Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 27-Aug. 2
July 27: Actor John Pleshette ('Knots Landing') is 83. Actor-director Betty Thomas ('Hill Street Blues') is 78. Singer Maureen McGovern is 76. Actor Roxanne Hart ('The Good Girl,' ″Chicago Hope') is 71. Guitarist Duncan Cameron (Sawyer Brown) is 69. Comedian Carol Leifer is 69. Comedian Bill Engvall is 68. Jazz singer Karrin Allyson is 63. Country singer Stacy Dean Campbell is 58. Singer Juliana Hatfield is 58. Actor Julian McMahon ('Fantastic Four' films, TV's 'Profiler') is 57. Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ('Game of Thrones') is 55. Comedian Maya Rudolph is 53. Drummer Abe Cunningham of Deftones is 52. Singer Pete Yorn is 51. Actor Seamus Dever ('Castle') is 49. Actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers ('The Tudors') is 48. Comedian Heidi Gardner ('Saturday Night Live') is 42. Actor Taylor Schilling ('Orange Is the New Black') is 41. Singer Cheyenne Kimball of Gloriana is 35. Actor Alyvia Alyn Lind ('Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors') is 18.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Toronto Sun
2 days ago
- Toronto Sun
REVIEW: Finally, the Fantastic Four get the movie they (and we) deserve
Published Jul 23, 2025 • 3 minute read From left, Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm/the Thing, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm/Invisible Woman, Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards/Mister Fantastic and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm/Human Torch. Photo by Jay Maidment / 20th Century Studios/Marvel Studios Reviews and recommendations are unbiased and products are independently selected. Postmedia may earn an affiliate commission from purchases made through links on this page. Flame on! Buoyant, bracing and, most shocking of all, brief, 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' represents a quantum leap of ship-righting. Everything about this amiable adventure – its space-age idiom, its sub-two-hour footprint, its emphasis on a literal nuclear family of heroes – has been cannily calibrated to dispel the air of listlessness that's engulfed the Marvel Cinematic Universe in recent years. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The difficulties adapting the First Family of Marvel Comics go back further than that. Josh Trank's 2015 'Fantastic Four' flamed out despite the presence of Michael B. Jordan as Johnny 'The Human Torch' Storm. Tim Story's 2005 'Fantastic Four' and its 2007 sequel both had Chris Evans playing that physiological hothead, but were too forgettable to disqualify him from suiting up as Captain America later. Most lurid of all was the early '90s 'The Fantastic Four' (italics mine) – rushed to completion by schlock auteur Roger Corman on an austerity budget of $1 million just so producer Bernd Eichinger could hang onto the rights. Those prior iterations hail from a more innocent age of corporate hegemony, before the acquisition of both Marvel and Fox – holder of the Fantastic Four and X-Men movie licences – by Disney, whose appetites rival those of the new film's major threat, the giant purple planet-eater Galactus. True to creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's crazypants vision, this deity's genocidal pig-out is preceded by a visit to our doomed planet from his emcee and enforcer, the Silver Surfer. (Julia Garner plays the surfer in 'First Steps,' and despite being coated in digital chrome, she conveys palpable melancholy.) Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. After opening in media res via a TV special celebrating the Fantastic Four's many victories, 'First Steps' quickly puts the family in family film, with Vanessa Kirby's Sue Storm contemplating a home pregnancy test – one of the more prosaic technological anachronisms in this alternate early 1960s, which also has flying cars and faster-than-light travel. 'Nothing will change,' says her spouse, Reed 'Mr. Fantastic' Richards (the ubiquitous but still welcome Pedro Pascal), because even super-geniuses can be hella dumb. That's our movie: What to Expect When You're Expecting a Violet, Planet-Devouring God. That Sue is in a family way doesn't stop her from blasting off with her family to negotiate with and/or defeat Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson), who demands a biblical tribute. Unwilling to pay up, the Fantastic Four get to work on Plan B, which involves uniting every government on Earth in a coordinated defense requiring global power conservation. (One amusing effect of the brownout is that the Thing can't shave his granite face.) That all this unfolds in just a few brisk scenes with nary a hint of dissent is indicative of the dramatic opportunities that get overlooked when storytellers are bent on efficiency. Still, in an era when blockbuster run times have stretched out longer than Mr. Fantastic's rubbery limbs, it's a refreshing change. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Clearly, Marvel and DC have been reading the same feedback cards. Like the equally pithy new 'Superman,' 'First Steps' eschews its heroes' oft-told origin and drops us into a world where Reed, Sue, her brother Johnny and gentle-geologic-giant Ben 'the Thing' Grimm are already beloved public figures. The director is Matt Shakman, who helmed the memorable MCU streaming series 'WandaVision,' where each episode was a pastiche of a distinct era of television. I am duty-bound to tell you 'First Steps' is set on Earth-828, a dimension removed from all the other Marvel heroes – for now, anyway. Maybe that's the reason cinematographer Jess Hall and production designer Kasra Farahani have been permitted to give 'First Steps' a distinct retro-futuristic look that escapes the house-style visual tedium of the MCU. Its off-world middle act evokes the cosmic majesty of Christopher Nolan's 'Interstellar' more than the screensavery muck of prior spacefaring Marvel films. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Equally remarkable is that no member of the cast is ever dwarfed by the extinction-level machinations around them. Pascal and Kirby, in particular, tuck into the nuances of their partnership in ways seldom seen in these films. Even the minor players – Paul Walter Hauser's comic Mole Man, Natasha Lyonne as a Hebrew schoolteacher drawn to the canonically Jewish Mr. Grimm despite his igneous orange bod – leave us wanting more. — Three stars. Rated PG-13. At area theatres. Superhero action, a zero-gravity childbirth sequence, mild cussing. 118 minutes. Rating guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time. Golf Canada Toronto & GTA Ontario World
Winnipeg Free Press
3 days ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Movie Review: The villains steal the show in ‘The Fantastic Four: First Steps'
More than six decades after Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created a superhero team to rival the Justice League, the Fantastic Four finally get a worthy big-screen adaption in a spiffy '60s-era romp, bathed in retrofuturism and bygone American optimism. Though the Fantastic Four go to the very origins of Marvel Comics, their movie forays have been marked by missteps and disappointments. The first try was a Roger Corman-produced, low-budget 1994 film that was never even released. But, after some failed reboots and a little rights maneuvering, Matt Shakman's 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' is the first Fantastic Four movie released by Marvel Studios. And a sense of returning to Marvel roots permeates this one, an endearingly earnest superhero drama about family and heroism, filled with modernist 'Jetsons' designs that hark back to a time when the future held only promise. 'First Steps,' with a title that nods to Neil Armstrong, quickly reminds that before the Fantastic Four were superheroes, they were astronauts. Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm (a soulful Ebon Moss-Bachrach) flew into space but return altered by cosmic rays. 'We came back with anomalies,' explains Reed, sounding like me after a family road trip. They are now, respectively, the bendy Mister Fantastic, the fast-disappearing Invisible Woman, the fiery Human Torch and the Thing, a craggy CGI boulder of a man. In the glimpses of them as astronauts, the images are styled after NASA footage of Apollo 11, like those seen in the great documentaries 'For All Mankind' and 'Apollo 11.' But part of the fun of the Fantastic Four has always been that while the foursome might have the right stuff, they also bicker and joke and argue like any other family. The chemistry here never feels intimate enough in 'First Steps' to quite capture that interplay, but the cast is good, particularly Kirby. In the first moments of 'First Steps,' Sue sets down a positive pregnancy test before a surprised Reed. That night at dinner — Moss-Bachrach, now an uncle rather than a cousin, is again at work in the kitchen — Ben and Johnny immediately guess what's up. The rest of the world is also eager to find out what, if any, powers the baby will have. We aren't quite in our world, but a very similar parallel one called Earth-828. New York looks about the same, and world leaders gather in a version of the United Nations named the Future Foundation. The Thing wears a Brooklyn Dodgers cap. Someone sounding a lot like Walter Cronkite reads the news. And there's a lot to read when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) suddenly hovers over the city, announcing: 'I herald your end. I herald Galactus.' The TV blares, as it could on so many days: 'Earth in Peril. Developing Story.' Yes, the Earth (or some Earth) might be in danger, but did you get a look at that Silver Surfer? That's Johnny Storm's response, and perhaps ours, too. She's all chrome, like a smelted Chrysler Building, with slicked-back hair and melancholy eyes. He's immediately taken by her, but she shoots off into space. In a rousing, NASA-like launch (the original Kirby and Lee comic came eight years before the moon landing), the Fantastic Four blast off into the unknown to meet this Galactus. But if the Silver Surfer made an impression, Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) does even more so. Fantastic Four movies have always before gone straight for Doctor Doom as a villain, but his entrance, this time, is being held up for 'Avengers: Doomsday.' Still, Galactus, a planet-eating tyrant, is no slouch. A mechanical colossus and evident fan of Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis,' he sits on an enormous throne in space. Sensing enormous power in Sue's unborn child, he offers to spare Earth for the baby. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. What follows casts motherhood — its empowerments and sacrifices — onto a cosmic plane. There's a nifty chase sequence in space that plays out during contractions. The two 'Incredibles' movies covered some similar ground, in both retro design and stretchy parent and superhuman baby, with notably more zip and comic verve than 'The Fantastic Four.' That's part of the trouble of not getting a proper movie for so long: Better films have already come along inspired by the '60s comic. But as good as Vanessa Kirby is in 'First Steps,' the movie is never better than when the Silver Surfer or Galactus are around. Shakman, a former child actor who's directed mostly in television (most relevantly, 'WandaVision' ), proves especially adept at capturing the enormous scale of Galactus. 'First Steps' may be, at heart, a kaiju movie. What it certainly is, though, is a very solid comic book movie. It's a little surface over substance, and the time capsule feeling is pervasive. This is an earnest-enough superhero movie where even the angry mob protesting the superheroes turns quiet and pensive. I was more likely to be moved by a really handsome chalkboard than I was by its vision of motherhood. But, especially for a superhero team that's never before quite taken flight on screen, 'First Steps' is a sturdy beginning, with impeccable production design by Kasra Farahani and a rousing score by Michael Giacchino. Even if the unifying space-age spirit of Kirby and Lee's comic feels very long ago, indeed. 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps,' a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for action/violence and some language. Running time: 115 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Toronto Star
4 days ago
- Toronto Star
Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 27-Aug. 2
Celebrity birthdays for the week of July 27-Aug. 2: July 27: Actor John Pleshette ('Knots Landing') is 83. Actor-director Betty Thomas ('Hill Street Blues') is 78. Singer Maureen McGovern is 76. Actor Roxanne Hart ('The Good Girl,' ″Chicago Hope') is 71. Guitarist Duncan Cameron (Sawyer Brown) is 69. Comedian Carol Leifer is 69. Comedian Bill Engvall is 68. Jazz singer Karrin Allyson is 63. Country singer Stacy Dean Campbell is 58. Singer Juliana Hatfield is 58. Actor Julian McMahon ('Fantastic Four' films, TV's 'Profiler') is 57. Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ('Game of Thrones') is 55. Comedian Maya Rudolph is 53. Drummer Abe Cunningham of Deftones is 52. Singer Pete Yorn is 51. Actor Seamus Dever ('Castle') is 49. Actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers ('The Tudors') is 48. Comedian Heidi Gardner ('Saturday Night Live') is 42. Actor Taylor Schilling ('Orange Is the New Black') is 41. Singer Cheyenne Kimball of Gloriana is 35. Actor Alyvia Alyn Lind ('Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors') is 18.
