Why Billy Bob Thornton feels more at home outside Hollywood
Billy Bob Thornton doesn't consider himself to be part of Hollywood.
The 69-year-old actor has enjoyed huge success in the movie business, starring in films such as A Simple Plan, Armageddon and Friday Night Lights – but he tries to distance himself from the Hollywood scene.
He told People: 'I
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NZ Herald
17 hours ago
- NZ Herald
Why Billy Bob Thornton feels more at home outside Hollywood
Billy Bob Thornton doesn't consider himself to be part of Hollywood. The 69-year-old actor has enjoyed huge success in the movie business, starring in films such as A Simple Plan, Armageddon and Friday Night Lights – but he tries to distance himself from the Hollywood scene. He told People: 'I
The Spinoff
29-05-2025
- The Spinoff
Event noticeboard: Inter-species collabs, free festivals and dancing at 3am
The Spinoff's top picks of events from around the motu. Weekday workers rejoice! It is a long weekend and we are also not termites, who do not sleep and instead work until they die (must feed, build and protect the colony). Yes, sun and warmth might be distant memories, but that does not mean we can't have fun. Almost everything on this week's noticeboard is inside, where you will be protected from rain. Music: Pulotu Underworld presents Road To Glasto fundraiser Neck of the Woods, 155B Karangahape Road, Auckland Central 10pm-3am Friday, May 30 $40 – $55 I don't think anything feels as good as partying for a good cause, as what could be hedonism is re-routed to also tick the type two fun box. This Friday, Pulotu Underworld, a collective based across Aotearoa and the UK that celebrates Pacific music, culture and artistry founded by Lady Shaka, is putting on a fundraising show. They need funds to get artists over to the UK, where they will be the first ever Pacific Island collective to curate a stage at Glastonbury. All five artists heading to Glastonbury will perform, so it's a taste of the famous festi right here on K Road. The dancefloor will be ruled by Mokotron (Ngāti Hine), Poppa Jax (Ngāti Raukawa ki Wharepuhunga), Katayanagi Twins – DJ Fine China, Rain (Ngāti Tuwharetoa, Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Samoa, Tonga, Niue) and DJ K-Swizz (Cook Islands). They say it's your chance to support Indigenous excellence and it's also your chance to dance. Northland Film: The Chodge Event Cinemas, 18 James Street, Whangārei 6.30pm Thursday, May 29 $19 – $23.50 Part of the Resene Architecture & Design Film Festival, this is a local documentary about an award-winning home built on the banks of Lake Whakamaru. Sculpture: Yellow Post Brick Bay, 17 Arabella Lane, Snells Beach 10am-4pm Monday-Friday, 10am-9pm Saturday, 10am-5pm Sunday $18 There's a new addition to the 2km sculpture trail, a yellow tower based on hākari, the massive, pyramid-shaped structures on which Māori would showcase important feasts. Tāmaki Makaurau Music: Thee Golden Geese at Wintergeddon Mainstage at Armageddon, Auckland Showgrounds, 217 Greenlane West, Auckland 11am Saturday, May 31 $28 or free for under 12s (Entry to Armageddon) A pitch of 'very unusual', 'waterfowl themed' and 'an incredible multimedia storytelling experience' is possibly an undersell for this band. It might just be a once-in-a-lifetime-what-is-happening-wow kind of experience. The Button Factory, 2 Abbey St, Auckland Central 2pm-12am Sunday, June 1 $5 – $100 There will be a market, tattoo artists, DJs, live music, a raffle and more to fundraise for a family trying to escape Gaza. Improv theatre with music by Samara Alofa and PollyHill that will explore youth perspectives on democracy and civics. Palmerston North Market: Red Cross book sale Barber Hall, Waldegrave Street, Palmerston North 10am-8pm Friday, May 30 10am-6pm Saturday, June 1 10am-4pm Sunday, June 2 10am-2pm Monday June 3 Free entry The annual book sale is here, just in time to get reading material to cosy up with by the fire. Napier Exhibition: Pūrākau o Te Whenua MTG Hawke's Bay, 1 Tennyson St, Napier 9.30am-5pm daily Free If you've ever wondered about the story of Ngā Tohorā e Whitu (Seven Whales) or how Lake Waikaremoana or Te Mata o Rongokako got their names you will find all the answers here. Te Whanganui-a-Tara This is an album informed by inter-species collaboration put together by a drummer and percussionist of found sounds. Blenheim Marlborough Art Gallery Te Kahu o Waipuna, 15 High Street 10am-4pm Tuesday-Sunday until June 8 Free On tour from the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata are paintings of New Zealanders, by New Zealanders. Ōtautahi 'This is an hour long show, performed by one person, who has no idea what they are going to perform before the show. As much as this is art, this is also a feat of physical and mental athleticism.' Ōtepoti Music: Pearly*, HōHā and Eris Yours, 43 Moray Place, Dunedin 8pm Saturday, May 31 $15 (all ages) I'm unfamiliar with Pearly* but HōHā hold a special place in my heart and are not to be missed. Hokitika Food, dance, music: Culture Fest '25 Enjoy food, dance and music from the Phillipines, Germany, South Africa, Ireland, the USA, China and India.
NZ Herald
15-05-2025
- NZ Herald
Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning – Tom Cruise pulls off his most deranged stunt yet
Instead, it comes on like apocalyptic scripture. Within minutes, there are vivid premonitions of nuclear holocaust, then flashbacks to the earlier films – so very many flashbacks – in which seemingly self-contained plot points are revealed to have been of seismic importance to the story at hand. During the original film's dangly break-in at Langley, fans may recall a knife slipping from Cruise's hands and impaling itself on a desk. Rest assured, you'll be seeing that thing again, and many more previously incidental gubbins besides. Even the first film's release date – May 22, 1996 – plays a brief but talismanic role. The sheer last-hurrah loopiness of the above meant it took me a good 45 minutes to realise that not only was The Final Reckoning working – and well – but that I was watching one of the most dazzlingly ambitious, exactingly crafted studio projects of our time. Returning writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, a long-time Cruise collaborator, wittily structures the film like a single sizzling bomb fuse of epic length and explosive potential: the touch paper is lit on Armageddon, and off Cruise hares to disarm it. (There is a wonderful chutzpah in the final cliffhanger involving a wire-snipping dilemma straight out of the 1960s TV show.) Two particular sequences stand out: a pivotal submarine raid, which unfolds in around 20 almost wordless, unrelentingly tense minutes, and the climactic dogfight, highlights of which include Cruise jumping from one aeroplane to another in mid-air. This is masterful stuff – entirely outrageous and yet, in the heat of the moment, somehow entirely real. Imagine if it could be said that with this final episode, Cruise and McQuarrie have tied up some sort of grand project that changed modern blockbuster cinema for the better. But in fact, it's more striking than ever that the series from its fourth entry on – 2011's Ghost Protocol, which sent Cruise up the side of the Burj Khalifa with electrified sucker gloves – was built in defiance of prevailing Hollywood wisdom and trends. Its peril is, and always has been, on a determinedly human scale; its action sequences are doggedly grounded, even when set 8000 feet in the air. Perhaps the only rival productions that actively paid heed to Cruise and McQuarrie's work were Cruise's own Top Gun: Maverick and the Daniel Craig James Bond films (Mad Max was already there): meanwhile, everyone else kept gluing ping-pong balls to leotards and pegging out the green screens. But like Hunt himself, Cruise and McQuarrie thundered heedlessly on, proving as they went that action cinema at its most elemental could still break new ground. They were only able to do this because Mission: Impossible 's parent studio, Paramount, lost Marvel to Disney in 2009 – and left without a weapon in the cinematic universe arms race, its board agreed to let the star and director cook up whatever they wanted, at any cost, in the hope of keeping pace with their rivals. That effectively turned the twosome into rogue agents within the studio system, with the M:I brand serving as cover for all sorts of unthinkable schemes. (This concluding chapter reportedly cost Avatar money: more than $400m.) Now, alas, the cassette deck is smoking; the whatever-it-takes mission briefing revoked. With that brand's apparent passing comes the end of an era, Mr Hunt, whether you choose to accept it or not.
