Pixar's Toy Story 5 introduces new antagonist, a tech-savvy tablet
Pete Docter, Pixar's chief creative officer, presented exclusive behind-the-scenes clips from Toy Story 5 at the Anncey International Animation Film Festival on Friday (Jun 13).
Docter unveiled the film's first two minutes, which included a reveal of the film's new antagonist – a frog-themed tablet named Lily Pad, belonging to eight-year-old owner Bonnie Anderson.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Toy Story 5 is set in a tech-driven world and will delve into the struggles faced by traditional toys as they compete with digital distractions. With the tagline, 'Toy meets Tech', the story will follow Woody, Buzz Lightyear and the rest of the team as they navigate a new generation of children who are more captivated by screens than physical toys.
The opening scene also highlighted a container full of Buzz Lightyears stranded on a desert island, each awakening and trying to reconnect with star command, Buzz's internal control system. The thrilling opening teases another high-stakes adventure that fans can look forward to.
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CNA
a day ago
- CNA
'Every boy wants to be a superhero': The ex-GP who became a Power Ranger and is now in Singapore pursuing his latest adventure
More than two decades after Jason Chan first donned the iconic Power Ranger suit, the 54-year-old still gets stopped in the street by fans who recognise him from the hit American live-action television series. Just last month, Mr Chan was spotted while riding a private bus during a site recce for a work project. "One of the guys sitting on the bus turned around, and he was whispering to the guy next to him. He said: 'Have you guys ever watched Power Rangers?'" Mr Chan recalled with a laugh. "And I said: 'I'm right here. I can hear what you're saying.' And he was like: 'I'm so happy to meet you, you were so much a big part of my life growing up'." Mr Chan's portrayal of Cameron Watanabe – the Green Samurai Ranger – in Power Rangers Ninja Storm (2003), the 11th season of the long-running franchise, has made him a role model for fans worldwide. Seeing an Asian superhero on screen – especially a "sarcastic, tough and edgy" character like the Green Ranger – was particularly empowering for many Asian viewers at a time when the representation of Asian people on television was scarce, he said. The American Power Rangers series was based on a Japanese series. After starring in just one season, the Malaysian-born Australian relocated to Singapore in 2006, spending the next two decades largely out of the Power Rangers spotlight. But a recent return to the public eye – this time on TikTok – has revived memories of his TV role. While promoting Cinewav, the audio-tech firm he co-founded, Mr Chan began posting social media clips that unexpectedly sparked a wave of recognition from fans who grew up watching him. When we met for a sit-down interview at his home on Tuesday (Aug 13), he was wearing a green Power Ranger T-shirt – a fan-made design gifted from the United States. In a corner of his living room sat a box of Power Rangers toys given to him by Disney – the show's production company then – on his last day of filming. Mr Chan noted that Power Rangers was created by a toy manufacturer as a way to add a storyline to its products and boost sales, with related toys racking up tens of millions of dollars over the years. Gingerly lifting the helmet off one of his Green Ranger figurines, he revealed it had been modelled on him. The designer, he said, had studied photographs of him, sculpted his face in clay, and fine-tuned the details before it went into production. Peppered throughout his home are items of Power Rangers memorabilia, which he had gathered to show me during the interview. He still keeps his original costume, though admits it no longer fits. "(Power Rangers) was kind of a catapult onto the world stage, in a way. And afterwards, for the next 20 years since I've done it, I experienced a lot of love from fans of the series." LEFT MEDICINE TO BECOME A POWER RANGER When Mr Chan was five, he, his parents, older brother and younger sister left Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for a new life in Perth, Australia. Growing up, he gravitated towards the arts – playing piano, dancing, acting – and in high school, starred in plays and musicals while taking speech and drama classes. Cinema also greatly shaped his early years. He borrowed up to 10 movies weekly at the local video library, immersing himself in the magic of film. Mr Chan however eventually enrolled in medical school – one of three typical pathways among immigrant families in Australia, along with law and business, he said. While he valued his time in medical school, he admitted it was ultimately not the right fit – a realisation that crystallised during his internship year, when he endured gruelling 80-hour weeks under immense pressure. "And I remember every night doing these 16-hour shifts. I would sit up on the bench by myself at the quietest time of the night, at 3am, and I was like: why am I doing this? There's nothing creative in this at all. You can't use any of your creativity that you grew up with." As an escape, he began taking night acting classes twice a week while still in medical school. "I couldn't stop talking about it (the classes) to my acting friends," Mr Chan recalled. "We would be out in the car park talking about the classes till 2am or 3am. That's when I knew: this is my passion, this is really what I want to do." Still, he graduated with a medical degree in 1994, and worked as a doctor for three years. Unable to shake the feeling of being unfulfilled, he enrolled in a three-year full-time Bachelor's programme at the renowned National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, which has trained stars including Cate Blanchett and director Baz Lurhmann. He kept working as a locum doctor on weekends to pay the bills. Mr Chan recalled an acting school auditioner telling him they would never normally encourage someone to leave a "good profession" like medicine for the "horrible" world of acting. But there are exceptions, the auditioner had said. Some people are born to act and if they don't express what they have to say, it will bug them for the rest of their lives. "(The conversation) just hit home to me, and I said, yeah, that's me. I've just got something to say," said Mr Chan. Looking back, he said many had asked if the pivot to acting was difficult, or if he regretted it. "And my answer to that is that it was incredibly easy, because I was miserable on one side and so incredibly happy when I had no money, living in a run-down house with mold, living off 50 dollars a week at acting school, crawling around the floor in acting exercises all week," he said. Acting school, Mr Chan said, was also a way for aspiring actors like him to get noticed and land their first roles. Close to graduation, each student performs before casting agents. As a result, Mr Chan landed his first contract with Disney as a host in its children's television show Playhouse Disney. A year later, he auditioned for Power Rangers. When the offer came, he was thrilled. But the filming schedules clashed, forcing him to choose one over the other. "I told my agent: you know, every boy wants to be a superhero. I don't think I'll ever get this opportunity again, let alone, to play a lead role in a TV show in America," said Mr Chan. While his agent double-checked if he wanted the role – warning he might be typecast as it was a "B-grade kids' show" – Mr Chan recalled watching the 1995 Power Rangers movie near the end of high school and knew he wanted to take it. "(The film) was just these kids in spandex running around a city kicking monsters' butts, and most of those monsters looked very PVC-ish in rubber suits. And I just thought, that's amazing – I love it and I totally want to do that." Taking the role, he spent a year filming in New Zealand. Looking at the thick, multi-layered lycra suit hanging nearby, I ran my fingers over the fabric as Mr Chan recalled his first time donning the bright green costume. It was stiflingly hot, especially while filming in a non-airconditioned warehouse during the country's warmer months, he said. To prepare themselves for the role, the cast trained with a Japanese stunt team who had worked for Hong Kong martial artist and actor Jackie Chan. "They put us through boot camp for two weeks and after the first day, a few of us literally couldn't walk," he said. When filming wrapped, Mr Chan asked if he could keep a Green Power Ranger suit as a memento. Though it was against Disney's protocol and the costume department initially hesitated, his rapport with the team paid off – and he cheekily recalled how the head of costume "turned his eyes" as he took it. As for his parents, they were not thrilled at first about him giving up medicine for acting, though they felt reassured after seeing the acting school's notable alumni. "I think the hope was that I'd always come back (to medicine). But really, after Power Rangers, I was gone. I was like: this is what I want to do. This is fun," said Mr Chan. For years, he didn't consider himself famous. While the show aired in the US and fan mail came in, he was still filming in Auckland, New Zealand, where no one recognised them. It wasn't until attending the official Power Rangers convention in Los Angeles last year that he realised the show's reach. Thousands queued to meet him and his co-stars, some even tearing up as they spoke about bonding with family over the show each week. At the time, however, the role did not open many doors in Australia. It wasn't aired on free-to-air television there – a decision he suspects was due to concerns over its arguably violent content. Mr Chan also struggled with stereotyped roles offered to Asian actors, including parts requiring speaking broken English, which he found disappointing. Then, a family friend in Singapore who was a casting agent offered to represent him here – prompting his move to Singapore in 2006. LIFE IN SINGAPORE In Singapore, Mr Chan's career quickly gained momentum – not from Power Rangers fame, but because being in an Asian country opened doors to lead roles. Having mostly auditioned for minor parts in Australia, he suddenly found himself considered for romantic leads and main characters, landing "pretty major" roles in the local sitcom My Sassy Neighbour, the 2008 romance film The Leap Years, and a stage musical. While sharing an apartment with other actors, Mr Chan met fellow actor Christian Lee, an American. Bonding over their love for the craft and frustration with the limitations they faced as actors, they co-founded the video production firm BananaMana Films in 2009, stepping away from acting to produce short films online. "(We) weren't always happy as actors being in the shows that we were in. We always thought, 'oh, we can do better'. And of course, when we started we couldn't do better at all – we were horrible," said Mr Chan with a laugh. But the duo persevered, teaching themselves how to operate cameras, handle audio, write scenes and everything in between. "We did a lot of skits and short films that were, to this day, just horrific. But we've kept them up online, just to remind ourselves and other people that you have to start somewhere." Their work eventually caught the eye of filmmaker and then-Mediacorp commissioning editor Lionel Chok. This led to the creation of What Do Men Want, a 13-episode drama-comedy on Toggle, Mediacorp's newly launched digital platform at the time. It was produced on a modest budget and tight timelines. As they began weighing different projects, they shifted their mindset from asking: "Would we do this for free?" to "Would we pay for the opportunity to do this?" This mantra made them more selective about what they took on, and in 2014 they channelled their energy into a passion project – the short-form web series Perfect Girl, made for just S$5,000 (US$3,900). The show won multiple awards – including at the Los Angeles Web Series Festival – holding its own against productions with far larger budgets. It was also picked up by regional streaming platform Viki. Then a few months later, Netflix acquired the rights, making Perfect Girl the first Singaporean drama on the global streaming giant. Building on that success, the duo produced Jimami Tofu in 2017, a feature film promoting Okinawa to Singaporeans. Rather than creating a standard tourism piece, they wrote it as a romance woven with traditional Okinawan cuisine and Ryukyu culture. The film became the longest-running independent release at Golden Village cinemas, screening for two-and-a-half years until the COVID-19 pandemic, said Mr Chan. He claimed the film even inspired Jetstar Asia's first direct flight from Okinawa to Singapore, after the airline's head of business development attended its preview. Before the film's theatrical debut, Mr Chan and Mr Lee hosted an outdoor screening at the Singapore Botanic Gardens – an event that sparked their next big idea. Then, they noticed a recurring issue with outdoor cinema: most relied on external speakers, resulting in compromised sound quality that, they felt, diminished the immersive experience. "We broke the record for the number of people coming out to the Botanic Gardens for a movie screening, and it was beautiful. Everything was amazing, except for the fact that the sound, for us, was horrible," he said. "You can't scale good quality surround sound to 2,000 people. It becomes reverberant, echoey, unbalanced." The pair worked with developers to create a solution. The result was Cinewav, an audio-tech startup that lets audiences plug in their own earphones to stream high-quality, synchronised audio from their smartphones – transforming outdoor viewing without the need for loudspeakers, and also reducing noise complaints from nearby residents. They refined the technology over time, eventually patenting it in five countries: Singapore, the US, Britain, Japan and South Korea. It was, as Mr Chan quipped, like "a cinema in a backpack". They are looking to create works for various mediums, and have already begun projecting onto trees. More importantly, they see Cinewav as a way to build and transform communities, and have been donating screens to low-income neighbourhoods overseas. In Singapore, they power free screenings at the Enabling Village, Somerset Youth Park, migrant worker dormitories and in public housing estates. On the journey ahead, Mr Chan said: "We always look back and go: 'look where we were five years ago, look where we were 10 years ago. That was a crappy little online video we made.' And we've come this far, and we get there from always just putting one foot in front of the other."
Independent Singapore
2 days ago
- Independent Singapore
45-year-old Venus Williams given wildcard to play at the US Open, the oldest player so far in the tournament
Photo: Venus Williams will once again compete in a tennis Grand Slam at this year's US Open, following her two-year hiatus from the sport. The 45-year-old athlete recently received a wildcard into the tournament's women's singles event, and she will be the oldest athlete competing since 1981, following Renee Richards, who played at the age of 47 back then. Last season, Venus missed most of the events due to surgery to remove uterine fibroids. She recently had her comeback at the DC Open and had entered this year's Cincinnati Open via a wildcard as well. However, she was defeated during the first round of the singles tournament. In New York this year, she will play with Reilly Opelka in the mixed doubles event happening on August 19 and 20, and the singles event as well. In her tennis career, Venus has won seven major singles championships, which include the US Open 2000 and 2001. Furthermore, she won 14 titles in women's doubles with her younger sister, Serena Williams, and two more in mixed doubles. See also Liv Golf stars set for big test at Sentosa's Serapong course Venus Williams returns to the sport In her recent comeback at the DC Open, Venus Williams expressed that even though she has missed playing for a couple of years, there is no doubt that she can play, and that it will take time to 'get in the swing of things.' Williams declared at that time: 'This is very special for me to come back and play tennis… I think it's a surprise for the fans — and a surprise in general, as I hold my cards tight.' 'I definitely feel I'll play well. I'm still the same player. I'm a big hitter. I hit big. This is my brand,' she added. Furthermore, Venus also misses playing with her sister, Serena, on tour. The athlete also remarked that everything is a lot better if she were with her. She stated, 'I keep saying to my team: The only thing that would make this better is if she was here. Like, we always did everything together, so of course I miss her… But if she comes back, I'm sure she'll let y'all know.' Serena Williams has not played tennis since the 2022 US Open. During the peak of her career, the athlete won 23 major singles titles and 14 more in the doubles event with Venus. Read more about Venus Williams' 2025 tennis comeback here. On social media, netizens continue to express their support for Venus. One netizen stated: 'You are such an inspiration! Keep going! We have your back always! 💙'. Another netizen said: 'Queen is going to do some damage in New York, I feel it 😍' () => { const trigger = if ('IntersectionObserver' in window && trigger) { const observer = new IntersectionObserver((entries, observer) => { => { if ( { lazyLoader(); // You should define lazyLoader() elsewhere or inline here // Run once } }); }, { rootMargin: '800px', threshold: 0.1 }); } else { // Fallback setTimeout(lazyLoader, 3000); } });
CNA
3 days ago
- CNA
Taylor Swift's chat with the Kelces on New Heights marks a milestone moment for podcasts
Since nothing Taylor Swift ever does is small, her two-hour conversation with boyfriend Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce on their New Heights podcast is a watershed moment for a media format that has already outlived the device it was named for. By Thursday (Aug 14) afternoon, Wednesday night's talk had already been seen more than 11.7 million times on YouTube. But that's only a fraction of its circulation – clips distributed on Instagram, TikTok, X and elsewhere have received more than 400 million views, and the episode was also available for streaming on audio platforms. Swift, who infrequently gives interviews to journalists, revealed key information about her upcoming album, The Life Of A Showgirl, and talked about her relationships with Travis Kelce and her family, and her joy of gaining full control of her past work – a yearslong quest. It was a revelation for fans with whom she's primarily communicated through her music and social media Easter eggs, a treasure hunt of clues about what she's doing professionally. 'We have not heard Taylor speak in like a long-form interview like that in about five years,' Alex Antonides, a superfan from Dallas, told The Associated Press. 'She's never been in that comfortable of a situation, either. It's always been like more professional, like a professional interviewer asking her questions. And then this is like with her boyfriend and his brother. So that was ... an environment we've truly never seen her in before.' CELEBRITIES LIKE A FRIENDLY FACE FOR PUBLIC TALKS Swift cemented a trend that's been seen in recent years among entertainers, sports figures and politicians who seek to deliver particular messages. A visit to friendly faces for a long-form conversation beats questions from nosy, prying journalists. In this case, Swift and Travis Kelce locked arms and cooed at each other between admiring queries. 'My boyfriend says,' Swift said in asides when Kelce laid things on too thick. 'The Kelce brothers have become the Barbara Walters of their generation,' said Nick Cicero, founder of Mondo Metrics, which studies the podcast industry. Fans ate it up. 'I think it's really nice and refreshing, especially for a woman whose primary fan base is young women, to see somebody that is so celebratory of their partner and also not self-deprecating in a bad way, but also really admires what they do, and they don't try to minimise that,' one fan, Britton Copeland, who goes by Britton Rae on TikTok, said in a Zoom interview. Swift interpreters immediately began online discussions about What It All Means. One fan discussed theories about the still-unheard song, The Fate Of Ophelia, listed as the new album's first cut. Others pointed out that the album release date of Oct 3 coincided with National Plaid Day – apparently a Swift obsession – and National Boyfriend's Day. Such Easter eggs are likely to bring listeners back to the New Heights interview again and again, meaning it could eventually stand as the most listened-to podcast episode on YouTube ever. 'It's got a chance,' Cicero said. Podcasts emerged in the 2000s as an audio-only programming format tied to Apple's now-defunct iPod. The New Oxford American Dictionary called 'podcast' its word of the year in 2005, even as many in the industry sought an alternative name almost as soon as it was coined. The well-regarded Serial podcasts helped bring the format into the mainstream a decade ago. Particularly since the pandemic, and with the explosive growth of YouTube and personalities like Joe Rogan, video podcasts have become far more popular. Like most interview podcasts, New Heights can also be enjoyed in an audio format – and it's background noise even for many who air it on YouTube – but being able to see Swift and the Kelces interact has its benefits. WILL SWIFT OUTDRAW PRESIDENT TRUMP'S APPEARANCE WITH ROGAN? Rogan's interview with US President Donald Trump was a key moment in the 2024 presidential campaign, and has been seen 59 million times on YouTube in nine months. Certainly Swifties – and possibly Trump himself – will be eager to see if the New Heights interview exceeds that number. Swift is among the celebrities who has drawn the president's ire. It has further to go to be a record-setter, though. The most-watched podcast episode ever on YouTube, and likely the most-consumed podcast ever, is Abdulrahman Abu Maleh's interview with relationship coach Yasser Hazimi for 'Secrets to Thriving Relationships' from the Saudi Arabian company Thmanyah. It has racked up 144 million views in two years. Swift's and the Kelces' teams were particularly skillful in creating a huge demand for the interview with its spread clips across various social media platforms, said Tom Webster, founder of Sounds Profitable, a firm that analyses the podcast industry. By Thursday morning, Instagram highlights alone from the interview were viewed more than 350 million times, Cicero said.
