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Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
TIFF 50th Edition Kicking Off With Colin Hanks & Ryan Reynolds' New Documentary ‘John Candy: I Like Me'
The Toronto International Film Festival is opening its 50th edition on Sept. 4 with a look back at one of the Great White North's own: legendary SCTV comedic actor-turned-comedy superstar, John Candy in the Colin Hanks directed, Ryan Reynolds produced new documentary, John Candy: I Like Me. That second part of the title, of course, is a nod to Candy's famous line in John Hughes' Planes, Trains and Automobiles, when his goofy character Del Griffith stands up to the cynical Neal Page and exclaims, 'I like me.' One of Candy's big breakout movies stateside was 1984's Splash in which he co-starred with Hanks' father, Tom Hanks. More from Deadline Blake Lively's Emotional Distress Claims Are DOA, Judge Rules In Win For Justin Baldoni As Wrexham AFC Closes In On Premier League, FX Renews 'Welcome to Wrexham' For Season 5 Shake That Subpoena Off: Taylor Swift Probe Dropped By Justin Baldoni In Blake Lively Battle's Latest Twist The docu features candid stories and memories from Candy's family, closest friends, and longtime collaborators, covering his on-and-off camera life. TIFF will run from Sept. 4-14. 'Comedy fans all over the world grew up on John Candy's humor,' said Cameron Bailey, CEO of TIFF. 'We love that John's global career started in Toronto, and we can't wait to share John Candy: I Like Me with everyone at this year's Opening Night Gala premiere. Colin Hanks has made a hugely entertaining film packed with some of Hollywood's biggest stars, but like John, this movie is all heart. For us, it's the perfect way to kick off TIFF's 50th edition.''When you hear the name John Candy, your face lights up. He wasn't just a great actor; he was an even better person. People loved his everyman qualities, but they didn't know how relatable John really was. He went through the same struggles we all do, except now we talk about them. We are incredibly honored to have gotten to know the man better through this process and to bring the real John Candy to audiences starting with his hometown of Toronto,' said Hanks and Reynolds in a statement. John Candy: I Like Me, an Amazon MGM title, will debut on Prime Video this fall. Amazon MGM Studios also fired up SXSW with the Paul Feig directed movie, Another Simple Favor. Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More
RTÉ News
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- RTÉ News
The Ballad of Wallis Island is a big hug of a movie
"Would you like to hear a story about a man who's tired of life?" So begins a movie that will put a song in your heart - anyone who loves Local Hero, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, and The Holdovers needs to pitch up on Wallis Island. It's the home of Charles Heath (Tim Key), an endearitating oddball who's about to have the ultimate fanboy experience. By means best kept undisclosed, Charles has managed to reunite his favourite group, the folk duo McGywer and Mortimer, for a gig on his doorstep. The first to arrive is Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden), a gifted singer-songwriter who has taken the soup of chart collaborations and - worse - also suffers from a chronic case of Lead Singer's Disease. Then Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan) shows up, the perfect foil for Herb's high maintenance who left music behind after their split and is now happily married to in-tow husband Michael (Akemnji Ndifornyen). As Charles does his ham-fisted best to make his guests feel at home, aided amidst the rolling disasters by local shopkeeper Amanda (Sian Clifford), we get a backstage pass to life in all its messiness. There's a gorgeous backstory here for reel romantics that adds to the magic on screen. Eighteen years ago, co-stars and co-writers Basden and Key and director James Griffiths released a BAFTA-nominated short called The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island. Eventually, Basden and Key finally got around to writing a full comedy-drama in the lockdown era; they brought Mulligan's character into the mix, and along with the returning Griffiths have made a better film than they would've done if the cameras had started rolling in 2009. There's something about the onslaught of time, the aging of the central trio, and, indeed, yourself that makes the quirks, laughs, and misty-eyed moments of The Ballad of Wallis Island all the more powerful in the present day. The performances are brilliant; it has the best of British humour mixed with lovely songs, and it also says a lot about making sense of the world and ourselves. As for the ending, well, just you wait... If there's a more uplifting cinema experience between now and Christmas, 2025 will be one for the books. See you in the foyer.
The 42
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The 42
The Last Ditch: 20 years on, the book that conquered an author's extreme phobias
FOR PEOPLE OF a certain age, journalist Eamonn Sweeney's book The Road To Croker was a sporting and cultural touchstone. If that sounds like a wild example of hyperbole, hear us out. The Road To Croker was a diary of the 2003 GAA championship season as followed by Sweeney, and let's just say there was a lot going on at that time. While rugby's transition from amateur to professional was explicit, the GAA was gradually doing the same thing but under the covers. There was money swashing about the place. You could sit down for a coffee and talk to a player, even a Dublin footballer or a Clare hurler. Truth be told, their stock wasn't so high back then. Looking back on it now, there was a huge innocence. Part Jack Kerouac in pondering his existentialism on trains and buses, but also a little John Candy and Steve Martin in Planes, Trains and Automobiles in the way he might, ohhh, fetch up midweek for a few drinks in a bar in Tempo, County Fermanagh on the hunt for a few words from county footballer Ryan Keenan. Either way, it was fun, colourful and vibrant and firmed it up in an impressionable mind or two – including this one – that the life of a GAA reporter might be enough to keep body and soul together while also enjoying yourself. It sure had to be better than working, right? Right? In the meantime, Sweeney wasn't quite the larger than life character of the imagination. He wasn't on the circuit. He instead could be found on the pages of the Sunday Independent, emitting eruptions of anger or else tender passages on the clans of west Cork. He would puncture the pomposity of managers, players, politicians and administrators. He had a cut once at my own wheezebaggery, putting me into a subgroup of Paul Galvin and Mickey Harte that I am sure they were delighted with. He'd construct an argument about a man preparing to ask for a lawnmower only to play out the scene catastrophically enough that when the door was answered, the man on the doorstep would be told to fuck off, him and his lawnmower. Madcap. Sweeney the Madman. Great stuff. But yet, anything he wrote came with the thought that he didn't have to go face-to-face with any of his targets. We'll circle back to that in a bit. Long story short, he was approached by publishers Hachette Ireland to see if he would be interested in doing a modern-day Road To Croker. He ignored them as long as he could, until he agreed. We all like a little jam in our egg. And so he did. He went around the country and followed the games and the various sideshows. Called into here for a spot of grub, had a long hard think to himself about McGeeney's rage and Davy's rage and the issue of toxic masculinity, racism in the north inner city of Dublin, the Cork hurling lunatics, Hozier lookalikes in Tipperary jerseys belting out 'Whiskey In The Jar' while surrounded by Cork yahoos and groups of girls who simply wouldn't stop singing Shania Twain. He delivered the manuscript to his editor and publisher, Ciara Considine. Then he slipped it in that she was lucky she got it at all. Why so? Well, we come back to the whole thing of him not being on the circuit. Over the period soon after Road To Croker, he developed a panic-stricken aversion to travelling. He couldn't even stand on a train platform without feeling his throat close over and sweat pouring out. His world shrank. He refused to go further than five miles in the car. It became a paralysing handicap that kept him rooted to his base in west Cork. In order to write the book, he had to conquer that. Considine regarded him quizzically, and then said, 'But that's… that's the book.' So he took the DH Lawrence approach. He read the book that he wrote, and then he started all over again. The Last Ditch becomes so much more than a book about following a championship season. It's that, surely, but it's crammed with layers, poignancy, love, hatred, certainty, vulnerability. It has the potential to become an instant classic. After reading it, we had to speak to him, even after he threw that shade several years back. Declan Bogue: You had all this time to write about a really concerning issue for you and others. And you didn't. That's unusual for a journalist, surely? Eamonn Sweeney: I read something recently, I don't know who it was. I was going to say Jonathan Franzen, but it probably was not him. I have a fierce habit of ascribing anything I don't remember to Jonathan Franzen. But he said, the thing that scares you most is the thing you should write about. That's when you'll actually write something of some worth and, and like, I mean, yeah, I know I did have the platform, I did have the platform for years, funny enough, to write about these personal things, but I never kind of really wanted to go down that road. Advertisement It kind of came out almost by accident. Ciara said it to me and then I started writing and then I thought, 'Jesus, you know, this is a great.' It's a great weight off the mind and it's been a huge experience. I mean, I'm easy enough on how the book does or how it's received. I'm in the bonus, now. DB: A cathartic experience, no doubt? ES: I thought, jeez, this looks, this looks kind of stark enough for us to put down in print. But the funny thing about the process of going through it was, you see, you're telling yourself all the time, 'Oh sure, this is only a small thing, this is only a normal thing. Sure, I can't get on a train, big deal. I can't get on a bus, big deal. I can't travel five miles in a car.' Jesus, you know, everyone has their cross to bear, so I mean, I don't know how people will take it, to be honest, you know. I'm sure there's a fellow somewhere going to his friend, 'I always told you that fellow wasn't right in the head.' DB: It clearly was the major element in restricting your career. We never got to see Eamonn Sweeney's big sitdown interview with manager X, Y or Z? ES: Well, yeah, mind you to be honest, I always felt even when I was traveling, that I was that I was a poor enough interviewer, to be honest. I don't think I was ever great at that. I wouldn't miss that. I missed going to matches I think. To be honest, there were (interviews), there were, but when it sort of kicked in, I left a few people sitting there waiting for me, and that's when I knew it. Kind of pull the horns in. You can't be arranging interviews with people and leaving them there because you can't travel. That did happen. Croke Park. James Lawlor / INPHO James Lawlor / INPHO / INPHO DB: And now you've been released back into the wild. ES: I'd actually planned to go with the daughters to the Kerry-Cork match, but then I had to travel up for an interview. So I'm looking forward to getting out. After I finished the book, for example, one thing I did was I've never been away with my daughters to Dublin. So when I finished the book, we celebrated, we went up. And since then I've gone to Paris and I've gone to Amsterdam and the world has kind of opened up. I was in my own kind of lockdown for about 10 to 15 years and that. And without the book, I think, to be honest, I'd just rattled on the way I was going and the world becomes smaller and smaller and you get used to it. It becomes the new normal for you and you say to yourself, I don't really miss this. DB: Your first book was written by a younger, more innocent fella who seemed to be having a great time. The Ireland you write about still seems wild fun. Maybe it's all happening on trains and buses! ES: I don't think it's changed that much. The country has got more sophisticated or it's got whatever, but the GAA doesn't seem to be that different. There's a lot more tattoos, that's about it. DB: The passage about the Hozier-lookalike Tipp hurling fan in the train carriage surrounded by Cork fans was surrealism. ES: Everything in the book is absolutely true. Do you know what I mean? There's no kind of, you know, sticking two stories together. This is just what happened. I happened to be in that carriage, and there was your man. I thought he was the coolest man I'd seen in his life, to be honest. And I'm also so kind of reclusive from popular culture. I would say to my kids, 'They were singing this song called You're Too Sweet For Me, have you ever heard it?' They were saying, 'Dad, you're probably the only person in the country that doesn't know what the song was.' I wasn't even particularly sure what it was, to be honest. DB: It's also a brilliant cultural exploration. You attend Russian religious ceremonies and eat at exotic cafés. It's a marvellous push-back against right-wing drivel. ES: You see, the whole social media thing just pits one side against the other. Anti this and pro that, and we don't get a good exploration. Part of it, I suppose, is that I'd been so long out of the world. I thought, I'm in Dublin and I want to see as much in Dublin as possible, and also I'd been so long for going abroad. That's what really killed me was not being able to go abroad because I used to love travelling. I think you're correct too, because I see so, so much of the kind of right wing stuff comes out of this idea of treat everyone with suspicion. 'Oh, God knows what, God knows what they're at in their churches or their mosques' or, 'Oh, if you went into that place and if you went into that place in Moore Street, they'll have your guts for garters', do you know what I mean? And what I felt everywhere I went, people were really friendly to you, but if you think of it, that's what we're like. If we meet a foreign guy at a GAA match, you're delighted to see that he's interested in it, you take it as a compliment, you know, and then I didn't meet one suspicion. They were saying to you, 'Are you having a good time, you know, did you enjoy that now? And it was great. It's better than spending your life full of suspicion and worrying that the foreigners are getting everything. Oisin Conaty and Kieran McGeeney celebrate Armagh's All-Ireland win. Tom Maher / INPHO Tom Maher / INPHO / INPHO DB: You've really given some of this stuff serious thought, such as the area of where machismo and a combative mindset stray too far. (Sweeney explores Kieran McGeeney's embrace of mixed martial arts and asks what role that mentality played in Armagh's All-Ireland winning culture.) ES: It's like drink, to be honest. Some fellows can handle it, but it's toxic for an awful lot of people. If you went back, especially 20-30 years ago when I was when I was starting off in sportswriting, this was a kind of thing that everyone wrote about this. There was a time when everyone, fraudsters in general tended to really believe in this Hemingway stuff. Jeez, every game was a war. 'There is a time when we must stand.' All very kind of unimaginable stuff, and to be honest, I always found it kind of oppressive, one-headed way to go on. It strikes me as well, especially for young lads — you talk to people dealing with young lads, and there's a problem with young lads: [Conor] McGregor and Andrew Tate and people like that, it's a terrible way to live your life. It does work in persuading a guy to, you know, to go in for that dangerous fifty-fifty ball out on the sideline, but should be left there. DB: What did you find were the major differences in the sports over 20 years? ES: Waterford I think at the time hadn't won a championship match in 20 years. I remember writing that book and then I was thinking just on that; it was a very serious hobby for an awful lot of people. They put a lot of time into it, but at the same time, you're talking about twice a week, you're training on Tuesday and Thursday and you meet up for a game. After that, unless you're Armagh, you were maybe in the gym once, maybe twice a week, right? It's a very Celtic Tiger idea that you're going to pay the manager because he's the CEO, but the players are going to get fuck all, you know. It's a real top-down Celtic Tiger neo-liberal conservative idea of how business works. Training them as fucking much as possible because he's probably getting money for sessions and mileages and on top of everything else so that the shit is driven out of them, they have no person like and they retire at 28 or they go traveling or whatever. It's a power imbalance. DB: How about Irish journalism and how the games are reported on? ES: I think Irish sports journalism in general tends to be much more independent spirited. If you look at the way that the English soccer journalists lap up all kinds of old nonsense, and tend to see themselves as being the representatives of the clubs, I think Irish journalism is pretty independent. I know there's a handful of lads who will always use the Croke Park line. But, to be honest, I'm forever thinking about things I wrote even 10 years ago. I'd be walking the dog and I'd think of something I wrote, and I go out loud, 'Oh fuck, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.' Why did I write that? *** That's the story of writing. The most emotional passages are reserved for his daughter who is on the autism spectrum, and his Galway-obsessed mother. We'll leave that to the reader to explore for themselves. But this is a book that enters the GAA canon. Check out the latest episode of The42′s GAA Weekly podcast here
Boston Globe
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
In ‘The Ballad of Wallis Island,' a reunion concert for one sets the stage for a bittersweet story
After years of isolation, Charles is giddy about meeting Herb and can't stop blathering on, though his ebullience only irritates the perpetually wounded singer. In a recent video interview, Key, who co-wrote the movie with Basden, says Charles's nervous energy is the 'motor' for the film's humor, with Herb finding himself increasingly on edge as one thing after another goes awry. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It's a classic dynamic, like 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' — when one character is annoyed by another, the audience can enjoy the irritant from a safe distance,' Basden said, noting that Key being so 'funny and lovable' helps. When Herb gets soaked trudging from boat to beach, Charles refers to him as 'Dame Judi Drenched.' Charles sells Herb on the island's charms by saying, 'The beauty of this island is the silence,' then gestures to the gorgeous vista and, unable to help himself, talks over the silence, adding 'and the beauty.' (The island is fictional; the movie was largely filmed along the coast of Wales.) Charles's babbling, especially his wordplay, comes from the fact that the duo and their group of friends 'are not afraid of a pun, which can be partly funny but also just funny that someone would actually say something so rubbish,' Key said. 'Gradually, we've both learned that the stupid stuff that we say to each other has an authenticity and the seal of approval because your friends have already laughed at it.' Advertisement Another dynamic comes into play when Nell's arrival churns up Herb's hurts and desires. That she's now married and brought her husband along only exacerbates tensions. The film is simultaneously silly and sweet; a poignant look at healing from loss and finding oneself. It is not, despite the setup, a rom-com. Carey Mulligan and Tom Basden in "The Ballad of Wallis Island." Alistair Heap/Focus Features Director James Griffiths (whose TV work includes 'Bad Sisters' and 'Black-ish') said there was a 'conscious effort' to steer clear of that genre. 'We were keen to avoid those tropes,' he said. 'Herb is living in his version of a romantic comedy, and he projects that onto Nell, but she's really well-adjusted.' Herb McGwyer is actually a stage name, which Basden said is crucial: 'There's an artifice to him, and even to his way of understanding the past, that he needs to strip away. The name ramps up the idea that his persona — the thing that Charles has loved — is a fabrication and that the best thing is to give it all up completely.' The film began as a 2007 short film focused on Charles and Herb. Key and Basden, who were in a sketch-comedy group and living together, had aspiring director friends looking for material. Griffiths met both while filming a commercial (casting Basden over Key for the part) and wanted to use that money to make a short. In that short, neither Herb nor Charles had endured the romantic loss that imbues the feature with its pathos. Still, unlike some of their early comedic shorts — like one where a policeman chases a thief into a maze and neither can escape — 'there was something at its heart that was compelling and lived beyond its comic setup,' said Basden. Advertisement 'We felt the characters would sustain a feature so we kept going back to it,' Key said, adding that they grew as writers in the intervening years. 'It's good we didn't write it back then,' Basden continued. 'We've been through that first, optimistic stage of a career, and there's something about looking back on that with a bit of wisdom. If we made this film straight away back then, it might have been funny, but I don't think it would've had the same heart.' Adding Nell gave Herb a former life and his songs (which Basden wrote) extra heft, the duo said. 'When we started thinking about what the music meant to Charles, we began to see how the film could work emotionally,' Basden said. That combination is what enabled them to land a legitimate movie star to play Nell. Mulligan loved her character and 'that the film had compassion without sentimentality,' she said. 'The people have grace for one another — maybe not initially, but they can look at another person they don't understand, and find something that makes sense and then change their mind.' The actress, who's married to Mumford & Sons lead singer Marcus Mumford, also appreciated how the movie captured musicians, 'the ease with which two people will just pick up a guitar and start singing a song,' she said. 'That's not my world, but I've always thought it's unbelievably cool.' Griffiths says as they cut the film down in editing, the goal was to 'make sure we didn't veer into being too self-aware. We wanted it to be really truthful and authentic. We wanted these characters to be eccentric but not unbelievable.' Advertisement That can be a tricky balancing act, especially while tossing in silly jokes amid the angst and even anguish. 'I don't know how we did it, and doing it again may be quite difficult,' Key said. 'It just sort of fell into place quite naturally.' Stuart Miller can be reached at .
New York Times
24-03-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Giants' Jung Hoo Lee returns, Landen Roupp impresses in final Cactus League game
Sunday's exhibition between the San Francisco Giants and Sacramento River Cats was set up perfectly. The Giants were going to open with Landen Roupp, and halfway through the game, they were going to bring in Hayden Birdsong. The order didn't matter, but the results would. If they both threw four scoreless innings, the Giants were going to hem and haw for the next 72 hours, like Steve Martin's boss in 'Planes, Trains and Automobiles,' as fans waited for them to make a decision. The fifth starter's job was on the line, and for good measure, Kyle Harrison was starting for the River Cats. With each strikeout of his former and future teammates, an unspoken message would be sent: It wasn't too late for the Giants to change their minds. Advertisement It didn't quite work out like that. Birdsong threw a third of an inning and allowed three runs in a rough relief outing, and Harrison was scratched before the game started. The Giants didn't officially announce that Roupp would be the fifth starter to start the season, but if that isn't the eventual outcome, Sunday's 4-3 loss to the River Cats will sure look strange in retrospect. Here are some notes from the last exhibition game away from Oracle Park. Roupp's numbers from his final start of March: five innings, one run allowed, three walks and eight strikeouts. It was the kind of tuneup you might expect from a starting pitcher who will be in the Opening Day rotation. Which he isn't officially. At least, not yet. But there's an actual line between the opening paragraphs and this paragraph, and there will be a line indicating when the next section starts. So you're literally reading between the lines right now. We all are. The assortment of pitches made Roupp look like someone who belonged in a rotation and not a bullpen. Last year, he threw a sinker or a curveball 84 percent of the time, with a nearly even split between the two. When he threw a changeup, it was generally out of the strike zone, and he rarely threw more than two sliders in an outing, even if he was the starter. He was a sinker-curve guy, which is a reliever's profile. He added a cutter in the offseason specifically to attack left-handed hitters. As Eno Sarris notes in his starting pitcher rankings, Roupp has been throwing it often this spring with great success, and he kept it going on Sunday, saying after his appearance that he 'threw some really good ones. I broke (Jairo) Pomares' bat with it, struck out (Wade) Meckler looking with it, and I got Lamb on a swinging strike. It's right where it needs to be. It still needs some improvement on location, but I'm happy with it.' Advertisement Roupp's curveball is good enough to get by with his (mostly) two-pitch arsenal from last season, but a third pitch — especially one with swing-and-miss potential against lefties — would help him get through lineups a second and third time. His changeup looked good on Sunday, too, so you can get greedy. There was a roster shakeup before the game: Reliever Sean Hjelle was optioned to Triple A. If the Giants are moving away from the idea that bullpens should be filled with multiple long relievers, there's plenty of symbolism in them sending Hjelle down. The move was surprising, though, because Hjelle was an effective reliever for the Giants last year, and he was considered something of a lock to make the roster in most projections. He was often brought into games that were already going sideways, so it's not as if he was a high-leverage reliever, but his sinker was effective and hard to square up. The Giants seem content with Spencer Bivens in the janitorial role, and they'll save the rest of their spots for higher-octane arms. It's one thing to carry just one left-hander in the bullpen, but it's another to stock up on right-handed pitchers that left-handed hitters see well. One of those higher-octane arms could be Birdsong or Roupp, depending on which one makes the rotation, but it's notable that right-hander Joel Peguero is still in camp. Triple-digit fastballs in the strike zone all spring will get a pitcher the longest looks possible. Max Stassi hit a line-drive double in his only at-bat of Sunday's game, which was notable not for the result, but because he was on the roster at all. As a player with six years of major-league service time who finished last season on a major-league roster, he could have opted out of his minor-league contract on Saturday. He did not exercise that option. Advertisement Manager Bob Melvin confirmed before the game that Sam Huff will be the backup catcher on the Opening Day roster, though, which means the Giants are likely to have enviable catching depth in Sacramento. Stassi could have found another team in another city that offered a better chance at a job in the majors this season, but it's hard to imagine a better situation for the pride of Yuba City High if a major-league job wasn't guaranteed. It's supremely unlikely that the Giants will need only two catchers all season — the 2016 Giants were the only team in the San Francisco era to use just two in a full season — so it's probably just a matter of 'when' and not 'if' for Stassi. Almost every team calls on their catching depth throughout the season. Everyone should have made a bigger deal about Buster Posey and Trevor Brown catching every pitch of the 2016 season. Pleasant injury update: Jung Hoo Lee was back in the lineup, and he lined the second pitch he saw from River Cats starter Keaton Winn for a loud double. He added a walk in his next plate appearance. He had a misadventure in center field in the fourth inning that was responsible for the only hit Roupp allowed — the route was clean, but the timing of his sliding catch attempt was not. Unpleasant injury update: Jerar Encarnación will need surgery to repair the fracture in his left hand, and there's no timetable for his return. The Giants were the home team for Sunday's game, and they got to use the River Cats' very nice and renovated clubhouse. The River Cats were relegated to being the visiting team in the visiting clubhouse, despite playing at their home ballpark. None of these locations are to be confused with the Athletics' very very nice and renovated clubhouse, which is a different building entirely. It's complicated. Best of luck to anyone and everyone involved with the logistics it will require to have a major-league team and Triple-A team use the same ballpark. The grass looked great, for what it's worth.
