Latest news with #RadSimonpillai
CBC
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
The best films and biggest flops at Cannes 2025
Social Sharing Between the latest Mission: Impossible installment and the new red carpet dress rules, this year's Cannes Film Festival is filled with buzz and controversy. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with film critics on the ground at Cannes, Barry Hertz and Rad Simonpillai, about the hype around the biggest films of the festival, as well as the attendees' reaction to the festival's various new rules. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: Rad, one of the big movies at Cannes this year is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. The expectations for this movie, truly through the roof. It's supposed to be the last of the franchise. What's your take? Elamin: Oh no, oh no. Just giving it a preface means you're not that excited, man. Oh, no. Rad: Yes, because I love the Mission: Impossible franchise. I think the Mission: Impossible franchise is the best franchise. Like, I don't think there's such a thing as a bad Mission: Impossible movie. However, this one certainly tested that belief. It's not that I didn't love and appreciate what this movie was going for. It's just that it was going for a lot. Of course, it's going for the big, spectacular action set pieces, where Tom Cruise is risking life and limb. It also wants to speak to the current moment in terms of how the internet is turning young men into trolls, basically. There's a whole subplot in this movie where there are radicalized young men becoming terror cells because they're following the villainous AI. So the movie wants to speak to now, but also wants to speak to and celebrate the past by incorporating story elements from the past 30 years of movies. Like, there's a guy that shows up from the original Mission: Impossible movie — like that dude's here. It's all part of this movie's big victory lap. And the thing is: it's just too much movie. There's too much going on. It struggles to bring all that together. It's the most convoluted and the most exhausting Mission: Impossible. At the same time, when it kicks into gear and you can set aside those frustrating plot elements, it still gives you some of the most beautiful looking action that will run circles around any other blockbuster. Elamin: Barry, I'm so disappointed to hear this tepid response to this particular Mission: Impossible movie that I'm just going to move it right along and pretend I didn't hear any of that until I see it on Friday because I refuse to believe that there's any hesitation about a Mission: Impossible movie. And instead I'm going to ask you about another big movie at the festival this year, The Phoenician Scheme, that's Wes Anderson's new movie, starring Michael Cera. Walk me through it. What do you think? Barry: I mean, this, on paper, should be a delight. Elamin: Oh, come on, you guys. More prefaces! Come on! Barry: OK, we'll get the good out of the way here. Michael Cera is great in this. It's a shock that he has never worked with Wes Anderson before. He walks out of an Andersonian picture book, basically. And they have been friends, apparently, for decades, but this is the first time they're actually collaborating. And it works. He has a great role, and it's kind of a little bit of a twisty role too, requiring some turns there, which I appreciated. But the rest of the thing is just really emotionally empty. There's a black hole of empathy at the centre of this movie. It's very picturesque, it's extremely well art directed, it's everything you would expect visually of a Wes Anderson movie. But whereas something like Asteroid City or The French Dispatch actually had characters you cared about and were exploring metacontextual elements of what film and storytelling means to Anderson, there's really none of that here. This is a lark — and kind of a dead fish lark at that.
CTV News
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Behind the scenes at Cannes Film Festival: New dress code causing a stir
Watch Film critic Rad Simonpillai reports from Cannes, France, where A-list celebrities are promoting their new films.
CBC
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Is Andor the best thing to come out of the Star Wars universe?
Social Sharing Andor, the latest prequel series in the Star Wars franchise, just wrapped up its second and final season. The Disney+ show takes a deep dive into both the Rebel Alliance's and the Galactic Empire's operations, many of which seem eerily familiar to real life governments and political movements. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud speaks with critics Lyvie Scott and Rad Simonpillai about their thoughts on Andor 's series finale and what it says about our current reality. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts. Elamin: A big part of the acclaim that people have given Andor is that has so directly spoken to some of the larger socio-political themes of the moment. We're talking from the plight of migrant farmers, state-sponsored genocide, to the moral toll that revolutions can actually have on their supporters. Lyvie, what was the theme that stood out the most for you? Lyvie: I think the idea that fascism doesn't protect you, that uplifting this system of oppression doesn't stop you from becoming one of the oppressed. And I think we see this the most with Dedra Meero's character. I think she's played by Denise Gough, and she's one of my favourites. I just love the face that she makes, this kind of smearing face…. But she's been dedicating her whole life to keeping the Imperial machine running, but time and again, she's brutalized and degraded by her superiors. And we see this the most in Season 2, I think, all of these microaggressions that she faces, being a woman in the Empire. And there's this hilarious scene at the end, in the final arc where Krennic places his finger on her on the top of her head — and it's already becoming a meme. But you really think about where she ends up, after years of giving her all and you think about how this sexism is just hitting her from all sides, no matter what she does and it's tragic. It's this compelling reason to push against those systems instead of letting them rule us or supporting them outright, and I really appreciated that exploration this season. Elamin: I think we're used to [ Star Wars ] being a place where good guys have a lightsaber that looks like this and bad guys have lightsaber that looks like this, but this is not a show that is doing that. This is a show that is actually very interested in those political mechanics. So Rad, one of the most talked about episodes revolves around the Empire's use of the word "genocide," but also around the use of genocide itself to extract minerals from a planet that they need to fuel the Death Star. You wrote a whole piece for The Guardian that was inspired by that episode. What stood out for you about that episode? Rad: It's the fact that only in a Star Wars storyline like that can we have something that speaks directly to what's happening right now in Gaza, right? Only in a galaxy far, far away could a popular piece of art today say the word "genocide" out loud like that, you know? And of course, people have been watching Andor and seeing the struggle for Palestinians from the beginning, even in that first season with its depiction of occupation forces and illegal settlements and mass incarcerations. I mean, it was all there, not just speaking to the Palestinian struggle, but any number of conflicts throughout history involving colonial forces. It just became so pronounced this season the way the Empire would instigate this conflict on this fictional planet Ghorman, the way the media would then paint Ghormans as terrorists and give these one-sided narratives. And the way the Empire tried … to shut down the broadcast for calling a genocide "a genocide" and try to finally suppress all that stuff. So you saw in reaction to that moment, social media sort of stood still, like, "Did she say that? Did they just do that?" It's so incredible that you have a show like this go that far. But also it's unfortunate that can only happen in a setting like a galaxy far, far away.
CBC
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Why China may soon lift its de facto ban on South Korean cultural products
While South Korea has become a cultural powerhouse around the world in recent years, there's one place where K-pop and K-dramas haven't dominated in quite the same way. There's a de facto ban on Korean movies, music, and other cultural products in China. The restrictions began in 2017, reportedly in response to South Korea's installation of an American missile defense system. But after almost eight years, and an increasingly rocky relationship with the United States, there are reports that China could soon reverse that unofficial ban. Today on Commotion, University of Toronto professor Michelle Cho talks with guest host Rad Simonpillai about what we do and do not know about the future of South Korean TV, music, film and more in China's cultural market.
CBC
25-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Should Christie's be auctioning off AI-generated art?
Social Sharing The popular fine art auction company Christie's is receiving backlash for hosting an all-AI art auction. On now until March 5, the Augmented Intelligence auction is purportedly the first AI-dedicated sale to take place at a major auction house. Christie's describes it as "a groundbreaking auction highlighting the breadth and quality of AI Art." However, thousands of artists have signed an open letter calling for the auction to be cancelled. The letter cites concerns that many of the artworks up for sale were "created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license," and how supporting these models "further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work." Today on Commotion, guest host Rad Simonpillai speaks with artist and illustrator Reid Southen to discuss a petition he started with other artists demanding Christie's rethink their AI-art strategies, and the issues he has with the event itself WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube (this segment begins at 17:00):
