Latest news with #Hawaiian-born
Daily Mirror
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Mrs Brown's Boys makes return to BBC tonight as controversial show divides viewers
It's the shows that divides the nation. Mrs Brown's Boys is back for a new series - whether you like it or not... The garish opening theme titles of Mrs Brown's Boys (Friday, BBC1, 9.30pm) will either spark joy or set your teeth on edge - it's the return of the Marmite show that splits the nation. From the moment 'Mammy' (Brendan O'Carroll) appears like a Pantomime Dame in her floral dress and cardigan, millions of viewers fall about laughing. The other half of the nation scrambles for the remote and switches off immediately. For every person who loves the crude innuendo, toilet humour and expletive-filled slapstick, there is another who would rather gouge their eyes out of their head than watch a single second. As this four-part series arrives, you can expect more of the same. Agnes continues to meddle in the lives of her nearest and dearest, with plotlines including helping Winnie to pass her driving test and Agnes discovering a passion for erotic fiction. Meanwhile Grandad has SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) and won't move out of his chair, while Buster (Brendan's son Danny O'Carroll) tries to start a new dog walking business. The jokes are so well signposted that the studio audience is ready to cheer or boo at every line, with bloopers kept in for extra gag points. There's also the usual monologue message at the end, with a wink to camera. In this episode, Agnes unwittingly becomes the subject of a new podcast, sending her daughter Cathy (Brendan's wife Jennifer Ann O'Carroll) into a tailspin. Agnes says of the podcast: 'Who in their right mind is going to listen to that? What a load of Sh***!'... an observation that some viewers of this sitcom may well relate to. Mrs Brown's Boys is airing on BBC One tonight at 9.30pm There's plenty more on TV tonight - here's the best of the rest... FIRST DATES, CHANNEL 4, 10pm Former banished Traitors contestant Ash Bibi is in the restaurant for a date, though she admits she's hopeless at flirting. Fortunately Fred Sirieix is on hand to give her a crash course in romantic banter. Ash's date is Miguel, a 46-year-old self-confessed cheesy Spanish poet, but will the pair enter into a 'faithful' relationship? Also in the restaurant is 22-year-old luxury sales assistant Dominic, who is looking for a geek with heart who can handle his big personality. Enter Stephen, a sound engineer armed with a library of one-liners. Self-proclaimed smoothie Wayne from Kent is a handyman who can fix almost anything... except his love life. With a ukulele in hand he's hoping to serenade music-lover Teresa. And superyacht steward Natasha is back for the second time, still on the lookout for a man who can sweep her off her feet. Her date, Jack from Ipswich, is a prison manager who insists that he's more of a lover than a fighter. CHIEF OF WAR, APPLE TV+ Who else could play Hawaii's ferocious warrior than Hawaiian-born American movie star Jason Momoa? Even on a normal day, he looks like a warrior. Based on true events, this epic saga follows what happens with Hawaii's four kingdoms divided by war. Told from an indigenous perspective, with a predominantly Polynesian cast, this is a passion project for creators, Momoa and Thomas Pa'a Sibbett, who both have native Hawaiian heritage. Set against the stunning backdrop of the islands of Hawaii, the nine episode large-scale production tells the story of the unification and colonisation of Hawaii at the turn of the 18th century. Momoa leads the show as warrior Ka'iana, who embarks on a mission to unite his people as an existential threat approaches their shores. Expect stunning scenery, epic battles, heartfelt emotion, tribal allegiances and a fight for peace. Momoa says: 'It's a story rooted in my home, my culture, and my heart.' EMMERDALE, ITV1, 7.30pm After John planted a listening device and discovered some dirt on his brother, things are going from bad to worse for Robert. After being stabbed in the leg by Kyle, Dylan is in a bad way but refuses to talk to anyone. Celia feels annoyed with Kim for raising the rent. Now she just needs a plan to retaliate. Lewis encourages Ross to stop wasting his time and win Steph back. Will Ross take his brother's advice on board? CORONATION STREET, ITV1, 8pm It's the anniversary of Becky's death and Lisa is struggling. At a therapy session, she admits that she thinks there was more to it than meets the eye and wonders if Becky was in some way corrupt. At the garage, Kevin tells Carl he's sacked as he simply can't trust him anymore. Todd plays it down when Billy calls round and sees bedding on the sofa. Bernie and Aadi go over the wedding plans, trying to keep the cost down.
NZ Herald
19-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Chief of War: Jason Momoa on moving ‘home' to New Zealand and All Blacks' surprise cameos
'Here's the big thing I want New Zealand to know - they should take a deep, deep amount of pride in this because we would not be able to make this show had it not been for the help of Aotearoa - they need to know that. I'm very thankful. 'They bled for us and we united Polynesia,' says the Hawaiian-born actor. Momoa extends his gratitude to some unexpected legendary New Zealanders who flexed their acting chops for the first time, just for their 'brother' Momoa. Eagle-eyed fans may have already spotted rugby players including Piri Weepu, Renee Ranger, Frank Bunce, Troy Flavell, Kees Meeuws and Pita Alatini featuring as Koa, Polynesian warriors, in the trailer for the series. Piri Weepu, Rene Ranger, Frank Bunce, Ofa Tu'ungafasi, Troy Flavell and Pita Alatini all feature in the new Chief of War series. Photo / Apple TV+ Hesitant to spoil the plot of episode one, I tread carefully with questioning, before Momoa excitedly cuts in. 'No, let's say it, let's just say it - I'm a huge All Black fan. I love them. I tried to get Tana Umaga in there, but Kees Meeuws is one of my favourites of all time. So I got Kees and a bunch of them came to help,' Momoa adds. All Black prop Ofa Tu'ungafasi, who Momoa calls 'one of my closet friends' and 'my younger brother', has a starring role in episode one, battling with Momoa's character Ka'iana, a legendary Hawaiian warrior. 'He was so good. He was so scared to do it. He would not want me to tell you that, but that he was,' Momoa says with a laugh, adding, 'I was so proud of him.' Momoa recalls a particularly funny moment on set between Tu'ungafasi and his stunt double Kim Fardy, who is Australian and the brother of ex-Wallabies player Scott Fardy. 'Kimmy would always talk s*** about the All Blacks. And so I let Ofa know, I was like, 'just give a little sting because he's an Aussie'.' 'And sure enough, Ofa gave a little f****** extra dude,' Momoa laughs, recalling a hearty onscreen tackle between the two. 'He's a f******* wall, it's crazy. He's so strong.' In Chief of War a Hawaiian war chief embarks on a mission to unite his people. Photo / Apple The nine-part series also reunited two Hollywood heavyweights and Aotearoa acting royalty. Temuera Morrison and Cliff Curtis, who starred in the 1994 film Once Were Warriors, play Kings Kahekili and Keōua in Chief of War. Momoa says learning from Curtis was one of the big blessings from his time on set. 'It was nice to actually sit down and learn from Cliff,' Momoa says, crediting the duo's performances as award-worthy. 'Cliff Curtis and Temuera Morrison can come and play the biggest kings and pull that s*** off and learn our language and play it better than I've ever played before - those guys should be up for Emmys.' Momoa praised the pair's commitment to learning the language and cultural immersion, revealing that he teased the role to Morrison during the 2017 filming of Aquaman, which they starred in together. 'I told Tem on Aquaman, 'I wrote you the greatest role. You're gonna play the greatest game -an amazing king. It's unbelievable,' and he replies, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, true boy',' says Momoa, giving an impeccable Morrison impression. 'You gotta get the facial expressions down when doing it,' he adds with a laugh. Temuera Morrison and Jason Momoa have a very special bond after starring as father and son in Aquaman. Photo / Instagram His love for New Zealand actors, people and rugby players is no secret, but what keeps him coming back to Aotearoa? 'I came here when I was about 20 years old,' Momoa explains, 'and when I landed there, Hawaii is home, but there's never been anywhere in the world where I've ever felt more connected. 'I can't really explain it, if it was my destiny, my ancestors...I don't know what it was, but the moment I stepped off that plane I felt it, and I've always been drawn to it.' Momoa says that on a month-and-a-half trip he took as a 20-year-old, he scaled the country from 'top to bottom' and ultimately decided it was where he wanted to end up. 'I just loved it, just being in the outdoors, man. Being down in Queenstown and experiencing that - snowboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing.' Cliff Curtis in Chief of War. Photo / Apple TV+ 'I just was like, 'I'm gonna live here.' I was going to spend the rest of my life here one day, and now having the opportunity to come down and film,' he explains, the passion for our country clear as he circles back to 'the greatest f******* rugby team of all time', and goes off script. 'I mean, listen, I'm in Hawaii right now and I'll just...' Momoa pauses, turning his camera on during the Zoom call to show me the Steinlager Pure beer he's drinking on the couch, raising it for New Zealand before turning his camera off again. 'That's Steinlager P right there.' . Momoa admits he still feels a call to relocate, saying eventually that's the plan. 'I will eventually move one day, that's where I'll live and work. I don't want to leave - I'm gonna keep coming down. I just love it.' But with his passion project about to be seen by the world, in two short weeks, Momoa, who also worked as a director, writer and producer on the series, says right now his focus is on the series and Hawaii. Temuera Morrison in Chief of war. Photo / Apple TV+ 'I don't have anything that I will ever do in this life that'll be bigger than this - this is my heart and soul. You live with it for a decade, and then you finally get it up, and you get to make all the choices, direct, act, learn the language that you've always wanted to learn, that you've never learned.' But it hasn't been easy: 'No one will ever understand the battles I went through for my culture'. 'This is as big as it gets, you know. This is the tip of the spear of everything. After this is just an actor paid to go do some s***. This is my heart and soul in here.' But before he polishes off the rest of the 'Steinlager P', Momoa says he wants Kiwi fans to know one more thing: 'I'll see you soon. Next year. Aotearoa, I'm coming home, baby.' Chief of War premieres on Apple TV+ on August 1. Jenni Mortimer is the NZ Herald's chief lifestyle and entertainment reporter. Jenni started at the Herald in 2017 and has previously worked as lifestyle, entertainment and travel editor.
The Mainichi
06-07-2025
- Sport
- The Mainichi
Where did Japan's Hanshin Tigers emblem come from? Icon gives glimpse into team's history
OSAKA -- The year 2025 marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of Japan's Hanshin Tigers. While the professional baseball team's tiger emblem is well-known, it's less commonly known that the Tigers' first ace pitcher and a designer employed by Hanshin Electric Railway Co. teamed up to produce it. The tiger emblem was already appearing on posters as early as the year following the squad's founding in 1935. The Mainichi Shimbun took a closer look at the team's history from the perspective of the logo's iconic design. Inspiration from alma mater of first pitching ace "Before the word 'brand' became established in Japan, the Tigers had already branded their tiger emblem and logo, and it's been loved by fans for 90 years," says Masaki Omori, 58, a railway designer from the Hyogo Prefecture city of Ashiya in western Japan. According to Omori, the birth of the tiger emblem can be traced back to Tadashi Wakabayashi (1908-1965), the team's first ace. The team was founded in December 1935 as the Osaka Baseball Club. When the Osaka Tigers was chosen as the team's name, Wakabayashi, a Hawaiian-born "nisei," or child of Japanese-born immigrants, recalled that his alma mater, President William McKinley High School, had a sports team also called the "Tigers" with a tiger emblem. He accordingly proposed adopting a tiger emblem for the Osaka team, Omori says. One of Wakabayashi's high school classmates, Susumu Hoshina (1906-2000), who went on to become the first coach of Hosei University's American football team, drew the initial draft, which was then incorporated into a design by Genichi Hayakawa (1906-1976), a designer at Hanshin Electric Railway. Omori praised the design, saying, "The shape of the eyes and fangs are drawn accurately, the balance of the stripes is just right and it's superb." Hanshin's beautiful baseball tickets The 1936 poster "The Osaka Tigers are Coming" (held by the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum), designed by Hayakawa, already featured the tiger emblem. The following year's admission ticket marking one year since the team's founding was beautifully colored with a red circle containing the tiger emblem against a base of yellow and black stripes. "Printing technology was underdeveloped at the time, and I think multicolor printing was likely expensive, but the Tigers continued to produce beautiful tickets from the start," Omori recalls. Shigeyuki Yamagishi, 51, a company worker in Nagoya who has collected tens of thousands of baseball tickets dating from before World War II to the present, also praises the tickets, saying, "In the era before the war, when most tickets only had text, those adorned with the tiger emblem and the 'TIGERS' logo were by far the coolest." Attention to striped uniform detail Hayakawa, who hails from Tokyo, studied design at Kyoto Craft High School (the present-day Kyoto Institute of Technology), and went on to enter Hanshin Electric Railway Co. Materials relating to Hayakawa are retained at Osaka company Shiura Sports Yohin Co., which supplied uniforms to the Tigers in the 1950s. Including the word "OSAKA" that decorated the chests of the uniforms, Hayakawa paid attention to details that would typically be outsourced to manufacturers today. This included hand-drawing the stripes one by one to make samples to show the difference in width. The team's name changed to the current "Hanshin Tigers" in 1961. Even after retiring in 1958, Hayakawa continued to work with the team, designing the cover for "Tigers 30-year history" in 1965 and a Hanshin Department Store poster featuring pitcher Yutaka Enatsu in the 1970s. Original strength from yellow and black Incidentally, it was in 1953 that the Yomiuri Giants, founded in 1934, adopted orange as their team color, while the Hiroshima Carp, founded in 1950, chose red in 1975. The "raging bull" emblem of the Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes (1949-2004) was designed by renowned Japanese artist Taro Okamoto but has faded from view since the team's merger with Orix. Omori reflects, "I think the raging bull emblem is a wonderful work of art, but I got a keen sense of how difficult it is for designs to endure, no matter how good they are." In the 2000s, it became more common for teams to wear not only home and away uniforms but also revived designs and ones with different color schemes. Since 2013, the Hanshin Tigers, too, have adopted different uniform designs each year under the theme "Urutora (Ultra) Summer" -- a play on words incorporating the Japanese word "tora" for "tiger." Even when a green-themed uniform was introduced, the yellow and black tiger emblem on the sleeve ensured that the "Tigers' identity" was not lost. Omori, a Hanshin fan from Tokyo, fell in love with the design of the yellow and black baseball cap as an elementary school student. Having designed train cars for JR West, he found a connection with Hayakawa, who also worked as a designer for a railway company, and has made researching Hayakawa his life's work. For 90 years, the tiger emblem has continued to be loved by fans. "I feel the original strength anew," Omori says, expressing respect for Hayakawa. (Japanese original by Mayu Maemoto, Osaka City News Department) Exhibition underway in Hyogo Pref. The Otani Memorial Art Museum in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, is currently hosting an exhibition titled " Baseball and Design: Tracing the Hanshin Tigers Through Design." The exhibition features posters by Hayakawa, along with many caricatures and other items from teams other than Hanshin, including a caricature of famed Giants player Shigeo Nagashima, who passed away in June. Yamagishi's ticket collection and Omori's collection of historical Hanshin baseball caps are also being displayed. The exhibition runs through July 27, and is closed on Wednesdays, with general admission costing 1,200 yen (about $8). For more information, phone the museum on 0798-33-0164 (in Japanese).
Irish Examiner
25-06-2025
- Sport
- Irish Examiner
Return time uncertain but injury-plagued Roman Salanoa pens one-year Munster extension
Tighthead props Roman Salanoa and Conor Bartley have both signed contract extensions with Munster, the province announced on Wednesday. Hawaiian-born Salanoa, 27, has not played since coming off the bench in the URC Grand Final victory over the Stormers in Cape Town 25 months ago, his 21st appearance of that title-winning campaign and his 30th overall of an injury-hit five years at Munster. The former Leinster academy player has signed a one-year deal to the end of the 2025-26 season as he continues his rehabilitation from a problematic knee injury. It is understood there is still no specific date set for Salanoa's return to action as the Munster medics and fitness staff carefully manage the front-rower back to match readiness and it is unlikely he will be ready for the start of pre-season under incoming head coach Clayton McMillan. Bartley, meanwhile, has extended his stint with Munster with a new short-term deal. Signed from Young Munster last November and with a decade of All Ireland League experience, the 29-year-old is yet to make a senior debut for the province. He will continue to provide back-up to senior tightheads John Ryan and Oli Jager, with Ronan Foxe also in the selection mix to add to his URC experience as an academy player. Munster's record appearance maker and veteran tighthead Stephen Archer retired on May 31 following his 304th performance for the province.
USA Today
16-06-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Look: Rams' practice field in Maui features awesome alternate logo at midfield
Look: Rams' practice field in Maui features awesome alternate logo at midfield The Los Angeles Rams are holding their mandatory minicamp this week, but it won't be at their headquarters in Woodland Hills. Instead, they're in beautiful Hawaii, specifically on the island of Maui. It's a special edition of minicamp, which the Rams are calling 'Mauicamp,' and it's only appropriate that the practice field at War Memorial Stadium gets a special design, too. Rather than putting their traditional logo at midfield, the Rams used an alternate logo designed by Hawaiian-born artist Aaron Kai, who's now based in Los Angeles. Kai tweaked the Rams' LA logo to make it Hawaii-themed, turning the white-and-yellow horn shape into waves. The Rams previewed the field design on social media. And here's a look at some of the merchandise the Rams are selling at a pop-up shop in Maui, all designed by Kai himself. It's awesome that the Rams aren't just relocating minicamp to Maui, but they're going all-in with community events and this special merchandise run with a renowned Hawaiian artist. It should be a fun week for the team in Hawaii as they wrap up their offseason workout program before training camp kicks off next month.
