Latest news with #Expos
The Mainichi
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Mainichi
The Mainichi News Quiz Answer for June 5
Why has Tomiyo Yamada, nicknamed "Expo lady," made headlines at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai? A) She designed the official Expo mascot. B) She visited every pavilion in just 46 consecutive days. C) She works as the oldest volunteer at the Expo. D) She introduced traditional Aichi cuisine at the Expo. Correct Answer: B) She visited every pavilion in just 46 consecutive days. Tomiyo Yamada, a 76-year-old woman nicknamed "Expo lady," made headlines by completing visits to all pavilions at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai in 46 consecutive days since its opening. Yamada is widely known for her dedication to attending Expo events, previously visiting Expo 2005 Aichi every day and attending subsequent Expos abroad in Shanghai and Yeosu, South Korea. She now aims to visit Expo 2025 on all 184 days until the event's conclusion on Oct. 13.
Winnipeg Free Press
09-05-2025
- General
- Winnipeg Free Press
Domestic chores and never-fail pastry
Opinion Betty, my late mother, was a full-time homemaker. Her primary task was to mind her two boisterous offspring. Anyone who knew my ambitious father, John, understood the necessity of that decision. 'If I didn't stay home, who knows what would have become of you two kids,' Mum said. It's true. She raised us single-handedly. Elizabeth Alberta Brough was born in Winnipeg on April 8, 1935 — on her mother Elizabeth's 20th birthday. It was the height of the Great Depression. During the 1950 flood, the Brough family was displaced from their Norwood home. Betty Robertson playing cards. Photo courtesy of Robertson Family Estate. While other women in Betty's generation took up the feminist cause, she happily played a supporting role in the background. Betty didn't attend protest rallies or defend the clinic like her outspoken daughter. Instead, she washed laundry, made homemade soup and transcribed Rusty Staub of the Expos for my father's first book. To my discredit, I devalued her housewife role. These days, Mum would be condescendingly dubbed a 'Trad Wife.' She graciously endured the disdain and judgment of younger, hipper women like me. It didn't matter what we thought. Mum knew her intrinsic value. And she never wavered from her task as mother. 'My happiest times were spent at home when you kids were little,' she would tell me, a dish towel slung over one shoulder as she stirred a freshly made five-bean soup with a wooden soup spoon. 'If you're not busy, my girl, could you unload the dishwasher?' I hated that Harvest Gold portable dishwasher. Tim, my younger brother, was typically still at hockey practice. He never had to unload it. Dad was downstairs pounding out a column and a game story. 'Why me?' I'd whine. 'Why not you? It's important to contribute and earn your keep. You'll thank me one day.' Now I refuse all offers of a modern dishwasher and do dishes by hand while I listen to music producer Rick Rubin wax on about creativity on Audible. In her prime, Mum preferred the manic tones of CJOB's Peter Warren. Mum listened to local radio in her kitchen, which made her feel connected to the news of the day. As the doting wife of a busy journalist, it was a job requirement. Mum read every daily newspaper in whatever city we resided and she subscribed to Reader's Digest, Sports Illustrated, Maclean's, Canadian Living and Chatelaine. Whenever I challenged the traditional Robertson family hierarchy, dad, much to his credit, had the same pat reply: 'Listen to your mother.' It never varied. Whether I was demanding release from chores, an extended curfew or some other privilege I hadn't earned, dad still backed Mum. Tim, who was temperamentally better-adjusted, thanks to hours and hours of hockey practice, always obeyed Betty. Without fail. This earned him the upbeat nickname, 'Sunshine.' 'You don't know how lucky you are, my girl. Other kids have to fend for themselves after school. At lunch hour, you arrive home to hot tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.' In 1990, when John and Betty retired to Winnipeg Beach, Mum inscribed her mother's 'Never Fail Pastry' recipe into my Sunset International Vegetarian Cook Book. Her trademark cursive handwriting and 'Love Mum' sign off still brings me to tears all these years later. Mum was soft-spoken and shy. She didn't like to be 'demonstrative,' as she called it. She did little things, every day, with great love and no credit. As job descriptions go, Mother isn't a highly valued opportunity. It's ceaseless, unpaid and mostly thankless. Yet Mum far preferred mothering to her work as a legal secretary. Dad was the breadwinner and she was the chatelaine. Their roles never wavered. Except when dad retired and assumed my job in the dish pit. In his prime, John didn't even know where the coffee cups were kept. His retired domestic role proved that even the most patriarchal male can adapt. Now I find myself defending my kitchen like it's my personal territory. My spouse, Grant, loves to cook and put the clean dishes away. Grant logged lots of kitchen time with his Prairie mother, Irene. 'I've always enjoyed the company of women,' Grant says with a knowing wink. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. When we visited, Mum marvelled at Grant's domesticity and how well we worked as a team. 'You don't know how lucky you have it.' 'Oh, that's nothing, Mum. Grant does laundry, too!' 'He does if he wants cleans clothes,' Mum jabbed back. Happy Mother's Day, Mum. I miss you every day. Patricia Dawn Robertson's new book, Media Brat: a Gen-X memoir, can be purchased at
Telegraph
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Britain's new symbol? An extraordinarily expensive box
From the top of a building bursts a large, glowing sun. Nearby, a group of geodesic domes are being consumed by shrubbery, like a kind of feral Eden Project. Ahead stands a transparent box, inside which is a second building, a bottled miniature Colosseum. This is not a cheese dream. This is Expo 2025, in Osaka, which opens tomorrow, and these are, respectively, the pavilions belonging to the Netherlands, Switzerland and Italy. But why? What even is an Expo? What began in London as the Great Exhibition of 1851 has since grown into an international extravaganza, held at irregular intervals. The edition in Osaka will be the 36th. These days, the organisers refer to the Expo as a 'gathering of nations', around 160 of them, although early pavilions functioned more as shop windows of industrial and cultural might, rather than symbols of global togetherness. The Great Exhibition, for instance, sold the achievements of Britain's Industrial Revolution to the world. Joseph Paxton 's cast-iron and glass Crystal Palace set the benchmark for technologically audacious and architecturally spectacular pavilions – though so rushed was its conception that Paxton, with just nine days to produce a design, ended up hurriedly doodling it during a meeting, after which it was constructed and opened within a breathless nine months. Yet that building would represent the spirit of the age, and as successive Expos have come and gone, each has tried to encapsulate the global moment in a different way. Paris 1889 saw the construction of the Eiffel Tower. Like the Crystal Palace, it was designed as a temporary structure, though imagine if it had been scrapped. The world would have lost the symbol of a bold, modern France, one that still astonishes today: a Jules Verne fantasy made iron, engineering as art. Nineteenth-century Expos (known in the US as World's Fairs) were sold with posters showing wafty Pre-Raphaelite women representing the spirits of elemental forces, summoning the power of the new from their classical bosoms. Progress was dressed up in faux-classical drag to disguise the truth of clanking industrial grime or the shadows of empire. But all that changed quite abruptly with Chicago 1933. No dusty centurions or drifty muses there. The poster showed a starkly graphic image of a globe trailing whoosh-lines – a planet that might also be an atom – representing the Expo's stated theme, 'A Century of Progress'. And in the depths of the Great Depression, this became the first Expo to fully exploit the potential of modernist design. Out went reworkings of classical and renaissance buildings: instead, we got a forward-looking panorama, typified by the Chrysler Motors building, reminiscent of an art-deco cinema. You might have thought that Paris wouldn't have needed another Expo landmark, but for its 1937 fair, a half-mile-high observation tower was proposed, whose spiralling concrete ramp would have allowed you to drive your Peugeot more than halfway up its colossal height. The tower was never built, and in the event, the Expo was dominated by two other ominous structures: those of the Soviet Union, bearing Vera Mukhina's enormous sculpture of workers brandishing a hammer and a sickle; and Germany, a bombastic neoclassical tower by Albert Speer, which he topped with an eagle and a swastika. Global conflicts took their toll, but Expo 58, in Brussels, was a return to outlandish form. Here, the atom was your friend, so much so that it was celebrated in the Atomium, nine atoms blown up – as it were – into a sculpture of hollow metallic spheres, the highest containing a restaurant suspended over the city. And if you liked a bit of modular design, Expo 67, in Montreal, was the one for you. Canada's pavilion was an upside-down pyramid; the US's was a huge dome designed by Buckminster Fuller, with a monorail that passed through it. Britain's effort was a gleaming white brutalist-style ziggurat by Basil Spence, the architect of Coventry Cathedral. It was one of many buildings that would later feature in sci-fi television series such as Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, where they looked at home among the spaceships and boiler suits. In case you're wondering, you can't just create your own Expo. You have to get it recognised by the Bureau International des Expositions, or BIE, one of those curious global bodies, like the World Bank or Fifa, which seemingly float above the inconvenience of everyday life. The BIE began with 12 member countries in 1928; today, there are 184, showing a shift away from the Great Power dynamics of the inter-war years to something truly international. And this isn't a toothless organisation. The New York World's Fair of 1964 was never officially recognised by the BIE, after some disastrous negotiations by Robert Moses, the city's all-powerful planner, who dismissed them as 'a bunch of clowns in Paris'. As a result of the BIE's snub, only six countries participated that year, the fair being dominated instead by domestic corporations. IBM's 'egg' was designed by the superstar architect Eero Saarinen and his design friends Charles and Ray Eames, who also provided an innovative 3D film experience shown on numerous oddly shaped screens: half funfair, half spy-movie brainwashing booth. Whether or not it had the official imprimatur, it was the very epitome of a mid-century Expo. Osaka's most recent Expo was in 1970, when it had a psychedelic hangover-from-the-1960s Yellow Submarine vibe. (A spherical concert hall inspired by the experimental music of Karlheinz Stockhausen? West Germany, take a bow.) But what of its 2025 extravaganza? The logo, a ring of red spots with what look like eyes, is the 1970 design come to life in the age of AI. The theme is 'Designing Future Society for Our Lives', which, we're told, 'makes individuals think how they want to live' – my immediate thought was of eating crisps on the sofa while watching Antiques Road Trip – 'and how they can maximise their potential'. (Er, maybe not.) The aim is to provoke discussion about how the post-pandemic world might reconstruct itself sustainably. As a result, the pavilions are rather more lightweight than some of the grandiose creations of the past. Britain's, designed by WOO Architects, is a rectangular box with walls of perforated aluminium panels, paying homage to the punchcards of the pioneering mathematician Ada Lovelace – though they're more immediately reminiscent of a small demountable Debenhams store. Many of the other designs resemble items of furniture from Wayfair blown up to improbable size. The Czechs' is the kind of chandelier you might find in the restaurant of a medium-sized provincial hotel; Singapore's is a large windowless ball; Japan's circular timber structure recalls the temporary stadium used for Abba Voyage (this is not a criticism). Meanwhile, Norman Foster's firm has produced such a sober, villagey design for Saudi Arabia that it threatens to allude to real life. In an Expo? Puh-lease. Bahrain's may be the most beautiful: the Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh has produced a kind of ghost ship with struts of wood. And just in case you were worried that Expos had given up on the James Bond dream, the whole show is contained in a vast wooden ring constructed on an artificial island. In today's unstable world, Expos connect us back not just to other periods of instability and conflict, but to a bubble of optimism that reality cannot burst. If we all lived in Expo-world, it would be a shortcut to a headache, sure. A kind of Las Vegas designed by school children; a place that defies logic and realism, and instead aims to be beautifully, pointlessly extraordinary. It might have begun as a form of Industrial Revolution showboating, but the modern Expo feels more Eurovision than Great Exhibition, a gloriously camp exercise in national rebranding, rather than a showcase of international subtleties. There's even an Expo museum in Shanghai, for the purpose of giving the city's old 2010 Expo buildings something to do. It's a retirement home for Expos, those mayflies of the global village. Let's hope that Osaka's will be one to remember. Expo 2025 runs in Osaka, Japan until October 13
CNN
11-04-2025
- CNN
Architect Sou Fujimoto: Expo 2025 is ‘a precious opportunity to come together'
Ever since the Great Exhibition opened its doors in London 174 years ago, the World's Fair has offered nations a chance to show off the greatest inventions of the age. But Expos of recent decades have been as much about diplomacy and public relations as innovation. It is little surprise, therefore, that the mastermind behind Expo 2025 — which commences this weekend in Osaka, Japan, just three years after the end of Dubai's Covid-delayed Expo 2020 — doesn't express his vision in terms of scientific or industrial progress. In an era of increasing conflict, the message is all about unity. 'The whole global situation is very unstable,' said Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto, touring CNN around the site ahead of Saturday's opening ceremony. 'I believe this is a really precious opportunity to show (that) so many countries can come together in one place and think about our future together.' Japan hopes to welcome 28 million visitors to the event between now and mid-October. Designed by Fujimoto on a 960-acre artificial island in Osaka Bay, the site will host over 150 pavilions showcasing new technology, design concepts and multimedia exhibitions under the theme 'Designing Future Society for Our Lives.' Among them are dozens of national entries, from the serenely minimalist US pavilion to the corkscrew-shaped Czech one. The main attraction, however, is the venue itself: Fujimoto's Grand Ring, a continuous wooden structure, more than 1.2 miles in circumference, encircling much of the Expo. Made from Japanese cedar and cypress (as well as Scottish pine), it now holds the Guinness World Record for the world's largest wooden architectural structure. The Grand Ring is symbol of unity, too, Fujimoto said. And while it serves a functional purpose as a pedestrian route around the site, while protecting visitors from rain and sun, the structure was also designed to demonstrate the possibilities of timber as a viable alternative to carbon-intensive concrete. 'At the beginning, nobody believed it was possible,' Fujimoto said, describing the technical challenges of building with wood at such scale as 'so huge.' The use of wood in large structures, even skyscrapers, has accelerated in recent years. It's a trend spurred by the development of advanced 'mass timber' — typically made by gluing layers of compressed wood into strong columns or panels — and progressive building codes and policies promoting its use (France, for instance, now requires all new public buildings to include at least 50% wood). Related article World's first wooden satellite, developed in Japan, heads to space Engineered timber nonetheless remains novel in much of the world. But Japan has a long and continuous history of wooden architecture. The devastating earthquakes of 1891 and 1923 exposed the shortcomings of then-popular European-style brick and stone buildings. Today, around 90% of Japan's single-family homes are built using timber frames, which are better equipped to withstand quakes. As such, Fujimoto's Grand Ring looks both to the material's future and its past. He combined modern construction methods (including steel reinforcement) with interlocking joints inspired by those traditionally used in Shinto temples and shrines. These joints required exhaustive study, with mockups made and stress-tested — sometimes to the point of destruction — to ensure their durability and seismic resistance. Fujimoto believes his country can remain a world leader in timber construction. It is a movement he has pioneered, alongside architectural luminaries like Shigeru Ban and Toyo Ito, since his eponymous firm's breakout project: a home in Kumamoto, completed in 2008 and named Final Wooden House, that resembles an oversized Jenga tower. 'We have such a wonderful tradition of wooden construction,' Fujimoto said. 'And also, really wonderful craftsmanship from more than 1,000 years ago. So now, we can combine that kind of tradition with the latest technology to create the future of sustainable architecture.' The road to Expo 2025 has been, at times, bumpy for Japan. Venue construction costs have ballooned from an initial estimate of 125 billion yen ($852 million) to 235 billion yen ($1.6 billion). Public interest has meanwhile proven lukewarm, with Osaka's governor Hirofumi Yoshimura last month admitting that the city was struggling to meet its advance ticket sale targets. On both matters, Fujimoto struck a diplomatic note. He described the final costs as the 'proper price, not too high, not too low,' while expressing hope for growing 'passions and energetic interest' from the Japanese public. 'The atmosphere is changing now,' he added. 'So, I'm optimistic about it.' While Fujimoto can justifiably distance himself from blame, there is another controversy to which he is more intimately tied: the fate of the Grand Ring. Whether, or how much of, the structure will live on after the Expo is a matter of ongoing debate in Japan. It is also a bone of contention among critics who believe that dismantling the structure would undermine its message of sustainability. Regardless of his wish that nothing goes to waste, the architect realizes that the decision may hinge on the funding required for upkeep and future events. 'I, myself, (would) really like to keep it — to preserve it … because it is really wonderful, and it is like a symbol of how our society can live together with nature,' he said. Yet, Fujimoto also notes that impermanence has always been a feature of Japanese architecture. Traditionally, the country's wooden homes were constructed with an expected lifespan of 20 years, and many Japanese people would sooner rebuild their house than renovate it. Some of Shintoism's most important structures, including the famous Ise Grand Shrine, have been regularly torn down and rebuilt over the centuries, posing a philosophical question — akin to the ship of Theseus paradox — of whether a building is more than the sum of its material parts. Related article 11 architecture projects set to shape the world in 2025 The architect implored that, should the Grand Ring be dismantled, its wood is repurposed in other projects. Then, 'even though the building is gone, the life or spirit of the materials will still be alive,' he said. In any case, the legacy he envisaged for the Expo is an intangible one: 'Amazing memories and surprising experiences that inspire (visitors) to create something for the future.' One of Japan's most celebrated living architects, Fujimoto was an obvious choice for Expo organizers. As well as practicing widely in Japan, the 53-year-old has become internationally renowned since being asked to design a temporary pavilion at London's Serpentine Gallery, one of architecture's most prestigious commissions, in 2013. Other recent high-profile projects include the striking L'Arbre Blanc ('The White Tree') residential tower in Montpellier, France, and the House of Hungarian Music, an airy arts venue whose perforated dome sits nestled among trees in a Budapest park. Both projects are emblematic of Fujimoto's architectural philosophy, dubbed 'primitive future,' which explores the symbiotic links between people, design and the environment. It's an outlook he has often attributed to his upbringing, amid nature, in Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. Fittingly, greenery is woven throughout his Expo 2025 design. '(We) couldn't live without nature,' he said, adding that the site should 'show how we can be together with the cycle of nature.' At the heart of this year's expo lies the 'Forest of Tranquility,' a congregation of around 1,500 trees, including native species like Japanese blue oak, Japanese maple and Japanese snowbell. Among them are trees replanted from Expo '70's Commemorative Park, some 13 miles northeast of the site, which serves as a permanent reminder of the last time Osaka hosted the World's Fair. Architecturally, much has changed in the intervening 55 years. Expo '70, held the year after the moon landing, played out under a giant 'space frame' roof and exhibited a moon rock brought back to Earth by Apollo 12. The event's lead designer, the late avant-garde architect Kenzo Tange, was known for conceptual floating cities and grand, outlandish megastructures. Related article Pritzker Prize 2025: China's Liu Jiakun awarded 'Nobel of architecture' Fujimoto described the event as 'a glorious moment of Japan in the 20th century,' but emphasized the difference between his Grand Ring and his predecessor's centerpiece design: 'Kenzo Tange's roof represented technology and industry… but our ring is made from wood and is a symbol of sustainability.' Japan itself has also transformed since the previous Osaka Expo, an event alive with the hopes of post-World War II social reinvention. For Fujimoto, not all this change has been for the better. As such, his call for unity at Expo 2025 appears to be directed as much toward his compatriots as the world at large. 'Japanese society is getting rather conservative and not so open,' he said. '(It is) rather closed to other countries and cultures… So, I believe this is a wonderful occasion (to) reconnect Japanese culture to the world.' CNN's Hazel Pfeifer, Yumi Asada and Daniel Campisi contributed to this story.
Yahoo
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New TV shows, movies on Netflix in 2025: Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein,' new Tina Fey show and Mae Martin's Canadian thriller
This year Netflix is set to release an impressive number of new TV shows, movies, games, documentaries and live events on its platform. From the final season of Stranger Things and the return of Wednesday, to completely new content and its continued partnership with WWE, Bela Bajaria, chief content officer of Netflix, presented a full slate of 2025 releases to reporters around the world on Wednesday. Speaking from Los Angeles, Bajaria stressed how important creativity is for Netflix, referencing a New York Times video opinion piece by Kirby Ferguson titled "Is Creativity Dead?" She highlighted Netflix's commitment to supporting projects "other people think are too specific, or too quirky, or too local." "So I'm sorry to The New York Times reporters in the audience, but creativity is not dead — not on Netflix, and not for the creators we work with," Bajaria said. "They're always coming up with amazing, original ideas we can't stop thinking about." "And they're the reason 2025 is going to be the most surprising, most unique, most entertaining year yet." From films and TV, to games and live sports events, Netflix in 2025 is looking to reach every category of viewer, all over the world. Throughout the years, Netflix has developed a robust catalogue of productions filmed in Canada, but continues to make additional investments in telling Canadian stories through its platform. "We are looking for Canadian stories that can please our members here, and go on to light up the world," Tara Woodbury, director of content for Netflix Canada said at the event in Toronto on Wednesday. That includes North of North, in partnership with CBC and APTN, created, executive produced and written by Inuit writers and producers Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril. The comedy series stars Anna Lambe as Siaja, and Inuk woman in the Arctic town of Ice Cove. After a very pubic ending of her marriage, leading her to crashing on her mother Neevee's (Maika Harper) couch with her daughter Bun (Keira Belle Cooper), Siaja just wants to explore a new independent life for herself. There will also be a new documentary this year that breaks down the controversial story of the Montreal Expos baseball team. "The story of Expos leaving Montreal has everything you'd want, negotiations and backstabbing, athletes on the edge, and big big emotions from the fans," Woodbury teased. "The filmmakers have brought all the key people who were involved in the Expos move to Washington, from Guerrero, to the MLB to David Samson and audiences will get a true insider's perspective." The hilarious Mae Martin moves to the thriller genre with the upcoming release of their series Wayard, starring Martin, Sarah Gadon, Patrick J. Adams, and Toni Collette, who plays the head of a school for troubled teens. "It's a show that I wanted to make for years and years. I've always been obsessed with my teens and the visceral emotions of that time," Martin said. "I was a troubled teen myself. And my best friend actually, when we were 16, got sent to a rehab facility in the States. That was like a troubled teen school, like the kind that Paris Hilton went to." "She was gone for two years and she escaped in the woods and she came back and had these crazy stories about it, and in researching those schools in the troubled teen industry it just seemed like the perfect framework to hang a thriller on and and it gets pretty crazy in the wider conspiracy of the town, and my character's, kind of trying to figure it all out." Martin also took the time at the Toronto event to highlight how great it's been to work on a project back home. "I left in my early 20s and lived in England for 12 years, and then L.A., and I've always come back whenever there's work here," Martin said. "And I really think if I had known that I would be able to make something of this scope and scale, and have the amazing freedom and everything, then I would never have left." "It's the best and all the cliches about Toronto and Canadian crews and their warmth on set are all really true. Like, as of my first day, three crew members were like, 'Yeah, we partied together in high school.' ... It's such a small, small world." While there are several Canadian projects to be excited about on Netflix in 2025, there are also highlights to Netflix's global programming that we are really looking forward to. In addition to the final season of Stranger Things and Squid Game, and the return of Wednesday, here are new projects to look out for. Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro is one of the most prolific filmmakers in history, with one of his most exciting projects coming to Netflix in November, Frankenstein starring Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, David Bradley, Charles Dance and Christoph Waltz. Adapting Mary Shelley's classic tale, the story follows a "egotistical scientist," played by Isaac, who brings a monster to life. "This film has been on my mind since I was a child — for fifty years," Del Toro said in a video message during the Netflix event. "And I've been trying to make it for 20-25 years." "Over the decades, the character has fused with my soul in a way that it has become an autobiography. It doesn't get more personal than this." Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are once again working together, through their company Artists Equity, for their upcoming film Rip, a crime thriller set in Miami. "Rip is not a horror movie. A rip is when cops keep whatever money they find at a crime scene, and this movie takes a look at the things people will do for money," Affleck said on Wednesday. Inspired by true events, the film is written and directed by Joe Carnahan, starring Sasha Calle, Teyana Taylor, Steven Yeun, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, and Kyle Chandler. Following the hit docuseries with Victoria and David Beckham, the Spice Girl is bringing the cameras into her fashion and beauty business, as a Creative Director of her own brand. The legendary 30 Rock creator and star, Tina Fey, is coming back to the series world with an upcoming show called The Four Seasons, inspired by the 1981 Alan Alda movie. The show stars Fey, Steve Carell, Will Forte, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Colman Domingo, Marco Calvani and Erika Henningsen. "If you've never seen the original movie, it has a very simple premise. It follows a group of old friends — three couples — over four vacations," Few said. "We never see them at home. We never see them at work — we just see how their lives change over a year by hanging out with them on vacation. No one is a vampire and — spoiler alert— there are zero murders." "In the original, Alan Alda and Carol Burnett played husband and wife and I remember feeling, like, 'What?! My two favourite comedy people from other shows are pretending to be married?! What is this deep comfort I'm feeling?!' It was fan fiction before there was fan fiction. It was Nancy Meyers sweater porn before Nancy Meyers… found her career in porn." Fey co-created the project with Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. Famed comedian and actor John Mulaney is taking his skills to a talk show titled Everybody's Live with John Mulaney, a live weekly show on Netflix, beginning March 12 at 7:00 p.m. PT/10:00 p.m. ET. This comes after Mulaney's 2024 six-episode talk show John Mulaney's Everybody's in L.A., which was part of Netflix is a Joke Fest. "We will be live globally with no delay. We will never be relevant. We will never be your source for news. We will always be reckless. Netflix will always provide us with data that we will ignore," Mulaney said. "This will be the one place where you could see Arnold Schwarzenegger sitting next to Nikki Glaser sitting next to a family therapist with music by Mannequin Pussy. That's just a brief sampling of guests. We don't know if we can lock in Mannequin Pussy, but we are in talks with them." "This is a really fun experiment. Not since Harry and Meghan has Netflix given more money to someone without a specific plan." Lena Dunham and her production company Good Thing Going (GTG) partnered with Netflix to develop future projects, including her first scripted comedy series with Netflix, Too Much. "Jessica (Megan Stalter) is a New York workaholic in her mid-thirties, reeling from a broken relationship that she thought would last forever and slowly isolating everyone she knows," the synopsis of the show reads. "When every block in New York tells a story of her own bad behaviour, the only solution is to take a job in London, where she plans to live a life of solitude like a Bronte sister." "But when she meets Felix (Will Sharpe) — a walking series of red flags — she finds that their unusual connection is impossible to ignore, even as it creates more problems than it solves. Now they have to ask themselves: do Americans and Brits actually speak the same language?"
