Latest news with #Moulton
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Code of Silence' Writer Catherine Moulton Knows: 'Lip Readers Are Detectives'
When you watch the crime drama Code of Silence, which premiered on ITV and streamer ITVX in the U.K. on May 18 and will hit streaming service BritBox in the U.S. and Canada in July, you quickly realize that lip reading is even harder, and much less of a science, than you may have believed. One big reason for this reality check embedded throughout the detective thriller series is the experience of partially deaf creator and writer Catherine Moulton (Baptiste, Hijack) and the show's deaf star Rose Ayling-Ellis who portrays the protagonist Alison, a deaf police canteen worker who gets tasked with a role in a sting operation due to her lip-reading skills. 'People are always looking for new ways into crime shows,' Moulton tells THR. 'And it just sort of made sense to me that lip readers are detectives. So to have a crime show with a lip reader at the heart was just something that felt very personal to me.' More from The Hollywood Reporter Marcel Ophuls, 'Sorrow and the Pity' Documentarian, Dies at 97 Crunchyroll Anime Awards: 'Solo Leveling,' 'Look Back' Big Winners at Star-Studded Tokyo Ceremony 'Romería' Review: Carla Simón Dives Deep Into Painful Family History in an Act of Reclamation That's Equal Parts Shimmering and Meandering The show, executive produced by Bryony Arnold and Damien Timmer for ITV Studios' Mammoth Screen, alongside Robert Schildhouse and Stephen Nye for BritBox, as well as Ayling-Ellis and Moulton, also features Kieron Moore (Vampire Academy, Masters of the Air, The Corps), Charlotte Ritchie (You, Ghosts) and Andrew Buchan (Black Doves, The Honourable Woman, Broadchurch). Moulton talked to THR about the inspiration for the series, the origin of its title, and her hopes for addressing misconceptions about lip-reading. Could you share a little bit about what inspired you to create and write ? I'm partially deaf, and I have been since childhood. Kind of like Alison, I I just picked up lip-reading. I just taught myself naturally, and it came quite instinctively. I didn't really know how I was doing it. Then, a few years ago, I wanted to understand more about it and get better at it. So I had lip-reading lessons, and I learned more about the theory. The statistic is that between 30 and 40 percent of speech is visible on the lips, and that's the best case scenario, when we're sitting looking at each other, and I can see you clearly. The rest of it is just very informed guesswork. You're looking at people's body language, you're taking things from the context of what you know about them, the situation that you're in, and even the rhythm of speech. And you're putting all those clues together to work out what the sentence is. So there's a lot going on. If I have to spend a whole day relying on lip-reading, I get very, very tired. It's really a lot of work. People are always looking for new ways into crime shows, and it just sort of made sense to me that lip readers are detectives. So to have a crime show with a lip reader at the heart just felt right, and it was something that was very personal to me. How did you come up with the title . I love that it has a couple of layers and meanings… It came very early on. I always find with titles, either you get them straight away, or you're forever changing it. This just felt thriller-y and tells you that you're getting a thriller. But it's also [a reference] to lip-reading. Lip-reading is a silent code, so that's what the show is about. As a viewer, you learn a lot about lip-reading and its challenges. For example, Alison asks in one scene if the police can zoom in on someone's face in a video. Or in another scene, she asks someone to turn to her while speaking. How did you approach integrating these issues into the script? The trickiest thing was marrying the kind of the information we needed to get in for the thriller and mystery story with the reality of lip-reading. [Lead director] Diarmuid [Goggins] has done such a brilliant job, because there was a version that could have looked really bad where either you definitely can't see the lip shapes, or they are weirdly always looking at the camera really conveniently. But Diarmuid has done it so brilliantly that it really works. You draw viewers into that idea of lip-reading as detective work that you have mentioned in scenes where Alison pieces together lip movements and we see letters appearing and moving around on screen until they end up forming a sentence or phrase. I felt so frustrated following these puzzles and gained additional respect for lip-reading because I often couldn't figure out what was being said until the words were shown on screen. I assume you wanted us to feel this stress… Yeah, I wanted to put the audience in the position of a lip-reader, and for them to understand how difficult it is, and how tiring. I think there's this misconception that lip-reading is just like reading a book — you just magically see all the words. And I don't think people really understand quite how much work lip-readers are doing. So, I'm glad you felt stressed. Catherine Moulton How did you think about balancing this educational aspect and the entertainment focus of your show? It was really important to me that the show was entertaining and that you could just watch it and be entertained. It's hopefully a really good crime story. I love detective shows. I've grown up watching them, and I really love mainstream crime drama. With Code of Silence, what I wanted to do was just think about how to put someone with some of my experience and some of Rose's experience in a crime show. Obviously, there are elements that we've seen before, like surveillance shows and heist shows. But if you put a very different character, like Alison, at the heart of it, what does that do to the story? How does that change it? Hopefully, that makes it feel fresher. What was the biggest challenge as a writer on the show? The biggest challenge was definitely making the lip-reading realistic and difficult, but also making sure that we were getting enough of the right beats of the crime story at the right point. so that people could understand what was going on and wanted to know more. And the lip-reading subtitles kind of evolved even in postproduction. Obviously, it was quite an unusual script in a way, because there was the scene you're seeing on camera, Rose with the police, and what she's able to see, but then we had to also write the scene that was happening in the background — the scene of the crime gang and what they're saying to each other. So there was a lot of trying to balance what they would really be saying and what we wanted to reveal. So it was different from any other crime show that I've worked on. What feedback did Rose give on her experience that led you to adjust the script? Rose, I think, was brilliant when we got to finalizing the lip-reading subtitles in that she was very, very focused on the authenticity of the moment and what we can actually see on screen. What lit patterns are there? What can we work with? Whereas I was kind of juggling that with what the audience needs to know. So, she really kept me honest in that respect. Sometimes it was just really great to have someone else who is a brilliant lip-reader on the show. A lot of the time it was us just going: Oh, can I actually see that on screen? Or do I just know that I wrote that line? Did you always know Alison would be someone who gets a chance to work with the police? It started from that thing about lip-readers being detectives, and then the idea that lip-readers have to watch all the time. You have to watch very closely, so that suggested a surveillance show. And because she's deaf, it feels unlikely that she would be a police officer, and I didn't think she should be a criminal. So she was obviously going to be a civilian [who ends up working with the police]. I caught myself rooting for Alison early on because everyone seems to doubt her but she is ambitious, and you want to see her succeed. What can you share about why you chose to make her so driven and not, as you could have done, a more passive character who gets dragged into a big role? I didn't want that character to feel like a victim. That's not how Rose is. That's not how I am. We don't see ourselves as victims,. We're kind of happy with who we are and being deaf, so I never wanted to make Alison any kind of victim. She had to be an active character. I did want you to both be rooting for her to succeed and to worry. At the start, she's not where she wants to be in her life. And she's running between two jobs, and when she gets this opportunity with the police to use her skill that often goes unrecognized, she grabs onto it with both hands. But I wanted you to worry a little bit about how far she would push that, because you see that she's got something to prove. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise
Politico
6 days ago
- Politics
- Politico
‘Hegseth Has Not Honestly Told Us': The Problem with Pete Hegseth's Purge
Seth Moulton, the Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, knows a few things about generals. As a Marine officer in Iraq in the early years of the war, he served as one of three aides on Gen. David Petraeus' elite counterinsurgency task force. Later, when he ran for Congress in 2014, he was endorsed by retired Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Moulton has also been an outspoken critic of the strategic failures by military leadership in Iraq and of military careerism more broadly, which has too often rewarded leaders who did not make hard decisions and were promoted anyway. But he has nothing but scorn for what he says is the crude and overtly political way that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has chosen to revamp the highest echelons of the military. Hegseth, also an Iraq veteran, recently announced he would slash 20 percent of 4-star officers and 10 percent of all other generals and admirals to 'drive innovation and operational excellence unencumbered by unnecessary bureaucratic layers.' In a conversation with POLITICO Magazine, Moulton, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, explains why he agrees with Hegseth that the military is top-heavy — but why Hegseth's purge appears completely political and ultimately undermines military readiness. 'That's a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military,' Moulton said. 'That's the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea. And by the way, it's a big part of why those militaries are not as strong and capable as our own.' This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Secretary Hegseth has recently announced dramatic changes he wants to make across the military. One of them is substantial cuts in the number of generals at the four-star level and below. From the public's perspective, it's often hard to understand the vast bureaucracy of the military, and whether these are good decisions or bad decisions. Hegseth has said he wants to streamline redundancy, but he has also said he wants to get rid of people who have been involved in 'DEI crap.' So, what is really going on here?' Well, the truth of the matter is that we don't know because Hegseth has not honestly told us why he's making these changes. We have asked formally in letters, bipartisan letters from Congress, including one that I authored with Rep. Don Bacon, a former Air Force general, to ask him why he fired a bunch of generals early on. We asked his DoD officials in hearings. And of course, you and the press ask him, as well. By not telling us why he's doing this, it first of all violates a fundamental tenet of leadership that he should have learned in the National Guard, which is you explain your intent to your troops. But it also violates a basic expectation in a democracy, which is that we don't just follow blind orders from government officials. We understand and debate the thinking behind what they're doing. One of the things Hegseth has said is 'more generals does not equal more success.' And he's cited, or people on his behalf, have cited the vast difference between the ratio of generals to rank and file soldiers in World War II compared to now. Does he have a point about the way the military is structured now? Has it become too bloated? I actually agree with the idea that we might have too many generals. From 1965 to 2023, the number of general and flag officers increased 31 percent, which includes an especially high growth at the top end, 107 percent growth of four-star officers and 129 percent increase in three-star officers. And yet, during the same period, the size of the total force dropped by about 50 percent. So, it's not clear exactly what all of these high-level generals are doing. The Marine Corps, unsurprisingly, gets this right, and only has two four-stars in the entire corps, the commandant and the assistant commandant, whereas the Army has inflated rank almost as much as they inflate medals. Spoken like a true Marine! But it's the truth. The point is that you have to have a strategy for making these changes, because there also have been a lot of changes in the force structure over that time. The security environment we face is much more varied. No one was worried about Africa in 1965 the way we are today. We didn't have two near-peer nuclear adversaries like we have in Russia and China, and no one knew what cyber meant. Or what unmanned vehicles would do to change warfare in Ukraine. So, we should be an evolving force. But just making random across-the-board cuts because 20 percent or 30 percent sound like nice round numbers is not reflective of a strategy. So far it seems as though many of the highest-ranking officers he has targeted for removal — Chairman of the Joint Chiefs C.Q. Brown, Admiral Lisa Franchetti — have been Black or women. In other words, while he talks about streamlining redundancies, what he's doing seems to be responsive to a much more political agenda. Is that a fair characterization? Well, that's how Pete Hegseth characterizes it in his book, which is essentially a manual for politicizing the military and indoctrinating the Pentagon with extremist conservative ideology. Of the people they've fired so far, it includes three women, including the first chief of naval operations and the first commandant of the Coast Guard. And yet women make up less than 10 percent of general and flag officers. In the entire force, only 10 women have ever reached the rank of four-star general or admiral, and Trump has fired two of them. Look at C.Q. Brown, one of the most talented general officers of his generation. Unsolicited, I wrote a recommendation to President Biden, strongly encouraging him to be chosen as chairman of the Joint Chiefs because I was simply so impressed by his leadership and intellect. C.Q. Brown was very clearly fired by Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth because he is Black, and that's outright racism. I want to come back to the politicization that you just mentioned a moment ago, but before that, I want to talk also about what the removal of Black generals and female Admirals does to military readiness. It sends a message to the troops that merit doesn't matter, that there's no accountability for important decisions and that anybody can be fired for simply disagreeing politically with the commander-in-chief. That's a recipe not just for a politicized military, but an authoritarian military. That's the way militaries work in Russia and China and North Korea. And by the way, it's a big part of why those militaries are not as strong and capable as our own. Because we value criticism and new ideas. We thrive off the diversity of talent in our country. And we ask the troops to take responsibility for their actions and the actions of those in their command. Pete Hegseth represents the opposite of all of that. It is the antithesis of leadership by example. You mentioned criticism that's inherent in our military and not in our some of our adversaries. But let's talk about accountability for a second. Much has been written about the lack of accountability in the military over the past generation, including two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was that famous quote: 'A private who loses a rifle faces greater consequences than a general who loses a war.' Do we need to do more in terms of culling our leadership for their failures? I think we should. And that would mean firing people based on merit. Not for quotas or racist ideals. If you're a member of the public and you're looking at this, how will you know that the decisions to remove or demote this general or that admiral are made for justifiable reasons or because they're part of a larger political agenda? All he needs to do is simply answer the question: Why were they fired? And he has refused to honestly answer that question to date. Is there a way to compel that response? Every other secretary of Defense in history, as far as I know, has answered questions from Congress. And Hegseth has refused to even respond to our inquiries, which not only undermines his credibility. But it also undermines his leadership for everyone else, because every general or officer today is wondering if he or she will be next. They have no idea why some of their colleagues were fired. I've spoken to fired generals who have no idea why they were fired. This is no way to lead the Department of Defense. You've seen his memos on the commands that he wants to consolidate. The Army's Futures Command and its Training and Doctrine Command he wants to combine into one. There's a four-star general at the top of each. One of them, I assume, will go. From the lay perspective, is that a good decision? Is that the right call to solve some of what you described, as the problem of too many generals? Or again, is it because — and I'm going to be very blunt here — is this being done because there's a Black general at the top of one organization and a white general at the top of the other? Well, let's take a wild guess as to whether Hegseth will fire the Black guy or the white guy. What do you think? I could make a case for combining these two commands. If Hegseth is so smart, let's hear that case. And if it's a reasonable case, then people will agree with it. But my guess is he just fires the Black guy. The president is seeking a big increase in military spending. If you had a magic wand to wave over the military budget, where would you be focusing resources? I would invest many times more in space. The administration is cutting the space budget. I would reinforce our cyber capabilities. The administration just fired the head of cyber command. I would invest more in the innovative private sector, including satellite imagery and intelligence. And we've seen no similar initiative under Hegseth. So, it's not necessarily that big is bad. Big can be great. But it has to be the right priorities. And I don't know anyone in the Pentagon who has enough faith in Pete Hegseth's leadership to make the right investments for our troops. He spends his day defending himself, not defending our country. I want to return to that politicization theme we discussed earlier. What are the risks of a politicized military from the perspective of service members and also from the perspective of the public? What happens when either or both of those groups perceive that the decisions at the top of the hierarchy are being made for ideological reasons, agenda-driven reasons? Just imagine if we had a partisan, politicized military like Trump and Hegseth want. As a platoon commander in Iraq, if I give an order to my platoon and half the platoon says: 'Nope, we're not going to do that because we don't agree with Bush's war,' that doesn't work. It doesn't work in a successful military. And it sure as hell doesn't work in a democracy. Are you worried about Trump's deployment of troops to the border? I worry that the military could be used in lawless, illegal, partisan political ways because Trump has told us he wants to. Do you see evidence that that's happening now? Where are you most worried it might happen? The next time there's a protest that Trump doesn't like and he asks the secretary of Defense to order the troops to shoot the protesters, I expect Hegseth would comply. Whereas, at least in his first term, Trump's secretary of Defense said no to that very request.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Yahoo
Washington state man locked up without bail for threatening to kill Sheriff Mike Chitwood
A Washington State man who doesn't approve of Sheriff Mike Chitwood's public shaming of children arrested for making threats against schools was arrested after sending a letter saying he was going to kill him, an arrest report shows. "Do you know what the Internet does with children you expose?" Matthew Moulton, 45, of College Place, Washington, wrote to the sheriff. "They put them in AI and make child porn with them." Moulton was extradited to Volusia County and booked into the jail on Wednesday on a charge of written threat to kill or do bodily injury. He was locked up on Thursday without bail. Chitwood was at the airport to greet Moulton on his arrival in Florida in handcuffs. According to investigators, Moulton sent the threatening letter to Chitwood on March 20. In his letter, Moulton also accused Chitwood of threatening his First Amendment rights. "I am going to have to threaten you with death. It's coming," Moulton told Chitwood in the letter. "There is nothing you can do to stop it." Moulton, who called himself a Patriot, included a YouTube link in the letter that showed a collection of video footage where Chitwood is shown taking a stand against Neo-Nazis, publicly talking about death threats he had received, and threatening parents with perp-walking their children for making bogus school shooting threats. Volusia County deputies, assisted by the College Place Police Department, located Moulton at his mother's home in Washington, the report said. This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Washington State man in jail for threatening to kill Volusia sheriff
Newsweek
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Democratic Congressman Worries His Party Is in 'Denial'
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts says he is concerned that lawmakers in his party are in "denial" over "how badly we've lost," in the aftermath of November's presidential election defeat to Donald Trump. The remarks come after excerpts from CNN's Jake Tapper and Axios' Alex Thompson's new book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, were published by multiple media outlets this week. Newsweek reached out to Moulton's office via email Wednesday night for comment. Why It Matters Then-President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race in late July, following a disastrous debate performance against then-Republican presidential nominee Trump. Biden repeatedly stared at Trump and made halting statements where he appeared to lose his train of thought. Biden later said he had "a bad, bad night." Biden's vice president, Kamala Harris, replaced him as the Democratic nominee after he announced his departure from the race, but she faced an uphill battle with less than four months to assemble a team and energize grassroots organizations and donors. Harris and the White House also had to field repeated questions about Biden's cognitive abilities, as well as allegations that the administration intentionally hid the extent of the former president's decline from American voters during the primary. Newsweek previously reached out to Joe and Jill Biden's office via online form for comment regarding Tapper and Thompson's book. What To Know While speaking to Politico, Moulton said that "It's OK for us to come to grips with our failures so that we can make the changes necessary to win." He then expressed his worry: "And while I am very much focused on the future, I'm concerned that there's still a lot of denial in our party about how badly we've lost." "Some of the same people who just want to move on are the same people who are basically in denial that we lost," Moulton said. In Tapper and Thompson's book, they spoke with numerous Democratic officials. One was David Plouffe, veteran Democratic strategist and ex-adviser to former President Barack Obama. Plouffe revealed to the pair that he believed Biden's delayed exit from the race "totally f----- us," according to an excerpt published in The New Yorker. Plouffe added that "We got so screwed by Biden, as a party." After Trump's inauguration, Republicans have pointed to the chaos within the Democratic Party, highlighting that their counterparts can't seem to find a new leader or a cohesive message that resonates with U.S. voters. A new poll from the Associated Press (AP) and NORC at the University of Chicago released on Wednesday shows that only 35 percent of Democrats are optimistic about their party's future. In July 2024, 57 percent of Democrats felt hopeful, a 22 percent plunge. The poll was taken from May 1 to May 5 among 1,175 adults, with a margin of error of 4 percent. Then-President Joe Biden, left, talks with U.S. Representative Seth Moulton after the State of the Union address on February 7, 2023, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images) Then-President Joe Biden, left, talks with U.S. Representative Seth Moulton after the State of the Union address on February 7, 2023, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images) What People Are Saying Representative Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat, to Politico: "Look, most Democrats ... had no idea that Biden had lost some of it — not all of it — but he lost some of it. It's one of those things that happens in all aspects of life. You don't want it to happen at that level, but it does." Cleaver continued, "I think some people in the White House who were trying to be helpful, didn't talk to the right people who ... could have addressed it a little better. But it's not like that's going to destroy the Democratic Party." Democratic Representative Adam Smith of Washington, also to Politico: "Joe Biden clearly just was not capable of delivering the message we needed to deliver in 2024." Smith added, "Why did it take so long? Why was it so hard to recognize that and make the change? So I guess to some degree it is helpful to have that conversation." A Biden spokesperson responding to Tapper and Thompson on Biden's behavior at a Democratic fundraiser, The New Yorker reported: "No one has been able to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline. In fact, the evidence points to the opposite—he was a very effective president. Evidence of aging is not evidence of mental incapacity." Former George W. Bush adviser Scott Jennings on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday: "After Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race, he essentially disappeared. His own WH knew he was unfit to serve in office — and yet, monumental policy decisions were being made. This question might reveal the biggest scandal of all: Who was really making those decisions?" What Happens Next As Democrats lick their wounds following the presidential election defeat and subsequent loss of the House and Senate, it is immediately unclear who will break away from the pack as a leader the party can rally behind.
Daily Mail
14-05-2025
- Daily Mail
Ofsted shuts nursery with immediate effect after worker is arrested on suspicion of sexual assault
Ofsted have shut down a nursery with immediate effect after a worker was arrested on suspicion of sexual assault. Child First nursery in Moulton, Northamptonshire was suddenly shut on May 8 after a report was made to police. A member of the nursery's staff has been seized by police, who continue to investigate the allegation. Ofsted said that there was 'reasonable cause' to believe children 'may be exposed to a risk of harm at the site' as they explained why the site's license had been suspended. The nursery had 188 children on its roll and employs 34 members of childcare staff. A Northamptonshire Police spokeswoman said: 'A member of staff has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault following a report made on May 8, 2025. 'Safeguarding measures have also been put in place in response to this allegation. 'As this is a live investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.' Child First charges £74.25 per day for a 0-5-year-old child at their Moulton nursery, which includes breakfast, snacks, sun-cream, nappies and activities from 8am to 6pm. It was rated Good in its most recent Ofsted inspection, in July 2024, with the inspector saying the 'children thrive in the warm and welcoming nursery'. A spokesperson for the schools watchdog said: 'Children's safety is our priority and we suspended this nursery on 9 May because we had reasonable cause to believe that children may be exposed to a risk of harm. 'We will monitor the suspension in line with our guidance and continue to work with other agencies on this matter.' A spokesperson for the nursery told the Northampton Chronicle & Echo: 'While we are unable to comment further during this process, the wellbeing of the children and families we support remains our top priority.
