Latest news with #Jaws2
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Top 10 summer movies: ‘Fantastic Four,' meet ‘Jurassic Park 7' and the new man from Krypton
Hey, how's the water? Pleasant? Sharks? Any shark trouble? Fifty years ago, a certain film franchise hadn't yet asked audiences those questions, in so many words. 'Jaws' the first, and by several hundred thousand miles the best, opened in 1975; three years later 'Jaws 2' arrived, dangling the marketing tagline 'Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.' That first sequel wasn't much, but people went. That's what moviegoers did then, reliably. They went to the movies, in a time just before sequels clogged an entire popular culture's plumbing system. It's different now. 'Star Wars' and then Marvel Studios, among others, have ensured our risk of franchise fatigue, and a rickety industry's default reliance on a few big familiar name brands. So why am I cautiously optimistic — hope springs occasional, as they say — about the summer season, a time when all the franchisees come out to play and take you away from the sun? My reasoning is simple. A few weeks ago, 'Thunderbolts' — the 36th title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and yes, that's too many — turned out pretty well. More recently, 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' the sixth in the 'Final Destination' killing spree, was fresh enough, in its blithe smackdowns between humans and Death, to remind us: You never know when one of these franchise entries will pay off, even modestly. 'Mission: Impossible - the Final Reckoning,' already in theaters, will soon be joined by dinosaurs, superheroes, naked guns and men in capes, all familiar, most having endured earlier big-screen adventures somewhere between bleh and much, much better than bleh. If many can't help but favor the forthcoming releases promising something new, or -ish, well, the ones that succeed have a way of ensuring the industry's future. And every time a stand-alone of populist distinction like this year's 'Sinners' finds an audience, an angel gets its wings. Here's a list of 10 summer offerings, five franchisees, five originals. Release dates subject to change. 'Materialists' (June 13): Writer-director Celine Song's second feature, after the quiet triumph of 'Past Lives,' stars Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, aka the Man Who Is Everywhere, in a romantic comedy about a high-end matchmaker's triangular conundrum. Song knows the value of a triangle; in an apparently glossier vein, her 'Past Lives' follow-up should make it crystal clear and, with luck, a winner. '28 Years Later' (June 20): Ralph Fiennes brings nice, crisp final consonants to a ravaged near-future in director Danny Boyle's return to speedy, menacing rage-virus junkies, with a script from franchise-starter Alex Garland. This is my kind of continuation; the first two films, '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later,' both worked, in interestingly different ways. Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson co-star. 'Elio' (June 20): Pixar's back, which historically and statistically means good news more often than not. This one's about an 11-year-old accidentally but not unpleasantly beamed into outer space's 'Communiverse' after making contact on Earth with aliens. Can Elio save the galaxy while representing his home planet well and truly? The directors of 'Elio' are Madeline Sharafian (who made the Pixar short 'Burro'), Domee Shi ('Bao,' 'Turning Red') and Adrian Molina ('Coco'). 'Sorry, Baby' (June 27): I've seen this one, and it's really good. The story hinges on a maddeningly common incident of sexual assault, this one rewiring the life of a future college English department professor. But 'Sorry, Baby' is not a movie about rape; it's about the days, weeks and years afterward. Writer-director-star Eva Victor (who played Rian on 'Billions'), here making a sharp-witted feature directorial debut, proves herself a triple threat with a wide-open future. 'F1' (June 27): 'Top Gun: Maverick' director Joseph Kosinski returns for what sounds a little like 'Top Gun: Maverick: This Time on Wheels, and the Ground.' Brad Pitt plays a former Formula One superstar, now mentoring a reckless hotshot either to victory and wisdom, or defeat and a tragic embrace of his character flaws. Damson Idris, Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon co-star. 'Jurassic World Rebirth' (July 2): The latest in a hardy multi-decade franchise that has known triumph as well as 'Jurassic World Dominion.' Heartening news on the director front: Gareth Edwards, who did so well by Godzilla in the 2014 'Godzilla,' wrangles the new storyline, with Scarlett Johansson leading an ensemble of potential snacks (humans, that is) in and out of digital harm's way on a secret research facility island fulla' trouble. 'Superman' (July 11): The whole double-life thing has gotten to the Kryptonian strongman by now, and in director James Gunn's take on the 'Superman' myth, he's determined to resolve his Smallville upbringing and Clark Kent newspapering with the wider galaxy's perilous demands. David Corenswet leaps into the title role; his co-stars include Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane) and Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor). 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' (July 25): Despite two of the least grabby words ever to fill the right-hand side of a movie title's colon, 'First Steps' already has stoked the enthusiasm of millions with a pretty zingy trailer, which of course automatically means the film is a classic. (Kidding.) We'll see! The motley yet stylish quartet, led by Pedro 'Everywhere, All the Time' Pascal, squares off with the ravenously evil Galactus and Galactus' flying factotum, the Silver Surfer. 'The Naked Gun' (Aug. 1): First there was 'Police Squad!', the one-season 1982 wonder that introduced America's most serenely confident law enforcement know-nothing, Frank Drebin, originated by the magically right Leslie Nielsen. Then came the 'Naked Gun' movies. Now Liam Neeson takes over in this reboot, with a cast including Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser. 'Caught Stealing' (Aug. 29): In director Darren Aronofsky's 1990s-set NYC thriller, a former pro baseball player (Austin Butler) attempts the larceny equivalent of stealing home once he's entangled in the criminal underworld. This one boasts an A-grade cast, with Zoë Kravitz, Liev Schreiber, Regina King and Vincent D'Onofrio taking care of goods and bads alike.
Chicago Tribune
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Top 10 summer movies: ‘Fantastic Four,' meet ‘Jurassic Park 7' and the new man from Krypton
Hey, how's the water? Pleasant? Sharks? Any shark trouble? Fifty years ago, a certain film franchise hadn't yet asked audiences those questions, in so many words. 'Jaws' the first, and by several hundred thousand miles the best, opened in 1975; three years later 'Jaws 2' arrived, dangling the marketing tagline 'Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.' That first sequel wasn't much, but people went. That's what moviegoers did then, reliably. They went to the movies, in a time just before sequels clogged an entire popular culture's plumbing system. It's different now. 'Star Wars' and then Marvel Studios, among others, have ensured our risk of franchise fatigue, and a rickety industry's default reliance on a few big familiar name brands. So why am I cautiously optimistic — hope springs occasional, as they say — about the summer season, a time when all the franchisees come out to play and take you away from the sun? My reasoning is simple. A few weeks ago, 'Thunderbolts' — the 36th title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and yes, that's too many — turned out pretty well. More recently, 'Final Destination Bloodlines,' the sixth in the 'Final Destination' killing spree, was fresh enough, in its blithe smackdowns between humans and Death, to remind us: You never know when one of these franchise entries will pay off, even modestly. 'Mission: Impossible — the Final Reckoning,' already in theaters, will soon be joined by dinosaurs, superheroes, naked guns and men in capes, all familiar, most having endured earlier big-screen adventures somewhere between bleh and much, much better than bleh. If many can't help but favor the forthcoming releases promising something new, or -ish, well, the ones that succeed have a way of ensuring the industry's future. And every time a standalone of populist distinction like this year's 'Sinners' finds an audience, an angel gets its wings. Here's a list of 10 summer offerings, five franchisees, five originals. Release dates subject to change. 'Materialists' (June 13): Writer-director Celine Song's second feature, after the quiet triumph of 'Past Lives,' stars Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal, aka the Man Who Is Everywhere, in a romantic comedy about a high-end matchmaker's triangular conundrum. Song knows the value of a triangle; in an apparently glossier vein, her 'Past Lives' follow-up should make it crystal clear and, with luck, a winner. '28 Years Later' (June 20): Ralph Fiennes brings nice, crisp final consonants to a ravaged near-future in director Danny Boyle's return to speedy, menacing rage-virus junkies, with a script from franchise-starter Alex Garland. This is my kind of continuation; the first two films, '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later,' both worked, in interestingly different ways. Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson co-star. 'Elio' (June 20): Pixar's back, which historically and statistically means good news more often than not. This one's about an 11-year-old accidentally but not unpleasantly beamed into outer space's 'Communiverse' after making contact on Earth with aliens. Can Elio save the galaxy while representing his home planet well and truly? The directors of 'Elio' are Madeline Sharafian (who made the Pixar short 'Burro'), Domee Shi ('Bao,' 'Turning Red') and Adrian Molina ('Coco'). 'Sorry, Baby' (June 27): I've seen this one, and it's really good. The story hinges on a maddeningly common incident of sexual assault, this one rewiring the life of a future college English department professor. But 'Sorry, Baby' is not a movie about rape; it's about the days, weeks and years afterward. Writer-director-star Eva Victor (who played Rian on 'Billions'), here making a sharp-witted feature directorial debut, proves herself a triple threat with a wide-open future. 'F1' (June 27): 'Top Gun: Maverick' director Joseph Kosinski returns for what sounds a little like 'Top Gun: Maverick: This Time on Wheels, and the Ground.' Brad Pitt plays a former Formula 1 superstar, now mentoring a reckless hotshot either to victory and wisdom, or defeat and a tragic embrace of his character flaws. Damson Idris, Javier Bardem and Kerry Condon co-star. 'Jurassic World Rebirth' (July 2): The latest in a hardy multi-decade franchise that has known triumph as well as 'Jurassic World Dominion.' Heartening news on the director front: Gareth Edwards, who did so well by Godzilla in the 2014 'Godzilla,' wrangles the new storyline, with Scarlett Johansson leading an ensemble of potential snacks (humans, that is) in and out of digital harm's way on a secret research facility island fulla' trouble. 'Superman' (July 11): The whole double-life thing has gotten to the Kryptonian strongman by now, and in director James Gunn's take on the 'Superman' myth, he's determined to resolve his Smallville upbringing and Clark Kent newspapering with the wider galaxy's perilous demands. David Corenswet leaps into the title role; his co-stars include Rachel Brosnahan (Lois Lane) and Nicholas Hoult (Lex Luthor). 'The Fantastic Four: First Steps' (July 25): Despite two of the least grabby words ever to fill the right-hand side of a movie title's colon, 'First Steps' already has stoked the enthusiasm of millions with a pretty zingy trailer, which of course automatically means the film is a classic. (Kidding.) We'll see! The motley yet stylish quartet, led by Pedro 'Everywhere, All the Time' Pascal, squares off with the ravenously evil Galactus and Galactus' flying factotum, the Silver Surfer. 'The Naked Gun' (Aug. 1): First there was 'Police Squad!', the one-season 1982 wonder that introduced America's most serenely confident law enforcement know-nothing, Frank Drebin, originated by the magically right Leslie Nielsen. Then came the 'Naked Gun' movies. Now Liam Neeson takes over in this reboot, with a cast including Pamela Anderson and Paul Walter Hauser. 'Caught Stealing' (Aug. 29): In director Darren Aronofsky's 1990s-set NYC thriller, a former pro baseball player (Austin Butler) attempts the larceny equivalent of stealing home once he's entangled in the criminal underworld. This one boasts an A-grade cast, with Zoë Kravitz, Liev Schreiber, Regina King and Vincent D'Onofrio taking care of goods and bads alike.
Chicago Tribune
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: How ‘Jaws' changed our chumminess with swimming 50 years ago this summer
Few things in my life have been as consistent as 'Jaws.' I have no friendships as old as my relationship with 'Jaws.' It debuted 50 years ago this spring, soon after Memorial Day, and for those of us who spent summer breaks getting wrinkled in water, it ruined the next eight weeks. It was the first movie I saw in a theater (or in my case, a drive-in). Having grown up and regularly vacationed not that far from where it was shot, whenever I catch a snippet of 'Jaws' on TV, even decades later, I am partly watching a film and partly seeing family photos, a childhood and home movies from New England beaches, circa 1974. Boardwalk arcade games. Unleashed dogs. Suntan oil, not sunblock. Sublime lethargy, soundtracked in one scene by a beach radio that's faintly wafting Olivia Newton-John's 'I Honestly Love You' — although, trivia alert, in the film, it's a cover by Lynn 'Rose Garden' Anderson, as well as a devilish example of a 28-year-old Steven Spielberg's genius for detail. Just as you hear it, the song is cued to: 'Jaws,' for me, remains uncomfortable and bittersweet, hilarious and rousing, and though Roy Scheider's sons in the film supposedly have New York accents, they sound much more working-class New England and when I hear them, I always get homesick. I catch glimpses of free-range summer vacations — one of those sons takes a dingy into a pond, — and mentally note coastal buildings and roads and landscapes irrevocably altered or no longer there. 'Jaws,' for me, is more of a documentary. Every election cycle, I smile when someone posts a photo of the actor Murray Hamilton with a reminder: The mayor in 'Jaws' is still mayor in 'Jaws 2.' That said, from Cape Cod to saltwater-free Chicago, perhaps for you, the response was just as primal: 'Jaws' inaugurated the lifelong feeling that down there, beneath us in the water, wherever we were swimming, even if we were wading in a neighbor's aboveground pool. My daughter once eye-rolled me, suspicious at my claim that 'Jaws' kept people out of the water for years, regardless of whether that body of water was the Atlantic Ocean, Lake Michigan or a backyard swimming pool. I assured her, there's good reason Universal Pictures decided the tagline for 'Jaws 2' needed to be: There's even a clinical name for the phobia that 'Jaws' appeared to exacerbate among a population who probably didn't know they had it to begin with: , or the intense foreboding one feels around deep water and whatever exists under the surface. Ask a film critic and they will confirm, regardless of whether they agree: 'Jaws' gets routinely name-checked as one of the few perfect movies in the entire history of cinema, a movie so much about its own medium that in 1975 Pauline Kael wrote of running into a veteran director who was astonished by the young upstart director of 'Jaws.' The filmmaker said that Spielberg 'must never have seen a play. He's the first one of us who doesn't think in terms of the proscenium arch. … There's nothing but the camera lens.' Here's how that translated inside a theater: Audiences floated at the lip of the ocean, the waves casually slapping at the bottom of movie screens, reminding them, without spelling it out, that something's below. Here's how it translated after we left the theater: A horror flick irrevocably changed our relationship to swimming. Hitchcock's 'Psycho' spoiled the long hot shower for a few years, but Spielberg ruined 70% of the Earth's surface. A few weeks after 'Jaws' opened, a columnist at this newspaper, taking this temperature of alarm, reminded readers they had a better chance of being struck by lightning than being eaten by sharks. Besides, the (true-ish) story Quint tells in the film about the hundreds of soldiers killed by sharks after the U.S.S. Indianapolis sank — an exaggeration. It wasn't hundreds, it was '70 or 80 at most.' . A few months after 'Jaws' opened, the fear remained so real that another columnist noted: 'The silver screen knoweth no salt-water boundaries. Somewhere in the country, a swimmer may well be looking for a fin in his chlorinated pool at this very moment.' Grabbing the feet of fellow swimmers was now a thing. By summer's end, humming was already a cliche. Asked by a reporter that summer if 'Jaws' had already become indelible, Roy Scheider could not have answered more wrongly: 'Traumatic shocks in entertainment disappear.' Sorry, Chief Brody, but for years afterward, reporters and editors at this paper received the occasional letter or phone call, from tourists testing Oak Street Beach, from visiting suburbanites, seeking reassurance, or just wondering: Could Lake Michigan contain a shark or two? Philip Willink, a researcher for the Illinois Natural History Survey, former senior biologist at Shedd Aquarium and co-author of the new 'Fishes of the Chicago Region: A Field Guide,' remembers the movie creating 'all kinds of problems for regional fish biologists. I used to routinely get calls from concerned parents wondering if it was safe to let their kids swim at Chicago beaches — or was there a risk of shark attack.' There was not. Still, the other day I spotted a bumper sticker: 'The Great Lakes: Unsalted and Shark Free.' As Henry David Thoreau once wrote presciently: 'I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long.' Rumors are pesky creatures: The big one that got going after 'Jaws' was an urban legend about a boy named George Lawson who, depending on who told it, lost a leg to a shark in Lake Michigan or was eaten and never found. But what did was at least one hoax, as well as an incident biologists still debate. The hoax: In spring 1969, two fishermen pulled up a dead 29-inch-long shark off Milwaukee. After their catch created a bout of agita along Lake Michigan, a Wisconsin tavern owner admitted he had snagged a shark off Florida in 1967, and, for reasons lost to history, kept it in a refrigerator, presumably biding time until his killer prank. As recently as 2008, a dead two-foot-long blacktip shark was found near Traverse City, Michigan — again, it was probably imported and then dumped, or so says the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Less clear-cut is what happened in 1937 on the Mississippi River in Alton, Illinois: Though sharks are largely a saltwater species, fishermen working along the Missouri line pulled up a five-foot-long bull shark. Photographic evidence points to a bull; researchers at the time confirmed, yes, it's a bull. But just last year, a piece in the Detroit Free-Press described biologists as still split on whether that catch was just another hoax or, more likely, a terrific example of the adaptability of the bull shark. Look, don't listen to me, try a professional fish man: Kevin Feldheim of the Field Museum, whose work focuses on the biology of sharks, said: 'Some sharks — bulls in particular — tolerate fresh water and do swim quite far up rivers.' Bulls are special. But he's never heard of a bull navigating fresh water as far north as a Great Lake. However, as a child in the Los Angeles suburbs, he did get interested in sharks because of 'Jaws.' It never affected whether or not he swam in pools. 'Although the movie 'Piranha' did.' Considering that 1978's 'Piranha' — directed by a young Joe Dante and written by a young John Sayles — was one of the first successful 'Jaws' rip-offs, I believe this is splitting hairs. Irrational fear is not different from the panic sweeping beaches in 'Jaws.' There's truth involved: When I was a kid, a friend whose home stood on stilts alongside a cove on Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay — which does see the occasional great white shark — was convinced a great white ate his dog. In truth, it was likely a mako. , again. But also, there's more perception than reality. Another friend of mine, an NCAA swimmer back in college, often finds herself in a freshwater lake in New York: 'When I am doing a long swim across the lake, I often think of the ('Jaws') poster and get myself all anxious.' Brian Samuels, a Deerfield native and fishmonger at Dirk's Fish in Lincoln Park, informed me: 'I would not swim in public pools because of ('Jaws'). Not just that, but across the street from my house, a neighbor had a pool. I was convinced beneath me in that dark water was a shark, because, of course, there had to be.' Even Gene Pokorny, principal tubaist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — who has played the infamously ominous tuba thumps in the 'Jaws' score at Ravinia Festival while conducted by John Williams, its Oscar-winning composer — does not swim in deep bodies of water, period. He always thinks of 'the guys from the U.S.S. Indianapolis.' He also thinks of Tommy Johnson, his late friend and teacher, who played the tuba on the 'Jaws' soundtrack. In fact, Pokorny was there at the recording: 'I remember it clearly and I remember the circumstances were horrendous. I was there with three friends from the University of Southern California and we had managed to get permission to watch. I was in my last quarter of college at the time. We didn't really know anything about the film itself, but I remember (the recording session) was late in starting because Tommy, my tuba teacher, was also a regular instructor at a high school and it was rainy that day and the substitute who was coming to fill in for him was late. Plus, there's the traffic in LA. So everyone is already there waiting when Tommy comes crashing in. The whole orchestra is waiting. Tommy makes his way toward the back row and John Williams just goes, ' you ready?' Tommy says 'Sure,' pulls out the music, looks at it, the red light goes on to record. He did it cold. There was a movie screen in the studio set to that first scene in the movie, with the woman swimming at night in the ocean. Tommy did not even have the right tuba that day, but the double bassists came in and he nailed it perfectly. It's what you hear in the movie, one of the most remarkable things. He played tuba on tens of thousands of film and TV scores, but this became his claim to fame. I remember thinking how the images on screen were perfectly complemented by this music. I remember watching with my mouth wide open.' I can think of no better illustration of the power 'Jaws' that retains: Pokorny was present while its Hollywood mythology was being crafted, and he still can not swim in an ocean. As biologists have noted over the past 50 years, sharks ironically became the true victims of 'Jaws,' villainized and exploited by industries that lobbed off fins for food. The upside is that sharks also became symbols of ocean conservation — a cause that 'Jaws' author Peter Benchley espoused during the last years of his life, before he died in 2006. In case you're wondering, the Florida-based International Shark Attack File says that, since 1975, less than 60 people have been killed by great white sharks, worldwide. Not one of those people was swimming in Lake Michigan. According to the Coast Guard's Great Lakes offices in Cleveland, shark sightings across the Midwest are now basically . Still, Willink, of the Illinois Natural History Survey, said he was vacationing last year on the South Carolina coast when he noticed a fin slice the ocean surface, not far from his son. They had recently watched the film for the first time, and though his son showed no fear of swimming in oceans, Willink's heart jumped into his throat. The scene in which a mother 'is wandering hopelessly and in grief along the surf is seared in my memory.' That fin belonged to a bottlenose dolphin. 'But my first thought was the movie 'Jaws.''
San Francisco Chronicle
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
The 50th anniversary of the summer blockbuster promises a season of not-to-miss movies
On July 5, 1975, I unknowingly participated in what would become an enduring summer ritual. On that date, I happened to go to a movie theater to see 'Jaws,' the first-ever summer blockbuster. This season marks the 50th anniversary of the summer blockbuster's release, a significant event in popular culture and in movie history. To be clear, that history has not been all positive. Most of the blockbusters that followed weren't nearly in the same league as 'Jaws,' and that includes 'Jaws 2' (1978). But when they're done right, a good summer flick is pure fun — audacious, breezy, grand-scale and exciting. Here are the most eagerly anticipated films of this summer movie season. 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' Tom Cruise is back for the last time as Ethan Hunt in the eighth installment of his 'Mission: Impossible' saga, which began in 1996. This time out, Hunt, who is considered something of a reckless maniac by his superiors, is charged with saving the world. If anyone can do it, he can. In theaters May 23. 'From the World of John Wick: Ballerina' A better title might have been, 'Don't Worry, This Isn't About Ballet: This is Another Nonstop Bloodbath.' From the trailer, it seems that Ana de Armas stars as a woman going around killing everybody. Then John Wick (Keanu Reeves) shows up and they try to kill each other, but they keep missing. Does anyone want to bet that, before the end, they team up to kill everybody else? 'The Life of Chuck' Because this film is based on a Stephen King story and was directed by Mike Flanagan (' Ouija: Origins of Evil '), one might expect this to be a horror movie. But apparently it's not. It stars Tom Hiddleston as Chuck, and Chuck just seems to be … a normal person. Where the drama will be found in this movie is anyone's guess, but it has a strong cast (Oakland's own Mark Hamill, Karen Gillan, Chiwetel Ejiofor) and seems to be an attempt to do something worth doing — that is, to celebrate normal life. In theaters June 6. 'The Ritual' The attempt here is to make a serious, sincere exorcism movie. Based on a real exorcism that took place in the 1930s, it stars Al Pacino as a real-life person, Theophilus Riesinger, whose performance of an exorcism in Iowa made him nationally famous. Here, Pacino is supported by Dan Stevens, who plays Riesinger's second in charge, and Abigail Cowen, who plays the afflicted woman. In theaters June 6. 'The Materialists' Dakota Johnson plays a successful matchmaker working for a high-end agency, who becomes torn between two men. The first, played by Perdro Pascal (who is appearing in every other movie this summer, including the Oakland-set ' Freaky Tales ') is a rich guy who lives in a $12 million apartment. The second is a working stiff played by Chris Evans. My money is on Evans, but my interest in this movie is that it places Johnson at the center of a film that looks like it just might be worthy of her. If I had to pick one movie to see this summer, this would be the one. In theaters June 6. 'Superman' Another 'Superman' movie? And yet another Superman? This newest reboot stars the relatively unknown newcomer David Corenswet (' Twisters ') as the renowned superhero who thinks he's a tough guy because he just happened to land on a planet where he can beat up everybody. The movie was directed by James Gunn of ' Guardians of the Galaxy ' fame, so maybe 'Superman' will be funny for once. Two names in the supporting cast are promising: Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane and Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor. In theaters June 11. 'Eddington' Taking place in a small town, at the height of the pandemic lockdown in May 2020, the movie stars Pedro Pascal (see what I mean?) as the mayor of Eddington, N.M. The mayor's clash with the town's police chief (Joaquin Phoenix) divides the town and brings about dire consequences. But the consequences are always dire in the world of director Ari Aster (' Midsommar '). The thing that's most intriguing here is the movie's pandemic setting. It was the dominant reality of our lives five years ago, and so far, only a few films have touched on it. In theaters June 13. 'Jurassic World: Rebirth' If any series needed a rebirth — or a swift burial — it's this series, which began in 1993 and has been running on fumes for the last decade. But the story of this one looks like it might be fun. Scarlett Johansson plays the woman leading a team tasked with bringing back DNA samples from the three biggest dinosaurs. The only problem is that these dinosaurs were 'too dangerous for the original park. … The worst of the worst were left here.' Uh-oh. In theaters July 2. 'The Fantastic Four' This series has always been the weak link among superhero movies. But this new movie, a reboot, seems an attempt to up the franchise's game. Four astronauts come back from space with superpowers that will come in handy when an alien entity announces the planet is 'marked for death.' Vanessa Kirby, as the Invisible Woman, and Pedro Pascal (ever heard of him?) as Mister Fantastic, play a newly married (and pregnant) couple whose desire to just stay home and relax is thwarted by their need to defend the planet. In theaters July 25. 'The Naked Gun' If you've ever watched a Liam Neeson action movie and wondered if Neeson actually knows he's funny, his starring in this film gives you your answer. Yes, he knows. This reboot of the 1980s and early '90s franchise that featured Leslie Nielsen stars the similarly named Neeson as Nielsen's son, an equally bumbling detective. The one-minute trailer released earlier this year has a couple of good laughs, including the sight of Neeson in a girl's school uniform, fighting bad guys with a lollipop. We'll see how the other 84 minutes stack up. In theaters Aug. 1. 'Freakier Friday' This is the sequel to the 2003 film, which starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan in a comedy about a mother and daughter who accidentally switch bodies. Some 22 years later, things get even more mixed up when their bodies and consciousnesses are spread out over three generations. It's hard to imagine all that confusion resulting in a successful movie, but stranger things have happened, and it can be nice when performers return to the same role after more than two decades. In theaters Aug. 8. 'Americana' Advertised as a modern Western, the film stars Sydney Sweeney and Paul Walter Hauser as people embroiled in a desperate effort to recover a valuable Native American artifact. That's about all that can be gleaned from the trailer, aside from the fact that Sweeney speaks with a stutter for this role. Sweeney has been making good choices, clearly swinging for the brass ring of real achievement over ephemeral pop stardom. We'll know soon how this film fits in with her master plan. In theaters Aug. 22. 'The Roses' Set in the Bay Area, this dark comedy stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a husband and wife who gradually come to hate each other. This one looks funny, with the two stars operating at their comically outlandish best, backed by a variety of strong comedic performers (e.g. Kate McKinnon) showing up throughout. The only question is why, if it's so good, are they releasing it on one of the deadest weekends of the year — the one before Labor Day? That could be a sign, or it could simply be counter-programming.
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
What do you do when 14-foot white shark is 'checking' you out in Florida? Shoot video, photos
There's nothing like an encounter with a 14-foot-long white shark to get the heart pumping. Not to mention the stories you'll bring home from your Florida vacation. That's what happened when a Kentucky family headed out for a fishing trip from Florida's Panhandle. Capt. Taylor Bankston took a group of anglers from Kentucky — a mother, dad and two daughters — out on his 26-foot boat, Get the Gaff, on April 10. ➤ 'Giant teeth and a giant eyeball.' Photos show Florida boater's great white shark encounter While fishing about nine miles from Destin in the Gulf of America, formerly known as the Gulf of Mexico, "I looked up ... what I thought I saw in the water was a submarine, and I was waiting next for the periscope to pop out of the water,' Bankston said. 'But it never did ... and then the submarine turned into something that had giant teeth and a giant eyeball,' he said. 'I immediately knew I had never seen a fish in the water that big. It had to be a great white,' Bankston said. 'It was just circling us and checking us out. It was as if we were viewing a dinosaur,' he said. Bankston said the shark circled his boat about 20 minutes, mouthing the back of the boat at one time "to see what we were ... and realized that we weren't anything eatable." After the shark circled for about 20 minutes, it just disappeared. ➤ More photos, videos posted by Taylor Bankston on Facebook 'Then five minutes later we saw a dorsal fin about 100 yards away from us going across the surface slow as all get out ... like the movie 'Jaws.' That was her when she swam away,' Bankston said. Bankston estimated the shark was about 14 feet long, with a dorsal fin about 2 ½ feet tall. He estimated it to be between 1,100 and 1,400 pounds. 'The dorsal fin looked like the fin on 'Jaws,' " he said. "Jaws 2" was filmed in the Destin area. 'First thing I thought was 'captain we're going to need a bigger boat,'' Bankston said. To put it in perspective, Bankston's boat was 26 feet long, making the shark just over half the length of the boat. 'If I would have been hooked up to a heart monitor, there would have been some peaking and beeping," Bankston said. Bankston said the anglers onboard were ecstatic. 'Oh my gosh, it made their vacation. It was a great day." Destin is located about 40 miles east of Pensacola or 50 miles west of Panama City. It's about 130 miles west of Tallahassee. White sharks love to visit Florida during the winter months. OCEARCH, which describes itself as a "data-centric organization built to help scientists collect previously unattainable data in the ocean while open sourcing our research and explorations," regularly tags and tracks sharks, both white and tiger sharks. In January 2025, scientists tagged a 13-foot 9-inch shark, nicknamed "Contender," near the Florida-Georgia border. The male shark was estimated to weigh more than 1,300 pounds. ➤ 2 great white sharks, one massive at 1,653 pounds, ping off Florida east coast. Here's where After being tagged, Contender headed farther south, exploring the waters as far south as Indian River County before turning to head north. His last "ping," when a transponder attached to his dorsal fin sent a signal to a satellite, was Tuesday, April 15, off the coast of North Carolina. Three other sharks — two white and one tiger — tagged by Ocearch have pinged off Florida this week, including one this morning: Dold: Male white shark, 761 pounds, 11 feet 2 inches long. Pinged 10:45 a.m. April 16 in the Gulf west of Sarasota. Morada: Female tiger shark, 761 pounds, 11 feet 2 inches long. Pinged 7:34 a.m. April 15 in the Atlantic southeast of Miami. Breton: Male white shark, 1,437 pounds, 13 feet 3 inches long. Pinged 8:54 p.m. April 12 in the Atlantic east of Jacksonville. Florida is known as the shark bite capital of the world. And Volusia County leads the state in the number of unprovoked attacks, according to the International Shark Attack File. Information provided by Dr. Gavin Naylor, director of Florida Program for Shark Research and curator of Florida Museum of Natural History. ➤ Curious about Florida sharks? We asked an expert about things you should know Some large sharks can swim in waters that are 1 or 2 feet deep. There were 351 unprovoked shark attacks in Volusia County from 1882 to 2023. Bull sharks are tolerant of fresh water and can be found in estuaries and rivers. Dawn and dusk are the worst times to be in the water but bites are possible any time of day. Sharks follow baitfish so watch out for them close to shore especially in the summer. Black-tips and Atlantic sharp-nose are the most common encountered by Florida swimmers. The most aggressive shark in Florida waters is considered to be bull sharks. This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Great white shark circles, bites boat fishing off Destin, Florida
