Latest news with #TimMiller
Fox News
2 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
Buttigieg reveals how he'd advise Democrats on key issues if he could time travel back to 2020
Former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg offered multiple ways he would change the Democratic Party platform if he could time travel back to 2020. In the wake of the party's decisive defeat in 2024, several prominent Democrats have spoken about how they need to change on America's most pressing issues. Many Democrats have argued that the party needs to moderate not only its tone, but its policies. Buttigieg, who has spoken out before on how the party needs to stop alienating voters, is no exception. Tim Miller, a political strategist for The Bulwark, released a new episode of the outlet's podcast on Tuesday where he interviewed Buttigieg. Miller referenced the time-traveling DeLorean from "Back to the Future," and asked Buttigieg what advice he would give his past self and then-nominee Joe Biden to prevent the state of the U.S. today. "What do you think y'all should have done differently?" Miller asked. "One, for the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner," Buttigieg said. "We got very knee-jerk about this and the costs were — not just politically — but in a profound way I think, for a generation, the costs were profound, and I think anybody who's involved, who was, by the way obviously doing their best to deal with a crisis that killed a million Americans, but I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools open more quickly." The former transportation secretary followed up with another key issue that has grown prominent in recent years. "Obviously, pay more attention to the border," he said, noting another piece of advice for 2020 Democrats. "That's real, and that's going to be something that you can't just, like, take your time to deal with. These are all things, by the way, that's super, you know, policy-wise and politically, we have the benefit of hindsight to reflect upon this." The third piece of advice he offered, particularly to himself, was about the nature of how the economy is perceived. "Three, even though you spent your entire political lifetime believing that 'the economy and jobs are the same thing, and if you have lots of jobs, it's a good economy, and if you have a problem with jobs, it's a bad economy.' Remember that prices is just as big a part of the economy, it just hasn't come up much in the last 40 years," he said. Buttigieg argued that no country was able to save its economy from the pandemic without taking on some inflation, "but I do think there were a lot of moments where people kind of waved it away in the first year or two, even just like the conversation about it."
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Love, Death & Robots Aired A Great Episode Recently (But It's Not Enough To Redeem Season 4)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. SPOILER WARNING: The following article may contain a few light spoilers for Love, Death & Robots Season 4. So, if you have not used your Netflix subscription to catch up on this latest batch of weird, wild animated shorts, do not say I did not warn you if you continue to read on. I am a huge fan of anthology TV shows, and one of my all-time favorites is Love, Death & Robots. From creator Tim Miller and co-executive producer David Fincher, the Emmy-winning, Netflix animated series for adults is a collection of short sci-fi/fantasy films, typically no longer than 15 minutes, boasting mind-blowing, highly inventive stories and out-of-this-world beautiful animation. However, I hate to admit that I would not quite say that about Love, Death & Robots Season 4 (billed as Vol. 4), which is easily the series' weakest collection of films so far, in my personal opinion. Luckily, there was one bright spot among the largely disappointing experience I had this time around. In fact, I'll start by singing my praises for that episode before I get into my reservations about the season overall. Director Diego Porral's "How Zeke Got Religion' is based on John McNichol's short story of the same name. It follows a group of World War II-era pilots, one of whom, named Zeke (Keston John), is unlike the rest by being a staunch atheist. However, he begins to question his certainties when his crew's plane is attacked by a monstrous demon conjured straight from Hell by the Nazis. Love, Death & Robots is not quite a horror anthology TV show, but it has been known to scare in some episodes, and 'Zeke' is a great example of that for its traumatically graphic violence, cleverly juxtaposed with gorgeous animation from the studio Titmouse. What really takes the creature feature over the edge for me is its message about the benefit of second-guessing your beliefs, or lack thereof, and acknowledging the secrets of the universe that we, as humans, cannot confidently understand. I can't say I would call it one of the all-time best Love, Death & Robots episodes yet, but it's easily my favorite from Season 4, especially in comparison to the rest. To be clear, I do not believe Love, Death & Robots Season 4 is a complete dud, and not just counting 'Zeke.' For instance, I found director Jennifer Yuh Nelson's 'Spider Rose' quite touching, especially as a devoted pet owner, and the Tim Miller-directed 'The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur' was a decent, futuristic chase flick. However, even those bear the same problem I have with the shorts I do not care for. As far as I am concerned, the majority of installments in this volume suffer from weak executions of decent concepts or weak executions of weak concepts. I have always praised the show for consistently having story ideas that I could only dream of coming up with on my own, and animation styles unlike anything I have ever seen. Season 4, for the most part, offers very little that is refreshing in the animation department, in my opinion, which is a shame because that could have redeemed some of these shorts from their relatively unremarkable plots. Patrick Osborne's 'The Other Large Thing' has a cute concept of a cat achieving world domination with a robotic assistant's help, but it ultimately felt like a setup for a joke with a weak punchline. I was even more disappointed by Miller's live-action short, 'Golgotha,' which is about a priest (Rhys Darby) meeting with an extraterrestrial, that I feel does not fully live up to its potential in its 10-minute runtime, especially with its abrupt conclusion. I was also excited about the star-studded, stop-animation comedy 'Smart Appliances, Stupid Owners,' in which tech products complain about the humans who use them, but it was not nearly as funny to me as it clearly tried to be. The first short in this latest collection had me invested from the beginning. An animated recreation of the Red Hot Chili Peppers performing 'Can't Stop' live, and from none other than David Fincher at the helm? Hell yes! However, it ended up being a little underwhelming, since it is really nothing more than a short concert doc that replaces humans with CGI marionettes. Sure, I had fun with it, but I didn't think it was anything special like what Love, Death & Robots has been capable of presenting before. It is certainly cool to see Fincher return to his roots as a music video director, but I suppose I was hoping for something more from the man who directed what I believe is the absolute best episode of this anthology series, Season 3's "Bad Traveling." You know, I have rewatched some of the series' older shorts and ended up liking many of them more a second time. So, perhaps I should try to stream Love, Death & Robots Season 4 on Netflix again at some point and see how I feel then. However, there are still a few installments I might skip.
The Verge
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
How MrBeast ended up in the new season of Love, Death, and Robots
One of the more surprising moments in volume four of Love, Death, and Robots is an appearance from YouTube star MrBeast. He shows up in the episode 'The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,' playing a sort of twisted game master presiding over a death race on one of the moons of Jupiter. Also, there are dinosaurs. According to LDR creator Tim Miller, who also directed the episode, the collaboration started out simply because MrBeast was a fan of the show. It then solidified once Miller realized he had the ideal role. 'I have this evil game master here, and I thought he would be perfect for that,' Miller says. 'I watched his Amazon show and I thought 'what a dick' often. With some of the contestants, he seemed to take a particular joy in their uncomfortableness. Not because he's an evil guy — he's not, he's a super nice guy. I think he just enjoys the whole machination of people and how they can either work together or against each other. And it seemed to fit this particular role very well.' Miller says that because MrBeast was such a fan, he didn't actually charge anything for his performance. 'The cool thing is he likes the show so much — we couldn't afford MrBeast prices or anything like it, but he said he'd do it for free,' Miller says. The inclusion of a massive YouTube star was partly a calculated decision. Miller says one of the goals with this season of the anthology series was to expand the audience, which currently is very focused on fans of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy animation. 'He has a huge audience, and is beloved by hundreds of millions of people, so I'm hoping even a small percentage of them will come to see him in the show,' Miller says. That thinking is also part of the reason why the show returned to live action with the episode 'Golgotha,' which stars Rhys Darby. Miller said that the show saw interest beyond its core with the season 1 episode 'Ice Age,' in which Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Topher Grace discover a miniature civilization in their freezer. 'Live action does broaden the audience a little bit,' Miller says. That said, this strategy hasn't really impacted the core of what LDR is. Volume four of the series still has the mix of action, violence, scares, and humor the anthology has become known for, many of which are based on short stories that Miller has been gathering for years. 'Golgotha' is based on a story by Dave Hutchinson, for example, while 'The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur' was adapted from a story by Stant Litore. 'I have a big bag of shorts, 100 or so, and it's added to constantly,' Miller says. 'And every season we kind of mix and match what we think will make an interesting lineup.' One of the new episodes is a bloody battle between soldiers and a demonic creature summoned by the Nazis in WWII, while another is simply a confessional where smart appliances reveal just how gross humans are. And then there's something like 'The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur,' which ticks several boxes. 'It's got a little bit of love story, a little bit of tragedy to it,' says Miller. 'But the main thing, the reason to show up, is because you have dinosaurs fighting each other in space.' The goal with each new season, he adds, is to find that right balance. The idea is to have a healthy mix between light and dark, fantasy and science fiction, and all of the other elements that go into a new collection of Love, Death, and Robots. Essentially, he doesn't want the show to repeat itself too much — though sometimes that happens by accident. 'We seem to have a preponderance of cats in our episodes,' Miller says. 'It's not on purpose; it's not because I like cats. I don't like cats. It just seems to happen.'
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Arcane' writer Amanda Overton describes reworking the end of season one so that a second season could be allowed to develop
When Arcane was first being mapped out as a series, the initial plan was to only do one season in the Piltover-Zaun region. When the decision was made to do a second season, Amanda Overton and the show's writing team had to do a major rewrite of the last two episodes of that first season. 'The idea was we're gonna get to really dig into what leads up to the war and the build up to the war in Season 2. That decision was made after the writer's room of Season 1 ended and then we came back and we're like, OK, let's write a season two that builds up to the war,' she tells Gold Derby during our recent Meet the Experts: TV Animation panel. Arcane, which can be streamed on Netflix, takes place in the universe of the online multiplayer battle video game League of Legends. The show centers around two cities: the prosperous and ideal city of Piltover and the dilapidated and sleazy undercity of Zaun. As the disturbance between the two places gets more heated, sisters Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) begin becoming aligned on opposing sides of a looming war over differing beliefs and mysterious occurrences. The series picked up the Emmy for Best Animated Program for its first season back in 2022. More from GoldDerby As Joel returns to 'The Last of Us,' cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt explains what went into killing him off TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games The writer's room always knew from the beginning that they wanted the relationship between Vi and Caitlyn to be their OTP (one true pair) couple for the series. But Overton wanted to draw out the establishment of their romantic attraction to make their romance epic. 'You really have to earn that relationship getting together. I think we did things in season one to make that attraction they had to each other explicit. We made that conscious choice to take the entire series as we knew it to get them together so we could feel like they had the same sort of treatment that most couples like that would get.' One of the more difficult things in developing the show was keeping track of all the world-building that a series like this requires. 'It's a huge scope game and it's a game that changes all the time. It's kind of like they're always iterating on the game. It's not just one set story. It's something you always have to keep your pulse on in order to make sure that what they're doing in the game would reflect properly in the show.' This article and video are presented by Netflix. Best of GoldDerby Making of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' panel: Bringing the Balrog to life was 'like doing a slight of hand card trick' TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' 'Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games Click here to read the full article.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Secret Level' creator Tim Miller explains how he gets writers to create short stories based on video and role-playing games
In putting together episodes of Secret Level, creator Tim Miller utilized a very similar system that he used when doing the show Love, Death + Robots. He assembled this group of novelists and short story writers and helped to give them key information about various video games to build stories off of. 'We make these big decks that tells you all the do's and don'ts and we send them to the authors and then they pitch us. We'll usually ask five or 10 authors to pitch us on any given game. Then we pick the best idea that we like and they write a prose version of that story which we then adapt into a screenplay,' he tells Gold Derby during our recent Meet the Experts: TV Animation panel. Secret Level, which is available to stream on Prime Video, is an animated anthology series that tells standalone short stories based various video games and role-playing games. Among the games that were used as the basis for episodes in the first season were Dungeons & Dragons, Mega Man, New World: Aeternum, Pac-Man, and Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. Miller has won three Emmys in Best Short Form Animated Program for Love, Death + Robots in 2019, 2021, and 2022. More from GoldDerby As Joel returns to 'The Last of Us,' cinematographer Catherine Goldschmidt explains what went into killing him off TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' '#1 Happy Family USA' co-creator Ramy Youssef reveals how animation was the perfect way to capture the middle school experience Miller is a longtime lover of short stories and how flexible the format is in allowing one to tell different narratives. He gave an example of how this translated to television by remembering a pitch for a television series he made about lesbian necromancers in space and how the people in the meeting stopped him before he could get any further. However, to pitch something like that for Secret Level wouldn't cause anyone to bat an eye. 'That kind of freedom is impossible to get with the heavy lift of a movie or a series and you have to worry about it being popular to kids, grandmas, moms, dads, and everybody else. We can afford to be niche.' When looking to what might serve as the basis for episodes in the second season, Miller doesn't divulge any specifics but does demonstrate that there are four categories of games they work with: nostalgia games, indie games, games that are coming out, and games that are currently out and popular. He especially loves the ones that fall into nostalgia because of the memories that they can they can bring back for him. 'Like Pac-Man was the first video game I ever played and so it has meaning to me. I still remember putting that quarter in the slot and so I love the fact that we can kind of go after anything in that regard and sort-of control the narrative and go after what we think is interesting instead of a commercial vibe.' This article and video are presented by Prime Video. Best of GoldDerby Making of 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' panel: Bringing the Balrog to life was 'like doing a slight of hand card trick' TV Animation roundtable panel: '#1 Happy Family USA,' 'Secret Level,' and 'Arcane' '#1 Happy Family USA' cocreator Ramy Youssef reveals how animation was the perfect way to capture the middle school experience Click here to read the full article.
