Latest news with #TheFrenchConnection
Scottish Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Albanian Laura Woods stuns in plunging Champions League final outfit as fans label her ‘simply exceptional'
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) EVA MURATI put it all on red - but was a sure-fire winner with her Champions League final outfit. The sports presenter wore a plugging crimson trouser suit for Paris Saint-Germain's 5-0 romp against Inter Milan. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 19 Eva Murati strode out confidently for final coverage Credit: Instagram @evamurati 19 She signalled more than once to her huge following Credit: Instagram @evamurati 19 She was red-dy and prepared for the showpiece match Credit: Instagram @evamurati 19 Eva's popularity spreads well beyond her native Albania Credit: Instagram @evamurati And while celebrations were at fever pitch on the Munich turf, it was scarlet fever online for the broadcaster's admirers. Eva, 30, has been labelled Albania's version of TNT Sports' Laura Woods. But she's also a model and an actress, having appeared in movies, TV drama and classic plays on the stage. Her outfits are as varied as her CV, keeping her Instagram following of 1.3million fans guessing. Never more so than this month. The Tring TV and Vizion Plus host went braless in a pink strappy top for coverage of the Giro d'Italia cycle race. She then opted for a glittering, low-cut gown to front an awards ceremony in her home country. And on Saturday night, just as PSG got everything right out in the middle, Eva's fans reckon she was flawless in the studio. 19 Even Eva's feet got special attention from some fans Credit: Instagram @evamurati The law graduate shared a clip of herself perched on a stool, writing notes and walking around as she prepared for the final. Eva topped off the video by blowing two kisses to the camera. Meet glam Champions League host Eva Murati One fan responded by calling her "The most beautiful lady on earth". And many followers believes she added a perfect touch by choosing sparkly high heels. "What beautiful feet, what a beautiful and sexy woman," declared one viewer. "Goddess," said another, while she was also described as "simply exceptional". Eva's cherry-coloured outfit might have hinted at half a link to PSG - as the first-time Champions League winners play in red and blue. But if the sometime film actress did get The French Connection spot on, it was a case of The Italian Sob for poor Inter and their dejected supporters. A glimpse into the broadcaster's colourful life 19 Eva is often joined by an all-star panel Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva also works as a model Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 The Albanian star is a Juventus fan and recently met Fabio Cannavaro Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva is a fans' favourite on Champions League nights Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva recently presented coverage of PSG's win over Barcelona Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 She also hosts magazine show Sports Week Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 The popular star also works as a lingerie model Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva has a huge following on social media Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva building a huge fanbase across the globe thanks to her many talents Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 The presenter has nearly one million Instagram followers Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 She has been presenting Champions League action since 2017 Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva has also tried her hand at acting Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 While she would also like a go at singing Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati
The Irish Sun
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Albanian Laura Woods stuns in plunging Champions League final outfit as fans label her ‘simply exceptional'
EVA MURATI put it all on red - but was a sure-fire winner with her Champions League final outfit. 19 Eva Murati strode out confidently for final coverage Credit: Instagram @evamurati 19 She signalled more than once to her huge following Credit: Instagram @evamurati 19 She was red-dy and prepared for the showpiece match Credit: Instagram @evamurati 19 Eva's popularity spreads well beyond her native Albania Credit: Instagram @evamurati And while But she's also a model and an actress, having appeared in movies, TV drama and classic plays on the stage. Her outfits are as varied as her CV, keeping her Instagram following of 1.3million fans guessing. READ MORE IN FOOTBALL Never more so than this month. The Tring TV and Vizion Plus host She then opted for a glittering, low-cut gown to And on Saturday night, just as Most read in Football 19 Even Eva's feet got special attention from some fans Credit: Instagram @evamurati The law graduate shared a clip of herself perched on a stool, writing notes and walking around as she prepared for the final. Eva topped off the video by blowing two kisses to the camera. Meet glam Champions League host Eva Murati One fan responded by calling her "The most beautiful lady on earth". And many followers believes she added a perfect touch by choosing sparkly high heels. "What beautiful feet, what a beautiful and sexy woman," declared one viewer. "Goddess," said another, while she was also described as "simply exceptional". Eva's cherry-coloured outfit might have hinted at half a link to PSG - as the first-time Champions League winners play in red and blue. But if the sometime film actress did get The French Connection spot on, it was a case of The Italian Sob for poor A glimpse into the broadcaster's colourful life 19 Eva is often joined by an all-star panel Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva also works as a model Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 The Albanian star is a Juventus fan and recently met Fabio Cannavaro Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva is a fans' favourite on Champions League nights Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva recently presented coverage of PSG's win over Barcelona Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 She also hosts magazine show Sports Week Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 The popular star also works as a lingerie model Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva has a huge following on social media Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva building a huge fanbase across the globe thanks to her many talents Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 The presenter has nearly one million Instagram followers Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 She has been presenting Champions League action since 2017 Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva has also tried her hand at acting Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 While she would also like a go at singing Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati 19 Eva loves to share snaps from her holidays Credit: INSTAGRAM / @evamurati
Daily Mirror
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Gene Hackman had 'huge fight with drivers who recognised and harrassed him'
In the months following Gene Hackman's tragic death at age 95, a previously unknown altercation from his later years has come to light from a former pal Months after Gene Hackman 's tragic death at 95, a wild story from his final years has come to light involving a minor car crash, a roadside brawl, and a surreal moment of self-awareness. Doug Lanham, a close friend who met Hackman in 2004 at his Santa Fe restaurant, revealed the incident in a new interview. He recalled: 'There was a time Gene was coming down where he was living [in LA]. These guys recognised him, and they started harassing him a little bit.' According to Lanham, after being rear-ended at a light, Hackman refused to back down: 'Gene being Gene, puts it in drive, goes forward, puts it in reverse and then whacks them.' Things escalated at the next light. 'Two of them get out of the car and Gene gets out of the car, and they go for it.' When Lanham later asked how he fared, Hackman gave a typically dry, cinematic reply: 'Well I was on my back and I kinda looked up over my head and there's a bus stop with a poster and there I was on the poster! And I was like, 'Hackman what the hell are you doing?'" he told the Daily Mai l. Hackman, best known for The French Connection and Unforgiven, retreated from public life after retiring in 2004. He and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their Santa Fe home earlier this year. Autopsy results painted a picture of a man in declining health: Hackman had long battled congestive heart failure, had a bi-ventricular pacemaker since 2019, and suffered from advanced-stage Alzheimer's. He also had 'severe atherosclerotic and hypertensive cardiovascular disease,' with multiple heart surgeries and damage from earlier heart attacks. Tragically, Arakawa passed first, likely around February 12, due to complications from Hantavirus - a rare illness linked to rodent droppings. A report confirmed she had been researching flu-like symptoms in the days before her death. Hackman, who tested negative for the virus, died days later, on February 18, likely unaware his wife had already gone. A heartbreaking scene awaited police: their dog guarding Betsy's body, notes exchanged between the couple scattered through their home, and photographs of their beloved German Shepherds throughout the house. A subsequent health inspection found rodent infestations across eight outbuildings on their property, including sheds, garages, and even vehicles. Inspectors also discovered traps throughout, indicating the couple had been struggling with the issue for some time. Authorities later confirmed the property posed a hantavirus risk to first responders who entered it.
Forbes
5 days ago
- Politics
- Forbes
Banksy, AKA Robin Gunningham, Puts A Fine New Lighthouse In Marseilles
TOPSHOT - This photograph shows a newly released artwork by street artist Banksy on the facade of a building in Marseille, southeastern France, on May 30, 2025. (Photo by Viken KANTARCI / AFP) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTION (Photo by VIKEN KANTARCI/AFP via Getty Images) When Britain's ebullient graffitist/prankster/political gadfly Banksy drops a move, the best art sleuths throughout the kingdom drop whatever they are doing and rush to verify the what-where-when-who-how. As happened on Thursday, May 29, rather late in the news cycle, the hunt is ordinarily triggered by the reclusive artist himself and/or his assigns in the form of 'Pest Control,' his personal verification/art agency. In the case of the witty, tiny, 'extended shadow' of the lighthouse mural in Marseilles, pictured above, the post of a shot of the stark black, rather foreshortened lighthouse, fully in the Banksy style, went up on Banksy's own Instagram account (of all places). That threw the kennel gates opened for the predictable flood of the finest coursing hounds in the British press last night. By lunchtime Friday in London, some four hours ago at this writing, no less a pack of art sleuths than the BBC had confirmed the chosen — now quite elite — streetscape as the Rue Félix Fregier, just south of the city's legendary port. As with everything Banksy, siting and context are chief among the avenues of investigation into the man's intent and into his his hilariously ruthless nocturnal execution of his art. And so we have now, per Banksy's choice, the port of Marseilles: Forever a magnet for European organized crime, it the 20th century it grew to become the infamous sluice for much of Europe's heroin trafficking (cf. The French Connection). That revenue stream is still in spirited play in Marseilles and in other, smaller, less-well-policed ports of call on the Continent, but over the last decade a new, politically fraught focus of all coast guard and/or national police forces in the northern Mediterannean — be that the forces of Spain, Italy, Malta, France, or Greece — has shifted to the combat of trafficking in people. Significantly, both for this ongoing paradigm shift as well as for Banksy's choice of Marseilles as a site for the 2025 placing of the lighthouse grafitto, the charity/humanitarian group SOS Mediterannee operates its massive and very capable rescue ship, Ocean Viking, out of Marseilles. Further toward decoding that Banksy has slipped into Marseilles to start production in Summer 2025, this week the Ocean Viking has been particularly busy with the rescue of 116 refugees whose wooden boat had departed Libya but which had given up the ghost and began to capsize in the central Mediterranean between May 24-26. The situation was dire. The rescue had to be executed in stages, mostly at night, hampered by bad weather and lack of coordination among the responsible coast guard forces, Italian and Libyan, according to the documentation of SOS Mediterannee in Marseilles. The first two attempts by civilian vessels managed to get some of the refugees off. Called in late, the Ocean Viking got the remaining majority, some 52 people, including women and children. Three refugees drowned. Occasionally, the point of a Banksy stencil is the siting, sometimes amplified by a title. But in the case of this most recent Marseilles graffitto, as pictured top and below, there's an actual stencilled legend, Jenny Holzer-style, across the lighthouse, reading: 'I WANT TO BE WHAT YOU SAW IN ME.' In fairness, and since the man is so innately, thoroughly political, it's difficult to say precisely what Banksy has buzzing in the behive of his mind, but nothing — repeat, nothing — the man writes can be taken at face value. More safely, with this artist, we can attempt to nail down what the man is saying by assuming that a few thousand metric tons of irony is being poured over us within whatever it is that he actually, physically states. Thus, this week in Europe, on the cusp of the summer solstice and with it, the 'migrant season' kickoff for the police forces on the Med, neither those forces nor the lighthouses of Europe have exactly been welcoming beacons, as SOS Mediterannee has richly documented. The rest of the tumultous, deadly migrant season lies before us. Unclear, also, is whether this lone grafitto, ominous as it is, portends what we might call a Banksy 'residency,' as he has performed repeatedly in Palestine, for instance, stencilling various fraught locations as well as the vast Israeli wall. There, in Palestine, portentously, irony was in rich supply.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How ‘The Penguin' transformed real NYC locations into Gotham's criminal underworld (see the exclusive concept art)
Who knew The Penguin owes a debt of gratitude to Popeye Doyle? As production designer Kalina Ivanov tells Gold Derby, Matt Reeves, the director of 2022's The Batman and an executive producer on The Penguin, informed her that the "inspiration" for his vision of Gotham City was The French Connection, William Friedkin's 1971 neo-noir crime thriller starring Gene Hackman as the unorthodox cop Doyle, which won five Oscars, including Best Picture. "That is something I held very dear in my heart," Ivanov says, "because I really wanted to make a new version of The French Connection." See exclusive sketches, concept art, and set photos from The Penguin in our gallery above. More from GoldDerby Janelle James on Ava's challenging year on 'Abbot Elementary': 'They kind of threw everything at me this season' 'Death Becomes Her' costume designer Paul Tazewell on creating show's spectacular outfits: 'Theater-making is about the impossible' (exclusive images) Jamie Lee Curtis eyes historic back-to-back Emmy win as Comedy Guest Actress race heats up Colin Farrell reprises his villainous role of Oswald "Oz" Cobb/the Penguin in the HBO limited series, after having a supporting role in The Batman. Following the events of that motion picture, The Penguin chronicles the character's rise to power in Gotham's criminal underworld, which was filmed in and around New York City. "It's rare to meet a producer and actor that will actually come and talk to you and have a real design meeting," Ivanov says about Farrell. "I showed him all the designs, and particularly his apartment, and he was instrumental in the design of the whole show." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max While Lauren LeFranc was the showrunner, producer, and writer of the TV spin-off, Reeves was still "involved," Ivanov explains. "We had some creative meetings, and occasionally, we would send him materials, and he was very aware of everything we were doing. He was staying behind the scenes, but he was communicative with Lauren in the script area." LeFranc is "one of the nicest people on the planet," claims the Emmy-winning production designer for Grey Gardens (2009). "I got to know her through this experience, and I can say that she is perhaps the best showrunner I've ever had. That doesn't come lightly, because I've had some good ones, but she's very communicative and very thoughtful. I just loved working with her." Growing up in Bulgaria, Ivanov was a "theater kid" who wanted to be an actress, until she realized "that was a disaster," so she set her sights on designing. "I suspect that was because my uncle was an architect," she reveals. "I studied theater, and then we escaped from Bulgaria. I ended up at NYU as an undergraduate in a graduate program, if you can imagine that. But it was a very, very good education." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max One of Ivanov's favorite locations in The Penguin is the Falcone mansion, which is on Long Island. "It's one of The Great Gatsby mansions, but it wasn't on the Sound, it was more in inland," she recalls. "The owners were incredibly generous with us. They made time for us to be able to film. They did not bat an eye when we offered to enhance the exterior with our fountain. As a matter of fact, they thought it was a good idea to have a fountain!" For the interior of the mansion, she "enhanced it quite substantially" after being influenced by an Italian villa on Lake Como. "What I liked about that villa was the darker colors, and so I thought it would be good to have a lot of black, a lot of gold, but sparingly, not overwhelmingly," she details. "The rest of it was done in Venetian plaster. We had a lot of textures, and the amazing pre-Renaissance murals were everywhere." The trolley depot set was built inside Kingsbridge Armory in the Bronx, which Ivanov states is the "biggest one in New York, and for 15 years nobody could shoot there." She continues on, "I loved the lobby that existed, and I wanted it to be a working man's cathedral. Going with Matt's theme of The French Connection being always under subways and arches, I went with that idea of arches for the trolley depot. The columns that we put in mimicked the detail from the lobby, so the relationship between the location and the set was perfect." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max She divulges, "The trolley cars were modern, so we retrofitted them and made them look like they've been there since 1957, because that's when we discovered the last trolley left the station. They were brought in, and the tunnel was built around the cars, in a sense." The Penguin's "journey" was important to Ivanov and LeFranc. As the artisan declares, "At the beginning, he lives on the third story of the abandoned hotel, and at the end he will graduate to the penthouse, to give him an arc of progression. The apartment at the beginning was a jeweler's repair shop, and I had done a little bit of research about that. And so the Penguin lived in a room that used to be the vault, basically." Ivanov designed the entire abandoned hotel "through visual effects," and planned to create the sets for it, but "our budget was not able to support that." Instead, the team found a real art deco building in downtown NYC with a floor that was under renovation, which she saw as a "completely blank slate." She remembers, "That worked well for us, because I was able to bring the columns, the floor, and the frescoes, which this time were the hounds of Zeus. We were able to create everything, from the chandeliers to every single piece of detail. In a way, it was a stage. But it was on the 30th floor of a real building." Courtesy of Kalina Ivanov/HBO Max Monroe's jazz club is one of Ivanov's favorite sets from The Penguin, as budget issues caused her to improvise on the fly. "We ended up with a location that had Hieronymus Bosch murals that were absolutely not appropriate for our movie," she recalls. "So, as I was wondering how I could handle that, a light bulb went off in my head, and I said, 'OK, we cover the murals.' And so we built in the columns, the booths themselves, the intricate work behind them, and the blue curtain, which hid the murals, and then we put our own paintings in front of that." The designer also "built this chandelier, and we put it up from the beginning, and then we dropped it in the end, and the scene is so good with the dropped chandelier." Ivanov adds, "It was so hard to come up with a solution, and yet I was able to find a solution and make and use the set that I had already planned on building." All episodes of The Penguin are streaming now on Max. The limited series is eligible at the 2025 Emmys, and Ivanov says a nomination "would mean the world to me." SIGN UP for Gold Derby's free newsletter with latest predictions Launch Gallery: 'The Penguin' exclusive sketches, concept art, and set photos from production designer Kalina Ivanov Best of GoldDerby 'Étoile' creators on writing a show for 'genius' Luke Kirby How 'The Handmaid's Tale' series finale sets up 'The Testaments' TV Visual Effects supervisor roundtable: 'Black Mirror,' 'The Boys,' 'The Wheel of Time' Click here to read the full article.
