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News.com.au
9 hours ago
- News.com.au
Verdict on Jenna Ortega in Wednesday's new season as the terrifying Alien: Earth delivers a new phobia
We've sifted through the latest offerings from TV and streaming platforms to find the best shows you should be watching this week. ONE SHOW. TWO VIEWS NEW EPISODES WEDNESDAYS, DISNEY+ So effective was the terrifying, slavering, jaw-snapping, chest-bursting Xenomorph in Ridley Scott's first Alien film that of the many sequels in the 46 years since, even the bad ones are still pretty good (we don't talk about the two Predator-adjacent abominations of the early 2000s). But by last year's not-half-bad Alien: Romulus, they were starting to feel a little repetitive. In the franchise's first foray on to the small screen – set two years before the events of the first film – creator Noah Hawley has come up with something that feels both familiar and fresh and adds depth and nuance to the world in a similar fashion to what Andor did for the Star Wars universe. Yes, there's plenty of acid blood, spiked tails and gory dismemberment after a stricken space freighter oaded with deadly cargo crash-lands in a city, but there are also new creatures to make your skin crawl, androids and other augmented humans that resonate with the current big questions about artificial intelligence and amoral tech giants who will make viewers wonder who the true enemy is. JAMES WIGNEY I have never quite recovered from seeing a blood-soaked alien burst forth from John Hurt's chest in the original 1979 film. The iconic scene introduced cinema goers to the killer creature (while also serving to reinforce my distaste for canteens). While plenty of folk relish jump scares, they have never been my thing and usually just result in nightmares or planting seeds for another phobia (case in point being It fostering a hatred of clowns and Misery making me deeply suspicious of jovial older ladies). This is why – despite my immense respect for Sigourney Weaver's groundbreaking performance as Ripley – I have tended to avoid anything to do with Alien. Until now. Like its predecessors, this prequel is scary stuff. But perhaps not for the same reasons. Set in 2120, in a time when the world is now ruled by corporations and egotistical trillionaires are experimenting with merging humans with machines, the problems created by humankind feel almost as scary as the murderous extraterrestrials. Worse yet, this future feels frighteningly possible. Cue new phobia. SIOBHAN DUCK WEDNESDAY NETFLIX It was always going to be a big ask for Tim Burton to recreate the magic of the gothic black comedy's first season, with its visually stunning take on the ooky, kooky Addamses, the cracked version of Hogwarts that is Nevermore Academy and the rogues gallery of Outcasts that populated its halls. But there's still plenty to like in the first four episodes of the follow-up season – with the second half due to drop next month. Jenna Ortega's title character is back at school trying to hone her psychic powers, much to the consternation of her mother, while also juggling a stalker, another murder mystery and new-found notoriety. Among the fresh faces leading up to a cracking cliffhanger are Steve Buscemi as the new principal, Billie Piper as a mysterious music teacher and Joanne Lumley absolutely revelling in the role of Wednesday's filthy rich, no-nonsense grandmother. AFL WOMEN THURSDAY, 7.15PM, CHANNEL 7, 7MATE, FOX FOOTY, KAYO This year's milestone tenth season will get underway where last year's wrapped up with North Melbourne's dominant showing against Brisbane at Melbourne's Princes Park to secure their first flag. Traditional powerhouse rivals Carlton and Collingwood, both of whom are yet to win the competition, will face off tomorrow night, followed by the West Coast Eagles hosting the Gold Coast Suns. Friday will see Sydney at home against Richmond and on Saturday it's Geelong v North Melbourne, GWS v Essendon and Western Bulldogs v Melbourne. On Sunday there's Brisbane V Hawthorn, St Kilda v Adelaide and then Port Adelaide taking on Fremantle to close out the opening round. PLAYING GRACIE DARLING THURSDAY, PARAMOUNT+ It's a foundational principle for horror that any time a Ouija board appears on screen – let alone when it's being used in a creepy abandoned building in the middle of the night – nothing good is going to happen. And so it proves in this intriguing new Aussie mystery thriller when a bunch of teenagers do just that, leading to the disappearance and presumed death of the title character. Years later Gracie's bestie and fellow seance enthusiast Joanie, who is now working at as a psychologist in a youth detention centre and still haunted by the terrifying experience, gets word that another member of the Darling family has disappeared under similar circumstances. Throw in some disgruntled small-town locals, dead birds and burning effigies and it all adds up to plenty of atmospheric and foreboding fun. PROFESSOR T FRIDAY, 8.30PM, ABC Hot on the heels in the same timeslot of autistic sleuth Patience Evans, comes another unconventional, neurodivergent detective in the form of Ben Miller's Professor Jasper Tempest. Punctual, meticulous, germ-phobic, prone to flights of fancy and living with obsessive-compulsive disorder, he's also a brilliant criminologist at Cambridge University who assists the police – sometimes reluctantly – in their investigations. When the spectre of a serial rapist appears in the uni's hallowed halls, a police officer who knew one of the victims and is a former student of Jasper, enlists his help in making connections that no one else can see to find the perpetrator. THE RAINMAKER SATURDAY, STAN Relative newcomer Milo Callaghan follows in the footsteps of Matt Damon for this pacy and more-ish ten-part adaptation of John Grisham's legal page-turner. He plays aspiring lawyer Rudy Baylor, who gets fired from his job at a prestigious firm on his first day for turning up late and bloody and mouthing off at his cocky boss. Turned down by every other firm in town Rudy signs on to a small, ambulance chasing outfit and proves to be a natural Rainmaker – someone who can drum up money-spinning clients. But in taking on a wrongful death case of a man who died in hospital, he finds himself not just pitted against his former employer (John Slattery putting an evil spin on his Mad Man character), but also his girlfriend, who still works for the firm. SURVIVOR: AUSTRALIA V THE WORLD SUNDAY, 7PM, CHANNEL 10 It's the last hurrah for veteran Survivor host Jonathan La Paglia – but he's going out in style with an action-packed, truncated season featuring the some of the best players from Australia's ten seasons facing off against greats of the game from the US, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada and Finland. With 16 days rather than 50-odd and 14 players instead of 24, moves have to be made fast and Aussies David 'Golden God' Genat and George 'King of Bankstown' Mladenov (sporting some alarming Speedos) waste no time getting in the heads of their fellow players. On the World side, American Parvati 'Black Widow' Shallow is gunning for record number of days played while hulking South African Rob is not afraid to call the shots early. THE ROOKIE MONDAY, 8.55PM, CHANNEL 7 It's literally an all-guns-blazing start for the seventh season of the much loved police procedural, with Nathan Fillion's John Nolan (back on deck after a bullet in the bum) and the gang backing up a SWAT team to take down a heavily armed house while on the hunt for last season's fugitives Jason and Oscar. As is his wont, Nolan's working smarter not harder in the ensuing chase, but his sporadic self-doubt in not being able to take shot that could save a life leaves him wondering whether he's come back to work too soon, especially with the looming threat of a stolen nuke. And of course there's a couple of new rookies – a cocky cowboy from Texas who wants to be the best and a by-the-book greenhorn who wants to help – setting up a fun rivalry between their two handlers. TRENDING – BRAD PITT As Brad Pitt pulls on his blonde wig for a second time to reprise his Oscar-winning performance as stuntman Cliff Booth in the upcoming spin-off to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, let's travel back to a time before Pitt was one of Tinseltown's top leading men. This 1991 film, made the same year as Pitt's breakout role as a conman with chiselled abs in Thelma and Louise, has the father-of-six starring alongside NYPD Blue star Rick Schroeder. Pitt plays a straight-a student whose well-planned future is thrown into disarray by the return of his troubled younger brother (Schroeder). While the film itself is predictable stuff, it offers a great glimpse at a star in the making.
The Australian
4 days ago
- The Australian
Apollo 13 moon mission leader James Lovell dies at 97
James Lovell, the commander of Apollo 13 who helped turn a failed moon mission into a triumph of on-the-fly can-do engineering, has died. He was 97. Lovell died Thursday in Lake Forest, Illinois, NASA said in a statement on Friday. 'Jim's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount,' NASA said. "We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements.' One of NASA's most travelled astronauts in the agency's first decade, Lovell flew four times – Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 – with the two Apollo flights riveting the folks back on Earth. Lovell and fellow astronauts Fred Haise and Jack Swigert received renewed fame with the retelling of the Apollo 13 mission in the 1995 movie Apollo 13 where actor Tom Hanks – portraying Lovell – famously said, 'Houston, we have a problem.' In 1968, the Apollo 8 crew of Lovell, Frank Borman and William Anders was the first to leave Earth's orbit and the first to fly to and circle the moon. They could not land, but they put the U.S. ahead of the Soviets in the space race. Letter writers told the crew that their stunning pale blue dot photo of Earth from the moon, a world first, and the crew's Christmas Eve reading from Genesis saved America from a tumultuous 1968. The Apollo 13 mission had a lifelong impact on LovellBut the big rescue mission was still to come. That was during the harrowing Apollo 13 flight in 1970. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the moon. But Apollo 13's service module, carrying Lovell and two others, experienced a sudden oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon. The astronauts barely survived, spending four cold and clammy days in the cramped lunar module as a lifeboat. ''The thing that I want most people to remember is (that) in some sense it was very much of a success,'' Lovell said during a 1994 interview. ''Not that we accomplished anything, but a success in that we demonstrated the capability of (NASA) personnel.'' A retired Navy captain known for his calm demeanour, Lovell told a NASA historian that his brush with death affected him. 'I don't worry about crises any longer,' he said in 1999. Whenever he has a problem, 'I say, 'I could have been gone back in 1970. I'm still here. I'm still breathing.' So, I don't worry about crises.' Lovell had ice water in his veins like other astronauts, but he didn't display the swagger some had, just quiet confidence, said Smithsonian Institution historian Roger Launius. He called Lovell 'a very personable, very down-to-earth type of person, who says 'This is what I do. Yes, there's risk involved. I measure risk.'' Lovell spent about 30 days in space across four missions In all, Lovell flew four space missions — and until the Skylab flights of the mid-1970s, he held the world record for the longest time in space with 715 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds. 'He was a member of really the first generation of American astronauts and went on to inspire multiple generations of Americans to look at the stars and want to explore,' said Bruce McClintock, who leads the RAND Corp. Space Enterprise Initiative. Aboard Apollo 8, Lovell described the oceans and land masses of Earth. "What I keep imagining, is if I am some lonely traveller from another planet, what I would think about the Earth at this altitude, whether I think it would be inhabited or not," he remarked. That mission may be as important as the historic Apollo 11 moon landing, a flight made possible by Apollo 8, Launius said. "I think in the history of space flight, I would say that Jim was one of the pillars of the early space flight program," Gene Kranz, NASA's legendary flight director, once said. Lovell was immortalised by Tom Hanks' portrayal But if historians consider Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 the most significant of the Apollo missions, it was during Lovell's last mission that he came to embody for the public the image of the cool, decisive astronaut. The Apollo 13 crew of Lovell, Haise and Swigert was on the way to the moon in April 1970, when an oxygen tank from the spaceship exploded 200,000 miles from Earth. That, Lovell recalled, was 'the most frightening moment in this whole thing.' Then oxygen began escaping and 'we didn't have solutions to get home.' 'We knew we were in deep, deep trouble,' he told NASA's historian. Four-fifths of the way to the moon, NASA scrapped the mission. Suddenly, their only goal was to survive. Lovell's "Houston, we've had a problem," a variation of a comment Swigert had radioed moments before, became famous. What unfolded over the next four days captured the imagination of the world. With Lovell commanding the spacecraft, Kranz led hundreds of flight controllers and engineers in a furious rescue plan. The plan involved the astronauts moving from the service module, which was haemorrhaging oxygen, into the cramped, dark and frigid lunar lander while they rationed their dwindling oxygen, water and electricity. Using the lunar module as a lifeboat, they swung around the moon, aimed for Earth and raced home. 'There is never a guarantee of success when it comes to space,' McClintock said. Lovell showed a 'leadership role and heroic efforts in the recovery of Apollo 13.' By coolly solving the problems under the most intense pressure imaginable, the astronauts and the crew on the ground became heroes. In the process of turning what seemed routine into a life-and-death struggle, the entire flight team had created one of NASA's finest moments. "They demonstrated to the world they could handle truly horrific problems and bring them back alive," said Launius. He regretted never being able to walk on the moon The loss of the opportunity to walk on the moon "is my one regret," Lovell said in a 1995 interview with The Associated Press. President Bill Clinton agreed when he awarded Lovell the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 1995. "While you may have lost the moon ... you gained something that is far more important perhaps: the abiding respect and gratitude of the American people," he said. Lovell once said that while he was disappointed he never walked on the moon, "The mission itself and the fact that we triumphed over certain catastrophe does give me a deep sense of satisfaction." And Lovell clearly understood why this failed mission afforded him far more fame than had Apollo 13 accomplished its goal. "Going to the moon, if everything works right, it's like following a cookbook. It's not that big a deal," he told the AP in 2004. "If something goes wrong, that's what separates the men from the boys." James A. Lovell was born March 25, 1928, in Cleveland. He attended the University of Wisconsin before transferring to the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland. On the day he graduated in 1952, he and his wife, Marilyn, were married. A test pilot at the Navy Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland, Lovell was selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1962. Lovell retired from the Navy and from the space program in 1973, and went into private business. In 1994, he and Jeff Kluger wrote "Lost Moon," the story of the Apollo 13 mission and the basis for the film "Apollo 13." In one of the final scenes, Lovell appeared as a Navy captain, the rank he actually had. He and his family ran a now-closed restaurant in suburban Chicago, Lovell's of Lake Forest. His wife, Marilynn, died in 2023. Survivors include four children. In a statement, his family hailed him as their 'hero.' 'We will miss his unshakeable optimism, his sense of humour, and the way he made each of us feel we could do the impossible,' his family said. 'He was truly one of a kind.' AP World Vladimir Putin will make his first visit to the United States in more than a decade to discuss Donald Trump's demand for an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. The Wall Street Journal Options under discussion focus on special forces operations, intelligence support and precision targeting.
News.com.au
4 days ago
- News.com.au
Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 moon mission, dead at 97
Space veteran and heroic Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell has died at the age of 97. Jim passed away on August 7, in Lake Forest, Illinois with NASA leading tributes for the 'unforgettable astronaut', The Sun reports. The proud Cleveland native was one of NASA's most travelled astronauts as he went to space a remarkable four times. He was on board Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and the infamous Apollo 13. Jim was hailed a hero after he managed to prevent certain tragedy after disaster struck the three-man space crew during Apollo 13's journey. In April 1970, the spacecraft's service module experienced a sudden oxygen tank explosion on its way to the moon. Jim and fellow astronauts Jack Swigert and Fred Haise were plunged into darkness after the blast as the world watched on in horror. The astronauts barely survived as they spent four cold days stranded 200,000 miles from Earth. In a nailbiting string of events, the astronauts' only option was to cram into a lunar lander to attempt the gruelling journey back to Earth, guided by mission controllers. Captain Lovell was just 42 years old at the time and the world's most-travelled astronaut. The journey was meant to mark Jim as the fifth man to walk on the moon. Twenty five years after the successful return to Earth a Hollywood film was released which retold the mission. Tom Hanks portrayed Jim with Bill Paxton, Ed Harris and Kevin Bacon also starring in the well-received movie. The real Jim was already in the history books for his role in the Apollo 8 mission which took place two years before 13. Jim served as Command Module Pilot and Navigator on the epic six-day journey which marked man's maiden voyage to the moon. Captain Lovell's death was announced by NASA on Friday. They said: 'We are saddened by the passing of Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 and a four-time spaceflight veteran. 'Lovell's life and work inspired millions. His courage under pressure helped forge our path to the Moon and beyond - a journey that continues today. Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy also paid a touching tribute to Jim. He said: 'NASA sends its condolences to the family of Capt. Jim Lovell, whose life and work inspired millions of people across the decades. 'Jim's character and steadfast courage helped our nation reach the Moon and turned a potential tragedy into a success from which we learned an enormous amount. 'We mourn his passing even as we celebrate his achievements. 'From a pair of pioneering Gemini missions to the successes of Apollo, Jim helped our nation forge a historic path in space that carries us forward to upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond. 'Known for his wit, this unforgettable astronaut was nicknamed Smilin' Jim by his fellow astronauts because he was quick with a grin when he had a particularly funny comeback. 'Jim also served our country in the military, and the Navy has lost a proud academy graduate and test pilot.' He logged more than 7,000 hours flying time- - including more than 3,500 hours in jet aircraft during his time in the navy. The tribute concluded: 'Jim Lovell embodied the bold resolve and optimism of both past and future explorers, and we will remember him always.' Captain Lovell was even once appointed to work for former US President Lyndon B. Johnson as his consultant for Physical Fitness and Sports in 1967. He retired from the Navy and the space program in 1973 before working in marketing and communications.
