Latest news with #myGod
The Herald Scotland
01-05-2025
- General
- The Herald Scotland
Trump's right-hand man is pretty smart, isn't he? Isn't he?
'One of the boys in my class used a slightly rude expletive,' revealed the teacher. 'So I naturally explained that it wasn't a nice thing to say.' She continued: 'Immediately, your Beatrice backed me up by saying, 'And Miss, you must never ever say 'Oh my God' or even 'For folk's sake', like my Uncle Harry does.' The Diary concludes that Beatrice is a very well-brought-up little girl. (Though we're not so sure about Uncle Harry.) Cruellest cut A Diary tale that took place in a hairdressing salon reminds David Donaldson of something that happened to his wife Marion. She phoned her salon and requested an appointment. 'Who did your hair the last time?' asked the receptionist. 'I can't remember,' replied Marion. 'Just give me the head cutter.' Healthy option Our readers continue impressing us with their exercise regimes. Chris Byers says: 'Every morning I get out of bed and do diddly-squats.' Future imperfect Depressed reader Jenny Casely says: 'The older I become, the less I feel that I have much to look forward to in the future. Adds Jenny: 'When I was younger I read my horoscope every single morning. I still do. Though nowadays I called it my horror-scope.' Fighting talk The modern shop assistant isn't as knowledgeable as the legendary sales person of yore, who had an answer to every query, no matter how esoteric. Leah Parkins visited one of the largest and best-stocked emporiums in Glasgow city centre, on the hunt for a punch bowl. She asked a young sales person if the store stocked such an item. 'Is that something to do with boxing?' replied the girl, a look of confusion flooding her face. 'I'm afraid we don't sell gym equipment here.' Hard to swallow Waiters can be exceedingly rude: a condition no doubt brought about because they have to stand on their feet all day, taking orders from smug people sitting in chairs. Albert Sullivan tells us he was once in a French restaurant with his wife, who asked the serving chap if there was anything she could eat which didn't have salt, sugar or fat. Without overly considering the matter, he replied: 'A napkin?' Kitchen cop-out Thought for the day from Donna Reynolds, who says: 'Any pan can be non-stick if I non-cook in it.'
Forbes
07-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
How Documentary ‘One To One: John And Yoko' Mirrors America In 2025
John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York in the 70s "When my editor, Sam Rice-Edwards, and I were making this, we could not believe that almost every day we were looking at it and saying, 'Oh my God. This is exactly what's going on in America right now,'" recalls director Kevin Macdonald as we discuss new documentary One to One: John and Yoko. "There was the first black woman running for President, and you had a right-wing populist who is running for President who gets shot on camera. Richard Nixon behaved with great skullduggery and used the power of the White House in an unconventional way. There are so many aspects of this, including the war in Vietnam, which is paralleled today with the war in Gaza and the divisions on the campuses of America, so it feels like we're living through the weird, warped repeat of what happened in the early 70s in America." The Oscar-winning filmmaker behind The Last King of Scotland uses never-before-seen Lennon family footage and audio, along with the musician's only full-length show after leaving The Beatles, the One to One benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, as the framework for the film. "I alternate on whether I think that's something the parallels with today are reassuring because it makes you realize that what is happening right now is not the end of the world because America has lived through this before, or whether it makes you think, 'Do we not learn anything? Do we keep just repeating the same mistakes?'" Macdonald muses. "I don't know, but it is remarkable. I didn't set out to make a film about today, but it feels that way." One to One: John and Yoko, which lands in theaters on Friday, April 11, 2025, in IMAX and theaters, delivers "an immersive cinematic experience" including never-before-seen material and newly restored footage of John and Yoko's only full-length concert and has been newly remixed and produced by Sean Ono Lennon. "That concert was released once on VHS in 1986 with terrible quality sound and picture, and the reason nothing else was ever done with it was because it was so badly recorded," Macdonald explains. "It's only now that it was able to be properly mixed because there was so much bleed-through from every track on the recording, and I think everyone was stoned when it was being recorded, so nobody did an excellent job. Only in the last couple of years, with the sound technology there is, was anyone able to make an amazing mix. This is the only full-length concert that John Lennon gave after The Beatles stopped touring in 1966. If you want to see him performing at his height, he's 32 years old, he's f**king great and so charismatic, then this is the show to see." One to One: John and Yoko is not the first time the filmmaker has tackled the narrative of an icon, having previously directed the acclaimed Whitney Houston documentary, Whitney. However, as with that piece, Macdonald needed to find a bigger story to weave around this legendary moment in time. He didn't want this film to be a concert movie because he felt it was more than that. "It was really about saying, 'Okay, so how do you create a film around that?' I've made a lot of music films and documentaries over the years, and I'm always interested in trying to do something different, to present the past in a different way," he muses. "This presented an opportunity to do an arts documentary, the premise of which was, 'How do you use the shards that are left behind by a life like this?' and not try and overly curate them into a neat narrative. Let's just take all these wonderful things that have not been used before, their home movies and news clips, and present them in a way that seems almost semi-random so that you get the feeling that you, yourself, the viewer, are looking through their archive. You're doing what I was doing, which is looking through the boxes of tapes, and out of that kind of kaleidoscope, you create your own feeling about what you think about them and about the times." Kevin Macdonald, director of 'One to One: John and Yoko.' That archive was key and threw up opportunities and realities that he hadn't anticipated, including an interview with John in which he talks about how when he first arrived in America. It struck a chord. "He learned about the country through TV. He spent so many of those eight years in America watching television. He was an addict, and he says that at the beginning of the film," Macdonald enthuses. "I related to that. I went to America for the first time in the 70s because I had an American grandmother, and we used to go often for holidays. Coming from three TV channels in Britain with the national anthem playing at midnight, and then it goes to black, you go to America, and you have suddenly got 150 channels and all the craziness of this country represented there." "I wanted to represent that experience as a European going to America at that time, the madness and fun of seeing the world presented in front of you in your living room. That's why I recreated the apartment. On one level, this film is about John and Yoko sitting on their bed watching TV, which doesn't sound very appealing, but other than the concert, it's the other thing in the movie." Sean Lennon, John and Yoko's son, became integral to the creative process. He gave Macdonald access to everything he had from that period because it "sounded like something his mother would love." The director remembers the first moment he started unpacking the treasure trove. "These drives showed up from the Lennon archive, and there were hours of this home video footage, filmed in black and white with an early form of a video called Portapak," he recalls. "There was footage from the world feminist conference, John and Yoko in their apartment singing and rehearsing, and then there was all these rushes from a documentary that was never actually made about Yoko's art exhibition that she had in upstate New York. We were fortunate that this is the only period in John and Yoko's lives that you could have done a film like this. At no other period did they allow the cameras in so much and want to be filmed." "Halfway through the edit, I got a phone call from Simon Hilton, who works with the family and oversees all their archive, and he said, 'We found these tapes in a box that says audio recordings 1972. Do you want to have a listen? We have no idea what they are,' and it turned out to be recordings of all their phone calls. That real treasure trove gives you John and Yoko's unfiltered, intimate voices in a way that most people probably haven't heard before." Yoko Ono and John Lennon in 'One to One: John and Yoko.' Macdonald knew from the outset that he wanted the audience to have the same unfiltered experience "of all the great bits." "There is that experience of when you go through a box of archive and you think, 'Oh, my God. What's this? I can't believe they're saying that.' To have that sense of chaos is amazing, but you're also piecing together what you think about these people from these seemingly disparate random bits. The voices of John Yoko come across very clearly, and I wanted the use of all these different clips to give you a sense of John and Yoko's emotional life in a way that we haven't seen before." But it wasn't always easy. "You really feel like you understand their relationship to Yoko's daughter, her being kidnapped, and how that affected both of them, particularly Yoko," the filmmaker concludes. "This theme of damaged children and their own difficult childhoods comes through the documentary. It's how they see these children who are being mistreated at a state-run institution in upstate New York called Willowbrook when they see that on TV, and that's what leads them to do this concert in the first place. I wanted you to have emotional access to John and Yoko that maybe you haven't had before."
CNN
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Rosamund Pike had a hairy situation filming with Pierce Brosnan, literally
Rosamund Pike has let us know that while Pierce Brosnan may not have been shaken or stirred on the set of their James Bond film, she believed he was stripped a bit. In a conversation this week's on David Tennant's podcast, Pike recalled filming the 2002 James Bond film 'Die Another Day' in which appeared with Brosnan and Halle Berry. Pike was 22 at the time, playing Bond girl Miranda Frost opposite Brosnan. During a love scene filmed on a bed with faux furs, Pike said was wearing nipple covers secured with tape. 'We have this clinch, and then we separate, and I look at this body tape and the nipple covers and they're covered in hair,' Pike recalled on the podcast. 'I think, 'Oh my God, I'm waxing Pierce's chest.'' The 'Gone Girl' actress said she was 'mortified' by what she believed was happening. 'I thought, 'Oh my God, he's so brave, and I'm pulling off his chest hair with every embrace,'' she said. 'It took a couple of takes to realize it was not him. It was the fake fur of the rugs.' Pike had a laugh as she remembered that she 'literally thought I was waxing the poor man's chest.' It was the first blockbuster film for Pike, who has since gone on to star in other movies like 'Jack Reacher' in 2012 and 'Saltburn' in 2023. Brosnan played Bond in three other films: 1995's 'GoldenEye,' 1997's 'Tomorrow Never Dies' and 1999's 'The World Is Not Enough.'
CNN
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Rosamund Pike had a hairy situation filming with Pierce Brosnan, literally
Rosamund Pike has let us know that while Pierce Brosnan may not have been shaken or stirred on the set of their James Bond film, she believed he was stripped a bit. In a conversation this week's on David Tennant's podcast, Pike recalled filming the 2002 James Bond film 'Die Another Day' in which appeared with Brosnan and Halle Berry. Pike was 22 at the time, playing Bond girl Miranda Frost opposite Brosnan. During a love scene filmed on a bed with faux furs, Pike said was wearing nipple covers secured with tape. 'We have this clinch, and then we separate, and I look at this body tape and the nipple covers and they're covered in hair,' Pike recalled on the podcast. 'I think, 'Oh my God, I'm waxing Pierce's chest.'' The 'Gone Girl' actress said she was 'mortified' by what she believed was happening. Prev Next 'I thought, 'Oh my God, he's so brave, and I'm pulling off his chest hair with every embrace,'' she said. 'It took a couple of takes to realize it was not him. It was the fake fur of the rugs.' Pike had a laugh as she remembered that she 'literally thought I was waxing the poor man's chest.' It was the first blockbuster film for Pike, who has since gone on to star in other movies like 'Jack Reacher' in 2012 and 'Saltburn' in 2023. Brosnan played Bond in three other films: 1995's 'GoldenEye,' 1997's 'Tomorrow Never Dies' and 1999's 'The World Is Not Enough.'
Axios
28-01-2025
- Business
- Axios
Trump's spending pause creates chaos in Colorado
The Trump administration halted federal grants and financial assistance programs Tuesday, sparking widespread confusion and throwing Colorado budgets into chaos. State of play: The extent of the impact is hard to underestimate, government officials said. Federal dollars account for 30% of the state's $40 billion annual budget and hundreds of millions go to Denver and surrounding localities. Moreover, area hospitals and nonprofits receive huge sums in federal aid each year. What they're saying: "It doesn't look great for the people of Colorado," said Sen. Jeff Bridges (D-Greenwood Village), the chair of the legislative Joint Budget Committee. Between the lines: The temporary pause, outlined in a memo from the White House Office of Management and Budget, is designed to give the new administration time to review agency spending. Agencies have until Feb. 10 to submit detailed information on any programs, projects or activities subject to the pause. The memo says the pause "does not include assistance provided directly to individuals." Yes, but: It's creating chaos at the state level, where lawmakers are midway through crafting the next spending plan for the 2025-26 fiscal year. State budget writers were left dumbfounded and scrambling to determine affected programs. "It's an 'Oh my God,'" said state Rep. Emily Sirota (D-Denver), a state budget writer. "I think we're all trying to figure out what it means." U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, the state's former Democratic governor, said in a statement that the pause would stop money for "our police departments, our rural hospitals, programs for homeless veterans [and] nearly 9,000 kids in Colorado Head Start programs may be locked out." By the numbers: The federal government was projected to contribute $13.4 billion to state-level programs. The bulk — 74% — is earmarked for health care and related safety net programs. Between the lines: Beyond the Trump administration's suspension, Colorado budget writers are wary about what's to come from Washington in terms of spending cuts. "There are any number of things that can be done that could dramatically change our budget and our ability to serve Coloradans in the way we do," Sirota said. Zoom in: Denver received approximately $100 million in federal dollars in its 2025 budget, primarily through grants. Joshua Rosenblum, a spokesperson for Denver's Department of Finance, said that money went toward critical infrastructure improvements, overdose prevention and other areas. Additionally, the Regional Transportation District received $150 million from the Federal Transit Administration to help complete the East Colfax rapid transit line. This is a developing story. Check back for more details.
