children’s store owner Herbert Heller (Lang) has lived with the weight of the horrors he endured as a 15-year-old imprisoned in Terezin and Auschwitz,” reads the film’s official synopsis. “As illness forces him to confront the silence he has kept—even from his own family—he forms a surprising friendship with Abbey (Fisher), a teenager navigating her own emotional fractures. Through their growing connection, Herbert is inspired to finally share his truth, opening a path toward empathy, forgiveness, and renewal.

    Check out The Optimist trailer below (watch other trailers):

    What happens in The Optimist trailer?

    The Optimist trailer follows the story of Herbert, a children’s store owner and Holocaust survivor. While he struggles to confront the past he’s dealt with, he forms a friendship with Abbey, a teenager also navigating their own issues.

    Alongside Lang, The Optimist also stars Elsie Fisher, best known for her breakout role in Eighth Grade. The pair are also joined by Luke David Blumm, Leah Pipes, Ben Geurens, Ursula Parker, Slavko Sobin, Stella Stocker, Oskar Hes, and Robin Weigert. The Optimist is written and directed by Finn Taylor.

    Lang was most recently seen in 2025’s Avatar: Fire and Ash, where he reprises his role as Colonel Miles Quaritch. He also starred in the sequel film Sisu: Road to Revenge, a sequel to 2022’s Sisu. Lang will next appear in 2026’s Hellfire, as well as the upcoming Gettysburg 1863. Since her role in Eighth Grade, Fisher has appeared in a litany of films, most recently 2025’s Tow. She’ll next appear in Latchkey Kids and Hypergalactic.

    Anthony Nash

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  • Video: ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ | Anatomy of a Scene

    Hey, Jim Cameron here. I’m the director of “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” So this is Varang, played by Oona Chaplin. And she’s sharing with Quaritch, now that he’s in this altered state of consciousness, her backstory about how the volcano erupted. She doesn’t use the term “volcano.” She says the fire came from the mountain. We can fill that in for ourselves, destroyed her homeland, she says, “burned our forests.” And she talks about the plight of her people. So this is Oona imagining flame. There’s no flame. And we even went back and did a pickup on this line — “But Eywa did not come.” — because I wanted something punchy that I could really zoom in tight on her face because we really fell in love with her character, the look of her character. People need to remember there’s actually zero photography going on here. There’s a hundred percent performance capture. So when we see this P.O.V., of how Quaritch is perceiving her, which is his altered state due to the hallucinogenic truth powder that she shot up his nose with her blowpipe. This is me with my virtual camera just playing, just having fun. Just seeing what a 9 millimeter lens would look like, just seeing what would happen if I jitter the zoom so it kind of flutters and fluctuates a little bit. And then we created shaders that would have the surface kind of boiling with these fractal patterns. And we created lags and all that. So I did a little research ahead of time on this back in college. [Laughs] No more said on that. And so this is Oona and Stephen Lang. And they didn’t do a lot of preparation. We didn’t rehearse the scene very much. We just kind of plunged into it. But you see two really consummate actors working here and just bouncing off each other, just feeding off each other’s energy. So Stephen approached it that he was on some kind of hallucinatory drug but he actually — he was playing it that he thought she was kind of amazing and almost goddess like. And that’s why we play with the scale and the size of her with the wide lens here, and that he actually thinks it’s kind of amazing and even funny at times, some of the things she says. Now, meanwhile, we’re supposed to think he’s in a lot of danger here. He’s lost his overwatch guy: Wainfleet, his sniper. He’s hidden from him. He’s on his own with her. She’s got a knife. She’s picking up his kuru. We’ve already seen her sever the kurus of many other people. Yeah, we’re past the point of peak jeopardy here, where we fake out the audience that she’s going to cut his kuru off, which we’ve also been told is worse than death for them. Oona’s performance is extremely detailed here. I’ve got an awful lot of respect for what she did. I don’t recall us doing a lot of takes. But at this point the power starts to shift. He said, “I can give you the one thing you’ve never had, which is an equal, ” and that stops her in her tracks. And then he starts to paint this picture of what he can do for her with human technology: guns and various advanced tech. And because he’s on a truth serum, she must believe everything that he says. And that’s what’s wonderful about this scene, because he can’t be lying. It will happen the way he describes it. And then she’s looking out into a future where she has the kind of power that she’s always dreamed of. And that’s when she says, “I see you,” meaning I see what you’re saying. “You need me.” “I see you.” And he closes with “damn right you do.” Which is — It’s been his plan all along to walk in there and do that. So all that time you thought he was in jeopardy. He was actually just setting her up. Now it starts to play out. So cinematically, I love this scene. I like the slow motion, I like the wind. I like the fact that you don’t hear any true sound here other than just the music, this incredibly pounding, driving thing. It’s almost like the music of a destiny playing out. And when his technology meets her lust for power, it becomes almost sexual here, her glee. It’s actually written in the script that she’s like a girl with her first pony. You know what I mean? Like, she’s just so happy with what he’s brought for her. But it’s actually quite a dark moment because you see the tumblers in the lock of destiny are kind of turning and locking in. And I had a bunch of dialogue here where he says, “So, are we partners?” And she says, “This is not the way we become partners,” but it just turned out to be unnecessary. And so it became a very stylized kind of cinematic approach. [GUNSHOTS]

    Mekado Murphy

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  • Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 9-15

    Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 9-15

    Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 9-15:

    July 9: Actor Richard Roundtree is 81. Singer Dee Dee Kenniebrew of The Crystals is 78. Actor Chris Cooper is 72. TV personality-turned-musician John Tesh is 71. Country singer David Ball is 70. Business leader Kevin O’Leary (“Shark Tank”) is 69. Singer Debbie Sledge of Sister Sledge is 69. Actor Jimmy Smits is 68. Actor Tom Hanks is 67. Singer Marc Almond of Soft Cell is 66. Actor Kelly McGillis is 66. Singer Jim Kerr of Simple Minds is 64. Singer Courtney Love is 59. Bassist Frank Bello of Anthrax is 58. Actor David O’Hara (“The District”) is 58. Actor Pamela Adlon (“King of the Hill,” “Louie”) is 57. Actor Scott Grimes (“ER,” ″Party of Five”) is 52. Singer-guitarist Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse is 48. Musician Jack White is 48. Actor Fred Savage is 47. Singer Dan Estrin of Hoobastank is 47. Actor Linda Park (“Star Trek: Enterprise”) is 45. Actor Megan Parlen (“Hang Time”) is 43. Singer-actor Kiely Williams of 3LW (“Cheetah Girls” films) is 37. Actor Mitchel Musso (“Phineas and Ferb,” “Hannah Montana”) is 32. Actor Georgie Henley (“The Chronicles of Narnia”) is 28.

    July 10: Actor William Smithers (“Dallas,” ″Peyton Place”) is 96. Singer Mavis Staples is 84. Actor Mills Watson (“B.J. and the Bear,” ″Lobo”) is 83. Actor Robert Pine (“CHiPS”) is 82. Guitarist Jerry Miller of Moby Grape is 80. Folk singer Arlo Guthrie is 76. Bassist Dave Smalley of The Raspberries is 74. Singer Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys is 69. Banjo player Bela Fleck of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones is 65. Actor Fiona Shaw (“True Blood,” ″Harry Potter” films) is 65. Drummer Shaw Wilson of BR549 is 63. Actor Alec Mapa (“Ugly Betty” ″Half & Half”) is 58. Country singer Ken Mellons is 58. Guitarist Peter DiStefano of Porno for Pyros is 58. Actor Gale Harold (“Hellcats”) is 54. Country singer Gary LeVox of Rascal Flatts is 53. Actor Sofia Vergara (“Modern Family”) is 51. Singer Imelda May is 49. Actor Adrian Grenier (“Entourage,” ″Cecil B. DeMented”) is 47. Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (“12 Years a Slave”) is 46. Actor Gwendoline Yeo (“Desperate Housewives”) is 46. Actor Thomas Ian Nicholas (“American Pie”) is 43. Singer Jessica Simpson is 43. Actor Heather Hemmens (“Hellcats”) is 39. Rapper-singer Angel Haze is 32. Singer Perrie Edwards of Little Mix is 30.

    Hong Kong-born singer and songwriter Coco Lee has died by suicide. She was 48. Her sisters said in a statement on Wednesday that the star had been suffering from depression for several years with her condition deteriorating drastically over the last few months.

    FILE - Rose Leslie, left, and Kit Harington arrive at the 77th annual Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 5, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. The "Game of Thrones" stars have welcomed their second child. A publicist for Harington confirmed Monday that the couple, who famously met on the set of “Game of Thrones," have added a daughter to their family. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

    Actors Rose Leslie and Kit Harington have welcomed their second child. A publicist for Harington confirmed Monday that the couple have added a daughter to their family.

    Violinist and singer Brittney Denise Parks, better known as Sudan Archives, appears in a promotional photo. Last week, she made her debut at the Glastonbury music festival in the U.K. (Obidigbo Nzeribe/7 Artist Mgmt via AP)

    Better known as Sudan Archives, Brittney Denise Parks is an avant-garde violinist and singer-songwriter who describes her style as “fiddle soft punk.”

    Actor Kevin Spacey arrives at Southwark Crown Court in London, Friday, June 30, 2023. Spacey is going on trial on charges he sexually assaulted four men as long as two decades ago. The double-Oscar winner faces a dozen charges at Southwark Crown Court. Spacey pleads not guilty to all charges. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

    A London prosecutor says Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey is a “sexual bully” who assaults other men and doesn’t respect personal boundaries.

    July 11: Singer Jeff Hanna of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band is 76. Ventriloquist Jay Johnson (“Soap”) is 74. Actor Bruce McGill (“Animal House”) is 73. Actor Stephen Lang is 71. Actor Mindy Sterling (“Austin Powers”) is 70. Actor Sela Ward is 67. Singer Peter Murphy of Bauhaus is 66. Reggae singer Michael Rose of Black Uhuru is 66. Actor Mark Lester (“Oliver”) is 65. Jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum is 65. Guitarist Richie Sambora (Bon Jovi) is 64. Singer Suzanne Vega is 64. Actor Lisa Rinna is 60. Bassist Scott Shriner of Weezer is 58. Actor Debbe Dunning (“Home Improvement”) is 57. Actor Greg Grunberg (“Heroes,” ″Alias,” ″Felicity”) is 57. Wildlife expert Jeff Corwin (“The Jeff Corwin Experience”) is 56. Actor Justin Chambers (“Grey’s Anatomy”) is 53. Actor Leisha Hailey (“The L Word”) is 52. Actor Michael Rosenbaum (“Smallville”) is 51. Rapper Lil’ Kim is 49. Actor Jon Wellner (“CSI”) is 48. Rapper Lil’ Zane is 42. Actor David Henrie (“Wizards of Waverly Place”) is 34. Actor Connor Paolo (“Revenge”) is 33. Singer Alessia Cara is 27.

    July 12: Actor Denise Nicholas (“In the Heat of the Night”) is 79. Singer Walter Egan is 75. Fitness guru Richard Simmons is 75. Actor Cheryl Ladd (“Charlie’s Angels”) is 72. Singer Ricky McKinnie of The Blind Boys of Alabama is 71. Actor Mel Harris (“thirtysomething”) is 67. Gospel singer Sandi Patty is 67. Guitarist Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum is 61. Actor Judi Evans (“Days of Our Lives”) is 59. Singer Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms is 58. Actor Lisa Nicole Carson (“Ally McBeal”) is 54. Country singer Shannon Lawson is 50. Rapper Magoo is 50. Actor Anna Friel (“Monarch,” “Pushing Daisies”) is 47. Singer Tracie Spencer is 47. Actor Alison Wright (“The Americans”) is 47. Actor Steve Howey (“Reba”) is 46. Actor Topher Grace (“That ’70s Show”) is 45. Actor Michelle Rodriguez (“The Fast and The Furious” films, “Lost”) is 45. Actor Kristen Connolly (“Zoo”) is 43. Singer-guitarist Kimberly Perry of The Band Perry is 40. Actor Matt Cook (“Man with a Plan”) is 39. Actor Natalie Martinez (“Under the Dome”) is 39. Actor Ta’Rhonda Jones (“Empire”) is 35. Actor Melissa O’Neill (“The Rookie”) is 35. Actor Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” ″House of Cards”) is 33. Actor Erik Per Sullivan (“Malcolm in the Middle”) is 32.

    July 13: Game show announcer Johnny Gilbert is 95. Actor Patrick Stewart is 83. Actor Harrison Ford is 81. Singer-guitarist Roger McGuinn of The Byrds is 81. Actor-comedian Cheech Marin is 77. Actor Daphne Maxwell Reid (“Eve,” ″The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”) is 75. Actor Didi Conn is 72. Actor Gil Birmingham (“Twilight” films) is 70. Country singer Louise Mandrell is 69. Bassist Mark “The Animal” Mendoza of Twisted Sister is 67. Actor-director Cameron Crowe is 66. Actor Michael Jace (“The Shield”) is 61. Actor Tom Kenny (“Spongebob Squarepants”) is 61. Country singer-songwriter Victoria Shaw is 61. Bluegrass singer Rhonda Vincent is 61. Country singer Neil Thrasher (Thrasher Shriver) is 58. Actor Ken Jeong (“The Masked Singer,” “Dr. Ken”) is 54. Singer Deborah Cox is 50. Drummer Will Champion of Coldplay is 45. Actor Aya Cash (“You’re the Worst”) is 41. Actor Colton Haynes (“Arrow”) is 35. Actor Steven R. McQueen (“The Vampire Diaries”) is 35. Singer Leon Bridges is 34. Actor Hayley Erin (“General Hospital”) is 29. Actor Kyle Harrison Breitkopf (“The Whispers”) is 18.

    July 14: Actor Nancy Olson (“Sunset Boulevard”) is 95. Football player-turned-actor Rosey Grier is 91. Actor Vincent Pastore (“The Sopranos”) is 77. Bassist Chris Cross of Ultravox is 71. Actor Jerry Houser (“Summer of ’42″) is 71. Actor Eric Laneuville (“St. Elsewhere”) is 71. Actor Stan Shaw (“Harlem Nights”) is 71. Singer-comedian Kyle Gass of Tenacious D is 63. Guitarist Ray Herndon of McBride and the Ride is 63. Actor Jane Lynch is 63. Actor Jackie Earle Haley is 62. Actor Matthew Fox (“Lost,” ″Party of Five”) is 57. Keyboardist Ellen Reid of Crash Test Dummies is 57. Singer-guitarist Tanya Donelly of Belly is 57. Actor Missy Gold (“Benson”) is 53. Singer Tameka Cottle of Xscape is 48. Country singer Jamey Johnson is 48. Musician taboo of Black Eyed Peas is 48. Actor Scott Porter (“Friday Night Lights”) is 44. Actor Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Fleabag”) is 38. Singer Dan Smith of Bastille is 37. Actor Sara Canning (“The Vampire Diaries”) is 36. Singer Dan Reynolds of Imagine Dragons is 36.

    July 15: Actor Patrick Wayne is 84. Singer Millie Jackson is 79. Guitarist-singer Peter Lewis of Moby Grape is 78. Singer Linda Ronstadt is 77. Drummer Artimus Pyle (Lynyrd Skynyrd) is 75. Actor Terry O’Quinn (“Lost,” ″West Wing,”) is 71. Singer-guitarist David Pack (Ambrosia) is 71. Drummer Marky Ramone (The Ramones) is 71. Guitarist Joe Satriani is 67. Country songwriter Mac McAnally is 66. Model Kim Alexis is 63. Actor Willie Aames (“Eight Is Enough,” ″Charles In Charge”) is 63. Actor Lolita Davidovich is 62. Actor-director Forest Whitaker is 62. Actor Shari Headley is 60. Actor Brigitte Nielsen is 60. Drummer Jason Bonham is 57. Actor Amanda Foreman (“Parenthood,” ″Felicity”) is 57. Singer Stokley of Mint Condition is 56. Actor-comedian Eddie Griffin (“Malcolm and Eddie”) is 55. Actor Reggie Hayes (“Girlfriends”) is 54. Actor Jim Rash (“Community”) is 52. Drummer John Dolmayan of System of a Down and of Scars on Broadway is 51. Actor Scott Foley (“Scandal,” ″Felicity”) is 51. Actor Brian Austin Green (“Beverly Hills 90210”) is 50. Rapper Jim Jones is 47. Actor Diane Kruger (“National Treasure,” “Troy”) is 47. Actor Lana Parrilla (“Once Upon a Time,” ″Swingtown”) is 46. Guitarist Ray Toro of My Chemical Romance is 46. Actor Laura Benanti (“Law and Order: SVU”) is 44. Singer Kia Thornton of Divine is 44. Actor Taylor Kinney (“Chicago Fire”) is 42. Actor Tristan “Mack” Wilds (“90210″) is 34. Actor Iain Armitage (“Big Little Lies,” “Young Sheldon”) is 15.

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