Untamed review — Eric Bana delivers shocks and originality
The first three minutes of Netflix's new thriller, set in Yosemite National Park and starring Eric Bana, Sam Neill and Lily Santiago, is one of the most visually dramatic openings to a drama that I've seen in some time. Two climbers are attempting, perilously, to scale the side of El Capitan, a 3000ft high granite monolith in Yosemite Valley, in scenes that will be challenging for those of you with vertigo. They slip, stumble and dangle but that's nothing compared to what comes next. Suddenly from the summit falls a young woman, crashing violently against the jagged stone face, until she stops, tangled in their safety ropes, and hangs there, swinging grotesquely and dead.
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The Independent
17 minutes ago
- The Independent
Watch: Ozzy's best moments in The Osbournes
Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath frontman and reality TV star, died at the age of 76 on Tuesday. His death has led to the resurfacing of memorable moments from his reality TV show, The Osbournes. The series followed the life of Osbourne, his wife Sharon, and their children Kelly and Jack at their home in Beverly Hills. A joint statement from his family confirmed that he "was with his family and surrounded by love" when he died. Watch the video in full above.
The Guardian
17 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Covid, social media, Black Lives Matter: Ari Aster's Eddington takes 2020 on and mostly succeeds
Eddington, writer-director Ari Aster's polarizing new black dramedy, opens with a troubling sight: an unhoused and clearly distressed man walking through the New Mexico desert, bleating an incoherent ramble of modern buzzwords. Troubling not for the man, but for the content of his ramble and the time: late May, 2020. TikTok. My immediate reaction was a derogatory 'oh no.' Aster has specialized in gut-twisting, unworldly horror, the kind of brain-searing, highly symbolic shocks that linger for weeks; I watched large stretches of his first two features, the demonic family parable Hereditary and Swedish solstice nightmare Midsommar – through my fingers. But in Eddington, he took on not one but two insidious bogeymen haunting our psyches: phones in movies and Covid. Nearly every character in Aster's black satire of Covid-era upheaval possesses a device essential to modern life but often incompatible with cinematic storytelling. People trawl Instagram for updates on their crush, sell crafts on Etsy, watch videos on the Bill Gates microchip conspiracy, receive updates via Pop Crave. Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix), the walking ego bruise of a protagonist in Aster's vision of a small western town, announces his snap campaign for mayor against nemesis Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal) on Facebook Live. In one of many blows to his tenuous dignity, he discovers message boards of pedophilia panic frequented by his wife, Louise (Emma Stone); he's awakened from a depressed, drug-tinged sleep binge by frantic iMessages from his two hapless deputies. Such verisimilitude to how most of the movie-going public live our lives – online, on screens, absorbing toxic dosages of information in our own private bubbles – usually spells disaster for a Hollywood project. Decades into the internet era, most movies and TV shows still cannot get the internet right. Second screens are inherently un-cinematic, and the tighter the internet's hyper-loops of viral attention coil, the harder it is to capture in cinematic projects that usually spans years from conception to audience. Something almost always feels off – the interface distracting, the tone askew, the liminality and speed incongruous with the story. I can probably count on two hands the films that have captured digital life in a way did not feel inaccurate, didactic or self-important, let alone seamlessly woven it into story – Eighth Grade, Sweat, Tár, Dìdi, Past Lives. I remember them because it's still so rare; it is difficult to incorporate the mundane minutiae of screen life, tie oneself to time-stamped events, or tap into the propulsion of social media and succeed. It is just as tricky to burrow into an identifiable cultural moment without coming off as horrifically smug – both the climate emergency satire Don't Look Up and billionaire-skewering Mountainhead were so politically self-satisfied as to be nearly unbearable. Much has and will be said about Eddington's portent precarious ambiguity, its mid-act tonal shift and descent into violence, about Aster's divisive transformation from horror wunderkind to high-minded auteur. (I personally found the shift dubious and the second, should-be thrilling half a tedious slog, though in the hands of cinematographer Darius Khondji, everything looks fantastic.) But on this front – the task of handling real events on a real timeline with a real sense of the vanishing boundary between online and off – Eddington is a success. Aster's film touches so many of the third rails of modern cinema – the internet, screenshots, Zoom, celebrities, political figures, bitcoin, 9/11 – and yet somehow survives. It does so by grounding this admittedly bloated satire of political and social turmoil in a hyper-specific moment in late May 2020. Whereas the winners in the digital culture film canon usually succeed by using the phone screen as a window into one character's psyche – think the surveilling Instagram Live that opens Tár, or the Instagram scroll montage in Eighth Grade – Eddington aims for a specific cultural moment; phone lock screens keep time during a week deep in US lockdown, as frustration, anger, fear and outrage fester into outright chaos. My particular brand of brain worms means that I remember, in crystal-clear chronological order, the concerned Atlantic articles, to NBA cancellation, to Tom Hanks coronavirus diagnosis death spiral, to New York completely shutting down on 11 March, as well as the beginning of the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd on 25 May. What I chose not to remember, at least until watching a scene in which the sheriff refuses to wear a mask in a grocery store, prompting a showdown with frazzled employees, was the lost etiquette of 2020 – standing 6ft apart, silently judging those who wore their masks on their chins and those who policed, constantly assessing others' propensity for a fight. Traversing fault lines everywhere. Eddington's characters implode and tangle and lose their minds against this chillingly familiar backdrop – half-masked high-schoolers gathering in clumps outside, mask mandates handed down from the governor, virtual town halls. Some tumble down internet rabbit holes into delusion. (A too-broad, conspiratorial wellness guru, played by a too-intense Austin Butler, makes an unfortunate IRL appearance in Eddington.) Others follow Instagram to the growing ranks of BLM protests across the nation. Neighbors doubt neighbors, and even the mention of Black lives exposes barely hidden racial tensions. Everywhere, at least for the film's superior first half, there's a feeling of trepidation – a familiar disorientation from the rapid blurring of right and wrong, a deluge of high-octane headlines and a potent confusion of sympathies that cannot be resolved. Aster is not always fair in his rendering, sometimes stacking its deck in favor of the needling center that is Sheriff Joe. But the internet is going to flatten everyone into statements and identities, and Eddington takes swipes in all directions. Tár is nimbler at skewering so-called 'social justice warriors', though at least Aster captures how some white leftist activists are primarily driven by ego, how much of the body politic is straight-up id. About a quarter of the way through the movie, Joe confronts an onslaught of national anger with his own projection; he dismisses concern from deputy Guy (a savvily cast Luke Grimes from Yellowstone) about the Black Lives Matter protesters (or 'looters') seen on TV with a blanket 'that's not a here problem'. Except, of course, it is. Five years on, we have only just reached some critical distance from the rupture that, judging by the lack of retrospectives this March, no one wants to remember. In Eddington, that upside-down, unreal reality begins to come into focus. There is no such thing as a 'here problem'. Everything is an everywhere problem. At any point, the worst parts of the internet – which is to say, the worst parts of people – can descend on your town at terrifying speed. To see that environment rendered believably on screen is, ironically, the most thrilling part of it all. Eddington is out now in US cinemas and in the UK on 22 August
Daily Mail
17 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
CBS Mornings anchor insults Stephen Colbert live on-air
Steven Colbert has been insulted live on-air by one of his CBS stablemates who implied the axing of the liberal star's talk show is no great loss. Tony Dokoupil branded Colbert and his stablemates 'one sided' on CBS Mornings Wednesday while he and his colleagues discussed Jon Stewart 's defense of The Late Show, which will disappear from screens in May 2026. Stewart claimed on his show Tuesday that a large part of CBS' parent company Paramount's $8 billion valuation was due to Colbert, despite The Late Show losing $40 million a year. Paramount plans to merge with media company Skydance in the coming months if it can gain approval from President Trump's Federal Communications Commission. Stewart and others have suggested anti-MAGA Colbert had been axed to grease the wheels of that deal. But Dokoupil was clearly unimpressed by that theory and even gave an exasperated sounding sigh live on air after the clip of Stewart was played. 'I understand the emotional views,' he said. 'I don't have an MBA but he's not right that the merger, the $8 billion, is based on reruns of a comedy show, no. 'People are buying the movies and the sitcoms and the sports. They're not based on reruns of us (CBS Mornings) either, so I think it's wrong.' Dokoupil then attacked Colbert himself, saying his show and its competitors 'got way way more one-sided than anything Johnny Carson was ever doing'. He was referring to talk show icon Carson, whose late night program paved the way for the likes of Colbert and who never shared his political views during his 30 years on air. He added: '[Stewart] acknowledged that these late-night shows are what he called like a Blockbuster kiosk inside a Tower Record – so the business is broken.' Co-host Gayle King ignored Dokoupil while adding that she felt sorry for Colbert, describing it as 'very difficult'. Dokoupil agreed, adding that he felt 'for the whole staff of both those shows, and whatever comes next for everybody'. Dokoupil is no stranger to going against the grain, and last year found himself hauled before CBS' in-house DEI team after clashing with author Ta-Nehisi Coates over his anti-Israel views. Stewart's spiel came during a reflective segment on The Daily Show, which originally aired alongside Colbert's since-cancelled 'Colbert Report' in the 2000s. He said Colbert went on to 'exceed all expectations' upon leaving Comedy Central for late-night, before acknowledging the fading format as a whole. 'Now, I acknowledge, losing money, late-night TV is a struggling financial model ,' he said. 'We are all basically operating a Blockbuster kiosk inside of a Tower Records.' 'But when your industry is faced with changes, you don't just call it a day,' joking. 'W hen CDs stopped selling, they didn't just go, "Oh, well, music, it's been a good run!".' He addressed executives at Paramount - CBS's parent company - directly, accusing them of capitulating to Trump to secure the sale. He said: 'I believe CBS lost the benefit of the doubt two weeks prior, when they sold out their flagship news program to pay an extortion fee to said president.' 'At that time, poor Andy Rooney must have been rolling over in his bed,' he joked of the late legendary news writer. 'That's right. He is alive. Andy Rooney is alive.' 'I understand the corporate fear. I understand the fear that you and your advertisers have with $8 billion at stake. But understand this,' Stewart added. 'Truly, the shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and control? A not-insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those [expletive] shows,' he added. Last Thursday, CBS announced that the comedian's decade-long run as the host of CBS' late night flagship will end next May. Colbert was paid between $15 million and $20 million a year for his failing show. 'Insiders' immediately maintained to publications like Puck and Variety the top-rated show was canceled due to being a money pit what was losing $40million a year. The sudden move s parked immediate backlash from left-wing celebrities and politicians, who claim the decision was strictly politically-motivated.
