logo
That's a career-wrap on Michael Douglas

That's a career-wrap on Michael Douglas

Yahoo2 days ago
Michael Douglas has hung up his bifocals and dashed any hopes fans had for a sequel to his Benjamin Franklin series. Speaking at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF) in the Czech Republic yesterday, per The Hollywood Reporter, and following nearly 60 years on screen, the 80-year-old Oscar winner announced that he has 'no intention' of working again, saying he'd rather hang out with his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, which, yeah, makes sense. It was a long time coming. Douglas says that he hasn't worked since 2022 when he realized 'I have to stop,' and indeed he has. Throughout his career, Douglas rarely went a year without a new release, and in the last two decades, he also survived throat cancer, a Wall Street sequel, and the ups and downs of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In that time, in addition to an Emmy-winning performance in Behind The Candelabra, he also enjoyed runs on the Netflix hit The Kominsky Method and a Green Eggs And Ham show that we're all just finding out about. Sadly, that's a wrap on Michael Douglas, who, weirdly, 'did not want to be one of those people who dropped dead on set.' Though he stops short of saying he's retired 'because [if] something special came up, I'd go back,' he reiterates, 'I have no real intention' of doing so.
In the meantime, he's 'happy to play the wife,' which we'll take in the good spirit of his sentiments and not as a weirdly regressive way of looking at his marriage with Zeta-Jones, who he admits is '25 years younger than' he and 'very busy right now.'
Douglas' IMDb page lists a couple more projects in the pipeline, including a drama called Looking Through Water, which is reportedly scheduled for release this summer, and the long-in-development Reagan & Gorbachev mini-series, co-starring Christoph Waltz, for Paramount+. Selfishly, we implore Douglas to reconsider his retirement until after his dramatic retelling of the Reykjavík Summit. Still, we understand if he'd rather play Catherine Zeta-Jones' wife until something really good comes along.
More from A.V. Club
Superman gets a big, blue reboot that supercharges a beleaguered genre
Spoiler Space: Jurassic World Rebirth once again makes dinosaurs everyone's problem
Federal court of appeals unsubscribes Americans from "Click to Cancel"
Solve the daily Crossword
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

The Classic Julia Child Recipe Ina Garten Idolizes
The Classic Julia Child Recipe Ina Garten Idolizes

Yahoo

time43 minutes ago

  • Yahoo

The Classic Julia Child Recipe Ina Garten Idolizes

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links. Every once in a while, you'll have a meal that sticks with you, for more than just wistful nostalgia. It's food that reinvigorates, inspires, and has you wanting to share it with everyone. For Ina Garten, one such meal was the coq au vin she once had decades ago in a campsite in France, which in turn led to her learning Julia Child's recipe for the dish. When Garten was a guest on the Your Mama's Kitchen podcast with Michelle Norris, she recounted a trip to Europe she and her husband once took when they were both young and relatively broke. During a stop in France, they drove up to the two-star campsite they'd be staying at and were offered a fresh serving of coq au vin by the woman who ran the campsite. Garten brought it back to their tent, heated it up for dinner, and fell in love. "I just thought, 'I need to know how to make this. This is amazing,'" she shared on the podcast. Since then, coq au vin has been a fixture in Garten's repertoire. She first learned how to make it by following Child's recipe, and has since adapted it to add her personal touch. Her dish today is the product of three great inspirations: the rustic campsite coq au vin, the legendary Julia Child, and her own personal tastes. It's a recipe worth learning, especially if you're a fan of Ina Garten's genius 10-recipe rule. Read more: 13 Meats People Used To Eat, But Are Now Illegal In The US The Julia Child Recipe That Inspired Ina Garten's Coq Au Vin If you want to follow in Ina Garten's footsteps and learn how to make Julia Child's coq au vin first, you can find it in "The French Chef Cookbook." Child was, for decades, America's most famous advocate for French cuisine -- and also, rather surprisingly, a spy for the early CIA -- and happily shared her recipes both on television and in writing. Child's coq au vin is hearty stew bearing the rich flavors of browned chicken, bacon, mushrooms, and onions, simmered in a broth of beef and tomato paste, and fortified by a healthy amount of red wine. The liquid is then reduced and further thickened with butter and flour, resulting in a dish that warms your bones and fills your belly. It's easy to see why the iconic French staple was Julia Child's favorite chicken dish, and why it left such a strong impression on Garten. Garten's recipe for coq au vin changes up a handful of things from Child's, but the inspiration behind her version still shines through. How Ina Garten Gave Julia Child's Coq Au Vin Her Own Spin Cooking can be a deeply personal matter, which is why you'll often see two chefs have wildly different takes on the same dish. In fact, there's a significant difference between Julia Child's and Ina Garten's beef bourguignon recipes, despite both being fans of French cuisine. While Child's recipe may have provided the foundation for it, Garten's coq au vin is distinctly her own. Based on the recipe she included in her cookbook "Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics," Garten uses chicken stock as the base of her broth instead of beef stock, while also forgoing the tomato paste. This strengthens the flavor of the chicken itself, but trades off some of the depth that the beef and tomato can provide. The addition of cognac to Garten's recipe accentuates both the sweet and savory flavors in the dish through its complex layers. While this likely isn't the same recipe that inspired Garten at the campsite all those years ago, it's nice to know where the story of her version of coq au vin came from: a life-changing trip with her husband, the kindness of a stranger, and the wisdom of a food icon. Every recipe, after all, comes from an experience we want to share with the people we cook for, and Garten's coq au vin is a tale we'd listen to over and over again. Read the original article on Chowhound.

This Is the Commodore Comeback Fans Have Waited for—but the Odds Are Still Against It
This Is the Commodore Comeback Fans Have Waited for—but the Odds Are Still Against It

WIRED

timean hour ago

  • WIRED

This Is the Commodore Comeback Fans Have Waited for—but the Odds Are Still Against It

After years of mismanagement and questionable product tie-ins, the 80s computer brand is back, now with a fan at the helm. But is the appetite for retro gaming still big enough for it to succeed? The Commodore 64U Starlight Courtesy of Commodore In 1994, Commodore crashed and burned. Once a home computing giant across the US and Europe, the company was undone by mismanagement and misfires. The carcass was picked clean and the pieces resold so many times that it was hard to keep track, but with each new owner came the inevitable—an attempt to make a fast buck by slapping the famous C= logo on any old junk. Fans watched in horror as the brand appeared on the mediocre all-in-one PC, the bizarrely named Gravel in Pocket media player, and the Commodore smartphone. There was even a Commodore-branded shredder. So when retro gaming YouTuber Christian 'Perifractic' Simpson announced he wanted to buy what remained of Commodore and give it a new life, questions were asked. Chief among them: does the world still even need Commodore? When I'm 64 Commodore as a brand initially focused on typewriters and calculators, but its glory days arrived with the rise of home micros, causing a swift rebirth as Commodore International Computing. Its biggest success was the Commodore 64, which hit the sweet spot between affordability and potential. While the CPU was sluggish, powerful graphics and a surprisingly capable sound chip (which remains revered today) spurred creativity on both sides of the Atlantic. Over 5,000 commercial games were released during the machine's heyday, and more than 15 million units were sold, making the C64 still one of the highest-selling single computer models ever. It's this legacy Simpson aims to revive. Initially, he sought a licensing deal with the Commodore brand owners, imagining 'official' boards and replacement components as part of an inclusive, community-friendly conglomerate. These plans snowballed during discussions, and Simpson found himself securing an agreement to buy Commodore outright for a 'low seven-figure' sum. He now serves as Commodore CEO and promises to revive the company in a sustainable way—one that won't repeat the failures of the past. But here's where things get tricky. Simpson doesn't actually own the original company because that company no longer exists. Commodore's 1990s dismemberment means the current iteration owns a number of trademarks, but essential parts of the ecosystem remain scattered. C64 ROMs and Amiga (Commodore's 16-bit micro) rights belong to Cloanto and Amiga Corporation. AmigaOS is controlled by Hyperion Entertainment. And aside from the odd mass-market flirtation from clone machines, like the C64DTV all-in-one joystick and the plug-and-play THEC64 Mini, major developments that mattered for the past 30 years have all come from the community, not the brand. Computers for the Masses It's for these reasons Simpson finds himself walking multiple tightropes. He must avoid alienating enthusiasts that kept the Commodore flame alive, and not imply that only his new Commodore confers legitimacy. He must collaborate closely with owners of other key puzzle pieces and license the Commodore brand fairly to interested third parties. And to recoup that seven-figure sum, the new Commodore must sell enough new hardware, which means moving beyond a dwindling core fanbase. For now, Simpson's initial play banks heavily on nostalgia—not solely for the C64, but for an entire era. The new Commodore website pitches the company as a 'digital detox brand [that's] grounded in digital minimalism.' It rails against social media, glorifies the good old days of 'techno optimism'—apparently, the 1980s through to the mid-1990s—and hints that Commodore can help users reclaim their childhoods. But the company also wants to be seen as an innovator with an eye on the future, and this results in a kind of branding whiplash. The new Commodore wants to be both reboot and original; past and future. Fittingly, this iteration's debut product, the Commodore 64 Ultimate, embodies such tensions. The $500 gold-bling Founders Edition and $350 LED-laden disco case Starlight Edition don't exactly scream digital minimalism. But the $300 BASIC Beige is the spitting image of the original hardware. All models bridge authenticity and modernity by supporting original C64 peripherals and current connectivity, including 1080p HDMI output so you needn't hunt down a CRT TV. Inside, it's all FPGAS—field programmable gate arrays—which ultimately mean simulation rather than the less-accurate emulation found in Chinese retro handhelds and cheap plug-and-play TV devices. Some critics nonetheless grumble that even this 'new' machine is past and present in another way, effectively being an amalgamation of existing products, from the keycaps to the having the Ultimate64 board at its core. However, Ultimate64 creator Gideon Zweijtzer has publicly disagreed that Simpson is merely assembling other people's hard work and slapping on a logo. He believes the Commodore 64 Ultimate was a 'joint effort between parties to create a cohesive package' and credits Simpson as someone with reach who can 'bring people together.' The $64,000 Question That reach will be essential because noble efforts, sentiment, and saying the right thing won't bring sustainability. Even pent-up demand for a new Commodore 64—at the time of writing, over 4000 units have been sold, amounting to $1.5 million in revenue—is a one-off trick that can't be repeated. History shows retro appeal can be short-lived. Outside the hardcore enthusiasts, fans tend to rapidly move beyond rose-tinted, wide-eyed nostalgia; the retro devices they've bought then gather dust. Few remain on sale for long because the market is finite and fickle. And then, there's the question of games. A large slice of the annual retro gaming market—estimated to be around $2.5 billion, though no one has a great handle on the numbers—comes from software rather than hardware. The issue for Commodore here is that it never released any notable games of its own, so it can't mimic Atari's ability to remake the Atari 2600 with modern connectivity while also reimagining 1980s classics like Pong and Missile Command . And even if Commodore were to license games, nothing in the entire C64 catalog has the cultural clout of Pac-Man , Space Invaders , Sonic the Hedgehog , or Super Mario Bros . The Commodore 64 Ultimate menu. The alternate mainstream option would be an attempt to reestablish Commodore's reputation as a brand that offers computing for the masses, not the classes, ringing in Simpson's desire for a 'simpler, distraction-free computing experience.' But what would that mean in practice? Unplugging? Educational and creative tools? Commodore 64 BASIC is notoriously bad, and it's unclear whether enough newcomers will see value in a relatively expensive beige retro box when a Raspberry Pi costs a fraction of the price and can tap into a massive existing ecosystem. But an entirely new platform would be a colossally risky endeavor. The Last Byte of a Legend What is the endgame, then? Without hit games and obvious mainstream appeal, how does Commodore survive, let alone thrive? Is it even possible for this 1980s cultural icon to move beyond people who were there at the time and break out of its bubble? It's hard to say. Perhaps it doesn't have to. Simpson envisions a 'single, joined-up family of Commodore machines,' and that could be enough. Commodore would become a community-focused brand, presiding over a modest ecosystem, acting as a benevolent curator that elevates quality projects, brings just enough polish and legitimacy to help the scene flourish, and simply refuses to let the legacy fade. Although investors who've pumped in cash might see things differently. A much worse scenario would be a repeat of the past: panic over income, leading to the brand again being stamped on unremarkable products, or the mismanagement and misfires that alienate partners and fans. There's also the very real possibility that Commodore might just discover the harsh reality of being a very niche, small player in an industry of giants. Any one of those could deal a final, fatal blow to the brand from which it would never recover, taking down swathes of the community with it. Still, this time feels different. This revival doesn't come from cynicism but from genuine passion and love for the brand. Even so, the odds of success feel slim, whether that means sparking a new wave of computing optimism or returning the brand to cultural relevance. But for a while at least, fans can remain optimistic this might finally be the play that truly brings Commodore back to life.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store