Latest news with #Lumiere
Japan Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Uh-oh, is the rest of the world making JRPGs better than Japan?
Hailed as 2025's first bonafide game-of-the-year candidate, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 released on April 24 from out of absolutely nowhere. More surprisingly, its gameplay and narrative, heavily influenced by Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs), were crafted by a team with little to do with Japan at all. Developed by French studio Sandfall Interactive, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 sets the player in a Belle Epoque-inspired world devastated by an enigmatic apocalypse that annually culls survivors of progressively younger ages. As the game begins, the lone bastion city of Lumiere gathers to bid farewell to all 33-year-old residents as well as Expedition 33, the latest in a long line of doomed task forces charged with traveling to a distant continent where, it's believed, lies a solution to the deepening crisis. You'd be right for thinking none of that sounds particularly Japanese, but make no mistake: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is not only a JRPG, a genre that has outstripped the geographical limitations its name might suggest, but it's quite possibly the best JRPG of the decade to date. So what even is a JRPG? In the 1980s and '90s, a cut-and-dry definition of 'role-playing games made in Japan' sufficed, but the gameplay mechanics established in this era — turn-based combat, an overworld punctuated by smaller dungeons and recruitable party members often differentiated by specializations like physical damage, magic-wielding or healing powers, etc. — came to define the genre as a whole. Aesthetics and narrative style also developed their own JRPG niches. The former increasingly took on anime-influenced character designs and voice acting idiosyncrasies, and the latter came to embrace predefined stories (as opposed to ones that change based on player choice) of ragtag groups of ostensibly ordinary adventurers drawn into world-altering struggles with kings, demons, gods and more. The tricky thing is that none of these elements are unique to JRPGs as a genre, and if one or more of them are missing, that doesn't necessarily disqualify a game from the label. More often than not, what separates a Western-style RPG like Baldur's Gate 3 from a JRPG like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 — both developed by non-Japanese studios — is an 'I know it when I see it' litmus test, as ambiguous in some cases as it is foolproof in others. In Clair Obscur: Expedition 33's case, I see a JRPG when I look at this game, which raises a more pressing question than a debate over what is or isn't a JRPG: Why aren't Japanese developers cranking out the type of games that once made the genre the source of some of gaming's best efforts? While developers outside of Japan are making games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, some of the pillars of the country's domestic JRPG scene are focused on remakes and remasters. | SANDFALL INTERACTIVE By critical metrics, the last truly great Japanese-developed JRPG was 2016's Persona 5 (with honorable mention to 2019's Kingdom Hearts III). Last year's Metaphor: ReFantazio was an admirable stab at a new story and setting from former Persona devs, but otherwise, the domestic JRPG scene has since become dominated by remasters and remakes. Industry giant Square Enix is preoccupied not only with sticking the landing on the third and final installment of its multipart remake of 1997's Final Fantasy VII, but it's also working on a remake of the original Dragon Quest (1986) and Dragon Quest II (1988) — following up a similar reworking of Dragon Quest III (1988) released earlier this year. This is hardly a problem specific to Square Enix. Over at Nintendo, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition released in March, remaking the 2015 game of the same name (setting aside the discussion of whether a 10-year-old game needs a remake at all). It's not that these remasters and re-releases make for objectively bad games, but they do little to move JRPGs as a genre forward. The plucky studios of Japan's past have since become or been subsumed into giant corporations, whose inexorable profit motive rewards commoditization of nostalgia over creative and financial risks aimed at the future. Meanwhile, developers outside Japan continue to experiment with the genre. In 2022, German developer Matthias Linda released Chained Echoes to critical acclaim, and in 2023, Sea of Stars, developed by Montreal-based Sabotage Studio, drew similarly high praise. These games were small in graphical scale, but they were original efforts that drew inspiration from JRPGs' earlier eras instead of repurposing and repacking them. Now, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has set a new high-water mark in modern JRPGs. The next mainline Dragon Quest game is still at least a year or two away from launch, and the Final Fantasy franchise has no releases planned for 2025. So if Japan is to answer the call set down by France's triumph, it just might have to be a daring unknown, a tried-and-true genre trope, that puts Japan-made JRPGs back on the map.
West Australian
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- West Australian
Disney's Beauty And The Beast musical to illuminate Crown Theatre Perth with Rohan Browne as Lumiere
No one could have foreseen musical theatre performer Rohan Browne's moment on a lamppost as Don Lockwood in the Australian production of Singin' In The Rain as a precursor to his current illuminating role in Beauty And The Beast. Yet Browne's current undertaking as the world's most famous talking candelabra Lumiere is not his first brush with the Disney musical, based on the company's groundbreaking 1991 animated film. With a background in ballet, Browne was a teenager studying at Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School when seeing the original Australian Beauty And The Beast production multiple times in 1995 — starring Rachel Beck, Michael Cormick, Hugh Jackman and Bert Newton — made him more determined than ever to pursue a career in musical theatre. 'If you've seen the cartoon, the original iteration of Lumiere was the fun, funny light in the castle who also gets to do a big number,' 45-year-old Browne says from his home in Melbourne. 'Aside from the title number, Be Our Guest is the big kind of showstopper, so there's a lot of pressure to really reach those heights, and I've put my own spin on it, as any actor does. They want to come at it with fresh eyes.' Browne's performance of Be Our Guest includes an extended dance break from the original stage production, taking it to a pulse-racing 11-minute extravaganza. 'It's Disney. They don't do things by halves, do they?' he laughs. 'It's pretty amazing to lead that number. It's a challenge. I don't ever rest on my laurels. I never get used to it. There's always something to work on or improve or find other little moments in it, even though we've been doing it for coming up to two years. 'That number aside, there's also the sentimental moments that we have of really trying to get the Beast to understand that this is our last chance before the curse really takes hold of us, this is his last opportunity… I really kind of see Lumiere as kind of the Beast or the Prince's fun uncle — the one who he kind of looks to because Cogsworth is too fuddy-duddy and strict.' Beauty And The Beast was the first Disney film adapted as a Broadway musical in 1994, this tale as old as time featuring the animation's original music by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, with additional lyrics by Tim Rice. 'When director and choreographer Matt West talks about him going to Disney and being like 'This is the perfect thing to start Disney Theatrical', it really is,' Browne says. 'It's got this beautiful heroine; a strong, powerful woman who stands in her power and stands in her truth, which was the antithesis of anything else that they'd really kind of done.' While the production still has all that old-school live musical magic, Browne believes the updated technology used throughout this reimagined Australian version, which premiered at Sydney's Capitol Theatre in June 2023, is rather spectacular. 'It's nostalgic for the older generation who have seen it before, but for new theatre-goers, or people who haven't seen the show before, they're going to be wowed,' Browne says. 'You hear a lot of gasping when certain elements happen, like when the Prince transforms into the Beast in the prologue and when he transforms from the Beast back to the Prince. How Chip comes on stage, how all of the trickery happens in Gaston and how Be Our Guest just keeps going and going. All of these incredible theatrical elements are thrown out there.' Without wanting to wax lyrical, Browne says he is loving his time on the Beauty And The Beast stage, not only as part of the musical's legacy but also for what it has meant to his family, particularly his four-year-old Duke. 'He still hasn't managed to be able to sit through the whole show because he gets scared of the Beast,' Browne says of his son with wife and fellow musical theatre performer Christie Whelan Browne. 'But he'll watch the Be Our Guest performance we did for Sunrise 15 times a day. I think he knows it better than I do.' Beauty And The Beast is at Crown Theatre Perth from July 24. Tickets at
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Lynne Ramsay On How Critics Are Misreading Her Buzzy Cannes Title ‘Die My Love': 'This Postpartum Thing Is Bulls***t'
Die My Love, the latest feature from Scottish filmmaker Lynne Ramsay, was one of the hottest titles heading into this year's Cannes Film Festival, and the film's stock has only grown following a headline-grabbing $24 million acquisition by Mubi. The film has been divisive on the ground in Cannes and is still a hot talking point up and down the Croisette. But did anyone who watched the film in the Lumiere on Friday actually understand it? Ramsay, a Cannes Film Festival vet, is skeptical. More from Deadline Mubi Pays $24M For Jennifer Lawrence-Robert Pattinson Drama 'Die My Love' In First Big Sale At Cannes Jennifer Lawrence On Playing Mother Struggling With Depression In 'Die My Love': 'I'm Not An Actor Who Brings The Work Home' Cannes Film Festival 2025: Read All Of Deadline's Movie Reviews RELATED: 'This whole postpartum thing is just bullshit,' Ramsay said Monday afternoon of the discourse surrounding her movie during a fireside chat with veteran film journalist and critic Elvis Mitchell here in Cannes. 'It's not about that. It's about a relationship breaking down, it's about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it's also about a creative block.' Starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson, Die My Love tells the story of a young couple who leave their comfortable lives in New York City for a quieter life in rural Montana. They live a life of passion, but after they have a baby, their relationship is shaken to its core. The pic is based on the 2017 novel by Ariana Harwicz and also stars LaKeith Stanfield, Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte. Ramsay directed Die My Love from her script, written with Enda Walsh and Alice Birch. Producers include Justine Ciarrocchi and Lawrence on behalf of Excellent Cadaver, as well as Martin Scorsese, Andrea Calderwood, and Black Label Media's Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill, and Thad Luckinbill. The latter served as the financier. RELATED: Later during the session with Mitchell, Ramsay broke down how Lawrence ended up in the pic alongside Pattinson, telling the audience that the Oscar winner had reached out to her to express her interest in collaborating. Ramsay said that she 'probably didn't get back to her for six months,' but the pair reconnected, with Ramsay suggesting a different project. But the filmmaker said Lawrence persisted. 'She said, 'What about this Die My Love?' But I said I don't want to do something like We Need to Talk About Kevin. I'd like to do something light. Because people like to box you in,' Ramsay said of her early conversations with Lawrence. Ramsay's 2011 feature We Need to Talk About Kevin is a psychological thriller about the strained relationship between a teenager and his parents. Tilda Swinton, John C. Reilly and Ezra Miller star. RELATED: After some convincing, Ramsay said she wrote a first draft for Die My Love, and she ultimately discovered her interest in the project. As Deadline reported first, Mubi's deal on the film includes a full domestic theatrical commitment on 1,500 screens for 45 days. The streamer/distributor took the following territories: North America, Latin America, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Benelux, Turkey, India, Australia and New Zealand. It's the first major deal on the ground for a film playing at Cannes and by far Mubi's biggest acquisition ever. The 78th Cannes Film Festival runs through Saturday. RELATED: RELATED: Full List Of Cannes Palme d'Or Winners Through The Years: Photo GalleryBest of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies In Order - See Tom Cruise's 30-Year Journey As Ethan Hunt Denzel Washington's Career In Pictures: From 'Carbon Copy' To 'The Equalizer 3'
The Independent
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
This little-known Croatian region makes wine loved by the royal family – with bottles as cheap as £4
If Hobbiton had a love child with the Loire Valley, the offspring would be Zmajevac: a tiny winemaking community in the region of Slavonia, rural Croatia, famous for its adorable gabled wine cellars (known as 'gators') which burrow their rear ends into the hill so the bottles can chill amid the cool mud. Wandering through the village, exploring each of Zmajevac's two rival 'wine streets' – one traditionally Catholic, one Protestant – I realised I had never seen so many cellars in such a concentrated area in my life. I passed dozens of these gators, many of which house restaurants or bars and spill out onto the steep cobbled street. With its quirky tasting room, full of old typewriters and crockery cabinets, Josić quickly caught our attention. I stopped for a free tasting, sipping crisp whites made from chardonnay and the local graševina grape before moving onto beefy reds that made me jealous of the people in Josić's restaurant being ladled steaming meat stew out of enormous cauldrons. Croatian wine may not be particularly well-known internationally, but it has been quietly accumulating awards, gaining a cult following among those in the know. And one of those people just happened to be Britain's late monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Wine from Slavonia was served at the queen's coronation in 1953 and has been served at many of the most important royal events since then, including the weddings of both the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As I learned over the next few days, the connections between the British royal family and this relatively unknown wine region of Croatia do not end there. I based myself in Osijek, the regional capital, and spent the next few days following in the footsteps of Queen Elizabeth II and the current King Charles. Both have visited (and loved) Slavonia; Queen Elizabeth's great-grandfather Franz, Duke of Teck, was actually born in Osijek. Hiring a pair of rental bikes for the bargain price of €0.66 for 30 minutes, I began to explore with a local guide. With a similar mix of Art Nouveau, Baroque and medieval architecture, the city resembles a rustic Prague or Budapest, except less imposing and with almost no other visitors. 'In the summer, everyone in Croatia escapes to the coast,' said our guide Renata Forjan. 'And most international visitors have never heard of Slavonia. They just head straight to the coast, which is a big shame.' She explained that Slavonia is not about mass tourism: 'It's peaceful and quiet. People come for the gastronomy, the wine, the craft beer, culture and nature.' Lunch was a glamorous pitstop at Lumiere, a restaurant with a lovely al fresco dining terrace filled with pot plants and a chalkboard menu next to the river. The thick slabs of kulen (a local take on chorizo) with sour cream dip, followed by melting joint of black pig – the regional delicacy – were welcome fuel after the cycling. Despite being one of the smartest restaurants in town, main courses began at just €10 (£8.40). The following day, I ventured to the countryside to explore more wineries and were pleasantly surprised to find that prices remained remarkably affordable. At Vina Belje, one of the most respected wineries in the country, bottles started from just €5 (£4.20). You can also take a fascinating tour of the cellars which were turned into jails during Ottoman times when drinking was discouraged. Metal bolts where prisoners' chains used to hang peeped out between the enormous oak barrels. Everywhere we went felt deliciously untouristy, too. Locals were low-key but friendly – and it was easy to see why the royals had kept this place their little secret. But how long, I wondered, could that secret last? Last year Ryanair launched a direct flight from London to Osijek, a connection which hasn't existed for several years and which could boost visitor numbers. What's more, Slavonia recently got its first ever luxury hotel (by international standards). Hotel Materra, which opened last year, feels a world away from the rest of Slavonia. Its sleek glass-and-concrete architecture snakes around a central courtyard with an infinity pond and soaring ginkgo trees. I spent several happy hours in the extensive spa area, hopping between the sauna, infinity pool and outdoor jacuzzi, all of which looked out over acres of open field. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, despite the hotel being situated just an 18-minute drive from the centre of Osijek and 27 minutes from the airport. Rooms begin at €197 (£165) including breakfast which, considering the quality of the rooms and services, was impressive – and would easily be double in a better-known wine region. With prices like this, what was once the British royal family's best kept secret could be about to hit the mainstream, I reflected. Although I doubt I'll bump into King Charles on the next Ryanair flight.
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Date set for Lumiere Durham 2025 - here's all the details you need to know
A date for this year's Lumiere Durham has been set, as details of the event have been set out by organisers. The hugely popular event will take place over three evenings this autumn, from Thursday, November 13 to Saturday, November 15, 2025. Produced and curated by Artichoke and commissioned by Durham County Council, Lumiere, which happens every other year, has attracted over 1.3 million visitors and boosted the local economy by more than £43 million since it began in 2009. Lumiere Durham pictured Javiers Riera's Liquid Geometry from November 2023 (Image: SARAH CALDECOTT) For Lumiere's 9th edition, a brand new programme has been revealed. According to organisers, this year, Lumiere 2025 will continue to "enchant visitors" and locals in a revised format, taking place over three evenings, from Thursday to Saturday, 13-15 November. Durham Lumiere 2021 - 'Lampounette' by TILT, France (Image: STUART BOULTON) Lumiere 2025 offers new opportunities for the local community to take part in and develop skills, showcasing County Durham's creativity on a national stage. People connected to the event are inviting local businesses and individuals to make a difference and invest in Lumiere. Durham Lumiere 2023 - Rafael Lozano-Hemmer's Pulse Topology (Image: SARAH CALDECOTT) With arts funding under pressure, organisers have urged people to invest in the popular event. Artichoke has welcomed new major partners, Prima Cheese and Northern Powergrid, alongside longstanding supporters such as Durham University, EMG Solicitors, MGL Construction, Radisson Blu Durham, New College Durham, and Ramside Hall Hotel. If people want to be part of the event, get in touch with Artichoke's development director, Ma'ayan Plane (Ma' Artistic director of Artichoke, Helen Marriage said: 'We're so excited to be returning to Durham to programme the next edition of Lumiere, the landmark cultural event in the North East. Durham Lumiere 2021 - 'Heron' by Jon Voss (Image: STUART BOULTON) "As well as providing a unique platform for some of the world's greatest artists, and giving everyone the chance to see great art, Lumiere has been consistent over the years in bringing tangible benefits to the local community, building the local economy and training local kids. "It is made possible only because of the amazing partnerships forged over the years with Durham County Council, Arts Council England, and Durham's local institutions and businesses who all invest in the event to bring wider benefits to the community.' Cllr Amanda Hopgood, Leader of Durham County Council and portfolio holder for Culture, Creative, Tourism and Sport at the North East Combined Authority added: 'Lumiere is a shining example of the transformative power of culture on our communities, our businesses and our wider economy. Recommended reading: Amazon chooses Darlington for UK first drone deliveries to your street County Durham MP calls for extra funding for rural schools with small budgets Review into the dangers of ketamine welcomed by Durham PCC as abuse of drug soars "It has played a crucial role in establishing Durham as the Culture County, inspiring similar events across the world and continuing our long-standing tradition of innovation and investment in the arts. "From the thousands of residents who have taken part in outreach activities, to the businesses that have benefited from the increased footfall, to the 1.3 million people who have been blown away by the spectacular light installations – the positive impact of Lumiere cannot be overstated. 'We're delighted to commission Artichoke and to work with partners including Arts Council England and generous sponsors to bring Lumiere to County Durham once again in 2025."
