Latest news with #Polley
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Readers ask: When will the splash pad reopen at Marathon Park in Wausau? What we know.
WAUSAU − Those looking to cool off in spraying waters and fountains will have to wait at least two months before Marathon Park's splash pad returns. Wausau and Marathon County's shared Parks, Recreation and Forestry Department is currently seeking donations to rebuild its 8,000-square-foot splash pad at Marathon Junction located within Marathon Park. The splash pad is the largest in the state, according to builders the department has contacted, Jamie Polley, parks, recreation, and forestry director, told a Wausau Daily Herald reporter. The department has not yet chosen a design or builder for the project. About two-thirds of the summer fun facility's $750,000 design and construction cost has been committed to the project from various sources. Funds committed so far include a $50,000 donation from the B.A. and Esther Greenheck Foundation, a $130,000 Community Development Block Grant and county capital project funds, Polley said. The Marathon Park splash pad was closed in 2023 due to a water pressure issue that could not be identified or resolved, according to a Facebook post made by the department in July 2024. The 20-year-old splash pad was demolished in spring 2025, and the department hopes to have its replacement built in August and give park visitors a few weeks to enjoy it before shutting down for the winter months, Polley said. A grand opening for the facility will be planned for 2026, Polley said. Individuals or organizations interested in making a tax-deductible donation to the project can contact the parks, recreation, and forestry department at 715-261-1550. Local business news: Looking for an intimate event space in Wausau? Flowers and plants bring Infused to life More local news: Wausau mayor vetoes housing project on vacant land the city has owned for over 15 years Erik Pfantz covers local government and education in central Wisconsin for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and values his background as a rural Wisconsinite. Contact him at epfantz@ This article originally appeared on Wausau Daily Herald: When will the splash pad reopen at Marathon Park in Wausau?
New York Post
30-04-2025
- Health
- New York Post
These 2 symptoms are hidden in plain sight — but can reveal a common condition linked to hearing loss
Sounds like treble. Some 50 million to 60 million Americans have experienced a ringing, buzzing or clicking in their ears that no one else hears, a frustrating condition known as tinnitus. An estimated 15% of tinnitus sufferers have a severe case that disturbs their sleep, mental health and daily routine. 3 An estimated 50 million to 60 million Americans have experienced a ringing, buzzing or clicking in their ears that no one else hears, a frustrating condition known as tinnitus. Aleksej – Now, researchers at Mass General Brigham have identified two involuntary, agonizing signs in tinnitus patients that appear 'hidden in plain sight.' 'These biomarkers get to the root of the distress,' said corresponding study author Daniel Polley, vice chair for basic science research and director of the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories at Mass Eye and Ear. What causes tinnitus? The phantom sounds can be caused by a variety of factors, including hearing loss, prolonged exposure to loud noise, ear infections, earwax buildup, medication side effects, head injuries and conditions like Ménière's disease, an inner ear disorder. How is tinnitus diagnosed? 3 Tinnitus severity can be tough to assess. Peakstock – Physicians diagnose tinnitus based on medical history, a physical exam, hearing tests and in some cases, imaging scans. Tinnitus severity is typically measured using questionnaires, psychoacoustic tests and clinical evaluations. Enter Polley's team. 'Imagine if cancer severity were determined by giving patients a questionnaire — this is the state of affairs for some common neurological disorders like tinnitus,' Polley said. 2 novel biomarkers for tinnitus Polley and his colleagues focused on the sympathetic nervous system, the body's 'fight, flight or freeze' mechanism. They recruited 97 volunteers — 47 had varying levels of tinnitus and sound sensitivity and 50 had normal hearing — to listen to pleasant, neutral or irritating sounds. The team used AI-powered software to detect the participants' rapid and subtle involuntary facial movements. The twitches in their cheeks, eyebrows or nostrils corresponded to tinnitus distress levels. 3 Researchers have identified two involuntary, agonizing signs in tinnitus patients. These images are from the study. Mass Eye and Ear 'For the first time, we directly observed a signature of tinnitus severity,' Polley said. 'When we began this study, we didn't know if sounds would elicit facial movements; so, to discover that these movements not only occur, but can provide the most informative measure to date of tinnitus distress, is quite surprising.' Polley also noticed that when people with severe tinnitus listened to different sounds, their pupils dilated extra widely. People without tinnitus or with less serious tinnitus had exaggerated pupil dilation and facial movements only when hearing the most unpleasant sounds. The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. How the new research may help treatment There isn't a cure for tinnitus — hearing aids, sound therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy can help manage symptoms. Polley and his lab are using the results from this study to devise new therapies that combine neural stimulation with immersive software designed to reduce the perceived loudness of tinnitus phantom sounds. 'What's really exciting is this vantage point into tinnitus severity didn't require highly specialized brain scanners; instead, the approach was relatively low-tech,' Polley said. 'If we can adapt this approach to consumer-grade electronics, they could be put to use in hearing health clinics, as objective measures in clinical trials and by the public at large.' Polley also plans to expand his research to include tinnitus patients with co-occurring issues like hearing loss, advanced age or mental health challenges. They were excluded from this study because of the limited participant pool.
CBC
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Sarah Polley is back on camera — and doing slapstick — thanks to Seth Rogen
Sarah Polley lets out a velociraptor roar in The Studio. She's guest starring as a version of herself in Canadian duo Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's caustically funny satire about everything wrong with the movie business today. Rogen plays Matt, a hapless studio head navigating the tension between Hollywood's franchise obsession and his genuine love for the auteur-driven movies that aren't built around IP. In the second episode, which is now streaming on AppleTV+, Rogen's Matt enthusiastically crashes the set of the latest Sarah Polley movie. And when things spiral out of control, the director rages in a way she never has in real life. "It was really cathartic," says Polley, about her first onscreen role in 15 years. Oh, sorry. Did I bury the lede? Sarah Polley is acting again! Somehow Rogen convinced her to get back in front of the camera. The former child star, who had lead roles in CanCon classics like The Sweet Hereafter and Hollywood genre fare like Go and Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake, gave all that up to focus on writing and filmmaking. And in the years since, she built a reputation for telling heavy and often deeply personal stories: exploring the dying days of a marriage in Take This Waltz; an intimate exploration of a family secret in Stories We Tell; confronting the violence women endure, as in Alias Grace, or taking a courageous first step towards communal healing, as in Women Talking. Now, with an Oscar in hand for adapting Women Talking, she's back on screen with some surprising bedfellows, appearing opposite Rogen and fellow Canadian icon Catherine O'Hara. She's also doing slapstick — a kind of comedy we don't typically associate with the name "Sarah Polley." And she's loving it. "It was almost embarrassing how much fun I had," says Polley, laughing, "and how vocal I was about how much fun I was having. I remember on the last day saying, 'I don't want to go home to sad movies.' And Seth was like, 'You know, you don't have to. No one's forcing you to. You don't have a contract to make people really upset all the time for the rest of your life.'" For all the "gravity" Polley pours into her work and politics she's really a wisecracker at heart. That's why Rogen had been insisting over the years — ever since he starred opposite Michelle Williams in Take This Waltz — that Polley try her hand at comedy. And finally, during a breakfast in LA just over a year ago, when Polley was in the middle of awards campaigning for Women Talking, Rogen presented her with the opportunity. "I think that he's probably the only person I would have taken the risk with," says Polley, on a Zoom call from home, "because I felt like he had such confidence in me. And, as an actor, that means everything: feeling like the director has confidence in you. It really made me feel liberated to play, which is really the mode you have to get into, and the mode that Catherine O'Hara and Seth are constantly in. Just this constant sense of play, discovering, experimenting and finding things." There's a lovely circularity to this reunion. Take This Waltz is the first movie Polley made after giving up acting. That movie, where Williams stars as a woman ready to step out on her perfectly stable but hopeless marriage, is bathed in warm colours and golden light. Polley recalls how much time Rogen spent on that set when he wasn't working, just hanging by the monitor, taking pictures and staying "deeply invested in the process." And now Rogen is directing Polley's return to acting, in an episode where she plays a director, and he's playing the eager and enthusiastic studio head hanging by the monitor, extremely invested in what her character is doing. And she just happens to be directing an elaborate continuous shot (a "oner") of a woman stepping out on her life, during magic hour, trying to capture the same golden glow that Take This Waltz basks in. So yeah, consider it an unintentional sequel of sorts, but one where Polley isn't just exploring a completely different style of acting — more improvisational and open to discovery (like Rogen and O'Hara) than the preparedness that she typically brought to her roles and stuck to —but also exorcizing some demons as a director who finally flies off the handle. "I let out all the frustration I'd internalized over the years on set," says Polley. "It was really, really satisfying." That wasn't the original plan. Rogen and Goldberg wrote Polley to be as nice as she typically is. This is the director who instead of calling "Action!" says "Action please," which she couldn't even resist doing when playing the fictional take on herself in The Studio. "I'm telling you, it's a bit much," she says with a self-deprecating chuckle. "I mean kind is great. But whatever I do is kind of compulsive and a little bit neurotic and clearly based in childhood trauma. "Because I grew up with so many filmmakers who were such hurricanes and created such chaos, I've put a lot of my energy as a filmmaker into how you make the nicest environment." It was Polley that wanted to give her character some boundaries, and test what it would be like to finally lose it when niceness only invites Rogen's Matt to feel entitled on set. "I felt like it was an opportunity to show how niceness on a set isn't always kindness," says Polley. "There are moments in which, as happens with my character in The Studio where, you open that door to someone who is potentially going to be a toxic element. You being really nice to that one person can be a calamity. And there is a moment in The Studio where I want [Rogen's character] to feel included and not have his feelings hurt, and it begins a process that doesn't end until everything's destroyed." Polley thinks back to the closest she's ever come to flipping out on set, after being "pushed and pushed" by an individual, and describes being terrified of it. "I remember saying to my husband, 'I am so scared I'm going to snap at somebody.' And he said, 'you've gotten so far. You would hate it so much. It doesn't cost you anything to walk away for five minutes, and you'll feel better.' "So I did once walk away for five minutes. I literally said, 'Excuse me, I just need a minute.' And I walked away for five minutes. I came back and everyone looked traumatized! It's as though I had trashed the set." Polley isn't the only famous director playing themselves in The Studio. Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard and even indie darling Owen Kline are in the mix too. They're all filmmakers that Rogen's character courts, because he's eager to be in the vicinity of cinematic greatness, but also alienates, because he's in the business of milking IP. In the first episode, he's trying to sell Scorsese on directing a Kool-Aid movie. What makes The Studio work as spectacularly as it does — besides the fact that Canadians, as outsiders, are just so good at skewering American culture — is its empathy and affection for the people who get all the blame for the garbage we're fed in theatres. There's a tragedy to Rogen's character — a guy who loves movies but realizes his job is killing them — which is played for belly laughs but also, in smaller moments, a sense of melancholy. "The show is ultimately about the business of films destroying the art of films," says Polley, "and that is a daily truth for filmmakers. The constant issue with film, as opposed to many other art forms, is it costs so much. Money has more say in film." She's feeling grateful that she's largely existed outside the studio system and hasn't had to succumb to the game that so many respected directors have to play with guys like Matt. She refers to pitching projects by saying "it's this movie meets that movie," a very real gimmick reducing their projects to algorithms while basically suffocating any sense of originality. "I guarantee you the people who made those movies that we remember 40 or 50 years later did not say 'it's like this other movie.'" Polley also addresses the whole "one for them, one for me" mentality that so many talented directors make compromises with, when being seduced by the franchise-focused industry that The Studio takes to task. "You can say, 'I'm just going to make this commercial movie for a few years, and maybe one more commercial movie, and then I'll go back to my independent films that I care about that have something to say.' But the truth is, who you are surrounding yourself with will have a huge impact on what you want, what you believe, what you think is important, where you put your energy, no matter how resilient you think your little soul is. "You see a lot of amazing filmmakers and suddenly it's just one bad film after another. They're not hanging out with the people they hung out with when they made their great movies anymore. They're taking advice from people whose main focus is business, industry and profit. It's really, really hard to separate yourself from that. And I say that, from personal experience. "I feel very lucky that I live in Toronto and most of my friends are not in the film industry. But when I have periods where I'm spending a ton of time around people who are in the industry, and focused on those things, I get confused for a minute."
Express Tribune
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Sarah Polley returns to acting after 17 years in Seth Rogen's The Studio
Oscar-winning filmmaker Sarah Polley has returned to acting after a 17-year hiatus, joining Seth Rogen's new Apple TV+ comedy series, The Studio. The show, a satirical take on Hollywood's chaotic film industry, features Polley playing a fictionalized version of herself. Polley, known for her critically acclaimed films Women Talking and Away from Her, had stepped away from acting to focus on directing. However, Rogen convinced her to step back in front of the camera for The Studio, which premiered on March 26, 2025. In the series, Rogen plays Matt Remick, a struggling studio head torn between Hollywood's franchise-driven system and his passion for original filmmaking. In the second episode, Polley's character finds her film production disrupted by Matt, leading to comedic chaos. Polley described the experience as 'really cathartic,' embracing the opportunity to release years of pent-up on-set frustrations through humor. The show also features an ensemble cast including Catherine O'Hara, along with guest appearances by Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, and Owen Kline. With its sharp industry satire and star-studded lineup, The Studio has already earned critical acclaim, boasting a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Polley's return to acting highlights her versatility and marks a rare comedic turn for the filmmaker. The Studio is now streaming on Apple TV+, with new episodes releasing weekly.
