Latest news with #TheBadGuys'
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Marc Maron announces end of ‘WTF' podcast after 16 years
Comedian Marc Maron announced on the latest episode of his 'WTF' podcast that he was ending the show after a 16-year run. Maron, 61, broke the news at the top of Monday's episode before an interview with guest John Mulaney. 'This podcast will turn 16 years old on Sept. 1. That's a couple months away. Sixteen years, it's a long time,' Maron said. 'It's a long time to do anything, and it's certainly — I've said recently that while I'm living it, I don't feel like time is passing by quickly, but all of a sudden, you're old and you realize you've been doing something for a long time. 'This started in the old garage. No one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. 'Sixteen years we've been doing this and we've decided that we had a great run and now, basically, it's time, folks, It's time.' He added that it was a choice he made alongside longtime producer Brendan McDonald and 'was not some kind of difficult decision.' 'We always said how do we know when we're done? And I always said, 'Whenever Brendan says so.' And he always said, 'If Mark is finished, then we're finished,'' Maron said. 'And thankfully we both realized together that we were done, and there was no convincing or pushback or arguing. We were done. And it's OK, it's OK for things to end… This was a show that started when there were no podcasts. And now, there is nothing but podcasts.' Maron launched 'WTF' in 2009, making it one of the longest-running podcasts, leading to around 2,000 episodes and more than 1 billion downloads. Some of the guests have included other comedians like late 'SNL' comedian Norm Macdonald and former late-night host Conan O'Brien as well as figures like former president Barack Obama and conservationist Jane Goodall. The show revitalized Maron's career, leading to 'Maron,' a sitcom based on his life and roles in Netflix's 'GLOW,' Apple TV's 'Stick,' 'The Bad Guys' animated films and many others. He is also making a new comedy special for HBO that will air in the fall, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Maron teased on the podcast that the upcoming 'home stretch' would bring as many people onto the show as possible. 'It really comes down to the fact that we have put up a new show every Monday and Thursday for almost 16 years and we're tired and we're burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we've done,' he said. 'We've done great work.' ________
Chicago Tribune
05-05-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Using classic recipe, Geneva shop aims to please Fox Valley bagel lovers
When it came time to name their Geneva bagel shop launched a little over a year ago, Sara Parisi and her husband Joe had already secured permission to use Geneva Bagels before one of their two sons unexpectedly put his two cents in and gave the store at 501 E. State St. its name. 'Our son has been reading this children's series of books called 'The Bad Guys' and there was a copy of one of the books sitting on the table,' Sara Parisi said. 'My husband Joe saw it and said 'What about Bad Guys Bagels?' We asked a number of other family members and friends, and that's what we went with.' Joe Parisi said that 'I'm normally pretty good at marketing and branding things like that and I just saw – when I said it for the first time, it just stuck.' 'A lot of people when they start companies they get stuck on a name,' he said. 'All these little pieces that they teach you in college are important, but the reality is the business is all that really matters. Can you make something that people want – can you sell it, will they buy it, will they buy it again?' Already entrepreneurs, the Parisis have been operating an online wedding favor company called Reception Flip Flops for 10 years that Sara Parisi said 'was now on auto-pilot and we were looking for something else to do.' The idea to open a bagel business fell to her husband, who said his passion for bagels was so great he and some buddies would drive all the way to Skokie in the middle of the night to get them. 'Bagels – we used to drive to Skokie at 2 a.m. and I'd do that after I met my wife. She didn't think it was worth the trip. We had a few buddies and we'd go,' Joe Parisi said. 'Here in the area, I'd drive to Jake's in Aurora and other places. I wanted bagels and I couldn't find them, and I figured maybe other people had this problem too. I saw this as an opportunity.' Those late-night pilgrimages were to New York Bagel and Bialy in Skokie, where Parisi approached the owner about a deal involving the recipe it uses to make its bagels. 'I mean it was a once in a lifetime opportunity,' he said. 'Not long after, he found out he was terminally ill. He said he didn't have a lot of time and wanted to do a deal and leave his wife as much money as he could. 'We went down and did the deal and he taught us how to make bagels,' he said. 'People love these bagels and we thought if it's not broke, why fix it? We have a profit-sharing agreement with them, and we're far enough away, there's no competition.' Sara Parisi said there are currently 13 varieties of bagels at the Geneva shop, 'flavors based on pretty much what everybody has and expects to find.' She said they are looking to try other flavors like asiago which some have asked for or perhaps consider producing a bagel of the month. The local business community has welcomed the shop with open arms. Paula Schmidt, president of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, feels Bad Guys Bagels is a welcome addition to the local business scene, 'with a name that's kind of provocative.' 'They have been wonderful Chamber members and have been involved in a number of things and this was definitely a needed business here in Geneva,' she said. 'You hear the name and I think it's a fun name and makes you want to take a peek at it. It's a unique name and makes them stand out completely.' Emily Wrenn of St. Charles said she likes the breakfast and lunch options offered at the shop. 'I don't know too many other places that are just specializing in bagels, which makes it super-fun and I love supporting local businesses,' she said during a recent trip to the shop. 'My go-to is an everything bagel but I like the onion or the cinnamon raisin. I grew up on the East Coast, and I like that bagel sandwich in the morning.' Sara Parisi said that East Coast transplants who have eaten New York style bagels 'are the pillars of the business.' 'They knew the difference between 'a roll with a hole' and other names used to describe something that's not a true bagel,' she said. 'It has to be boiled and baked. Some today are using steam, but a true bagel is boiled and then baked. The true bagel is dense, but still soft on the inside and crisp outside.' She said the shop currently produces 20 dozen bagels a day on weekdays and anywhere from 50 to 70 dozen on the weekend. 'We've never had lines out the door but things do get busy on the weekends,' she said. With a little over a year in the business, she said the people she works with and the customers she meets make it all worthwhile. 'The thing I like, what I enjoy the most, is being around people. I like getting out of the house, because the online business was a lot of sitting at the computer,' she said. 'We all love bagels. I make lunches for my two boys Luka, who is 6, and Joey, who is 9, and they love the bagels too. But I'm a people person and that's what make this enjoyable for me.'
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Bad Guys 2′ Footage Reveals the Bad Girls of DreamWorks' Summer Sequel
Like any animated sequel, 'The Bad Guys 2' is trying to bring fans of their wacky 2022 crime comedy back to theaters with the promise of new characters. Universal and DreamWorks gave theater owners a sneak peek of the wild ladies that will tempt Mr. Wolf and his band of reformed thieves back into crime. Two of the film's stars, Awkwafina and Chris Robinson, came out onstage to show the next trailer for the film, which shows the Bad Guys' failure to win the trust of the society they constantly robbed from. We also see Mr. Wolf sparring with Diane as he tells her his plan to go along with the Bad Girls' plan for a heist…but only so he can expose them and bring them to justice. Unfortunately, that plan involves them going to space, hijacking a rocket while it is being launched. Not even Tom Cruise could do that. 'The Bad Guys' was a decent box office moneymaker for Universal, grossing $250 million worldwide. Now the hope is that it has set the foundation for a breakout sequel, winning over families who saw the first film in theaters as well as those who saw it at home. 'The Bad Guys 2' comes out August 1. The post 'The Bad Guys 2′ Footage Reveals the Bad Girls of DreamWorks' Summer Sequel appeared first on TheWrap.
Los Angeles Times
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A guided tour of the visual world of ‘The Wild Robot'
When multiple Oscar nominee Chris Sanders took on adapting Peter Brown's beloved children's book, 'The Wild Robot,' he wanted to do something different visually than what he was seeing in other movies. The reigning 3D computer animation style, with its smooth surfaces, often bright, even lighting and familiar character designs wasn't right for the feeling he wanted to foster. 'You've got these cute animals, and you've got a forest, and you've got this robot, all these adorable elements. And if we had made the film in traditional CG style, I was absolutely sure it would play too young,' Sanders says of the DreamWorks film. So he and his team looked both backward and forward: They drew heavy inspiration from Tyrus Wong's revered painted environments for 1942's 'Bambi' and used cutting-edge computer animation tools to achieve the analog-looking visuals. Here, Sanders reveals the thinking behind those and other choices. 'I wanted people to see this film like I saw 'Bambi,' as the most glorious, sophisticated tone poem of a story that packs a wallop. So we began to pursue this more soft, painterly look,' Sanders says, acknowledging they were 'really fortunate that DreamWorks had made some huge advances in breaking away from that traditional CG' style with 'Puss in Boots: The Last Wish' and 'The Bad Guys' — placing a more illustrated feeling, like a hand-drawn picture book, within reach. They tweaked the software to produce what looked like real brushstrokes in the rendering of the images. 'We were going for something very specific, again, much more like Ty Wong and his styling for 'Bambi,' ' says Sanders. 'One of our development artists, Daniel Cacouault, was doing these beautiful impressionistic paintings out in France. He was very loose, and instead of flowers being [exactly articulated], he would just dot the paper with little [dabs] of color, red, as flowers.' 'It's like the best paintings when you get really close to them: They fall apart in the most glorious way, become like nonsense. But when you back up, they pull together, and it becomes a mountain or a cloud or a flower. And that's what we wanted to do. So imagine that as a challenge to really get true brushstrokes onscreen. It took many, many iterations and meetings to find just the right balance of the width of the brushstrokes, where they blended into other colors. ' 'Were they a hard edge? Were they a soft edge?' 'What kind of weight of paint we were using?' There's a lot of ingenuity and inventiveness that went into this, but the end result really achieved what I was hoping for.' Sanders says there was a balance to strike between the photoreal and the almost-impressionistic looks. For instance, letting go of the notion that every leaf on a tree had to be photoreal and separately articulated, instead using looser brushstrokes to imply them, they found, 'It felt in a way more real because you weren't dealing with those repeated leaves. That was something I didn't expect. And same thing with the animals' fur. When you got away from the individual hairs, and now you had these brushstrokes that felt more like matted fur again, there was an interesting reality that came from that. That was all its own. It was a really wonderful thing. 'Whether it be a fish or a bird or a human or a dragon, most of the time, animated characters have human eyes. They'll have a sclera and a beautiful iris, and they're gorgeous. They look like jewels. I felt that that would've broken the spell in our film. It was critical that we look at all the animal eyes and make them be as appropriate to the original animal as possible. [The fox] Fink's eyes are green; they have an oval pupil. 'No human eyes in animal bodies' was one of our rules.' 'The only thing I insisted on in the translation of Roz [the title robot] from the drawings in the book to the screen is that we eliminate the mouth entirely. I did a presentation on robots that I like, with the Iron Giant being the only one with an operational jaw that I felt really worked. Otherwise, I felt too much articulation on the face became distracting. So we gave that limitation to Roz: It was just Lupita [Nyong'o]'s voice, Roz's pantomime and her really complex eyes' that conveyed the character, Sanders says. 'If you bought a ROZZUM Unit 7134 and something went wrong with one of her eyes and you had to replace it, it would be very expensive. It would be like $70,000 to get a new eye. I wanted 'em to feel big and heavy and have a lot of glass in them. We threw a lot of development at her eyes, so there's a lot of stuff going on in them, and boy, it really paid off.' Among the film's sci-fi moments 'would be the cave; what we always called the robot graveyard. The natural world has been manipulated to create this interesting place to project the future. We have this wall that's tilted up above Roz, and we project the commercial from the damaged robot onto that wall, but the wall has this kind of geometric surface to it, and if you look at it straight on, the image is fairly regular, but if you turn just a little bit, the camera moves a little bit off. It's got this jagged look to it. So it was this really beautiful arrangement of the natural world but using basalt and geometric elements to create a bit of a structure that we would project this futuristic world onto. And the overall effect with the weird light coming from the tide pools, I wanted it not to be creepy but kind of beautiful and weirdly cozy. So we were heavily manipulating how light would actually work inside a cave like that. There's a luminosity coming from the pools — on a live-action set, you'd be dropping lights in. If it was a real cave, it would be incredibly dark, but we didn't want scary; we wanted beautiful and kind of weird.' 'In the migration, I felt very strongly that this is where Roz and Brightbill [the gosling she raised] are going to separate. I imagined an early-morning flight where Roz and all the geese are starting on the ground. The sun is rising, but it's only high enough to touch the birds once they separate from the ground. 'So Roz remains in that cool morning light, but as soon as Brightbill lifts off her shoulder, he lights up with the rest of the geese and they're this bright golden orange, and you're telling the audience that there's two layers to this story and to the world, and that once Brightbill joins that layer, he's now separated from Roz and she's deliberately left in that cool light, because she has to feel as though she's left behind.'
