Latest news with #Macfarlane
New York Post
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Post
How Seth Rogen pulled double duty with ‘The Studio' and ‘Platonic': ‘Hard work pays off'
Seth Rogen doesn't take his job lightly. The star, 43, was so invested in both of his Apple TV+ shows that he pulled double duty while filming. Rogen currently stars as Matt Remick in the Emmy-nominated dark comedy, 'The Studio,' and also portrays Will on the dramedy series, 'Platonic.' 11 Luke Macfarlane attends the season two premiere of 'Platonic.' Apple TV+ via Getty Images His 'Platonic' co-star, Luke Macfarlane, revealed how the actor was able to pull it off. 'Going into season two, you know, Seth had just finished filming 'The Studio,'' he exclusively told The Post. 'So we were very curious what 'The Studio' was going to turn into. And now, of course, we know what 'The Studio' turned into.' Macfarlane, 45, added, 'It is this incredible, brilliant, beautiful show. That he was, by the way, working on while he was filming Season 1 of 'Platonic.' Which is also, just as an actor, an incredible sort of reminder that hard work can pay off.' 11 Luke Macfarlane talks to Alexandra Bellusci of the Post. 11 Seth Rogen in 'The Studio.' The Hallmark star reminisced about how Rogen would juggle both roles at the same time. 'He was literally finishing scenes on 'Platonic' and going in his trailer and typing away,' continued Macfarlane. 'So it's delightful to come back and do a second season of the show. I think we all had a tremendous amount of time. It also feels like a lot of people that enjoy working together, and getting to work together again.' Looking back at filming the second season, one memory in particular has stuck with the 'Bros' vet. 11 Seth Rogen as Matt Remick in 'The Studio.' Apple+ 'Seth really respects what everyone does,' Macfarlane said. 'You know, Seth did an amazing thing once, actually. Somebody on set who kind of shouldn't have said this told me to do something.' He explained, 'I was wearing a lav, a microphone, and I brought my hand to my lav, and I covered the lav in the scene. And somebody said something to me like, 'Oh, don't do that with your hand, you'll cover your lav.'' Rogen made sure that was the end of stepping in where you shouldn't. 11 Luke Macfarlane in 'Platonic.' 'And Seth actually said to that person, 'Don't tell an actor what to do. That's not your job,'' Macfarlane shared. 'Just watching somebody look out for his fellow actors – that's what he does.' 'He's got integrity,' Macfarlane gushed. 'He knows how to look out for his actors. He really cares about an actor feeling comfortable.' Rogen also made sure to keep the laughs coming. 11 Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne in 'Platonic.' 'Seth is very famous for a lot of things. I think he's really famous for that laugh, you know?' Macfarlane mused. 'And I will say, working with Seth, you always want to get him to do that laugh. It makes you very happy when you make Seth laugh. So I will say the most Seth Rogen thing you can get him to do is laugh.' Rogen wasn't the only one who hit Macfarlane's funny bone. 'Rose makes me laugh a lot,' he dished about his on-screen wife. 'I think we're filming a scene where I was, like, popping in and out of a doorway, and of course, the timing was hilarious. So we were just making each other laugh because I felt like I kept on missing the entrance.' 11 Luke Macfarlane, Rose Byrne, and Seth Rogen speak at Apple's 'Platonic' Los Angeles event. Getty Images for Today at Apple 'It's something early in the season where I'm sort of like, you know, doing the sticking my head [in], and I just kept on sticking my head in at the wrong time. So that made us both laugh quite a bit.' These days, the Canadian hunk is focused on bringing Season 2 to the masses. 'Platonic' follows former best friends, Sylvia (Byrne) and Will (Rogen), who reconnect after a years-long rift. The second season drops on Wednesday, August 6, with Macfarlane describing what fans are in store for. 11 Carla Gallo, Luke Macfarlane, Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen. Getty Images 'Friendship, chaos, and comedy,' he stated. Macfarlane's Charlie, meanwhile, is trying to navigate his partner's reignited friendship. 'This second season is different for my character, because in the first season, my character is the rock,' he detailed. 'This season, he's definitely the character that is, oof, a little bit sort of lost. Lost in the weeds. So it was fun to kind of explore this other side of him where he's a little bit more sort of floundering in the universe.' 11 Seth Rogan in a scene from 'The Studio.' Apple+ But Macfarlane is happy to step back into Charlie's shoes for such a hilarious and sweet series. After all, he is 'most comfortable [in] comedy.' 'I get to wear sort of the most normal clothes,' elaborated Macfarlane. 'I like doing comedy. That's what I feel the most comfortable in.' 11 Seth Rogan looks upset in a scene from 'The Studio.' Apple+ Rogen is serving all sorts of comedy playing Remick – the newly appointed head of Continental Studios. He is juggling corporate demands, talent, and his own ambitions, all while trying to keep movies relevant. In June, Rogen opened up about what he wanted to portray with the show, which many people in the industry have related to in a very real way. 'I mean, I don't know if our specific goal was to trigger a trauma in people,' he told The Playlist, 'but it was meant to capture our own experiences with it as viscerally as possible. And that was a word we used a lot.' 11 A still from the 2025 drama 'The Studio.' 'So yeah,' he went on. 'I think the idea that people who have experienced similar things have a visceral reaction to it, I think it does mean that it is a good expression of our experience and what we were trying to put out there.' Rogen noted: 'But yeah, it's based on a lot of traumatic things I've experienced, so…'
The Hindu
7 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
Is a River Alive? Unpacking the Politics of the Rights of Nature Movement
Published : Aug 02, 2025 14:11 IST - 8 MINS READ In a 2014 keynote address on writing in the anthropocene, the author Ursula K. Le Guin suggested a simple antidote to extractivist ideologies: 'One way to stop seeing trees, or rivers, or hills, only as 'natural resources', is to class them as fellow beings—kinfolk.' This theme, of finding fellowship with ecosystems, of finding how best to channel human language to express the experience of a non-human other, forms the crux of the environmental humanities and literature scholar, Cambridge University professor, and bestselling nature writer Robert Macfarlane's recent book, Is A River Alive?, which sets out to 'imagine water otherwise'. It attempts to 'daylight long-buried ways of feeling about water, both in history and in us'. The answer to the question the title poses is yes, a river is alive, in what seems a no-brainer—as Macfarlane recounts in the book's introduction—to the author's 9-year-old son, Will. Is a River Alive? By Robert Macfarlane Penguin Hamish Hamilton Pages: 384 Price: Rs.1,699 Set in the cloud forest of Los Cedros, Ecuador; Chennai, India, home to the Adyar, Kosasthalayar, and Cooum rivers; and Nitassinan/Canada, through which the Mutehekau Shipu river (also known as the Magpie) runs, the book explores past and present manifestations of the global rights-of-nature movement, animating the land- and waterscapes through which it runs in vivid, compelling detail. The debates surrounding an ecosystem's aliveness—which, paradoxically, makes it killable—loom large over the places and people the book undertakes to represent. Also Read | India's environmental pioneers: The forgotten story At one level, Macfarlane's intention is crystal clear: 'Rivers should not burn. Lakes should not need funerals. How has it come to this?' The many rivers embodied in this book are embattled to this day, denizens of the natural world over whom communities, environmental defenders, corporations, and governments have historically tussled. Macfarlane names them as his co-authors, averring that 'this book was written with the rivers who run through its pages'. He is accompanied in his sprawling transcontinental sojourn by some key humans as well: through Los Cedros by the mycologist Giuliana Furci, the musician Cosmo Sheldrake, and the lawyer César Rodríguez-Garavito; through Chennai by the naturalist-educator-writer Yuvan Aves and various other members of his Palluyir Trust; and along the Mutehekau Shipu with the 'river-people' and fellow kayakers Wayne Chambliss, Raph, Danny Peled, and Ilya Klvana. Landmark legislations To set the stage for these three far-flung encounters, Macfarlane chronicles celebrated rights-of-nature rulings such as the the passing of the Te Awa Tupua Act granting legal personhood in 2017 to the Whanganui river in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the Uttarakhand court's recognition of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers as living beings later in the same year. Such landmark legislation as the enshrining of the rights of nature in the Ecuadorian constitution and the ensuing recognition of the personhood of Los Cedros cloud forest in 2021, provide precedent and inspiration for further ecological action. An intricate welter of stakeholders and interests is revealed as Macfarlane digs deeper into each of the three cases. And yet, this global story on a grand scale is anchored to a tiny chalk stream near Macfarlane's home in Cambridge, to which the book and its author repeatedly return. Is A River Alive? is a soul-stirring paean to nature, deeply felt and thought, marvellously meditative, awash with literary, historical, and metaphysical detail representing indigenous voices and schools of thought as well as more canonical presences from Europe and North America. It is penned with imagistic ingenuity and precision by a seasoned scholar-practitioner and writer of place with the ability to instantly, intimately, render the unfamiliar familiar: 'The interior of a cloud-forest is a steaming, glowing furnace of green. To be inside a cloud-forest is what I imagine walking through damp moss might be like if you had been miniaturized.' On the other hand, a dead olive ridley sea turtle on a Chennai beach is shockingly strange, simultaneously inducing grief and horror: 'Her eyes have been eaten from their sockets by the ghost crabs. This is the fifth turtle corpse we've met that day. The geometry of her shell-scales is beautiful even in death. She stares sightless from blue-white eyeholes.' The turtle serves as a stark reminder of senseless human cruelty and violence, juxtaposed with the reeking, mortally wounded rivers of Chennai and its overflowing beaches. Fusing riverine and human consciousness Also unfolding in this section is the remarkable life story of Yuvan Aves, his escape from a physically abusive stepfather, and eventual emergence as an ecological activist and educator during and after his years at Pathashaala, a J. Krishnamurti school on the outskirts of Chennai. Finding an admirer in Macfarlane, Aves' first book, Intertidal (2023), bears witness to the ravaging of Chennai's water bodies and marshlands even as it stands testament to human fortitude and the resilience of the natural world. Far from Chennai and on the road in Nitassinan/Canada next, Macfarlane describes the juggernaut that is hydroelectric power (its convoys advancing inexorably towards the Romaine river project) in contrasting strokes. 'A bird with a voice of water trills on, unseen. Vast, triple-wagoned trucks thunder eastwards, shaking earth and whipping tree branches with their back-blast.' Macfarlane counters these forces of industry by flinging the reader into a splendid, spinning, stream-of-consciousness vortex, fusing riverine and human consciousness towards the end. The book's exquisitely textured cover, designed from a linocut by the artist Stanley Donwood for both the UK and US editions (published by Penguin and W.W. Norton respectively), pays tribute to maps of the ancient Mississippi river imagined and crafted by the cartographer Harold Fisk in the 1940s: 'In them, the Mississippi comes to life: twisting like mating snakes, writhing with river ghosts.' In deep trouble Anyone reading Is A River Alive? should revisit in tandem Krupa Ge's ground-breaking 2019 book, Rivers Remember, a fiercely anguished insider account of Chennai's waterways that Macfarlane references alongside Nakkeeran's Neer Ezhuthu (also published in 2019). Ge's book, the first to fully acknowledge the trauma of the Adyar, Kosasthalayar, and Cooum, combines personal and intergenerational knowledge with painstaking political and legal explication to shine a light on the same Chennai rivers Macfarlane meets in 2025. She highlights the gruelling conditions under which sanitation workers, health workers, fishing communities, community organisers, and—astonishingly—Eelam refugees worked to alleviate suffering during the dread-inducing December 2015 'man-made flood'. Read together, the two books memorialise a unique culture of water storage and stewardship vanishing before our eyes, in which tanks, streams, ponds, rivers, and ocean were venerated throughout the Tamil region. Can rights-of-nature proponents truthfully engage with the material conditions under which humans live and work worldwide as part of the fight? Dwelling at length on whether rivers are alive is arguably a privilege. In the Global South, nature is not typically experienced at leisure through a window or contemplated in tranquillity as a painting in a frame. Macfarlane's own chaotic Chennai experience proves this point. For anyone seeking to protect the natural world in these contexts, there can be no ignoring the situation of communities whose livelihoods depend on the industries and governments that power nature's exploitation and destruction. Even as I write, Tamil Nadu is planning a 92 kilometre sealink flyover along its East Coast Road to ease traffic congestion—a heavy infrastructure and investment project with grave consequences for marine life, environmentalists assert. Will such 'progress' really benefit a choked city and its inhabitants, continually reeling from cycles of flood and drought? As recent protests against deforestation in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Manipur in the midst of heatwaves and other signs of a rapidly accelerating ecological crisis illustrate, the natural world is in deep trouble. So are humans. The plot thickens. Unconvinced by what he sees as Macfarlane's irrational animism, the writer and evolutionary biologist Rowan Hooper dubs Is A River Alive? 'anti-science' in his recent review of the book for New Scientist. Rivers simply are not living beings, in Hooper's estimate. But he does admit the need for ecological thinking that emphasises the interconnectedness of all life forms to replace 'the Cartesian justification for exploitation'. Hooper's blithe confidence in science and scientific reasoning is somewhat troubling as is his wholesale rejection of Macfarlane's premise. Implicit in Hooper's dismissal of 'spiritualism' as unscientific is the erasure of traditional/indigenous ways of knowing, and centuries-old practices of situated cognition and wisdom that Macfarlane has, to his credit, assiduously assembled and honoured throughout. Also Read | Moments in the sands of time Must science always advance at the expense of the soul? Has not this sort of either-or framing deepened divides and brought societies and cultures the world over to this current, polarised pass? 'Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe,' Le Guin concluded in the same keynote address from 2014 with which this essay began. In her view, science has the capacity to 'increase moral sensitivity' while poetry can 'move minds to the sense of fellowship that prevents careless usage and exploitation of our fellow beings'. If the twain shall ever meet, perhaps science and poetry can together keep us all alive. Akhila Ramnarayan is a writer, theatre actor, indie musician, and college educator at Krea University.
Scotsman
17-07-2025
- General
- Scotsman
Veteran guga hunter celebrates return of annual tradition as license granted to hunt 500 gannet chicks
A photo of guga hunters landing on the island during a hunt in previous years | Dods Macfarlane Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... An islander who ran Scotland's last remaining hunt for young seabirds for more than two decades said he is pleased the tradition has returned after bird flu brought it to a standstill. The guga hunt, which dates back to the 15th Century, sees a group of ten men hunt plump gannet chicks, known locally as guga, for their meat. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The annual tradition takes place on Sula Sgeir, a small rocky island 40 miles north of Ness on the Isle of Lewis. Sula Sgeir island. The site of Guga hunting off the north coast of Scotland | JanHendrik - The hunting of the protected birds has a special derogation, with Ness being the only community in the British isles with a licence. The hazardous ritual has continued almost unbroken for the last 500 years. However, it was unable to go ahead over the last three years due to concerns around avian flu. NatureScot, the Scottish Government's nature agency, has now granted a licence for the team of hunters, known as the Men of Ness, to kill a limit of 500 birds this summer. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Gannet chicks are hunted in the annual tradition that is only permitted in the community of Ness | Getty Images The agency said the number has been reduced from the usual quota of 2,000 kills permitted in recent times in order for the gannet population to recover from the disease. John Macfarlane, who prefers to go by the name Dods, first took part in the hunt in 1974. Dods Macfarlane splitting one of the hunted birds open to take the ribcage out | Dods Macfarlane The local Ness man made more than 40 trips to the island and led the annual hunt for more than two decades before retiring in 2018. Commenting on the renewed licence, Mr Macfarlane said: 'I am pleased, absolutely, that it's going ahead. 'I really enjoyed going out. 'We always looked forward to it every year.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The hunt is held in August and traditionally lasts about two weeks. The method has hardly changed in the last five centuries, with the hunters landing on the uninhabited island and sleeping in stone huts, known as 'beehive huts', for the duration. One of three beehive huts built 200 years ago that are still used today by the guga hunters to sleep in. | Dods Macfarlane This year, however, due to the reduced quota of birds, Mr Macfarlane said the hunt will be a shorter one, likely only lasting one day. Usually working in pairs, the men grab the birds from their nests on cliff edges with a long pole, catching them around the neck with a rope noose. They then pass them back to a colleague who knocks them on the head with a stick. 'It's very quick,' Mr Macfarlane said. 'Within seconds they are dead, so it's not cruel. The islander said the hunt is controlled to ensure a limited number of birds are taken from the island, which has some 10,200 occupied sites recorded, according to NatureScot. 'And it's the best way to get meat,' Mr Macfarlane added. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'There's no additives in these beasts. When you get meat off the supermarket shelves you don't always know what's in it.' The birds are gutted, plucked and salted before the team brings their harvest back to Ness. Salting of the birds after they have been prepped following the hunt | Dods Macfarlane Guga meat is considered a delicacy by some with the bird remaining a popular dish locally while some is sold abroad. Controversy In modern times, the annual ritual has proved a controversial practice with animal rights groups. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Responding to the approval of this year's guga hunt licence, Jason Rose, chief executive of animal rights charity OneKind, said the move will 'appal and embarrass' people of the Western Isles and across Scotland. Mr Rose said: 'There is simply no need for this cruel activity to take place. 'We live in a modern society where we have many more choices about where our food comes from. 'The guga hunt is a grisly story from history that should be left in books or a museum.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He said the charity will write to Scottish ministers asking them to rethink the decision. While the guga hunt continues, Mr Macfarlane said there are concerns island traditions are being 'watered down.' 'There aren't so many young people around which can be a problem for the hunt,' he said. 'You need to have a two week period free in August and that can be hard when local boys are working in the oil industry or on the ferries.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad NatureScot said it recognises the cultural significance of the guga hunt. The agency said licencing the traditional activity is made possible through the Wildlife and Countryside Act. A spokesperson for the nature agency said: 'This is the first year we have received a licence application from the Men of Ness since 2021, due to concerns about the impact of avian flu on the gannet population. 'We have thoroughly assessed the application taking into account survey data and population analysis and we have granted a licence with a limit of 500 birds. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'This is significantly fewer than in previous years where up to 2,000 have been granted. 'This revised limit for 2025 safeguards the sustainability of the Sula Sgeir gannet population and allows for its continued recovery following avian flu.' Avian flu In 2022, Avian flu hit seabird colonies across the Western Isles and the St Kilda archipelago, with gannets among the species worst affected. In the same year, the population of gannets at Bass Rock, off the coast of North Berwick, said to be the world's largest colony of the species, also suffered significant losses, with some experts saying numbers shrunk by a quarter because of the disease. The widespread impact meant that, at the time, for only the second time since the end of World War Two, the guga hunt was called off. The previous occasion was in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad What does guga meat like? In the past, guga hunts were carried out in other parts of Scotland, including on the remote archipelago of St Kilda where seabirds were part of the islander diet. Residents at the time also ate puffins and fulmars.
Yahoo
12-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Down 15% in a day, is this my chance to buy shares in this UK small cap?
The best time to buy shares in a company is when other investors don't want to. But this is easier said than done – when prices are low, there's usually something that's putting people off. That's definitely the case with Macfarlane (LSE:MACF) – the firm announced a 10% decline in operating profits and the stock fell 15% as a result. But I'm seeing this as an opportunity. Macfarlane manufactures and distributes packaging products. And its distribution business – which accounts for 85% of sales and 74% of operating profits – has been under pressure recently. The firm reported increased caution from customers in terms of new orders, as well as pressure on margins as a result of increased competition and higher costs. That's not a good combination. The problem is the company's distribution focuses on cardboard packaging for the e-commerce industry, which is largely undifferentiated. That leaves it open to the kind of challenges it's facing. The manufacturing unit – which makes up 15% of sales and 26% of profits – is doing much better. Tariff uncertainty aside, management reported strong momentum from the unit. To my mind, that's not a big surprise. This part of Macfarlane's business focuses on products that are much more bespoke, technical, and add significant value for customers. As a result, margins in this division tend to be much higher. It's also no surprise to me to see it faring much better in a difficult economic environment. Before the latest news, Macfarlane shares were trading at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 12. That's about where the stock has been trading on average over the last five years. The share price has fallen 15%, which is roughly what I expect a 10% drop in operating income to mean for earnings per share. So I think the P/E ratio is essentially unchanged. Given this, I think any positive signs from the business in future could very well move the stock higher. And there are reasons to believe some of the recent challenges are likely to be temporary. Regardless of the macroeconomic environment, customers are likely only able to delay their orders for so long. So I expect demand to return sooner or later and sales to grow when it does. There's also an ongoing share buyback programme, which management has stated it intends to continue. And at a lower price, the effect on the number of shares outstanding should be greater. Over the long term, I also expect strength in Macfarlane's manufacturing firm to offset short-term weakness in its distribution business. So I see a drop in the share price as an opportunity. It's an occupational hazard with this type of company that inflation can push up costs and slow sales at the same time. This is especially true with businesses that lack differentiated products. That's the situation with Macfarlane's distribution business at the moment. But the thing I find attractive about the company is – and always has been – its manufacturing division. It's the smaller part of the business, but I think there's a lot to like about it. And the opportunity to buy the stock at a 15% discount is one I'm looking to take advantage of. The post Down 15% in a day, is this my chance to buy shares in this UK small cap? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK. More reading 5 Stocks For Trying To Build Wealth After 50 One Top Growth Stock from the Motley Fool Stephen Wright has positions in Macfarlane Group Plc. The Motley Fool UK has recommended Macfarlane Group Plc. Views expressed on the companies mentioned in this article are those of the writer and therefore may differ from the official recommendations we make in our subscription services such as Share Advisor, Hidden Winners and Pro. Here at The Motley Fool we believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. Motley Fool UK 2025 Error al recuperar los datos Inicia sesión para acceder a tu cartera de valores Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos Error al recuperar los datos
Scientific American
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Scientific American
See The 4 Books Scientific American Loved Reading In June
In 2008 Ecuador startled the world. Articles 71 to 74 of the nation's then newly ratified constitution stated that nature had rights —rights to be respected for its existence and the crucial, life-giving services it provided and rights to be restored when damaged. Further, it asserted that the government could intervene when human activities might disrupt these inherent rights. In his latest book, Is a River Alive?, Macfarlane travels to three very different rivers (in Ecuador, India and Quebec) to examine the question of a river's sovereignty. He discovers that rivers create interconnected (and often fragile) worlds of plant and animal species—confirming they are life-giving wherever they run, as many Indigenous populations throughout the world have recognized for thousands of years. Now rivers are fighting for their lives as corporations, governments, pollution and climate change violate their vitalizing flow. 'Muscular, wilful, worshipped and mistreated, rivers have long existed in the threshold space between geology and theology,' Macfarlane writes. 'Rivers are—I have found—potent presences with which to imagine water differently. We will never think like a river, but perhaps we can think with them.' —
