Latest news with #matchmaking
CBS News
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- CBS News
Instead of dating apps, the LGBTQ community in South Jersey is turning to matchmaking services
Dating apps and websites are still a popular way for the LGBTQ community to meet potential partners, but the dating landscape is changing, and many people are now looking for different ways to find love. Pam and Staci Wixted are settling into motherhood. Their 1-year-old, Carter, keeps them busy, and he added more love to their home in South Jersey. "I'm very grateful for the fact our son can now grow up in a world that will respect, protect, and provide dignity to relationships and families like this," Pam Wixted said. Pam and Staci both came out after college, and they turned to dating apps to find relationships. It's also where they eventually found each other. "I feel like in the LGBTQ community, trying to meet someone and find a genuine relationship was very difficult at that time," Pam Wixted said. "For me, it was a way to be myself and meet people that were like-minded, and it was a safe way to talk to them because I never tried it before, it was something new for me," Staci Wixted said. That was seven years ago. Pam and Staci got married in 2021 and credit the app Tinder for finding love, but dating in 2025 has changed a bit. "Now it seems like people are moving from the apps and more towards things like matchmaking," Pam Wixted said. Wade Kyle, who calls himself The Magical Matchmaker, is based in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. "I call myself like a personal Cupid or a headhunter for love, I'm there with them through the entire process," Kyle said. Kyle helps forge connections in the LGBTQ community through his matchmaking service. He said people are reaching out to him to find more meaningful connections. "What I'm seeing is that people are really over the dating apps, they're over the superficial swiping," he said. Instead, Kyle said singles are having better luck finding a partner by joining a softball, bowling or running club. It is a common interest, and it can foster an authentic in-person connection. "I guess I would say I'm firing on all cylinders," said Greg Skiendzielewski, who is looking for a serious relationship. Skiendzielewski has turned to Kyle to help find his match. He's putting himself out there, beyond the apps, to find love. "I believe in it, I believe in love, and I believe that it will find me," Skiendzielewski said.
The Guardian
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Materialists review – Celine Song's Past Lives follow-up is a mixed bag
In the style of Lucy, Dakota Johnson's shrewd matchmaker in Celine Song's new film Materialists, I'll be blunt: dating is tough these days. It's probably always been tough, even back when the first couple of cave people tried it out – a scenario Song, who broke out with the winning naturalism and precise sensitivity of her 2023 debut Past Lives, imagines in bizarre bookends to her otherwise naturalistic, sharp-eyed romcom of modern love in New York. One needn't look back quite so far, but marriage, as Lucy puts it to a skittish client minutes before her very expensive wedding, has always been a business transaction – once a couple goats between families, then a dowry, now a more amorphous negotiation of intangible and material assets. To date today is to endure a slog of judgments, preferences, logistics and rejection that seem to only intensify the longer you stay on the market, as they say. And they say it a lot; Lucy and her ilk, a boutique matchmaking firm with a downtown office, are fluent in the depersonalized business-speak of the dating economy. They traffic in asset optimization and management, seeking a 'good match' that 'checks all our boxes,' navigating 'non-negotiables' and 'dealbreakers' that often involve dollar signs. (This being a paid matchmaker, the clientele skews rich.) Whereas Past Lives achingly refracted the sublime yearning of childhood sweethearts through the practicalities of distance, time and maturity, Song's sophomore feature hammers the desires of its matchmaker and her many clients through a brutal realism, to a fascinating, if occasionally off-putting, effect. Which makes Materialists an intriguing specimen and somewhat hot commodity, given the sparse modern marketplace for a theatrical romcom. We're often settling for something mid, something made for streaming, something riffing on or rebooting what has already been done. Clear-eyed, sharp and shot on location with a quiet luxury gloss very much not to be confused with the Netflix sheen, Materialists is like a 6ft 2in finance guy with a sense of humor and emotional availability – rare, highly coveted, immediately intriguing and definitely masking something. For Lucy, which Johnson plays with her trademark implacability, that would be her heart. She mirrors many campier, looser romcom heroines: motivated by career, skeptical of love, both allergic and susceptible to past attachments. She possesses a knack for selling romance while gaming compatibility along the typical lines of income, family background, education and the murkier ones of attractiveness, humor and style. And yet she remains single, the art of matchmaking having calcified her belief in love into something rigidly practical. To be in the business is to have faith in magic, and also to know better. True to form, these competing instincts implausibly collide at a client's wedding, in the form of best man Harry (an unfortunately miscast Pedro Pascal), an impossibly suave bachelor with a Tribeca penthouse and a private equity bankroll, and cater-waiter John (Chris Evans), Lucy's ex from her messy, broke 20s still living the messy, broke lifestyle of a struggling actor. Both are handsome and well-meaning; both transparently desire her. Lucy transparently chooses money. One awkward flashback scene, in which Lucy breaks up with John because they were permanently broke, stands in for a years-long compromise, though her bluntness about money – not coming from it, coveting it, tortuously respecting and resenting those with and without it – is one of the film's most singular and intriguing elements. That Lucy and Harry are not a love match is part of the point, though one wishes that Johnson and Pascal had at least some chemistry; as an actor, Johnson runs cold – suitable for Lucy's world-weariness, but stiff against Pascal's effortful polish. Likewise, one wishes that John, whom Evans imbues with as much everyman charm as Captain America can muster, had any more to him than a fantasy of a starving artist, a hunk with a terrible roommate and a heart of gold. Neither present particularly compelling love stories, let alone sentimental conclusions, but Materialists has other selling points. Song's lush, astute visual style, for one. Lucy's enviable wardrobe of minimalist professional chic, styled by Katina Danabassis. And most pointedly, the catharsis of hearing people say the quiet parts of dating out loud, ugly and callous as those parts can be. Song, who based the script on her six months as a professional matchmaker during the mid-2010s, turns the unspoken assumptions of dating, the raw material of the market, into some cutthroat lines with equal opportunity skewering. Fortysomething men think thirtysomething women are too complicated and load the word 'fit' to the gills; women won't even look at a man under 6ft. Everyone's expectations are sky-high, both rightfully and beyond ungenerously so. Materialists tempered by own with its strange amalgamation of qualities, as beguiling as it is frustrating. Rarely have I been so mixed on a film – drawn in by the confessions, put off by the romance, surprised by a line and deadened by another. Many un-cliched observations nonetheless resolve into one that muddles everything that came before, though I certainly don't begrudge a romcom for eventually revealing its heart. Inconsistent but never insubstantial, Materialists is far from perfect, but that doesn't mean it's not worthy of a date. Materialists is out in Australia on 12 June, the US on 13 June and in the UK on 15 August
Geek Vibes Nation
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Geek Vibes Nation
'Materialists' Review - Celine Song Breaks Our Hearts (Again) With Her Tender Look At Love And Self-Worth
Materialists has a lot of talk about math for a romantic comedy. For Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a successful New York matchmaker who makes $80,000 a year before taxes and has secured her ninth wedding for a client, it is her primary language. Love is less about candlelit dinners than rows on an Excel spreadsheet. She and her coworkers identify clients by their first name and last initial. She can handily arrange them by the bare necessities: height, weight, build, age, annual income, and apartment size. But she's bilingual, fluent in the language of love that her clients want to hear over their stringent requirements, phrases like 'you will find the love of your life.' And yet, as she dazzles a group of wedding guests (and prospective clients) with claims that there are 'no industry secrets' to finding a love match, you sense that she doesn't fully believe what she's selling to these women. After all, if love can be broken into ones and zeros, why hasn't Sam Altman taken a generative AI crack at it and put Lucy out of business? Celine Song seeks the answer with her utterly charming and disarmingly astute follow-up to her Oscar-nominated debut film, Past Lives . She starts by presenting Lucy's guiding insight on love. At her client's ninth wedding, an army of bridesmaids ushers her (in formation, a brilliant visual gag) to the bridal suite to give the jittery bride a pep talk. Lucy gently coaxes the hilarious reason the bride wants to marry her husband and packages it up for her in a far more amenable package. 'He makes you feel valued,' she says. It's a stunning, deceptively simple line that speaks to a buried-deep need to be seen for who we are and what we want to be. Lucy's theory is that love and worth are intrinsically linked, which is why people would spend tens of thousands on it. Perhaps romance is something to be automated and anonymized. (L-R) Dakota Johnson Credit: Atsushi Nishijima Materialists toys plenty with the theory, leaning on the matchmaking profession for its humor instead of the rom-com genre's usual contrivances and conceits. We watch as Lucy has brilliantly absurd intake meetings with clients who have crafted rigid profiles of their perfect partner: from a closeted conservative woman seeking an openly gay conservative woman, to a mid-40s man who defines older women as 28. 'I'm trying to settle!' Sophie (Zoe Winters) exclaims after another failed date. (Sophie's match chastised Lucy for failing to find him a 'high-quality woman.') The matchmakers' language reinforces how this ostensibly human art can be boiled down to cool sciences. 'She's not competitive in the market,' Lucy laments to a coworker about Sophie, exasperatedly laying out her ordinariness. It's funny because you simultaneously believe that Lucy means well and doesn't take Sophie seriously; her world is molded by casual, lukewarm cynicism. Song tests Lucy's cynicism and her overarching theory with the arrival of two potential suitors at her client's wedding: the groom's brother Harry (Pedro Pascal) and her ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans). In Lucy's imagined spreadsheet, the men are polar opposites. Harry is a fabulously wealthy private equity investor with a $12 million penthouse, while John is a cater waiter and struggling actor with two roommates who can barely afford Manhattan parking. Given Lucy's desire for financial stability, the choice seems obvious, but there are complications that have more to do with her than them. She is baffled by Harry's charm offensive, seeing him as a prospective client rather than a lover. After all, as she explains during a consequential date for them, Harry is a 'unicorn,' a mythical match who checks every imaginable box. If he could have any woman he wanted — younger, richer, prettier, ready for kids — why pursue her? (L-R) Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal Credit: Atsushi Nishijima The core of Lucy's question is Materialists' driving force: the role of self-worth in informing one's romantic possibilities. Song deepens the classic love triangle set-up of head versus heart and passion versus practicalities by grounding it there. Lucy, Harry, and John are all keenly aware of the value they bring to their respective relationships. Lucy sees herself as unremarkable compared to who Harry could theoretically date, while doubting she can support John through his financial troubles. Lucy's doubt of her self-worth further contextualizes her professional reliance on rote practicalities. Harry's breezy but genuine pursuit of Lucy comes from his belief in his 'unicorn' status and that he and Lucy are compatriots in a utilitarian approach to love. Meanwhile, John is on the sidelines, deeply wounded by his inability to give Lucy what Harry can easily offer. These nuances build upon Song's remarkable ability to subvert, but not diminish, the genre's most enduring tropes. 'Snow White' (2025) Review - Where Has The Magic Gone? Also remarkable and refreshing is the lack of misdirects and mixed signals. Song elevates honest (or honest enough) communication between the trio, manifesting in some of the most mature exchanges in the history of the rom-com genre. At its best, the honesty is blissfully romantic in its own right, thanks to Song's remarkable script and tender lens. Her framing of Lucy and Harry's date before their first time, where Harry tells her she has value, is a fascinating blend of romance and negotiation, with gorgeous low-light and medium shots that position them as Harry sees them: equals. John and Lucy's dance at a barnyard wedding is startlingly intimate, even at a distance, with the camera circling and cutting closer as the gravity of their connection becomes undeniable. (What follows — John's declaration of love — is a genre masterpiece.) There are a few times, primarily in the first act, where the mark is slightly missed, with Song leaving space in scenes that aim to convey chemistry but can read as awkward. (L-R) Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans Credit: Atsushi Nishijima That awkwardness is a minor quibble in the face of Materialists ' most staggering hat trick, which shatters its ostensible frivolity with a shocking dose of reality. While it does have fun at its characters' expense — like a brutal cut to Harry offering Lucy a ride home to her riding in John's dingy car — it also treats them as flesh-and-blood people who must reckon with the dangers of dating. Sophie is initially positioned as comic relief, but one particularly upsetting experience is the film's shocking lynchpin, upending Lucy's worldview, career, and relationships with Harry and John. The results can be soul-shattering. Even with that gut punch, Song keeps a staggering command of tone and script, maintaining the graceful romance, blistering honesty, and even levity. She connects that searing narrative beat to the central insight about love and worth, evolving it into a beautifully sophisticated statement about love not defining one's value. Song pulls similarly sophisticated, nuanced performances from her strong cast. Lucy is an excellent vessel for Dakota Johnson to channel her cool unflappability through, undercutting it with a slight veneer of artifice through her dry delivery. Her best work comes when an external force, specifically John or Sophie, shreds Lucy's disaffection, leaving Johnson to convey the raw insecurity undergirding her cynicism. Pedro Pascal wears Harry's charming elegance very well, practically floating across the screen without slipping into off-putting arrogance. After years of leading action films, Chris Evans's rom-com return yields his best-ever performance and possibly one of the all-time great performances in the genre. As the frustrated, yearning John, he reveals stunning new depths of vulnerability and grace, his eyes and voice expertly balancing palpable ache, teasing cynicism, and heartrending warmth. Zoe Winters, of Succession fame, is a revelation as Sophie, shaping her comedic and dramatic moments into scene-stealing showcases with deeply affecting energy. ChatGPT hasn't put the matchmaker out of business because, as Materialists shows us, love can't be automated. Love is an achingly human, imperfect art, subject to all the blissful and painful nuances that make it all worth it. Lucy tends to boil love down to snackable lines that win clients over, but the film reveals that the complexities hidden beneath those simplicities are what we're ultimately responding to so strongly. In what seems like a slow death march, aided by algorithms encroaching on everything that makes us, Materialists is a salve that reminds us that we can't be replaced, not our jobs or our capacities to love ourselves and others. It's apropos that Celine Song, who has proven to be an essential voice in romance cinema, is the harbinger of such a vital, life-affirming message. Materialists will debut exclusively in theaters on June 13, 2025, courtesy of A24.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
By holding out for more, boxing keeps missing the moment
For a sport built on unpredictability, boxing sure does love trying to script the future. Ryan Garcia vs. Devin Haney 2 and Caleb Plant vs. Jermall Charlo are fights that fans wanted to see. They're matchups that should've been made when the chance was there to make them. But instead, we got four bouts across two cards in the month of May, none of which anybody had much desire to watch, with two promised pots of gold at the end of the rainbow that now may never come. Advertisement Turki Alalshikh's Ring Magazine even went to the trouble of hosting the Garcia vs. Rolando Romero and Haney vs. Jose Ramirez double-header at New York's historic Times Square crossing in an effort to add intrigue to the show that the main two fights simply did not provide by themselves. When Plant and Charlo shared a card at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas this past Saturday, it was free to watch on Amazon Prime Video — a widely accessible service. It was an investment from the event partners in building a future fight that they hoped would repay dividends from pay-per-view revenue. Both cards had a clear narrative and a logical path forward. The aim was to maximize the potential of two huge all-American showdowns. But it all came crashing down when it was main event time — on both occasions. Romero and Armando Resendiz ripped up their scripts and pulled off shocking upsets over Garcia and Plant, respectively. And now, instead of the two perfect build-ups the sport attempted to create, boxing has lost two big pay-per-view rivalries that its limited arsenal of major fights could not afford to lose. Advertisement Of course, this isn't a new problem. Boxing has long attempted the concept of two co-main events sharing a card, with the two big favorites planned to face each other afterward. And it's gone wrong before as well, even in recent years. In December 2023, Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder finally signed contracts to battle each other — a fight that was years in the making. All the pair had to do was get past Otto Wallin and Joseph Parker respectively, but Parker showed fans just how faded Wilder actually was and dominated their 12-round heavyweight contest. The upset victory killed all interest in a Joshua vs. Wilder bout, which already was many years too late. Now, in June, Wilder will return to the ring against the little-known Tyrrell Herndon. He hopes to make a comeback to the world level and possibly rekindle any interest in a money-spinning Joshua showdown. But if it does eventually happen, the fight will be a shadow of what it once could've been when the pair owned all four of the heavyweight titles in the late 2010s. The promoters and broadcasters will almost certainly rely on the nostalgic element of the fight, knowing full well that the in-ring action won't deliver what fans have been sold — as was the case when Netflix and Most Valuable Promotions advertised heavily-edited 30-second clips of 58-year-old Mike Tyson on the pads before his fight with Jake Paul. Advertisement The rivalry between Plant and Charlo dates back to July 2023 at the weigh-in for Terence Crawford vs. Errol Spence Jr., where Plant was filmed delivering an open-handed slap to Charlo's face. Plant claimed that Charlo had disrespected his wife and grabbed him by the beard. Plant vs. Charlo was perfectly set up to be a major attraction — a bad-blood battle between former world champions in a division home to the planned Saul "Canelo" Alvarez vs. Terence Crawford spectacle in September. And with Plant, 32, and Charlo, 35, the clock was already counting down on their windows in the sport. But event organizers chose not to go straight into the big fight, perhaps viewing Charlo's extended period out of the ring as less than ideal in building a blockbuster clash. They were both offered tune-up bouts instead. Advertisement Charlo's well-documented struggles outside of the ring and lingering inactivity mixed together perfectly for an upset. But surprisingly, it wasn't Charlo that lost his warm-up bout — it was Plant. And maybe the warning signs were evident there, too. Plant faded late in fights with Alvarez and David Benavidez, and was hurt early by the unheralded Trevor McCumby in his most recent bout this past September. Plant went into the Resendiz fight owning a rematch clause, so we could see a second meeting between the pair. Alternatively, Resendiz could replace Plant's position in a Charlo fight. But whatever the next step, it won't be the build-up and fight we could've had with Plant and Charlo. Ryan Garcia vs. Devin Haney 2 was right there to make, and yet it didn't happen. (Cris Esqueda/) (Cris Esqueda/Golden Boy via Getty Images) In the case of Garcia and Haney, boxing lost out to marination it didn't even need. When Garcia and Haney battled the first time around for the WBC super lightweight title in April 2024, the build-up was nothing short of insane, with Garcia documenting himself smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol in late-night live transmissions leading up to the bout. Advertisement Serious questions arose about whether Garcia should've even been in the ring in the first place. He was more than three pounds overweight for the contest and seemingly chugged a beer bottle as he tipped the scales 24 hours before the fight at a ceremonial weigh-in. But Garcia — temporarily, at least— proved the doubters wrong. He scored three knockdowns of Haney in a big upset and provided the sport with another dramatic night. A few days after the fight, news broke that Garcia failed a drug test for the banned substance ostarine and that his win over Haney would be turned into a no-contest. To add fuel to the fire, Haney initiated legal proceedings against Garcia for having performance-enhancing substances in his system in their fight. The rivalry was already at a boiling point, and boxing should've struck while the iron was hot. But greed took over. The powers that be thought that the fight could be a little bit bigger. And by holding out for a tiny bit more, boxing keeps missing the moment — and ends up with a lot less.
Daily Mail
24-05-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Does your man have dreaded lizard skin? How to banish unsightly blemishes and get rid of 'skin Krispies'
In my capacity as self-elected matchmaker, I am always on the lookout for single older men. Functioning examples are, of course, a rarity. They are usually snapped up as soon as they come on the market. I was therefore delighted to be introduced at a business lunch to Iain, a prime specimen with all faculties intact: top job, 50something, cosy and engaging. Yet in the centre of Iain's forehead resided a raised colourless blob about the size of a broad bean. This threw me as I had to put all my mental energy into not letting my gaze wander towards it. What on earth was such a sophisticated man doing in not having this blob attended to? To me, it spoke of Iain's lack of aesthetic judgment and therefore he disqualified himself from my matchmaking books.
