Latest news with #Submarine
Wales Online
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Gavin & Stacey stars reunite in huge BBC drama Death Valley
Gavin & Stacey stars reunite in huge BBC drama Death Valley Fans of the Welsh/English comedy will be thrilled to see two members of the cast coming together again for a new BBC crime drama. BBC's new comedy crime drama Death Valley will star Timothy Spall and Gwyneth Keyworth (Image: BBC/BBC Studios/Jay Brooks ) Gavin and Stacey fans will be delighted to hear that two of their favourite characters will be reuniting in BBC's Death Valley. The series is a new comedy crime drama following retired actor, John Chapel, played by Timothy Spall, and a young detective, Janie Mallowan played by Gwyneth Keyworth, who become an unlikely crime-fighting duo in the Welsh valleys. Steffan Rhodri who famously plays David Gooch aka Dave Coaches will be joined by fellow cast member and former on screen lover Melanie Walters aka Gwen West. The pair were spotted together on Monday, May 19 at the premier of the first episode in Cardiff. For the latest TV and showbiz gossip sign up to our newsletter . The TV Preview was organised by BAFTA Cymru and held in Cardiff, afterwards there was a Q&A session with Paul Doolan, the writer of Death Valley, Steffan Rhodri and leading lady Gwyneth Keyworth. Content cannot be displayed without consent Fans of the comedy sitcom went wild when it was revealed that Dave Coaches was Gwen's secret love interest in the season finale. He even called her sugar tits! Article continues below However, in Death Valley the pair are not in a relationship and instead have very different connections to our leading lady, Janie. Dave Coaches and his new lover Gwen, will be reuniting in a new BBC series. (Image: BBC ) This time round, Melanie will be playing a different onscreen Welsh mam as she stars as Janie's mother Yvonne. She has quite a big storyline in the second episode as the crime fighting duo join her walking group to solve a mysterious murder on a waterfall. The mother and daughter duo seem quite close, and even replicate the same mannerisms. Throughout the series they speak Welsh to each other, to talk behind the back of Timothy Spall's character, despite him understanding bits of the language. Meanwhile, Steffan will be playing DCI Clarke, Janie's boss and mentor at the police station. His character is the complete opposite to what you would normally associate with is traditionally a toxic male environment. Instead, because he has three daughters he is incredibly sympathetic to his young protégé as he wants her to succeed. He even offers her a hot water bottle and a big bar of chocolate when he thinks she's on her period, green flag! Steffan Rhodri will be playing DCI Clarke (Image: BBC/BBC Studios/Simon Ridgway ) Melanie and Steffan have appeared in a range of various productions together. This obviously includes Gavin and Stacey, but also Submarine, Under Milk Wood, The Torchwood podcast series. Both actors from Swansea have also appeared in different episodes of Stella, the series which fellow Gavin and Stacey alum, Ruth Jones, created and starred in. The actress and writer, must have a habit of including her mates in her shows, as James Corden also had a cameo in the series. Article continues below The programme will airs on Sunday, May 25 at 8.15pm on BBC One, however the whole boxset will be launching on BBC iPlayer at the same time.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
At Chicago's Doc10, Filmmakers Say the Streaming Boom Is Over, and Governor Pritzker Talks Politics: ‘We Are Seeing Autocrats Exploit Those Who Struggle to Make Ends Meet'
The documentary streaming boom is officially over, according to Academy Award-winning producer and Impact Partners co-founder Geralyn Dreyfous. 'The market for streamers is not coming back,' Dreyfous said during a panel discussion at Chicago's Doc10 film festival over the weekend. 'To go into these film festivals like Sundance and think that you are going to get a big sale is la la land (thinking). The numbers are just not there. One of 20 films is being bought out of Sundance. When we started Impact Partners, eight out of 10 of our films were being bought. That's gone. Gone! We have to create new distribution models.' More from Variety Margaret Mead Film Festival Offers New Yorkers a Chance to See Acclaimed Docs Without Distribution Film About Democracy Now! Journalist Amy Goodman To Open Third Annual DC/DOX Festival (EXCLUSIVE) Isabel Arrate Fernandez Named as IDFA's New Artistic Director Dreyfous, whose credits include 'The Invisible War,' 'Won't You Be My Neighbor?' and 'Navalny,' helped launch Jolt, an AI-driven, direct-to-consumer streaming platform, in 2024. Meant to give a literal jolt to indie docs that might have been a success at festivals across the world but have not found traditional distribution, Jolt was created as a result of the doc distribution crisis. Recent Jolt titles include 'Hollywoodgate,' 'Zurawsksi v Texas,' and 'The Bibi Files,' a documentary from Oscar-winners Alex Gibney and Alexis Bloom. Submarine co-president Josh Braun and Red Owl co-founder Alice Quinlan joined Dreyfous on the May 3 panel discussion titled '6 Radical Ideas: Disrupting the Documentary Landscape' to discuss the current state of the nonfiction marketplace. Braun admitted that sales are taking longer than expected to make. 'Submarine went to Sundance this year with eight films, and we left without selling a single film,' said Braun. 'That's the first time that that ever happened. Now we have sold four of the eight. If those four had sold in February, we would have felt really great. Now that they are selling, and it's May, and we are afraid to feel really great because it's sort of like, was that evidence of anything? We don't know.' In addition to creating a highly curated viable mechanism that will give audiences the docs they want to see, Dreyfous also suggested the creation of an Angel Studios for the left. The studio that often releases faith-based movies lets members of its Angel Guild choose which film and television projects the company will market and distribute. 'Why can't we have our own guild?' asked Greyfous. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Heidi Ewing, whose doc 'Folktales' screened at Doc10 and recently sold to Magnolia, commented on the state of the industry. 'From a filmmaker's perspective, going to these festivals is a lead-up tour to a theatrical,' Ewing said. 'They actually become your evangelists. People will see the movie (at Doc10) and will tell their friends to come see it when it opens (theatrically) in Chicago. I'm not being an optimistic, pie in the sky, naivete, but people are really lonely and they want to gather. We have to reach them directly. So, I do believe in the theatrical. There is a way to get people to come.' Ewing was one of several filmmakers with high-profile docs that attended the tenth edition of Doc10. Geeta Gandbhir ('The Perfect Neighbor'), David Osit ('Predators'), and Academy Award winner Mstyslav Chernov ('2000 Meters to Andriivka') were also in attendance. All three films debuted at Sundance 2025. Chernov's '20 Days in Mariupol' offered audiences a visceral view of the first days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and its civilian toll. In '2000 Meters to Andriivka,' Chernov turns his lens toward Ukrainian soldiers — who they are, where they came from, and the impossible decisions they face in the trenches as they fight for every inch of land. During a Q&A with Doc10 head programmer Anthony Kaufman, the director explained why he made another film about Ukraine. 'When I'm going around the world, I keep hearing questions – 'What is going to happen next to Ukraine? How do the Ukrainians feel? How do they feel about the land?' Chernov said. 'I always want to give an answer, but I never know what to say, so I try to make a film about it. I really want those numbers of casualties, those kilometers that are just statistics, those names that are just names on the map to have meaning to them. That's why this film exists.' The five-day festival concluded on May 4 with a screening of Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz's 'Prime Minister.' The doc about former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern won rave reviews after premiering at Sundance in January. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker introduced the film and the guest of honor, Jacinda Ardern. 'What you will see in this documentary is a thoughtful and compassionate person navigating the complexities of her private life while facing the tension and the pressure of public office,' Governor Pritzker said. 'It's the type of empathetic leadership that I truly admire, and we should demand it from all of our public servants. (Arden) should remind us of the enormous contrast between the hero of this tale and the politicians who choose to approach public service with cruelty and ignorance. Those elected officials go about their daily lives, facing the challenges that we all do. But instead of choosing empathy as a response, they decide to make those burdens heavier for other people.'He added, 'We are seeing autocrats exploit those who struggle to make ends meet. They think that showing strength means punching down on the most vulnerable. They are convinced that those who look or live or love differently from you don't experience the same joy or the same pain that you have. In this documentary and throughout (Arden's) premiership, we see that strong and effective leadership is founded upon empathy and kindness, especially in times of crisis. She shows us that strength comes from recognizing and acting on behalf of our shared humanity.'Doc10 fest was hosted by Chicago Media Project. Best of Variety Oscars Predictions 2026: 'Sinners' Becomes Early Contender Ahead of Cannes Film Festival New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week What's Coming to Netflix in May 2025
Los Angeles Times
26-03-2025
- Science
- Los Angeles Times
What to do when family history is radioactive? Work around stonewalling relatives
After World War II, with support from Albert Einstein, Eugen Merzbacher entered the United States from Turkey to pursue graduate studies in physics at Harvard. There, the story goes, my father lent him his quantum mechanics notes, so Merzbacher could enroll in the course midyear. In a nice irony, Merzbacher would later author the standard textbook in that field. That a family friend survived to make this contribution was the result of an unusual confluence of luck and circumstances. In 1935, Merzbacher's industrial chemist father relocated his German Jewish family from the outskirts of Berlin to Ankara, Turkey's capital. 'We didn't flee. I never call us refugees. We were émigrés,' Merzbacher told me in a late-life interview, stressing the distinction. Siegfried Merzbacher, it seems, had received a well-timed job transfer just as the persecution of Jews in Germany was reaching a crescendo. Joe Dunthorne's discursive fourth-generation memoir, 'Children of Radium,' unpacks that move, while wandering across Europe and through decades of family lore. Based in London, Dunthorne is a poet and novelist whose debut novel, 'Submarine,' was adapted into a 2010 film. In the memoir, he carefully chronicles his great-grandfather's unsavory involvement in Nazi chemical weapons research and gas mask development. In the process, he raises familiar questions about the limits of his own quasi-historical enterprise. The memoir displays Dunthorne's gift for wry understatement and his doggedness as a researcher: he dug through archives, toted around a Geiger counter and even cooked food that his great-grandfather once consumed. Post-Holocaust memoirs are often quest stories, and Dunthorne juxtaposes his attempts to uncover the truth, or some approximation of it, with a fragmentary narrative of Siegfried Merzbacher's life. But the book's circuitous, meandering structure, including a major digression about one of Siegfried's sisters, tests the reader's patience. Epiphanies are sandwiched between near-irrelevancies and reportorial dead ends. As is typical, Dunthorne confronts gaps in the historical record — documents incinerated by bombs, removed by the Allies, even discarded by unsentimental relatives. Aggravating those gaps are distortions of memory and uncooperative key sources. Dunthorne's grandmother (Eugen Merzbacher's sister) essentially stonewalls him in his interview attempts. 'We felt her presence in the lack of it,' he writes of her funeral, a fitting coda to her elusiveness. Even his mother, who plays an important role in his research and earns the book's dedication, requests anonymity. Dunthorne compromises by referring to her only as 'my mother.' With the passage of decades, facts are difficult to unearth, and emotions and motivations are even more recalcitrant. To promote readability, Dunthorne admits to taking 'significant liberties with the chronology' of his research and to dramatizing moments in his characters' lives — deviations from journalistic accuracy that, however minor, underline Dunthorne's unreliability as a narrator. That unreliability mirrors, whether intentionally or not, that of one of his principal sources: the voluminous, virtually unreadable memoir that his great-grandfather composed. Dunthorne had access to the German original, about 1,800 typewritten pages, as well as to a translated, abridged version distributed to family members. Eugen Merzbacher, afforded a few cameos in 'Children of Radium,' turns out to have been the translator, finishing the task shortly before his death in 2013 at 92. Dunthorne's title derives from one of Siegfried's early professional accomplishments: the manufacture of a radioactive toothpaste that became the choice of the German army. 'A branch factory in occupied Czechoslovakia ensured that the troops pushing eastward, brutalizing and murdering, burning entire villages to the ground, could do so with radiant teeth,' Dunthorne writes, combining ironic detachment with horror. In 1926, Siegfried worked to create 'activated charcoal' filters for gas masks, a task he justified as life-saving. In 1928, he was named the director of a German lab researching chemical weaponry. As late as 1935, with a Nazi named Erwin Thaler, he co-authored an article in a trade publication, The Gas Mask, about carbon-monoxide poisoning — a method used years later to kill Jews. 'The relationship between their article and the gas vans was purely speculation, an invention of retrospect,' Dunthorne tells himself. In his own memoir, Siegfried had denied ever writing for the publication. The Merzbacher family lived in Oranienburg, the eventual site of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. And Siegfried's relationship with his non-Jewish colleagues was naturally complicated by the politics of the time. Their work fueled Nazi militarism but, in some instances, they themselves lacked ideological fervor. Or maybe Siegfried's expertise simply outweighed his Jewish background. The transfer to Turkey happened, Eugen Merzbacher told me, because his father's bosses 'saw the handwriting on the wall.' In Ankara, Siegfried became co-director of a gas mask factory, a joint Turkish-German enterprise next door to a poison gas laboratory. 'He and his family were fleeing the Nazis while remaining reliant on them, something that would only become more problematic in the years to come,' Dunthorne writes. The relocation saved the lives of Siegfried's immediate family, at some cost to his peace of mind. 'I cannot shake off the great debt on my conscience,' Siegfried later wrote. Dunthorne, in his wanderings, uncovers some impacts, direct and indirect, of his great-grandfather's actions. He visits the town of Ammendorf, Germany, where a chemical manufacturing plant run by Siegfried's bosses, since transformed into a nightclub, has left behind a toxic mess and a high incidence of cancer cases. More chilling yet, Dunthorne finds a letter connecting Siegfried to Turkey's purchase of chemical weapons from Germany — weapons allegedly used to massacre Armenians and Kurds in the town of Dersim. He notes, too, that the gas mask filters Siegfried helped develop allowed Jewish prisoners to clear corpses from the gas chambers. Siegfried later emigrated to the United States with his wife, Lilli, and worked in a New Jersey paint factory. After his retirement, his lifelong anxiety and depression worsened, and he was, for a while, institutionalized. With his mother's help, Dunthorne obtains Siegfried's psychiatric records, an investigative coup, and uses them to reconstruct his early life. In the end, the memoirist wrestles with both his great-grandfather's complicity and his family's continuing ties to Germany. Among his discoveries are editorial missives by Siegfried that preach global disarmament. 'In his letters, he envisioned a safer future, and in his memoirs he invented a safer past,' Dunthorne writes, inching his way from condemnation to empathy. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia and the Forward's contributing book critic.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Comic Book Legend Jack Kirby Getting Definitive Documentary in ‘Kirbyvision'
Documentary film director, Ricki Stern ('Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work,' 'UFOs: Investigating the Unknown'), is set to direct 'Kirbyvision' a feature length documentary telling the complete and fascinating story of legendary artist, storyteller, and creator, Jack Kirby. Dan Braun and Josh Braun ('The Andy Warhol Diaries', the Emmy-winning 'Wild Wild Country') will produce under their Submarine Deluxe production banner, a wholly owned subsidiary of Submarine, alongside Mike Cecchini, Ron Fogelman, and Chris Longo. Kirby is widely regarded as one of the comic book medium's most innovative, prolific, and influential creators. At the height of his nearly six decade career, Kirby created or co-created many of Marvel's major characters including Captain America (with Joe Simon), the Avengers, Black Panther, the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Iron Man, Silver Surfer, Thor, the X-Men, and countless others (with comics impresario Stan Lee). He worked similar magic for DC Comics, where he created the sprawling, psychedelic 'Fourth World,' a series of political and psychedelic sci-fi epics often considered his most ambitious work. His creations as writer, artist, and editor include Darkseid, Mister Miracle, OMAC, The Demon, and many others who are mainstays of DC's publishing and screen projects to this day. In the decades since his passing, Kirby's name has become synonymous with epic sequential art storytelling and unrestrained creativity. But the influence of his work extends far beyond the page, and his name is often celebrated by not only the entire comic book industry, but blockbuster filmmakers, contemporary artists, best-selling novelists, musicians, and more. To bring Kirby's remarkable story to life, 'Kirbyvision' will work with the Estate of Jack Kirby as represented by the Rosalind Kirby Family Trust, his daughters Lisa and Barbara Kirby, and grandchildren Tracy and Jeremy Kirby, as well as the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center to access a treasure trove of personal documents, home movies, and creative materials, many widely unseen by the public until now. 'We are thrilled to work with such a dedicated, passionate, and knowledgeable team of filmmakers,' Lisa Kirby said in a statement. 'The legacy of Jack Kirby is in good hands, as Ricki, Dan, Josh, Ron, Mike, Chris, and their team share the same creative energy that helped my father create boundless universes of characters that continue to inspire us and shape our imaginations.' Variety first reported the news. The post Comic Book Legend Jack Kirby Getting Definitive Documentary in 'Kirbyvision' appeared first on TheWrap.
