Latest news with #NewYork-set
New Indian Express
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
Jackie Chan on 'Karate Kid: Legends': 'I've been training for 64 Years, I don't need it anymore'
LOS ANGELES: Action legend Jackie Chan says he didn't require any formal training for his latest film Karate Kid: Legends, as he has already been practising martial arts for 64 years. Directed by Jonathan Entwistle, the New York-set film stars Chan alongside Ralph Macchio and Ben Wang. The film sees Chan reprise his role from the 2010 reboot of The Karate Kid. Chan, known for performing his own stunts throughout his career, said that fighting has become second nature to him. 'I don't need to anymore. I've been training every day for 64 years. I've been fighting, fighting, fighting,' the 71-year-old actor told entertainment outlet Variety.
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First Post
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- First Post
Scarlett Johansson debuts as a director in Cannes with a comic tale of grief and empathy
Johansson brought 'Eleanor the Great' to the Un Certain Regard sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival this week, unveiling a funny and tender, character-driven, New York-set indie that launches her as a filmmaker read more Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut, 'Eleanor the Great,' stars June Squibb as a 94-year-old woman who, out of grief and loneliness, does a terrible thing. After her best friend (Rita Zohar) dies, Eleanor (Squibb) moves to New York and, after accidentally joining the wrong meeting at the Jewish Community Center, adopts her friend's story of Holocaust survival. The film builds toward a moment where Eleanor could be harshly condemned in a public forum, or not. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD For Johansson, her movie speaks to the moment. 'There's a lack of empathy in the zeitgeist. It's obviously a reaction to a lot of things,' says Johansson. 'It feels to me like forgiveness feels less possible in the environment we're in.' Johansson brought 'Eleanor the Great' to the Un Certain Regard sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival this week, unveiling a funny and tender, character-driven, New York-set indie that launches her as a filmmaker. For the 40-year-old star, it's the humble culmination of a dream that's always bounced around in her mind. 'It has been for most of my career,' Johansson says, meeting at a hotel on the Croisette after a day of junket interviews. 'Whether it was reading something and thinking, 'I can envision this in my mind,' or even being on a production and thinking, 'I am directing some elements of this out of necessity.'' Johansson came to Cannes just days after hosting the season finale of 'Saturday Night Live,' making for a fairly head-spinning week. 'It's adding to the surrealistic element of the experience,' Johansson says with a smile. In just over a month's time, she'll be back in a big summer movie, 'Jurassic World Rebirth.' But even that gig is a product of her own interests. Johansson had been a fan of the 'Jurassic Park' movies for years, and simply wanted to be a part of it. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Following her own instincts, and her willingness to fight for them, has been a regular feature of her career recently. She confronted The Walt Disney Co. over pay during the pandemic release of 'Black Widow,' and won a settlement. When OpenAI launched a voice system called 'Sky' for ChatGPT 4.0 that sounded eerily similar to her own, she got the company to take it down. She's increasingly produced films, including 'Eleanor the Great,' 'Black Widow' and 'Fly Me to the Moon.' After working with an enviable string of directors such as Jonathan Glazer ('Under the Skin'), Spike Jonze ('Her'), the Coen brothers ('Hail, Caesar!') and Noah Baumbach ('Marriage Story'), she's become a part of Wes Anderson's troupe. After a standout performance in 'Asteroid City,' she appears in 'The Phoenician Scheme,' which premiered shortly before 'Eleanor the Great' in Cannes. 'At some point, I worked enough that I stopped worrying about not working, or not being relevant — which is very liberating,' Johansson says. 'I think it's something all actors feel for a long time until they don't. I would not have had the confidence to direct this film 10 years ago.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'Which isn't to say that I don't often think many times: What the hell am I doing?' she adds. 'I have that feeling, still. Certainly doing 'Jurassic,' I had many moments where I was like: Am I the right person for this? Is this working? But I just recently saw it and the movie works.' So does 'Eleanor the Great,' which Sony Pictures Classics will release at some future date. That's owed significantly to the performance of Squibb, who, at 95, experienced a Cannes standing ovation alongside Johansson. 'Something I'll never forget is holding June in that moment,' says Johansson. 'The pureness of her joy and her presence in that moment was very touching, I think for everyone in theater. Maybe my way of processing it, too, is through June. It makes it less personal because it's hard for me to absorb it all.' Some parts of 'Eleanor the Great' have personal touches, though. After one character says he lives in Staten Island, Squibb's character retorts, 'My condolences.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'Yeah, I had to apologize to my in-laws for that,' Johansson, who is married to Staten Island native Colin Jost, said laughing. 'I was like: Believe it not, I didn't write that line.' A poster for the 1999 documentary about underground cartoonist R. Crumb, 'Crumb,' also hangs on the wall in one scene, a vague reference, Johansson acknowledges, to her loosely connected 2001 breakthrough film 'Ghost World.' 'I was very young when I made that movie. I think I was 15, and the character is supposed to be 18 or 19. When I was a teenager, I often played characters who were a bit older than myself,' Johansson says. 'Even doing 'Lost in Translation,' I think I was 17 when I made it. I think I was playing someone in their mid-20s.' 'It's a funny thing,' she says. 'I wonder sometimes if it then feels like I've been around so long, that people expect me to be in my 70s now.' STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Highest 2 Lowest' Review: Spike Lee's Kurosawa-Inspired Kidnapping Drama Isn't So Much a Remake as a Manifesto
There's enormous risk in remaking a movie like 'High and Low.' Japanese master Akira Kurosawa set the bar high with his 1963 take on a kidnapping that brings an ambitious businessman to his knees — which means, even in the hands of such a visionary director as Spike Lee, you can't help worrying how low a modern, New York-set update might go. For three-quarters of its running time, Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest' glides along far better than skeptics might have expected (it's night and day with his sordid U.S. adaptation of 'Old Boy'). And then comes a scene for which there is no equivalent in Kurosawa's version — a face-off between Denzel Washington and A$AP Rocky as the man with the nerve to ransom his son — and the movie rockets into a sublime new stratosphere, delivering an electrifying last act that's at once original and deeply personal. More from Variety 'Splitsville' Review: Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona Play the Field in an Exhausting Knockabout Romcom 'The Crime of Father Amaro' Exec Producer Laura Imperiale Boards Dominican-Set 'Black Sheep, White Sheep' by 'Made in Bangkok' Helmer Flavio Florencio (EXCLUSIVE) Denzel Washington Gets Surprise Honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes During Spike Lee's 'Highest 2 Lowest' Premiere In the end, Lee has taken 'High and Low' to new highs, delivering a soul-searching genre movie that entertains while also sounding the alarm about where the culture could be headed. Ultimately destined to stream on Apple TV+, the big-screen-worthy project should perform well when A24 releases it in theaters on Aug. 22, three months after premiering out of competition at Cannes. As the film opens, blaring 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'' over beauty shots of the Big Apple (treating the 'Oklahoma!' hit as a New York-signifying show tune), hip-hop mogul David King is on top of the world. From the balcony of his penthouse apartment — in Brooklyn's awe-inspiring Olympia Dumbo building, no less — Washington's character is poised to acquire a majority stake in Stackin' Hits, the record label he co-founded more than two decades earlier. David has two things to show for all his years in the music business. There's Stackin' Hits, of course, but even more important is his family: wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and teenage son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), whose ear for fresh talent just might carry the label through the turbulent challenges the industry is facing. At this moment, just as David cashed in his portfolio and took out second mortgages on his two homes — all with the intention of seizing control of the company he helped to create — he receives a call from someone who claims to have abducted Trey. This direct threat to the King family puts his plans on pause, but it's just the first of several twists (unchanged from the original) that force David to decide whether he'll pay the ransom: 17.5 million Swiss francs. In a new wrinkle, public perception (as in, how the situation looks on social media) plays a significant role in his decision. No one wants to be seen as the guy who bought a company with the same fortune that could have saved an innocent teenager's life. The three NYPD detectives (Dean Winters, LaChanze and John Douglas Thompson) insist they'll be able to retrieve the money, but the kidnapper is smarter than they think, insisting that David bring the loot by subway, then making it disappear amid a busy Puerto Rican Day Parade in the South Bronx. Pumped full of life by pianist Eddie Palmieri's street performance, it's a spectacular sequence that instantly ranks among the best New York City action set-pieces of all time, up there with the chase scene in 'The French Connection' and the Five Points battle in 'Gangs of New York.' Lee has been establishing a lot more than just exposition in the lead-up to this moment, but from here on, the movie has us by the collar, propelled by a dramatic force that reminds what a gifted filmmaker he can be when everything's firing in the same direction. As in Kurosawa's version (loosely adapted from the novel 'King's Ransom' by Ed McBain), a serious miscalculation by the kidnapper drags David's oldest and closest friend, Paul (Jeffrey Wright), into the mix. Screenwriter Alan Fox strengthens the bond between these two men while also making a point about how the police officers treat them differently. David is one of the city's most successful Black entrepreneurs, and as such, he's afforded special respect and cooperation. Paul, on the other hand, has a criminal record and is viewed as a suspect at first. Later, when the tables turn, the police seem far less willing to help him than they did David. But Paul's not without his own support network, putting out calls to 'the streets' that yield essential clues in the investigation. You could hardly ask for two better actors than Washington and Wright in these roles, with the reunion between Washington and Lee (their fifth collaboration) allowing them to build on their own decades-long artistic legacies. Here, we find the 'Malcolm X' star playing a man called King, while doctored portraits of a young Denzel hang all around the man's office. Meanwhile, King's home is a temple to Black excellence, art-directed like a Pedro Almodóvar movie (its colored walls adorned with paintings and artifacts from Lee's personal collection), in a way that collapses the distance between the filmmaker and his fictional protagonist. In theory, paying the ransom comes at the direct expense of David's big plans for the music biz, and as such, it forces him to put all of his priorities into perspective. For the remake's all-new climax, looking every bit the Equalizer (while dubbing himself 'the Chance-Giver'), Washington throws down in a spontaneous rap battle with A$AP Rocky in a moment that shows why this man's the king. As David reclaims what he loves, we can hear Lee's own passions: as a teacher of film, speaker of truths and elder statesman to the community. They boil over in the last half-hour — in the rousing musical performance that gives the film its name and in a coda that reveals Lee's artistic conscience, answering why he dared to touch such a sacred object as Kurosawa's masterpiece. For starters, New York is practically another planet, compared to 1960s Tokyo, and this project allows Lee to celebrate what the city means to him today. As David puts it, 'You either build or destroy in this world.' Done wrong, remaking 'High and Low' might have diminished the original, but in this case, Lee clearly has something vital to add. Best of Variety The Best Albums of the Decade
Business Insider
17-05-2025
- Sport
- Business Insider
Where to watch the Preakness Stakes: Live stream the 2025 race from anywhere
The landmark 150th Preakness Stakes is underway, marking the second race in the 2025 Triple Crown. Keep reading to learn absolutely everything you need to know about where to watch the Preakness Stakes, including global live streaming Preakness Stakes takes place at the Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Maryland. It's the second of three annual races in the iconic Triple Crown circuit, which wraps up each year with the New York-set Belmont Stakes in June. This will be the last year on the Pimlico course before it's demolished ahead of a massive reconstruction. The Kentucky Derby, which took place earlier this month, saw Sovereignty win, surpassing the favorite, Journalism. Sovereignty won't compete in the Preakness Stakes, which means there's no chance for a Triple Crown winner this year, but Journalism will once again take to the you're a casual fan or a horse racing devotee, we'll make sure you know how to tune into this year's race. Peacock is just one of the many ways to live stream the NBCUK:When: Saturday, May 17, 2025*This option might not be VPN Preakness Stakes will air on NBC in the US. Coverage will begin at 4 p.m. ET on the network (and at 2 p.m. in general), but the main event won't kick off until 7:01 p.m. and usually only lasts about four minutes. Peacock is the cheapest way to live stream the coverage. Subscriptions start at just $8/month and unlock ad-supported coverage to the app's full on-demand offerings. You can upgrade for ad-free content and a few other perks or try out an annual is currently offering its best deal so far this year by knocking nearly 70% off its ad-supported annual Peacock Premium plan. You can get a year of Peacock, normally $79.99/year, for just $24.99 using the code SPRINGSAVINGS. The annual version of Peacock's ad-supported tier offers some solid savings compared to month-to-month plans. The plan unlocks Peacock's full suite of on-demand content, including programming from NBC, Bravo, Universal, and Peacock originals. Save $55 on your first year for a limited time. Preakness Stakes coverage will be available through Sky Sports in the UK. The cost of a Sky TV subscription varies depending on what contract you opt for, but plans with Sky Sports start at £35/month when you opt for a long-term contract. Plus, you'll get a Netflix subscription and tons of other channels. If you're looking for something a bit more flexible, you can check out a Now TV Sports you're traveling away from home and still hoping to tune into one of the streaming services mentioned above, you can do so with the help of a VPN, or virtual private network. VPNs are handy, easy-to-use cybersecurity apps that enable you to change your device's virtual location. This way, your go-to websites and apps work seamlessly from anywhere in the world. ExpressVPN is consistently our top recommendation. It's a user-friendly option with a hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee. Check out our ExpressVPN review for more info, and keep reading to learn how to use one. With its consistent performance, reliable security, and expansive global streaming features, ExpressVPN is the best VPN out there, excelling in every spec and offering many advanced features that make it exceptional. Better yet, you can save more than 60% right now and get up to four months free. Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.
Los Angeles Times
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A second serving of ‘The Wedding Banquet' leaves audiences feeling overstuffed
Gay marriage was illegal when Ang Lee released 1993's 'The Wedding Banquet,' a New York-set romantic dramedy about a queer Taiwanese man, his white male partner and the female Chinese immigrant he marries to placate his conservative parents. But Lee, wise to how the heart stutters, didn't pander to audiences with bromides like love is love. That small, assured masterpiece (only Lee's second film) insisted that love is also selfish, hurtful, short-sighted and confusing, and that many of its wounds come from worrying about what outsiders think. Today, the cultural battle lines have been redrawn, so the director Andrew Ahn ('Spa Night,' 'Fire Island') has rebooted 'The Wedding Banquet' with more characters and higher stakes. Teaming up with Lee's longtime co-writer James Schamus, he's concocted an out-there plot that's all complications and little soul. Instead of one couple, we now have two: boyfriends Chris (Bowen Yang) and Min (Han Gi-chan), and girlfriends Angela (Kelly Marie Tran) and Lee (Lily Gladstone). The foursome lives at Lee's home in Seattle, with the women in the main house and the lads in a barn-like bunker in the yard. Over the course of the film they'll fight, kiss and crack jokes, and ultimately walk down the aisle with the wrong person. Chris and Angela have been codependent chums since college. They hooked up briefly as teenagers, presumably as part of freshman (dis)orientation, although their sexual fluidity is blurry. What's clear is they're twin souls, two flip and emotionally risk-adverse forever-children afraid of adulting, as the dialogue's millennial parlance might put it. Today, each one can legally marry their significant others. They just don't want to. The blame has shifted from society to personal inertia. Their respective partners, however, want to settle down. Min, a fabric arts student, already has an engagement ring in his pocket. The scion of a billionaire Korean fashion conglomerate, Min cashes checks from his grandmother, Ja-Young (Youn Yuh-Jung), while dodging her request to take over as its creative director. 'You are not working for the company — you are the company,' she insists. Meanwhile, Lee is an earthy bohemian goddess who spends much of her screen time gardening. (Gladstone's flowery knitted outfits are a fun contrast to Tran's Metallica roadie duds — great work across the board by costumer Matthew Simonelli.) An aid-worker for LGBTQ+ youth on a ticking-clock quest to bear children of her own, Lee has endured two wrenching rounds of in vitro fertilization and, just as painfully, her partner's ambivalence about having kids at all. Angela's strained relationship with her own mother, May (Joan Chen, diva-fabulous), a showy ally who is closer to her PFLAG buddies, has made her unrehearsed in maternal warmth. The most credibly-written character, Angela is terrified to play mom herself; it's improv without a net. (One great comic beat comes when May consoles her daughter by cooing that Angela might not be as awful of a mom — she could be worse.) Min needs a green card. Lee needs cash for a third shot at IVF. Chris and Angela need more runway for their inertia. So Min and Lee brainstorm an unusual proposal: a partner swap that will solve one set of problems while creating a pile-up of others. For reasons too eye-rolling to explain, Min and Angela must marry and commit to the ruse when Ja-Young arrives to investigate whether her grandson's fiancée is a gold-digger. The four leads are yanked not by their heart strings but by the machinations of a plot that steers them from one contrived scene to another, just so it can point to the skid marks and call them a sketch of the new American family. In 2025, unlike 1993, Ahn and Schamus don't take it for granted that foreigners like Min want to live in America at all. 'Your trains are so slow!' he groans. Rich, charming and pop star-pretty (his skincare regimen is a playful runner), Min only wants to stay in the states for Chris, which is too much pressure to put on Yang's callow and underwritten role. Despite those limits, this is one of Yang's best parts. Now that he's established himself as larger than life on 'Saturday Night Live,' he has the confidence to play a human being. Han knows he must exaggerate Min's daffy naivete to get us to buy into his zeal to live in a small shack with noncommittal Chris. He and Chen give the film's least naturalistic and most delightful performances. ('My own daughter, marrying a man!' Chen's preening progressive wails despondently.) They're the only actors who've internalized that this is screwball stuff, despite the realistic cinematography that throws wet burlap on the nonsense. The cast is strong enough to sell us on the movie's idea of love, even when it bends conventionality into a balloon animal. But its conception of mega-wealth is truly phony. Min's lack of ego would be unusual if he was merely upper-middle class, but as the sole heir of a lineage that makes headline news, it's preposterous. I'm not saying that Min has to be a privileged twit. But if he can impulse-buy IVF as casually as a round of beers, then the film has to respect the viewer enough to answer the obvious follow-up questions: How unbalanced is this marriage-for-medical-treatment proposition? If Min is this desperate to escape his grandmother's fashion business, why does he sew her an impressive jacket for her hanbok? And, at minimum, why can't the guys rent their own house next door? The overall tone feels like Ahn asking us to trust him to make this modern romance work. But he hardly includes any of the genuinely true stuff like tough conversations about mistakes and forgiveness. There are no bonding scenes between Min and Angela. These longterm friends suddenly act like the other has cooties. Odder still, Ahn has a too-clever tic of cutting away from big confrontations. It's as though we've been invited into this home only to be ordered to butt out. When the drama is at its most compelling, the camera instead chooses to focus on Youn's grandmother staring at the youngsters from a window. The goings-on affect her Ja-Young least of all, but we're stuck watching her and whatever thoughts she's too reserved to express. I get that Youn, who won a supporting actress Oscar five years ago for 'Minari,' is a lucky talisman. However, the way the film forces her into moments she doesn't belong in makes her feel like an albatross — especially when it forgets that Gladstone's Lee exists for an insultingly long stretch and never gives that more central character a chance to speak her peace. There's something about the homespun aesthetics, in the gravity of Gladstone and Youn's expressions — trapped within scenes where the dead air is filled by the sound of birds — that make this good-hearted movie seem embarrassed that it's a comedy. When the gags arrive, they're clumsy and desperate: a discordant vomit explosion, some shenanigans at a court house. The humor comes off like a wallflower at a party who is racing with so many awkward thoughts that when it's finally time to speak, they blurt out something rude. How strange that everyone involved here loves the 1993 film so much that they've remade it — or in Schamus's case, rewritten it — without much of its cultural and character-driven wit. Ahn gets a couple giggles in his depiction of a hasty, half-baked Korean marriage ceremony with Chris promenading around with a wooden duck and the unlucky couple getting pelted with chestnuts and dates, symbology that no one in attendance totally understands. It's a neat way to make the point that traditions must be reexamined. But I still prefer a punchline Ang Lee delivered personally in his original 'The Wedding Banquet.' Playing a reception guest surrounded by drunken hijinks, he quips, 'You're witnessing 5,000 years of sexual repression.' Come to think of it, this redo doesn't even have a banquet. There's just leftovers.
