Latest news with #Traction
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Sirat' Review: Oliver Laxe's Beguiling Film Is a Desert-Set, Techno-Infused Meditation on Death and Grief
At some point in Oliver Laxe's beguiling new film Sirat, a character asks a fellow traveler their thoughts on what the end of the world might feel like. The friend considers the question before responding, somewhat half-heartedly: 'It's been the end of the world for a long time.' This sentiment haunts Sirat, which seemingly takes place in a near-apocalyptic future and follows a group of ravers as they journey through the Moroccan desert in search of one last party. Home for this crew is a worn-out caravan, stocked with food, water and other provisions. Community is anyone they meet either at or on their way to dance parties. And on the occasion they turn on the radio, the news warns of escalating wars, depleting resources and a breakdown in diplomatic relations. The harshness of this world, conjured by Laxe with his signature painterly vision, feels a lot like our own. More from The Hollywood Reporter Planes, Trains and Everything's a Mess for Upfronts and Cannes Travelers at Newark Airport Colombia Is Thriving, But Locals Worry About Tariffs Luke Evans Joins Noomi Rapace in Thriller 'Traction' Premiering at Cannes in competition, Sirat marks Laxe's fourth time on the Croisette. His debut You Are All Captain earned him an award in Directors' Fortnight in 2010; he won a prize for his 2016 Critics' Week film Mimosas and another for the gorgeous Fire Will Come, which premiered in 2019 in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. Sirat is the director's first film in competition, a charged meditation on grief and possibility in a world edging toward collapse. It is a beautiful film (Pedro Almodóvar is a producer) filled with those unhurried landscape shots the director loves so much. But the movie's message can be punishing and oddly muddied at times. Working from a screenplay co-written with his usual collaborator Santiago Fillol, Laxe crafts a story about itinerant characters negotiating the realities of different losses — on both societal and interpersonal levels. The desert is the perfect setting for this reflection, as the arid location functions as both a repository for overwhelming feelings and a reminder of our own smallness in the grand scheme of things. The last few years of global history, marked by the twin forces of a viral pandemic and an accelerating climate crisis, have underscored a discomfort with death. In the United States, at least, collective mourning is not a part of the culture, and the idea of death is met with avoidance rather than affirmation. Laxe, a French-born filmmaker of Galician ancestry, has been steadily confronting that in each of his projects. Mimosas was framed around the delivery of a body to an ancestral resting place, and while Fire Will Come principally observed an arsonist recently released from prison, it also meditated on the idea of cultural extinction. Sirat begins and ends with different kinds of losses. The film opens with Luis (an excellent Sergi Lopez) and his son Esteban (Brúno Nuñez) searching the grounds of an outdoor rave for his daughter Mar. Laxe indulges in languorous shots of people dancing to techno, blasted from a set of large outdoor speakers, in a small pocket of the desert. Their bodies sway to the rhythmic thumps of the hypnotic music, composed by the French artist Kangding Ray. His score is complemented by Laia Casanova's stellar sound design, which turns the ambient noises of the desert into their own soundtrack. Laxe displays a considered understanding of the cathartic self-expression inherent to techno and raves specifically. The kind of experience now associated with out-of-touch thrill seekers at Burning Man adopts deeper meaning here. Luis and Esteban snake their way through this crowd, handing out flyers of Mar in hopes that someone has seen her. The pair eventually come upon a group who wonder if Mar might be at the next dance party. Driven by desperation, Luis and Esteban follow the two vans carrying Stef (Stefania Gadda), Josh (Joshua Liam Henderson), Tonin (Tonin Janvier), Jade (Jade Oukid) and Bigui (Richard Bellamy) from this gathering to another one. At first, the veteran ravers try to get rid of Luis and Esteban, but the father and son duo are persistent. This journey of reluctant alliances at times reminded me of the one in Octavia Butler's novel Parable of the Sower, another work that deals with the forced itinerancy brought on by the end of the world. Sirat is at its most familiar as a Laxe-ian work in the middle, when this crew traverses the scorched landscape. Laxe revels in the beauty and imposing scale of the Sahara desert (where Sirat was filmed) with scenes of the cars rolling up steep mountains or getting lost in impromptu sand storms. The geographical isolation imbues the film with a haunting, almost otherworldly atmosphere. Ironically, Sirat gets muddled near the end. Although the last act is in many ways the liveliest — viewers will be jolted by a series of bleak twists — it's also where Laxe relinquishes narrative coherence in the service of making his metaphors more literal. The filmmaker leans into a sort of spectacle typically associated with genre works to wrestle with his theories about death as well as to actualize the film's title (which roughly translates to 'path' in Arabic), but his ideas — in part because of the sheer quantity — seem more embryonic here. There's also a dubiously judged scene in which more obviously racialized characters are used in a way that comes off as more aesthetic than meaningful. Despite these flaws, Sirat is an energizing film — a project determined to wake us up. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Luke Evans Joins Noomi Rapace in Thriller ‘Traction'
Luke Evans and Noomi Rapace are reteaming for the action thriller Traction, from writer and director Lorraine Darrow. Evans and Rapace earlier starred in the 2019 film Angel of Mine. Evans has movie credits that include Beauty and the Beast, Nine Perfect Strangers, Criminal and Weekend in Taipei. Rapace is best known for Close, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Left-Handed Girl' Review: Striking, Sean Baker-Penned Drama Sketches Compelling Portrait of Mothers and Daughters in Taiwan Erin Kellyman and June Squibb Formed a Real Friendship While Working on Scarlett Johansson's Cannes Movie Need a Drink? 5 Cannes Watering Holes to Wet Your Whistle The character-driven Traction will see Rapace play Kate, a former U.S. soldier leading a humanitarian mission in war-torn Chechnya. The assignment takes a perilous turn and Kate is forced to take on a cynical American war photographer, played by Evans, and a schoolteacher and her injured student as the group must evade both Russian forces and guerrilla fighters. Production on Traction will start in Spain in August. WestEnd Films is handling worldwide sales and shopping the film in Cannes. Traction is produced by CrossDay Productions' Janette Day, Dennis Davidson via his Elizabeth Bay Production banner and Simon Moseley. In Kim Farrant's psychological thriller Angel of Mine, Rapace played an emotionally troubled woman who becomes convinced that a neighbor's young daughter is actually her own child she thought was dead. She becomes involved in a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband (Luke Evans). The psychological thriller was a remake of the 2008 French film L'empreinte de L'Ange. Evans is represented by Anonymous Content, United Agents and CAA. Rapace is represented by Gersh, Tapestry and Narrative. Her deal was negotiated by Kurt Selling at Behind The Scene. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Planes, Trains and Everything's a Mess for Upfronts and Cannes Travelers at Newark Airport
Let's get this out of the way first: I love really like New Jersey. I was born there and raised there, and lived a year or so in Los Angeles before deciding to return there. I got married there (but engaged in L.A.) and am raising my kids there. It's a great place to be, even if currently a horror to get to (or get out of). Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) is a major travel hub and the northeast coast's home to United Airlines. Its proximity to New York City and relatively cheap flights makes it an attractive alternative to JFK (John F. Kennedy International Airport;); EWR has something like 11 to 16 nonstop flights daily to LAX and two flights per day directly to Nice, France (and more to Paris). This week, many of the area's air travel will service TV and film industry professionals coming to/from New York City's upfronts and Cannes' Cannes Film Festival. Or will it? More from The Hollywood Reporter At the Upfronts, Sports Sideline Scripted TV as Studios Lean In to Live Events Colombia Is Thriving, But Locals Worry About Tariffs Luke Evans Joins Noomi Rapace in Thriller 'Traction' Those who their booked flights into, out of or through Newark may find themselves grounded for longer than the underrated Donal Logue sitcom Grounded for Life (2001-2005) ran across Fox and The WB. As per usual, they can blame the U.S. government. Yes, President Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE aren't doing travelers any favors, but a scarcity of air-traffic controllers has existed for years. Newark airport has become ground zero for the issue through a confluence of events — events that haven't actually happened at Newark airport. The air traffic for the EWR airspace is monitored at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL; the tower you see at Newark is for ground control), as are each of the 50-something satellite airports west of the Hudson River. Airports east of the Hudson, like JFK and LaGuardia Airport (LGA, which still may somehow be a worse option than Newark), have their airspace monitored from Long Island. It's a totally different team controlling their airspace — and if this were a competition, they'd totally be winning. Regardless of the ground geography, multiple recent communication outages between air-traffic control and pilots flying into and out of Newark has put the spotlight on EWR. Outdated technology and poor facilities problems are compounding the staffing issue, a person with knowledge of the situation told The Hollywood Reporter. It certainly doesn't help that a major runway at Newark International Airport is currently under construction. When it rains, it pours. Oh, yeah! Weather in the region has made matters even worse. They're probably not about to get better. At midnight tonight, NJ Transit rail workers — specifically the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen — are poised walk off the job and go on strike. Take a wild guess as to which major airport is a NJ Transit stop for multiple rail lines in the Garden State and from New York Penn Station? Right. These two issues are about to meet head-on, and it is pretty much consuming all of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's time. At the Tuesday groundbreaking for Netflix Studios Fort Monmouth, nearly all of the questions (except ours!) for Gov. Murphy were about the looming NJ Transit rail strike and the shitshow that is Newark airport. 'I don't believe, and I've heard no evidence on the contrary, that there's a safety issue,' Murphy told reporters on the EWR flight delays, cancellations and communications outages. 'But there's just a huge mismatch in supply-demand in terms of the flights that take off and land in Newark and the manpower that could support that.' If you think that sounds bad, consider his stance on the potential NJ Transit walkout. 'I'm still hoping we find some resolution here,' Murphy said. 'But we're preparing for the worst.' Crap. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a memo dated May 7 that 'all the flights in and out of EWR are absolutely safe…But when the FAA has technology outages or staffing shortages, it does lead to delays and cancellations for our customers and *that's* the issue we're determined to solve for the longterm.' Per website there were 501 total delays at Newark Liberty International Airport yesterday and 132 cancellations. Today, there have already been 391 delays at Newark airport and 142 cancellations as of 4:40 p.m. ET. 'In ideal weather, with full staffing and with perfectly functioning technology, the FAA tells us that the airport can only handle 77 flights per hour,' Kirby wrote to his staff. 'And yet, the FAA regularly approves schedules of 80+ flights per hour almost every day between 3:00pm and 8:00pm. This math doesn't work. Especially when there is weather, staffing issues or technology breakdowns — the airspace, taxiways, and runways get backed up and gridlock occurs.' Sounds like a smart guy. Then again, he goes on to call EWR 'a crown jewel of the region' — twice — so then again, what does he know? That aside, Kirby is correct. Newark airport is the only major airport in the world to not be slot-controlled, meaning the number of scheduled flights cannot exceed the airport's max capacity. EWR was slot-controlled until 2016, when the FAA de-slotted it for some insane reason.'In reality, only the FAA can actually fix EWR,' Kirby wrote. But who can fix the FAA?Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
Business Journals
05-05-2025
- Business
- Business Journals
10 insider secrets to thriving in the entrepreneurial wild
Entrepreneurship is a journey paved by resilience, ingenuity, grit, hustle and – if you are a member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) – a supportive community. In Maryland, EO is a cornerstone for business owners, offering a network for both learning as well as personal/professional growth. I'm offering 10 hacks I wish I knew sooner, which contributed significantly to my own personal and professional development. They are a random compilation of experiences during the last six years or so of my EO Baltimore membership. 1. I joined EO in January 2019. In June 2019 I attended a workshop, based on the book 'Profit First,' where I learned a methodology to pay myself (and my taxes) first. Thanks to this workshop, I had way more money in my personal bank account within six months and was able to start profit sharing with my team. 2. That September I attended a conference where a fellow entrepreneur shared with me that during his team's self-performance evaluations, he asks people to rate themselves on a scale of 1 to 10, but he takes away the 7. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, _, 8, 9,1 0. He said sevens are where people go to hide, and if you force them to pick a six or an eight, it drives people to dig down and get more real with themselves (and you). He was absolutely right. 3. Same conference. Everyone kept using the word 'traction.' They knew something I didn't. I learned 'Traction' is a book by Gino Wickman. My company, Brand Builders, started implementing EOS. My leadership team got aligned, and we started getting more done in two weeks than in whole quarters. It felt like magic. (Another EO Baltimore friend said it to me this way: 'Structure sets you free; for nearly every problem, there's a solution involving structure.') expand 4. The Change Paradigm. (See diagram.). It works like this:20% of people are unfazed by change, adopting easily with little to no resistance. Sixty percent of people will adapt, but at different rates. It's our job as entrepreneurs to create as little friction as possible, so they can adapt more readily/quickly. Twenty percent aren't coming. In fact, they will go to great lengths to dig their heels in and thwart the change at every turn. Successful change management includes Identifying which groups your team members fall into and create a plan for each. 5. Time doesn't heal; energy does. – Finnian Kelly. His point was clear: If time healed, then we wouldn't be affected by our childhood traumas. Energy work is now part of my journey. expand 6. From my EO forum (it's six of us who meet monthly): 'There's nothing more powerful than the right book at the right time.' Here's an off-the-top-of-my-head list, I personally recommend: 'American Icon,' Alan Mulally 'The Desire Map,' Danielle LaPorte 'No More Mr. Nice Guy,' Dr. Robert Glover (I didn't actually read this one, but it was recommended during a trying time in my marriage; my husband read it, and it was instrumental.) 'Fierce Conversations,' Susan Scott 'The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,' Patrick Lencioni 'The Power of the Other,' Dr. Henry Cloud 'Get a Grip,' Gino Wickman and Mike Paton 'The Obstacle Is the Way,' Ryan Holiday 'Giftology,' John Ruhlin 'The Leader Within Us,' Warren Rustand 7. Warren Rustand taught me there are 86,400 seconds in a day. And encouraged me to stop wasting seconds on what you won't care about in 10 years. 8. Jack Daly demonstrated how to structure a lucrative referral bonus for employees as we were coming out of Covid – one I could afford when I couldn't afford much – but still was meaningful enough to incentivize my team to refer critical talent. (Think incrementally - 20%; 20%; 60% in terms of payouts). 9. Big one: Regret(s) help us because it shows us what we value most. Think of a compilation of regrets being a photographic negative of a good life. Do three exercises: Write a Failure Resume for yourself. Three columns at the top of the page: Mistakes/Setbacks What Did I Learn? What I Am Doing Next/Differently? Conduct a Regret Pre-Mortem on next big endeavor. Place a phone call to yourself – What am I going to care about in 10 years?. 10. I just attended EO's Global Leadership Conference, where Deepak Chopra spoke to 1,600 entrepreneurs from 56 countries. To become a member of EO, you must own a business, generating at least $1 million in annual revenue or join our accelerator program, which accepts entrepreneurs whose businesses range from $250,000 to $1 million revenue and are looking to grow to a million in two to four years.
Axios
14-03-2025
- Business
- Axios
Small business spotlight: Nana Joes Granola
Meet Michelle Pusateri, a Culinary Institute of America-trained pastry chef who found herself "crashing out mid-surf session" and blamed the sugary granola she was eating for breakfast. Dig in: Pusateri channeled her baking experience to found the gluten-free, organic granola company Nana Joes in 2010. It's named for Pusateri's "Nana" and her grandfathers — both named Joe. How do customers typically discover your granola? "We've found most of our customers organically. People really, really love a granola that's clean, and so once we get it into people's mouths, people will come back for it. We have a 69% customer return rate on our website, which is great, and I've done all of the sales myself in the stores." How big is your small business? "Two million in revenue last year. We are eight employees, nine with me. We self-manufacture in the Dogpatch." Has social media been important for your business? "I haven't actually done TikTok. We had a couple of people who really loved our products, who were gluten-free influencers, who would talk about it a lot. Two of them: @kalejunkie and @celiacandthebeast." What's one piece of advice you have for other aspiring small business owners? "It's important to establish a clear vision and define your ultimate goals from the very beginning, [and] I highly recommend reading 'Traction' by Gino Wickman [to help with] structuring and scaling your company."
