#American Music Award winner

[silver-horse]

bg3 didn't win best music.... wtf

[joegramoe]

Ms Emmylou Harris

Because of course🏆

[racew1nn3rs]

─ 𝘚𝘌𝘊𝘙𝘌𝘛𝘚, 𝘚𝘌𝘊𝘙𝘌𝘛𝘚 🫀

max verstappen x singer!fem reader // smau

⤷ summary: when max verstappen starts commenting on the posts of the beloved singer y/n l/n, fans are confused and less than enthusiastic at the new friendship. what they could never expect is just how long they've been 'friends'...

based on this request <3

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liked by sabrinacarpenter, maxverstappen1, and 46,908 others

tagged sabrinacarpenter

ynusername my new album is now officially out on all platforms! thank you so so much for all of the love and support, and special thanks to sab for her feature on the song <33 love u bb girl 🫦🫦 now that the album's out, tour next!!! see you all soon!

23,560 comments

user1 THE ALBUM OUT. THIS IS NOT A DRILL PEOPLE THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

user2 i cannot be normal about this i fear

user3 ik her back hurts from CARRYING the music industry on her back 😩

user4 hey so WHO TF IS SO AMERICAN ABOUT?? A LOVE SONG

user5 y/n writing a love song in god's year of 2024... wow

user6 y/n in the top 10 charts, fork found in kitchen

user7 sabrina and y/n are never beating the gf allegations

ynusername damn right we're not 😏

user7 HOLY SHIR HOKY SHIT HOKST SHUT

user8 y/n's in love and it's not with me, hanging myself as we speak

user9 the comment is gonna get reported but so real op

user8 can't a woman hang herself in peace 😣

user10 album's such a banger i had this shit bumpin at my grandmas funeral 🙏🏼 rest in piece nancy 🕊️💪🏻

user11 OH MY GOD???

user12 rest in piece nancy you would've loved make you mine 😔

ynusername oh my god please tell me your joking

user10 sorry queen the grind never stops

ynusername NO SHOT

maxverstappen1 great album! 👍🏼

user13 why does he text like my father 🧍🏻‍♀️

user14 brother eughh

user15 what da hell is a polar bear doin in arlington texas

ynusername thank you max!!!

user16 y/n l/n to redbull in 2025

user17 hellurrrrr who is this man in ur likes y/n

user18 f1 driver!!

user17 Y/N NO ATHELETES PLEAEJEWK 🫵

user18 tour content soon??? i'm sat

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user19 bro looks like he snuck onto earth, get his ass outta here

user20 grammy-award winner, vogue cover model, new york university graduate and Some Fucking Guy

user21 not y'all coming to her defense like the mighty morphin power rangers 💀💀 he's literally a world class athete and she writes pop music

user20 17.172.224.47

user21 IS THAT MY IP ADDRESS??

user20 melinda charleton

user22 IS THAT HIS MOTHER'S NAME!!?1?1!

user20 you want me to do you too???

user22 no we good 😃

user23 ruth bader ginsberg did not die for this

user24 now wtf does this have to do with babe ruth 🤨

user25 WHOOOOO 😧

user24 ... that wasn't right was it

user26 now let's be fr he does NAWT have a chance

user27 have u seen the marble-carved  goddesses these men pull, i fear he does 😔

user28 please no i feel ill

user29 TWO???? OH HELL NAW

user30 two might be pushing it, only one was confirmed

user31 jesus christ

user32 first taylor, now this

user33 yall, all he commented was great album 💀💀 yall are LEAPING to conclusions

user34 what can i say it's an art

user35 i do not see 👁️👄👁️

user36 no like 💀💀 im in your walls

user37 haha max verstappen!! right!!! (theres a sniper at ur location)

user38 omg ur so right 🤩 it is about him (i have a bomb strapped to my chest)

user39 i dont mean to sound stupid, idk who that man is, if i saw him on the streets i wouldnt know a thing 🥱

user40 this is so random too like what 😭

user41 the power of kindness won't work here, i have to throw him off a building

user42 i used to be a max verslsjjwwo lover 🤩 now im just a max verslsjjwwo hater 😔

user43 NURSE 🫵 SHE'S OUT AGAIN

user44 why would u put that into the universe 😧

user45 alright, lets get you to bed grandma

user46 mari stop being delusion and go touch grass 🧍🏻‍♀️

user47 ENOUGHHHH

user48 ain't no way in hell 😭

user49 ik ur feet hurt from all this jumping to conclusions babe

user50 lets leave the parkour to the athletes 😃

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liked by maxverstappen1, landonorris, and 54,789 others

ynusername italy thanks for letting me be inside you (; it was such a lovely show, expect me back asap!!!!

15,267 comments

user51 IT WAS SO GOOD I THNK I BLACKED OUT THE WHOLE TIME THO

user52 oh!

user51 oh so now this isn't a safe space

user53 LANDO AND MAX IN TGE LIKES??? NO NO NO NO

user54 ABORT ABORT ABORT

user55 y'all are doing too much 🙄 she's one of the top artists in the world, i think it's safe to say they might like her music

user56 the second picture 🧎🏻‍♀️do you need a stool cause i can kneel and be really quiet

user57 y/n fans be normal challenge (impossible!!!) (never done before)

user56 WOMP WOMP

maxverstappen1 wonderful show! 🙏🏼 you are so talented

ynusername ty max (: im glad you could come see me

user57 ain't NO WAYYYYYY

user59 THIS IS SIXKENJNG IM GONNA PUKE

sabrinacarpenter my gf looking sexy 🫦🫦🫦

ynusername only for u bbg 🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️

user60 BOOOO 🗣️ GET A ROOM

user61 do y'all need a third!!!!

user62 mamma mia pizza pasta mozzerella moment

user63 i just put u on a watchlist

user62 🧍🏻‍♀️

landonorris RAHHHHHH 🦅🫵🗣️‼️

ynusername RAHHH RAHHH RAHHH RISE POWER POWER 💪🏻‼️

user63 what the fuck

user64 OH GOD WHAT IF SHES DATING HIM????

ynusername brother eughhhh

landonorris WHAT THE FUCK????

user65 SINCE WHEN IS SHE FRIENDS WITH F1 DRIVERS HOW MANY CHAPTWRS DID I MISS

user66 apparently we all went into a universal coma while she was out galavanting cause idk how else this could've happened

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maxverstappen1 posted to his story!

(caption: beautiful show)

22,456 replies

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user67 someone save my girl bro, she don't know any better 😭

user68 it's like a little kid trying to touch the hot stove, LIKE STOP THAT!! DON'T DO THAT

user69 am i the only one who thinks they'd be cute together....

user70 YES!?!?

user71 there is literally no fucking way he bagged her

user72 losing y/n to european f1 driver would be the biggest american tragedy since 2001

user73 i had to read this shit twice, op what r u waffling abt 🫵😧

user74 can't even be nonchalant about this one bro, i'm chalanting hard asf

user75 we do not care

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liked by redbullracing, f1, and 78,567 others

tagged maxverstappen1

ynusername first time in monaco, safe to say i enjoyed myself! so happy to see you shine this time my love<3

25,788 comments

user76 oh. my. fucking. god

user77 THEYRE FUCKING DATING OH MYFODNSJ

user78 THAT SHOULD BE MEEEE HOLDING YOUR HAND THAT SHOULD BE MEEE MAKING YOU LAUGHHH 🎤

user79 i'm in mourning

sabrinacarpenter CHEATER 🫵

ynusername BABY IT'S NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE, IT WAS JUST ONE TIME 😣😣😣 IT WAS A MISTAKE

maxverstappen1 we've been dating for 2 years??

sabrinacarpenter SHUT UP FAST & FURIOUS NO ONE ASKED YOU

user80 i'm sorry 😃 two Y EARS

user81 i feel like i just got dumped. y/n don't do this, the kids need you 😔

maxverstappen1 i got p1 for you, i love you 🫶🏼

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hope you all enjoyed! please let me know your thoughts and feel free to leave a request for me to write something for your fav <3

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Nelly - Hot in Herre 2002

"Hot in Herre" is a song by American rapper Nelly, released as the lead single from his second album Nellyville (2002). It was written by Nelly, Charles Brown, and the producers the Neptunes. It features additional vocals by former labelmate Dani Stevenson and incorporates Chuck Brown's 1979 single "Bustin' Loose".

On April 15, 2002, "Hot in Herre" received over 760,000 streams on AOL Music's First Listen feature following its debut, setting a record for the website. The song was the inaugural winner of the Grammy Award for Best Male Rap Solo Performance at the 45th Annual Grammy Awards on February 23, 2003. In 2008, it was ranked number 36 on VH1's "100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop". The song became Nelly's first number one hit on the US Billboard Hot 100 and in Canada. It peaked at number four in the UK and reached the top 10 in several other international markets. The song was number three on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 Singles Chart for 2002.

Nellyville debuted at the top of the US Billboard 200. It remained at number one for four non-consecutive weeks and was eventually certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for shipments of over six million equivalent-units in sales, which allowed Nellyville to become Nelly's second number-one, multi-platinum, and top-10 album in the US following his debut album Country Grammar in 2000. As of March 16, 2011, Nellyville sold 6,488,000 copies in the US, and it became the 14th best-selling rap album of all time. Internationally, it peaked at number two on the album charts in the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and New Zealand.

"Hot in Herre" received a total of 74,2% yes votes!

[funkopersonal]

Here's your daily reminder that...

Jews are only 0.2% of the worlds population but...

Jews make up 14% of the World Total and 38% of the United States of America total winners for the Nobel Prize for Literature (source).

Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and 2023, at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. (source)

Jews make up 14% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 18% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry; 53% of the total winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction (source).

Jews make up 39% of the total winners of the Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award for Best Play; 54% of the total winners of the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical (with 62% of all Composers and 66% of all Lyricists of Best Musical-winning productions being Jewish) (source).

Jews make up 40% of the total winners of the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Original Screenplay; and 34% of the total winners of the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (source).

Although Jews constitute only 3% of the U.S. population...

80% of the nation’s professional comedians are Jewish (source).

90% of American comic book creators are jewish (source)

38% of the recipients of the United States National Medal of Science are Jewish (Source).

Jews are very successful, with educational levels higher than all other U.S. ethnic groups with the exception of Asian Americans, and income levels the highest of all groups. Six out of ten Jewish adults have college degrees, and 41% of Jewish families report a household income of $75,000 or more��� (source)

Jews are a minority across the globe. We've been historically opressed and hated. But these key figures from history are all Jewish and loved, yet many don't even know they're jewish (or they don't know these people in the first place!):

Stan Lee (birth name: Stanley Martin Lieber) - An American comic book writer and editor, Former executive vice president and publisher of marvel Comics, creator of iron-man, spider-man, and more.

Albert Einstein - a Theoretical physicist, Received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, developed the theory of relativity and the "worlds most famous equation"  (E = mc^2), and more.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, co-authored the initial law school casebook on sex discrimination, co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU in 1972, and more.

Jack Kirby (birth name: Jacob Kurtzberg) - an American comic book artist, co-creator of Captain America, one of the most influential comic book artists

Harry Houdini (birth name: Erich Weisz) - a Hungarian-American escape artist, illusionist, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts.

Emma Lazarus - An American author remembered for her sonnet "The New Colossus," Inspired by The Statue of Liberty and inscribed on its pedestal as of 1903.

Julius Rosenthal, Lillian Wald, Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, Stephen Wise, and Henry Moskowitz - Jewish activists that helped form the NAACP along with W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Mary Church Terrell.

Mark Zuckerberg - Founder and CEO of Meta, a businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook, and within four years became the world’s youngest self-made billionaire Harvard alumni.

Joseph Pulitzer - a politician and newspaper publisher, his endowment to the Columbia University established the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917, he founded the Columbia School of Journalism which opened in 1912.

Jacob William Davis - a Latvian tailor who is credited with inventing modern jeans and who worked with Levi Strauss to patent and mass-produce them, died.

Irving Berlin - drafted at age 30 to write morale-boosting songs for military revues (including “God Bless America”). Many Berlin songs remained popular for decades, including “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” “Cheek to Cheek,” ��Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better),” “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” and two celebrating Christian holidays: “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.”

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - received his doctorate in Berlin. He was arrested by the Nazis in 1938, moved to the U.S. in 1940, and became an influential figure in the 1960s, marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and speaking out against the Vietnam War.

Elie Wiesel - Romanian-American writer and professor, holocaust survivor, nobel laureate, political activist. Authored 57 books including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps

Bob Dylan - an icon of folk, rock and protest music, won the Nobel Prize in literature for his complex and poetic lyrics.

J. Robert Oppenheimer - ran the Manhattan Project, considered the "father of the atomic Bomb," presented with the Enrico Fermi Award by President Lyndon Johnson.

Betty Friedan - co-founded the National Organization of Women and became its first president, wrote The Feminine Mystique (1963) and helped spark the second wave of feminism.

Gloria Steinem - one of the most prominent feminists of all time, launched Ms. Magazine and co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus with Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Betty Friedan and Myrlie Evers-Williams, widow of Medgar Evers.

Sergey Brin - an American businessman best known for co-founding Google with Larry Page, president of Alphabet Inc.

Judith Heumann - a founder of the disability rights movement, led a 26-day sit-in at a federal building in San Francisco. The protest spurred implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, a precursor to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Larry Kramer - co-founded Gay Men’s Health Crisis in response to the AIDS epidemic but was soon ousted over his confrontational activism. He went on to help launch a more strident group, ACT UP, and wrote a critically acclaimed play, The Normal Heart, about the early AIDS years in New York City.

Steven Spielberg - released his critically acclaimed epic film Schindler’s List, based on the true story of a German industrialist who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The movie won seven Oscars and led Spielberg to launch the Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, which filmed interviews with 52,000 survivors of the Holocaust and genocides in Nanjing and Rwanda.

Calvin Klein - made designer jeans and the infamous ad starring Brooke Shields revolutionized the fashion industry, sold his company to Phillips-Van Heusen (now PVH) for $430 million. Klein was the first designer to win three consecutive Coty Awards for womenswear.

Daveed Diggs - an American actor, rapper, and singer-songwriter. he originated the dual roles of Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson in the musical Hamilton, for which he won a 2016 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical. Along with the main cast of Hamilton, he was awarded a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album in the same year.

And so much more. (a pretty decent list is available here)

Not only that, but the following are all Jewish inventions...

The Teddy Bear - made by Morris and Rose Michtom in honor of Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt.

The Ballpoint Pen - *the first commercially sucessfull ballpoint pen was made by Lazlo Biro, a Hungarian-Jew, and his brother.

Mobile Phones - made by Martin Cooper, nicknamed the "father of the cellphone", and was born in Chicago to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants.

The Barbie - made by Ruth Marianna Handler, born to Polish-Jewish immigrants.

Power Rangers - made by Haim Saban, a Jewish-Egyptian

Video Games - made by Ralph Baer, a German-Jew

Peeps - made by Sam Born, a Russian-Jewish immigrants who came to the United States in 1909.

Cards Against Humanity - created by a group of Jewish boys from the same high school

Many Superheroes including Superman, Ironman, spider-man, batman, and more!

and more! (an illustrated list available here.)

Conclusion: If you're Jewish, be proud. You come from a long line of successful people. No matter what happened to them, Jews persevered, and they strived for sucess. Be proud of your culture, your history, these are your people. You're Jewish.

(feel free to reblog and add more, or just comment and i'll add it!)

Last Updated: June 25, 1:35 AM EST

[crooked-wasteland]

The rapresentation of abusers in helluva boss is something that particularly frustrates me, Stella in particular, it seems to be done just to victimaze certain characters not to show the complex dynamics of those relationships. It seems to me the writers aren't mature enough to handle these topics properly.

Abuse and Vivienne Medrano

Christmas 1962, a man renowned the western world over for his revolutionary approach to animation sat in a withering melancholy as he watched what could only be called a cinematic masterpiece based on a novel classic. Walt Disney, now in the twilight years of his life, saw the walls closing in and his legacy coming to a close. This man, who pioneered the animated feature film, saw his greatest accomplishment as his greatest obstacle. The man responsible for the tales brought to life of Cinderella, Snow White, Pinocchio, and Dumbo felt trapped in his achievement. “I wish,” Walt lamented, “I could make a picture like that.”

To Kill a Mockingbird was a piece that challenged its audience. The discussion of a white man defending a black man in southern America, years before the civil rights movement. The movement that, at the time the movie hit cinemas, was in its infancy. Released during the height of the historically revisionist counter movement taking place to combat the rising push of African Americans towards their human rights. The last film Walt Disney ever saw the production of before his death in 1966 was The Jungle Book, a movie that was the epitome of “Safe” and a message that upheld the status quo of segregation.

It wasn’t until 1972 that the media of animation became raucously adult with those political and challenging concepts Disney felt were unattainable. Fritz the Cat was an X-rated animated film composed of vignettes that were unapologetically perverse, violent, and aggressively political. Critical of politicians and the police with a sympathetic if exploitative lens towards the LGBT and racial minority communities Brooklyn-based director Ralph Bakshi grew up around. Bakshi proved that animation was not strictly a child-friendly media and that adult animation could be financially and critically successful.

(For more on Ralph Bakshi's career and animation history)

If one has ever had the opportunity to listen to a Brad Bird (director of Ratatouille and The Incredibles) interview, it is clear to see that the success of Bakshi was generally quite limited. That animation is considered a genre and not a medium of art has resulted in animated films being knee-capped in the box office. There is far more potential to animation, highlighted by Howard Ashton in his collaboration with Disney studios during the Renaissance. Responsible for resurrecting the feature-length animated movie through The Little Mermaid and credited for the monumental success of Best Picture Award winner Beauty and the Beast, Ashton once said that the potential animation was ideal for musical theatre. The limitless possibilities given the medium gave the possibility of introducing Broadway to the common folk who didn’t live in New York and otherwise couldn’t afford the theater. He was quoted saying that live action musical films were “an exercise in stupidity,” highlighting the freedom that comes with a blank page.

However, the success of animation, and media in general, comes down to the message the media wishes to send. The reason the Disney Renaissance films have enjoyed their position as cornerstones of pop culture and creativity was because it did introduce the artform of musical theater into homes and made them readily accessible to everyone with an even heightened sense of fantasy that revitalized Walt’s ethos of making films for the child in everyone.

With Bakshi, it was the loud and violently political message of a revolution taking place. This continues in adult animation with the Simpsons, a series critical of hyper-capitalist America and the fallout of Reagan’s economic disaster that the effects of which are still being felt today and a satire of toxic masculinity and abusive family dynamics.

So, ultimately, the value of a piece of media is a cross between its social artistic influence and the message the creators are intending to make. While Medrano’s influence on the field of indie animation is often mischaracterized as a “pioneer”, the fact is that indie animation and pilots have existed and been funded before Spindlehorse existed. It is simply that Medrano has had the spotlight handed to her for the myth surrounding the production and subsequent success of his indie projects. Artistically, her influence can be summarized as a double-edged sword. For some, she is the motivation for inspiring artists to connect with the community to one day, hopefully, create their own work. On the other hand, she is the cautionary tale of why investing in an indie project is a financial risk for an audience member and a risk to the community as a whole that poses a real danger of making the indie sphere financially cannibalistic, as her public persona is off-putting to “normies” and her show is simply not good.

Much like Disney, the man in 1962, and Disney the company circa 2023, the revolution of animating "because you can" loses its luster very quickly. Without something profound to say, an entire company, regardless of its social influence, can fade into irrelevance despite still being "successful". The story of Disney is a cautionary tale for Indie animation as a whole and Spindlehorse in specific.

And that is the other axis on this chart. Her narrative lacks a message worth telling, and that’s very much due to her not having anything worthwhile to say.

“I really liked when things and shows and stories allow the characters to be flawed, and allow them to grow and to change. And I think that’s something that’s, you know, the world is not black and white. And I like things that explore the gray and that and the complexity, of life and mistakes and of things like that.” - Vivienne Medrano

It is not for want of mockery that I carefully transcribe Medrano’s words in her interview. To read the words aloud tells the story just as clearly as I have set out to do here. This is someone who is highly inspired by better media, who has ideas and a belief that she has something to say. But that is where the belief ends. There is no conclusion to that thought any more than there is one in the unfocused and run-on sentences she rambles along throughout the interview. She talks of “Things” without clarity, because she herself is a fundamentally incurious individual who has never once spent the time critically analyzing herself, let alone the work of others to better grasp what about it resonated with her. She merely consumes art insatiably and without any substance. Like a diet of fruit, it has a superficial veneer of positive value. Fruit would be considered healthy as it is “natural”. However, it is the nutritional equivalent of candy, lacking vital components that are necessary to sustain basic life, it is pure sugar. Her work, similarly, lacks any value of depth that would qualify as meaning.

Which comes back to what the message is in her work.

When it comes to others in the field of indie animation, Medrano does not have many friends. In response to the Lackadaisy situation, creator Tracy explained why she returned Medrano’s donation. For one, the donation was not Medrano’s money, but money she crowd sourced from her employees. While the $5k for the producer spot of the fundraiser would have not been a dent in her personal wallet, Medrano is so uninterested in supporting fellow creators while presenting an impression of camaraderie that she instead took money from the people she is in charge of the paychecks for to get her name in the credits of another creator’s work. In regards to why Medrano was declined her support, it was due to numerous individuals who had such an awful experience working for Medrano that they did not want her involvement associated with the project to any extent. When the money was returned, she made the situation extremely public and encouraged harassment by liking tweets attacking Tracy and the Iron Circus team.

A well-known member of Medrano’s crew, Hunter B, was leaked speaking crassly of other animation projects that were still in the process of production, met with support from other members in the discord. One of these creators being Ashley Nicoles from Far-Fetched. A former friend and creative partner on the Hazbin Pilot whose podcast streams featuring Edward Bosco and Michael Kovach single-handedly maintained interest in the show until the winter of 2021, free of charge. Ashley once spoke of how Medrano would speak disparagingly of an employee to her, saying that this individual was “Too unstable to work with”. Which, regardless of whether or not that is Medrano’s honest opinion, counts as defamation by an employer. It is the exact reason why most previous employers will not give a negative, detailed review of a former employee, maintaining instead to verify facts of the employment. If Erin Frost was more experienced and less involved in social media exposed culture, they could have easily sued Medrano and Spindlehorse for damaging their reputation in their field of employment.

Which circles back to Medrano’s self-assigned message of her show:

“Abusers rely on your silence. They rely on knowing you can’t retaliate without consequence. That they can tell any lies and vague around without getting called out. But we see you, and you don’t have the power you think you do anymore. A message I put into my work. “Fuck you!” - Vivienne Medrano

Medrano, who has vague and sub tweeted individuals like Lackadaisy Tracy, The Diregentlemen, Michael Kovach, and Ashley Nicoles. Medrano who has instigated and incited harassment campaigns knowing that no one can call her out without severe and relentless backlash from her cultish fanbase that she personally encourages through positive reinforcement of liking the tweets of fans. Medrano who relies on the silence of other creators in the field due to the fear of her ire collapsing their projects before they even have a chance to begin.

Vivienne Medrano with an extensive abusive history that continues to this day, has something to say about abuse.

What Medrano has to say about abuse comes from someone who has the position of superiority in all of her relationships, but feels like she’s the outcast and bullied loser. Her self insert that is repeatedly expressed in every character at one point or another is how easily they abuse those around them just because they can, but that the narrative justifies their “acting out” because they are sad. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “An abuser externalizes the causes of their behavior. They blame their violence on circumstances.”

Indeed, the lists of abusive characteristics and traits, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, overwhelmingly encompasses the characteristics shown by characters like Loona, Blitz and Stolas that Medrano repeatedly has attempted to rationalize, justify and minimize. Which, “An abuser often denies the existence or minimizes the seriousness of the violence [including emotional and mental abuse] and its effect on the victim and other family members.”

It is not surprising, then, that the conversation of abuse in Helluva Boss is often infuriating. The narrative underplays the harm done by characters we are supposed to see as “good”. Not allowing for them to grow or change, but ignoring and minimizing the behavior, justifying it through circumstances and perpetuating the false belief that victims are not, themselves, abusers.

One of the first blog post rants I ever made about mental health and abuse was the affirmation that not all victims of abuse are survivors. I wholly stand by that. Victims of abuse perpetuate abuse. A victim and an abuser are one in the same, whereas a survivor is someone who has actually done the difficult work of being self-critical. And the one thing we all are very aware of is how much Vivienne Medrano rejects criticism.

[whileiamdying]

All the Films in Competition at Cannes, Ranked from Best to Worst

The twenty-two films that premièred in the 2024 festival’s main program offered much to savor and revile.

By Justin Chang May 26, 2024

The seventy-seventh annual Cannes Film Festival came to a startling and joyous conclusion on Saturday night, when the competition jury, chaired by Greta Gerwig, awarded the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest honor, to “Anora,” a funny, harrowing, and finally quite moving portrait of a sex worker’s madcap New York misadventures. It was startling because the movie, though one of the best-received in the competition, had not been widely tipped for the top prize, which seldom goes to a U.S. film; with “Anora,” Sean Baker becomes the first American director to win the Palme since Terrence Malick did, for “The Tree of Life” (2011), thirteen years ago. And it was joyous not only because the award was bestowed on a worthy and remarkable film but because Baker used the occasion to deliver the best, most eloquent and impassioned acceptance speech I’ve ever heard a Palme winner give.

Reading from prepared remarks, Baker singled out two other filmmakers in the competition, Francis Ford Coppola and David Cronenberg, as among his personal heroes. He dedicated the award to sex workers everywhere, a fitting tribute from a filmmaker who has put their lives front and center, with drama, humor, and empathy, in movies like “Starlet” (2012), “Tangerine” (2015), and “Red Rocket” (2021). He tossed some exquisite shade in the direction of the “tech companies” behind the so-called streaming revolution—including, presumably, Netflix, which came away as one of the night’s big winners; its major acquisition of the festival, Jacques Audiard’s musical “Emilia Pérez,” won two prizes. And, in a moment that drew rapturous applause, Baker delivered a plea on behalf of theatrical films, declaring, “The future of cinema is where it started: in a movie theatre.”

I was fortunate to see all twenty-two films in the Cannes competition on the big screen, projected under superior conditions in houses packed with fellow movie lovers. It’s my hope that, when these movies are released in the U.S., as the great majority of them likely will be, you will seize the chance to see them on the big screen as well—even “Emilia Pérez,” which Netflix may not keep in theatres for long, but whose bold dramatic and stylistic risks have the best chance of winning you over if they have your undivided, wide-awake attention.

I have ranked the movies in order of preference, from best to worst. Here they are:

1. “Caught by the Tides”

Jia Zhangke, a Cannes competition veteran, has long been the cinema’s preëminent chronicler of modern China (“Mountains May Depart,” “Ash Is Purest White”), mapping its social, cultural, and geographical complexities with great formal acumen, and also with the longtime collaboration of his wife, the superb actress Zhao Tao. Jia’s latest work, drawing on an archive of footage shot in the course of roughly two decades, unfurls a story in fragments, about a woman (Zhao) and a man (Li Zhubin) who fall in love, bitterly separate, and have a melancholy reunion years later. It’s an achievement by turns fleeting and monumental: a series of interlocking time capsules, a wrenching feat of self-reflection, and a stealth musical, in which Zhao dances and dances, standing in for millions who have learned to sway and bend to history’s tumultuous beat.

2. “All We Imagine as Light”

As the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades, Payal Kapadia’s narrative début (after her 2021 documentary, “A Night of Knowing Nothing”) would be notable enough; that the movie is so delicately felt and sensuously textured is cause for outright celebration. Winner of the festival’s Grand Prix, or second place, it tells the story of two roommates, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and Anu (Divya Prabha), who work as nurses at a Mumbai hospital. It teases out their personal circumstances—Prabha’s estrangement from her unseen husband, Anu’s frowned-upon romance with a young Muslim man (Hridhu Haroon)—with a quiet truthfulness that, like the glittering lights of the city, lingers expansively in the memory. (A forthcoming Sideshow/Janus Films release.)

3. “Grand Tour”

The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes (“Tabu,” “Arabian Nights”) delivered some of the most virtuosic filmmaking in the competition—as the jury recognized by giving him the Best Director prize—with this characteristically yet extraordinarily playful colonial-era travelogue. Shifting between color and black-and-white, set in 1917 but full of fourth-wall-breaking anachronisms, the movie tells a story of sorts about a roving British diplomat (Gonçalo Waddington) and a fiancée (Crista Alfaiate) he’s in no hurry to marry. But its true fascination lies in the humid atmosphere and wanderlust-inspiring splendor of its East and Southeast Asian locations, ranging from Singapore and Bangkok to Shanghai and Rangoon. It’s a movie to get lost in.

4. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

It’s impossible to absorb this blistering domestic drama without thinking of its dissident director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who recently fled Iran after being sentenced to prison and a flogging. (His appearance at his film’s première made for one of the most emotional moments in recent Cannes memory.) Shot entirely in secret, the story follows a Tehran-based husband (Missagh Zareh) and wife (Soheila Golestani) who are increasingly at war with their progressive-minded young-adult daughters (Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki) during nationwide political protests led by women. The result is a thriller of propulsive skill and blunt emotional force, marrying the muscularity of an action film to the psychological intensity of a chamber drama. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

5. “Anora”

The director Sean Baker is near the height of his storytelling powers with this dazzling (and now Palme d’Or-winning) portrait of a Manhattan strip-club dancer (a revelatory Mikey Madison) who impulsively marries the ultra-spoiled son (Mark Eydelshteyn) of a Russian oligarch. Much comic chaos ensues, some of it pushed past the brink of plausibility, but Baker’s multifaceted love for his characters proves infectious and sustaining, as does his belief that acts of unexpected kindness can redeem even the darkest nights of the soul. (A forthcoming Neon release.)

6. “The Shrouds”

Early on in this elegantly sombre yet mordantly funny new movie, which stars Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and Guy Pearce, the director David Cronenberg, a master of cerebral horror, unveils his latest invention: a technologically advanced burial shroud that allows people to watch a loved one’s body decomposing in the grave. So begins a drolly fluid inspection of classic Cronenberg themes—the deterioration of the flesh, the instability of the image, the paranoia-inducing incursions of technology into every aspect of life—but imbued with a nakedly personal dimension that the director has noted in interviews; the story was inspired by his wife’s death, in 2017, from cancer.

7. “Megalopolis”

In this legendarily long-gestating passion project, which I’ve written about at length, Francis Ford Coppola posits that our fragile, battered civilization is headed the way of the Roman Empire. The grimness of that prospect is unsurprising from a director accustomed to peering deep into the heart of American darkness (the “Godfather” movies, “The Conversation,” “Apocalypse Now”). For all that, the filmmaking here glows with a particularly hard-won optimism, even a welcome sense of play—borne out by an ensemble of actors, including Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, and especially Aubrey Plaza, who fully embrace Coppola’s rhetorical and conceptual flights of fancy.

8. “The Substance”

Sympathetic or sadistic? Feminist or misogynist? Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror bonanza, which won the festival’s award for Best Screenplay, has been one of the competition’s more polarizing hits, which is unsurprising; divisiveness should be expected from a story about an aging actress and TV fitness guru who, desperate to regain her youthful bod of yesteryear, effectively splits herself in two. Whether the outlandish premise (think “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by way of “Death Becomes Her”) and its blood-gushing fallout withstand intellectual scrutiny, there’s no doubting the ferocity of the two leads, Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley, or Fargeat’s sheer filmmaking verve as she pushes her ideas to their sanguinary conclusions.

9. “Motel Destino”

Just a year after the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz appeared in competition with a surprisingly stiff-corseted English period drama, “Firebrand,” it was bracing to watch him rebound with the competition’s most sexually uninhibited and flagrantly horny title; corsets don’t apply here, and even underwear proves blissfully optional. Set at a seedy roadside motel where the clientele never stops moaning, it’s a feverishly shambling erotic thriller starring three very game actors (Iago Xavier, Nataly Rocha, and Fábio Assunção) in a romantic triangle that plays like James M. Cain with sex toys—“The Postman Always Cock Rings Twice,” as it were.

10. “Emilia Pérez”

A trans-empowerment musical set against the backdrop of Mexico’s drug cartels might sound like a dubious proposition on paper, and, for the many detractors of this genre-melding big swing from the French director Jacques Audiard (“A Prophet,” “The Sisters Brothers”), what actually made it onto the screen was no better. But I was disarmed from the start by Audiard’s quasi-Almodóvarian vibes, his touchingly imperfect embrace of song-and-dance stylization, and, most of all, his three leads: the remarkable discovery Karla Sofía Gascón, a scene-stealing Selena Gomez, and a never-better Zoe Saldaña. All three (along with Adriana Paz) were recognized with the festival’s Best Actress prize, awarded collectively to the movie’s ensemble of actresses; Audiard also won the Jury Prize. (A forthcoming Netflix release.)

11. “Oh, Canada”

After a tense trilogy of dramas about male redemption through violence (“First Reformed,” “The Card Counter,” “Master Gardener”), the writer and director Paul Schrader has taken a gentler turn with an adaptation of “Foregone,” a 2021 novel by the late Russell Banks. (It’s his second Banks adaptation, after the 1997 drama “Affliction.”) In exploring the fragmented consciousness of an aging documentary filmmaker (played at different ages by Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi), Schrader bravely forsakes the narrative fastidiousness of his recent work and takes on grand themes of memory, mortality, and artistic self-reckoning, to formally ragged but sincerely moving effect.

12. “The Girl with the Needle”

This stark and terrifying black-and-white drama from the Swedish-born, Polish-based director Magnus von Horn (“Sweat”) was perhaps the competition’s bleakest entry. Set in Copenhagen immediately after the First World War, it pins us so mercilessly to the hard-bitten perspective of Karoline (an excellent Vic Carmen Sonne), a factory seamstress who becomes pregnant out of wedlock, that we scarcely notice her story shifting in a different, more sinister direction. It’s a bitterly hard-to-stomach brew of a movie, at once hideous and beautifully made, with a chilling supporting turn by Trine Dyrholm as a friend whose interventions turn out to be anything but benign.

13. “Three Kilometres to the End of the World”

The setting of this well-observed but emotionally opaque drama, from the Romanian actor turned director Emanuel Pârvu, is a small rural village where a closeted teen-age boy, Adi (Ciprian Chiujdea), is brutally beaten after being caught in an intimate moment with a male traveller. Pârvu teases out the legal, psychological, and moral fallout with the pitch-perfect performances and laserlike formal focus that have become hallmarks of new Romanian cinema. But, though the movie is persuasive enough as an indictment of small-town religious fundamentalism and homophobia, it proves curiously incurious about Adi’s perspective, to the detriment of its own human pulse.

14. “Kinds of Kindness”

After his Oscar-winning period romps “The Favourite” (2018) and “Poor Things” (2023), the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos scales back—but goes long—with a sprawling, increasingly tedious compendium of comic cruelty. My favorite of the film’s three disconnected stories, all featuring the same actors, is the one where Jesse Plemons (the ensemble M.V.P., as the jury recognized with its Best Actor award) plays Willem Dafoe’s Manchurian candidate; my least favorite is the one where Emma Stone joins a sweat-worshipping sex cult. The one where Stone slices off her finger and cooks it for Plemons falls—much like the movie in Lanthimos’s over-all œuvre—somewhere in the middle. (A Searchlight Pictures release, opening June 21st in theatres.)

15. “Bird”

My admiration for the English filmmaker Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”) is such that I’m eager to revisit her latest rough-and-tumble coming-of-age story and find that I undervalued it. Arnold is certainly skilled at integrating recognizable actors, which in this case includes Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, into her grottily realist frames, and she has an appealing lead performer in Nykiya Adams, as a twelve-year-old girl who overcomes persistent abuse and neglect. But the story may lose you—as it lost me—with a magical-realist turn that magnifies, rather than minimizes, the tortured-animal symbolism that has often dogged Arnold’s work.

16. “Beating Hearts”

An exchange of insults at a high-school bus stop provides a saucy meet-cute for a good girl (Mallory Wanecque) and a ne’er-do-well boy (Malik Frikah); so begins a raucous and endearing love story for the ages, in which the director Gilles Lellouche, with outsized glee and little discipline, merrily appropriates the conventions of classic Hollywood musicals and gangster flicks. The result is much too long at nearly three hours—the story spans several years, with Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil playing older versions of the two leads—but I can’t say I didn’t warm to its rambunctious cornball charm.

17. “Limonov: The Ballad”

Why make a film about Eduard Limonov, the globe-trotting Russian dissident poet and punk provocateur reviled for his pro-fascist sympathies? The filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov never musters a satisfying answer in this muddled English-language bio-pic, despite an energetically uninhibited central performance by Ben Whishaw and a cheeky panoply of filmmaking techniques—jittery camerawork, lengthy tracking shots—meant to catch us up in the épater-la-bourgeoisie exuberance of Limonov’s revolt. Considering his earlier work, I prefer the rebel-youth vibes of “Leto” (2018) and the dazzling cinematic assaults of “Petrov’s Flu” (2021), both of which also screened in competition here.

18. “Parthenope”

Nearly every new picture from the Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino could be reasonably called “The Great Beauty,” the title of his gorgeous 2013 cinematic tour of Rome. (It left that year’s Cannes empty-handed, but won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.) His latest work remains most intriguing for its ambivalent but still sensually overpowering vision of the director’s home town, Naples, from which springs a modern-day goddess, named after Parthenope, a Siren from Greek mythology. She’s played by Celeste Dalla Porta, a great beauty indeed and an empathetic screen presence, though only fitfully does her character seem worthy of this movie’s epic enshrinement.

19. “Wild Diamond”

Another disquisition on beauty and its discontents, this time from the débuting French writer and director Agathe Riedinger. She hurls us the life and busy social-media feed of a nineteen-year-old, Liane (a terrific Malou Khebizi), who has nipped, tucked, and tailored every part of herself to realize her dream of being selected for a hot new reality-TV series. Part influencer-culture cautionary tale, part bad-girl Cinderella story, the movie glancingly suggests the soul-rotting effects of beauty worship, but it falls victim to the trap that Liane is trying to avoid: in a sea of worthy candidates, it doesn’t especially stand out.

20. “The Apprentice”

Donald Trump’s attorneys have threatened legal action to block the release of this drama about his early rise to fame and wealth under the mentorship of the attorney Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). It speaks to the useless proficiency of Ali Abbasi’s movie that the prospect of such censorship provokes more indifference than outrage. Shot to evoke cruddy nineteen-eighties VHS playback, the movie is well acted by Strong, Maria Bakalova as Ivana Trump, and an increasingly makeup-buried Sebastian Stan as Trump himself, depicted from the start as a sack of shit that gets progressively shittier. It’s not dismissible, but it’s hardly the stuff of revelation, either.

21. “Marcello Mio”

In this trifling meta-comedy from the French filmmaker Christophe Honoré (previously in the 2018 Cannes competition with the lovely “Sorry Angel”), the actress Chiara Mastroianni embarks on a strainedly whimsical personal odyssey to examine the legacy of her late father, the legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni, and her own conflicted place therein. To that end, she spends much of this overstretched movie in “8½” and “La Dolce Vita” black-suited drag as she navigates a roundelay of industry in-jokes; among the French cinema luminaries making appearances are Fabrice Luchini, Nicole Garcia, and, most welcome, Chiara’s mother, Catherine Deneuve.

22. “The Most Precious of Cargoes”

The French director Michel Hazanavicius continues his uneven post-“The Artist” run with this animated Second World War fable, adapted from a 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg (and narrated by the late Jean-Louis Trintignant). It has an affecting opening stretch, in which a baby girl, thrown by her desperate father from an Auschwitz-bound train, is rescued and raised in secret by a woodcutter’s kindhearted wife. But when the child’s provenance is discovered, stoking local antisemitism, the movie becomes a bathetic wallow in Holocaust imagery, drowned in an Alexandre Desplat score whose every surge turned my heart increasingly to stone. ♦

[d-criss-news]

See an exclusive first look at Darren Criss’ return to Broadway in Maybe Happy Ending

The "Glee" actor stars as a Helperbot named Oliver, opposite Helen J. Shen making their Broadway debut as Claire.

There’s nothing new about an awkward meet-cute turning into a love story… But what if that love story is between two robots?

That’s the question posed by Maybe Happy Ending, a new musical coming to Broadway this fall, starring Emmy-winning Glee and The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story actor Darren Criss. The show also marks the Broadway debut of Helen J. Shen (The Lonely Few) and Dez Duron (The Voice). Featuring a book by Will Aronson and Hue Park, with music by Aronson and lyrics by Park, Maybe Happy Ending is helmed by Tony Award winner Michael Arden (Parade, Once on This Island), with scenic design by Dane Laffrey (A Christmas Carol).

Ahead of its debut, Entertainment Weekly has your exclusive first listen to the show, with a music video of Criss and Chen’s emotional duet, "When You’re in Love.”

Darren Criss and Helen J. Shen in "Maybe Happy Ending". MAYBE HAPPY ENDING THE MUSICAL/YOUTUBE

The musical — a big hit in its native South Korea, winning six 2016 Korean Musical Awards and the Richard Rodgers Production Award for the English-language version — made its American debut at Atlanta’s Alliance theater in 2019. Now the show is coming to the Great White Way with Criss and Shen as Oliver and Claire, two outcast HelperBots whose initial awkward encounter evolves into an unexpected relationship.

“There's a real pathos that kind of snuck up on me with these two,” Criss told EW of the HelperBot romance. “You think, 'Oh, cute, like androids falling in love, that sounds sweet.' But there's a lot more to that when you start to examine what it is to not only love something or someone, but the inexorable, unavoidable back end of love, which is loss.” Oliver is living the simple life of an outdated HelperBot when the story begins, tending to plants and listening to jazz in his one-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Seoul. Then Claire comes by to borrow a charger, and changes everything. The video finds the HelperBots united by emotion, yet far apart as they process the swirling feelings of being in love for the first time. “When you’re in love, you’re never satisfied,” they lament. “The thing you want is always out of reach.”

By the end, they’re piecing together both the joys and painful realities of their newfound feelings. They sing, “Now I’m hoping that you feel all the things I feel / Wishing that you want me to sit beside you /Wanting now to learn all the things you are / Waiting for a chance to invite you in my heart.” If the prospect of seeing two bots find love isn’t enticing enough, Criss jokes that empathizing with the characters will at least give audiences a leg up in the AI apocalypse. “If there's any incentive to come see the show — other than a wonderful theatrical experience with a lot of beautiful universal themes and all that great stuff and fantastic music, and hopefully good performances — if not that, it's at least to soften the punishment and wrath of the AI takeover,” he laughed. Maybe Happy Ending begins previews at the Belasco Theatre on Wednesday, September 18. Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning on Thursday, June 6 at 10AM.

Watch the "When You're In Love" music video above and read more of Criss' thoughts on the HelperBot romance below.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Can you start by telling me a little bit about Oliver and what's at the core of this character for you? Well, I'll tell you what, this is the first time I'm ever really doing any kind of talking about a show that I haven't had much familiarity with yet. And I'm not saying that to avoid talking about it so much as to highlight the unique nature of my involvement in this show because, at least if we're talking about the theater, specifically Broadway Theater, every show that I've ever done came with something of a legacy and was a show that I would have been very familiar with, and I think audiences at large, for the most part would've had a history with it.

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was my Broadway debut, massively popular, classic Broadway show, people knew it. Second one was, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, I grew up as a teenager loving that show. And then the revival of American Buffalo, that's now a standard contemporary American classic and studied that in drama school and yada yada yada. So when talking about the show, I had a really good handle because the show had lived with me for most of my life. [Maybe Happy Ending] is a brand new show, which is wildly exciting. But I have yet to figure out that answer. I can tell you what his core is on paper, which is that Oliver is a Helperbot, something like a hundred years in the future where our technology helpers — in the way that we have our Alexas, and our Siris, and our digital systems, and our smart assistants — have evolved into more humanoid representations. He is a Model 3 in the world of Model 5's and is very much outdated, and kind of running the last of his powered up life in the world that we're watching him and coming to grips with the things that left him behind.

We got a little taste of it in the music video, but what do you think it is about the Oliver and Claire relationship that people will respond to? Or what did you respond to? There's nothing like being able to look at ourselves by looking through the eyes of things that aren't us. I find the most I'm ever moved about the human experience comes from animated films where you have non-human characters trying to figure out human emotions. It's a really great way for audiences to subconsciously look at their own experience objectively. It's funny that it takes inhuman characters to examine humanity in a way that feels somehow accessible. If you see yourself up there, it maybe hits too close to home. But you might think about it a little differently if you're suddenly looking at things through the objective lens of a true outsider — be it a cartoon fox or a mermaid wanting to be human.

So having said that, this is a story about two HelperBots, two robots “falling in love." Of course, they're not human, so they can't physically, literally intimately actually fall in love, but they have to sort of figure out what that means by way of how they've experienced human beings themselves, by cues they've gotten from their own owners and from the world around them. And when you start examining things like love, things like loss through the eyes of non-humanoid things that are trying to computationally analyze and synthesize those things, you sort of start to look at them in a different way. There are many things about the show — the premise was very interesting, and I think the design is exquisite, it's a wonderful theatrical experience. Getting to work with a longtime friend, Michael Arden is such a joy, and there's so many things about that that make this appealing to me. And of course the music is fun, and it's cute, and funny, and charming. But there's a real pathos that kind of snuck up on me with these two. You think, 'Oh, cute, like androids falling in love, that sounds sweet.' But there's a lot more to that when you start to examine what it is to not only love something or someone, but the inexorable, unavoidable back end of love, which is loss. And how do we deal with that? How and why do human beings willingly enter this contract if we know that on the other side of it, there is something that will hurt and that can hurt because love does come with loss, whether it's loss of self, loss of wholeness.

And this show really shows a really beautiful balance of these beings trying to suss out thousands of years of human meditation — of all the hundred thousand songs and poems and stories that have tried to help us understand this balance of love and loss, and the highs and the lows of it are pretty profound. er. In “When You’re In Love” there's the sentiment that being in love is the loneliest you can be. Is that something that you immediately connected with, or was that surprising?

I think that song's very interesting because it's them putting the pieces together. Many lines in the song that talk about how being loved does just constantly leave you with a sense of longing. Which I think goes back into the main thesis, which is love in many ways is loss. They kind of coexist in this yin-yang. It's just one's much more fun and more accessible to talk about, but they kind of come hand in hand. Again, the systematic exploration of all of the ones and zeros of what love is — it's a lot of ones, but it is also a lot of zeros, and one of those things is being lonely and the feeling of not being whole without a certain thing. Which I think is a really good connector to what this show talks about, which is the function of the things in our life that we lose. It is funny that we are getting closer and closer to the realities of what this show presents and suggests. The idea that Siri could be a person in a hundred years isn't absurd, it's not a crazy idea. Even talking about things like robots or artificial intelligence, it's an immediate thing that is part of the cultural fabric and a continual discussion about how and where and why it's going to be part of our life.

But even without talking about those sort of more sci-fi leaning things, technology is in many ways, like people in our life. I mean, people treat their phones like babies. We have attachments to our phones and the way that we need them in our lives and the way we care for them and the reliance we have on them. And the idea of shelf life and things being outdated, we're pretty comfortable with. It's more comprehensible with tech and objects. But it's funny that we have this cognitive dissonance between that and the idea of things being outdated and out of its prime is harder to grasp and a harder pill to swallow with people, and it's a harder journey to go on with people. But what happens when our objects become closer in likeness and experience to people? How are we going to wrap our brains around that and how will they wrap their brains or their programming around that? And how will they feel? Will they feel at all? How will they feel about their impermanence as it relates to ours and vice versa? So there's a lot of really, really nice questions being asked in this show.

Are you finding that it's changing your relationship to Siri and Alexa and your technology? As of now, absolutely not. Well, maybe in the future. Maybe. I'll bite my tongue… In a few years, who knows? She's listening. I'll be nice to you Siri, I promise. As long as you're nice to me when you decide to take over the planet. Well, after you've played a Helperbot, you've got an in. Hopefully that'll soften the AI takeover, they'll let us loose. If there's any incentive to come see the show — other than a wonderful theatrical experience with a lot of beautiful universal themes and all that great stuff and fantastic music, and hopefully good performances — if not that, it's at least to soften the punishment and wrath of the AI takeover. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

[theholmwoodfoundation]

THE HOLMWOOD FOUNDATION PILOT EPISODE CAST/CREW - PART ONE

REBECCA ROOT - MADDIE TOWNSEND/MINA HARKER

Rebecca trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. Theatre credits include A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time for the National Theatre (UK and Ireland tour); Rathmines Road for Fishamble at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin; Trans Scripts at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts; The Bear / The Proposal at the Young Vic; and Hamlet at the Gielgud Theatre and Athens International Festival. TV, Film and Video Game credits include Monsieur Spade, This Is Christmas, Irvine Welsh’s Crime, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Heartstopper, Annika, The Rising, Sex Education, The Gallery, The Queen’s Gambit, Finding Alice, Creation Stories, Last Christmas, The Sisters Brothers, Colette, The Danish Girl, Flack, The Romanoffs, Moominvalley, Hank Zipzer, Boy Meets Girl, Doctors, Casualty, The Detectives, and Keeping Up Appearances.  Radio credits include Clare In The Community, Life Lines, The Hotel, and 1977 for BBC Radio 4. Guest appearances include Woman’s Hour, Front Row, Loose Ends, Saturday Live, and A Good Read.  She plays Tania Bell in the award-winning Doctor Who: Stranded audio dramas. Rebecca has also recorded numerous documentary narrations, audiobooks, and voice-overs. Rebecca is also a voice and speech coach, holding the MA in Voice Studies from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.

SEAN CARLSEN - JEREMY LARKIN/ JONATHAN HARKER

Born in South Wales, Seán trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. He has worked extensively in audio drama, television, theatre and film.  Seán is perhaps best known to Doctor Who fans as Narvin in the Doctor Who audio series Gallifrey and has appeared on TV in Doctor Who - The Christmas Invasion and Torchwood. Recent TV credits include Mudtown (BBCiplayer/S4C), Dal y Mellt (Netflix), His Dark Materials (BBC1), All Creatures Great and Small (Channel 5), A Mother's Love (Channel 4) and Series 5 of Stella (Sky1).  Films include supporting leads in Boudica - Rise of the Warrior Queen, cult horror The Cleansing,  the lead in Forgotten Journeys and John Sheedy’s forthcoming film ‘Never Never Never’

SAM CLEMENS - ARTHUR JONES

Samuel Clemens trained at the Drama Centre London and is an award-winning director with over twenty years’ experience. Samuel has recently written and directed his debut feature film ‘The Waterhouse’ with Take The Shot Films & Featuristic Films and represented by Raven Banner Entertainment, which is due for release this coming year.  In addition, he has directed fourteen short films, winning awards all over the world including shorts ‘Surgery (multi-award winning), A Bad Day To Propose (Straight 8 winner 2021), Say No & Dress Rehearsal’. Samuel also directs critically acclaimed number one UK stage tours and fringe shows (Rose Theatre Kingston, Swansea Grand, Eastbourne, Yvonne Arnaud, Waterloo East Theatre) and commercials include clients JD Sports, Shell and Space NK. Samuel is also a regular producer and director for Big Finish Productions & Anderson Entertainment. He has cast, directed, produced and post supervised numerous productions of ‘Doctor Who – (BBC), The Avengers (Studio Canal), Thunderbirds, Stingray (Anderson Entertainment), Callan, Missy, Gallifrey’& Shilling & Sixpence Investigate’ and many more. Samuel has directed world class talent such as, Sir Roger Moore, Ben Miles, Tom Baker, Sylvester McCoy, Alex Kingston, Frank Skinner, Rita Ora, Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley, Rufus Hound, David Warner, Celia Imrie, Samuel West, Youssef Kerkour, Sophie Aldred, Ian McNiece, Colin Baker, Olivia Poulet, Stephen Wight, Jade Anouka, Mimi Ndwendi, Michelle Gomez, Peter Davidson, Paul O’Grady and many more. Samuel is one of the founding members and directors at Take The Shot Films Ltd and is Head of Artistic Creation and Direction. Lastly, Samuel is a regular tutor at The London Film Academy, The Giles Foreman Centre for Acting & The Rose Youth Theatre and is a member of The Directors Guild UK. As for upcoming projects, Sam is currently in pre-production on his next feature film “On The Edge of Darkness”, which is based on his dad’s stage play “Strictly Murder”.

ATTILA PUSKAS - DRACULA

Attila Puskás is a native Hungarian Voice Actor born in Transylvania – Romania, so Romanian is in his bag of tricks too, but most of his work is done in English, in a Transatlantic Eastern European Accent, but is quite capable of Hungarian, Romanian and International Eastern European accents, plus Standard American. His voice range is Adult to Middle Aged (30-40+) due to his deep voice. Vocal styles can range from authoritive, brooding to calming and reassuring and much more. He’s most experienced in character work, like Animations and Games, but his skills encompass Commercials to Narration as well. He’s received training through classes and workshops, pushing him to the next level to achieve higher standards. Now on a journey to perfect these skills and put them to good use!

PART TWO: HERE

PART THREE: HERE

[creations-by-chaosfay]

Janome America Best of Show #714 SERENITY Molly Hamilton-McNally Coto de Caza, California

AQS Best Hand Workmanship Award #409 FULLNESS Yoshiyuki Ishizaki Hyogo, Japan

BERNINA of America Best Stationary Machine Workmanship Award #113 FLORAL SYMPHONY NO. 2, Mariya Waters Victoria, Australia

Handi Quilter Best Movable Machine Workmanship Award #221 AND... (DOT, DOT DOT) Gail Stepanek & Jan Hutchison New Lenox, Illinois

AccuQuilt Best Wall Quilt Award #1423 THE LAST CALL Kestrel Michaud Melbourne, Florida

Coats & Clark Best Wall Hand Workmanship Award #1008 BLUE TONE II Aki Sakai Tokyo, Japan

Brother International Corporation Best Wall Stationary Machine Workmanship Award #1122 WETLAND ROMANCE Kathy McNeil Arlington, Washington

Janome America: Longarm Best Wall Movable Machine Workmanship Award #1318 CIRCUIT BOARD Jen Sorenson Rye, New Hampshire

Superior Threads Best Miniature Quilt Award #1611 TIMELESS Kazuyo Minami Tokushima, Japan

The Nancy Ann Sobel Award of Merit in Hand Quilting #425 WALTZ OF FLOWERS Ritsuko Uchida, Tokyo, Japan

APQS Judges' Recognition Award – Susan Cleveland #312 CONFETTI Diana S. Fox Parker, Colorado

APQS Judges' Recognition Award – Katie Pasquini Masopust #424 TULIPS Chinami Terai Chiba, Japan

APQS Judges' Recognition Award – Ricky Tims #428 KIMONO LOVERS Akiko Yoshimizu Hyogo, Japan

Rowenta Viewers’ Choice Award – Large Quilt #304 LOVE & MUSIC: THE LAST THINGS TO GO Sue Benvenutti Gulf Breeze, FL

Rowenta Viewers’ Choice Award – Small Wall Quilt #1403 TRUST Judy Ward Avant Young Harris, GA

[justforbooks]

Quincy Jones, dies aged 91

Widely and wildly talented musician and industry mogul worked with Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Will Smith and others

Quincy Jones, a titan of American entertainment who worked with stars from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson and Will Smith, has died aged 91.

Jones’ publicist, Arnold Robinson, said he died on Sunday night at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, surrounded by his family.

“Tonight, with full but broken hearts, we must share the news of our father and brother Quincy Jones’ passing,” the family said in a statement. “And although this is an incredible loss for our family, we celebrate the great life that he lived and know there will never be another like him.”

Jones was arguably the most versatile pop cultural figure of the 20th century, perhaps best known for producing the albums Off the Wall, Thriller and Bad for Michael Jackson in the 1980s, which made the singer the biggest pop star of all time. Jones also produced music for Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, Donna Summer and many others.

He was also a successful composer of dozens of film scores, and had numerous chart hits under his own name. Jones was a bandleader in big band jazz, an arranger for jazz stars including Count Basie, and a multi-instrumentalist, most proficiently on trumpet and piano. His TV and film production company, founded in 1990, had major success with the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and other shows, and he continued to innovate well into his 80s, launching Qwest TV in 2017, an on-demand music TV service. Jones is third only to Beyoncé and Jay-Z for having the most Grammy award nominations of all time – 80 to their 88 each – and is the awards’ third most-garlanded winner, with 28.

Among the tributes to Jones was one from actor Michael Caine, who was born on the same day as Jones: 14 March 1933. “My celestial twin Quincy was a titan in the musical world,” Caine wrote. “He was a wonderful and unique human being, lucky to have known him.”

Playwright and actor Jeremy O Harris paid tribute to Jones’s “limitless” contributions to US culture, writing: “What couldn’t he do? Quincy Jones, literally born when the limits on how big a black boy could dream were unfathomably high, taught us that the limit does not exist.”

Jones was born in Chicago. His half-white father had been born to a Welsh slave owner and one of his female slaves, while his mother’s family were also descended from slave owners. His introduction to music came through the walls of his childhood home from a piano played by a neighbour, which he started learning aged seven, and via his mother’s singing.

His parents divorced and he moved with his father to Washington state, where Jones learned drums and a host of brass instruments in his high-school band. At 14, he started playing in a band with a 16-year-old Ray Charles in Seattle clubs, once, in 1948, backing Billie Holiday. He studied music at Seattle University, transferring east to continue in Boston, and then moved to New York after being rehired by the jazz bandleader Lionel Hampton, with whom he had toured as a high-schooler (a band for which Malcolm X was a heroin dealer when they played in Detroit).

In New York, one early gig was playing trumpet in Elvis Presley’s band for his first TV appearances, and he met the stars of the flourishing bebop movement including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. (Years later, in 1991, Jones conducted Davis’s last performance, two months before he died.)

Jones toured Europe with Hampton, and spent much time there in the 1950s, including a period furthering his studies in Paris, where he met luminaries including Pablo Picasso, James Baldwin and Josephine Baker. At the age of 23, he also toured South America and the Middle East as Dizzy Gillespie’s musical director and arranger. He convened a crack team for his own big band, touring Europe as a way to test Free and Easy, a jazz musical, but the disastrous run left Jones, by his own admission, close to suicide and with $100,000 of debt.

He secured a job at Mercury Records and slowly paid off the debt with plenty of work as a producer and arranger for artists including Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan and Sammy Davis Jr. He also began scoring films, his credits eventually including The Italian Job, In the Heat of the Night, The Getaway and The Color Purple. (He produced the last of these, which was nominated for 11 Oscars, three for Jones himself.) In 1968, he became the first African American to be nominated for best original song at the Oscars, for The Eyes of Love from the film Banning (alongside songwriter Bob Russell); he had seven nominations in total. For TV, he scored programmes such as The Bill Cosby Show, Ironside and Roots.

His work with Sinatra began in 1958 when he was hired to conduct and arrange for Sinatra and his band by Grace Kelly, princess consort of Monaco, for a charity event. Jones and Sinatra continued working on projects until Sinatra’s final album, LA Is My Lady, in 1984. Jones’s solo musical career took off in the late 1950s, recording albums under his own name as bandleader for jazz ensembles that included luminaries such as Charles Mingus, Art Pepper and Freddie Hubbard.

Jones once said of his time in Seattle: “When people write about the music, jazz is in this box, R&B is in this box, pop is in this box, but we did everything,” and his catholic tastes served him well as modern pop mutated out of the swing era. He produced four million-selling hits for the New York singer Lesley Gore in the mid-60s, including the US No 1 It’s My Party, and later embraced funk and disco, producing hit singles including George Benson’s Give Me the Night and Patti Austin and James Ingram’s Baby Come to Me, along with records by the band Rufus and Chaka Khan, and the Brothers Johnson. Jones also released his own funk material, scoring US Top 10 albums with Body Heat (1974) and The Dude (1981).

His biggest success in this style was his work with Michael Jackson: Thriller remains the biggest selling album of all time, while Jones’s versatility between Off the Wall and Bad allowed Jackson to metamorphose from lithe disco to ultra-synthetic funk-rock. He and Jackson (along with Lionel Richie and producer Michael Omartian) also helmed We Are the World, a successful charity single that raised funds for famine relief in Ethiopia in 1985. “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him,” Jones said when Jackson died in 2009. In 2017, Jones’s legal team successfully argued that he was owed $9.4m in unpaid Jackson royalties, though he lost on appeal in 2020 and had to return $6.8m.

After the success of The Color Purple in 1985, he formed the film and TV production company Quincy Jones Entertainment in 1990. His biggest screen hit was the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which ran for 148 episodes and launched the career of Will Smith; other shows included the LL Cool J sitcom In the House and the long-running sketch comedy show MadTV.

He also created the media company Qwest Broadcasting and in 1993, the Black music magazine Vibe in partnership with Time Inc. Throughout his career he supported numerous charities and causes, including the , National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Jazz Foundation of America and others, and mentored young musicians including the British multiple Grammy winner Jacob Collier.

Jones’ illustrious career was twice nearly cut short: he narrowly avoided being killed by Charles Manson’s cult in 1969, having planned to go to Sharon Tate’s house on the night of the murders there, but Jones forgot the appointment. He also survived a brain aneurysm in 1974 that prevented him from playing the trumpet again in case the exertion caused further harm.

Jones was married three times, first to his high-school girlfriend Jeri Caldwell, for nine years until 1966, fathering his daughter Jolie. In 1967, he married Ulla Andersson and had a son and daughter, divorcing in 1974 to marry actor Peggy Lipton, best known for roles in The Mod Squad and Twin Peaks. They had two daughters, including the actor Rashida Jones, before divorcing in 1989. He had two further children: Rachel, with a dancer, Carol Reynolds, and Kenya, his daughter with actor Nastassja Kinski.

He never remarried, but continued to date a string of younger women, raising eyebrows with his year-long partnership with 19-year-old Egyptian designer Heba Elawadi when he was 73. He has also claimed to have dated Ivanka Trump and Juliette Gréco. He is survived by his seven children.

Other artists paying tribute included LL Cool J, who wrote: “You were a father and example at a time when I truly needed a father and example. Mentor. Role model. King. You gave me opportunities and shared wisdom. Music would not be music without you.” Femi Koleoso, bandleader with Mercury prize-winning jazz group Ezra Collective, called Jones a “masterful musician and beautiful soul”.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[dweemeister]

Instant reactions to the 96th Academy Awards

A rough night for me. But there have been rougher ones before. I imagine most of my comments put me in a very lonely minority, as has been apparent the last few months.

But here goes:

For all intents and purposes, yours truly was on the Killers of the Flower Moon train. An extraordinary crime epic from Scorsese, with astounding craftsmanship and fantastic performance from Lily Gladstone. More than what I previously believed possible, a major studio production went out of its way to make sure that its Indigenous American representation on-screen was as genuine as it could possibly be (still imperfect, as the film acknowledges, but what an effort). And yet, KOTFM goes 0/10. I've never had a favored Best Picture nominee be shut out in such a way before. And I'm not surprised at all by it. It was clear that non-American and non-Canadian audiences didn't get the context to the film (a criticism I understand, given the screenplay) and, in other quarters, folks thought it was too long (I admittedly have a higher tolerance for longer movies) and others have said something akin to the fact that they are getting tired over "racial guilt" movies from America. I'm not in the mood to respond to the last one. I think it deserved better tonight. I particularly think Lily Gladstone deserved better tonight.

Stat upheld: two non-white actresses have never won on the same night in Oscar history. History, in and of itself, was always against Gladstone.

Oppenheimer winning? Fine, I guess. It was my #4 choice of the ten Best Picture nominees. I guess Christopher Nolan was overdue, but I have always been a Nolan skeptic. The film certainly is his most humanistic, and I appreciate that. As for the narrative organization and editing trickery? It mostly serves to take me out of the movie. And I don't think Nolan truly understands what thematic film music can accomplish for his movies. I think RDJ should have had much more competition all season long, but he did not. Most people are gonna say this is the return of the Academy's favorite subgenre... the Great Man Biopic. But in composition and structure, Oppenheimer (and even Maestro) resembles very little of the past Great Man Biopics. It'll be interesting to see how history treats this movie.

I disliked Poor Things. I didn't care for its sense of humor, didn't agree with many folks' opinions that it was a magnum opus of female empowerment. I thought it was incredibly male gaze-y and troublingly sanitized its scenes of sex work. Jerskin Fendrix's score was unlistenable outside the context of the film and distracting within it. But it has four Academy Awards and people love this movie, so my opinion can go to heck?

Well done Da'Vine Joy Randolph for her win as Supporting Actress for The Holdovers. I truly hope this opens up a lot more new opportunities for her going for! Wonderful speech.

And speaking of wonderful speeches, both documentary winners got me very emotional. The Last Repair Shop is on YouTube for American and Canadian viewers, and it's simply wonderful. Perhaps the happiest I was all night long! And then came Mstyslav Chernov's speech after winning for 20 Days in Mariupol. Chernov had, arguably, the speech of the night. And I agree with him. I, too, wish he never had to make his film and that he never won this Oscar. But he did his job to document what happened in Mariupol. And for that he (and the Ukrainians suffering and dying in their war versus Russia) deserves our plaudits and support.

Once more, Hayao Miyazaki cannot be bothered to show up to an awards ceremony. It's hilarious! I would have voted Robot Dreams, but The Boy and the Heron is not a winner to sniff at. Spider-Verse will have one more shot.... whenever the third movie comes out?

Good lord, they selected the worst possible winner in Animated Short with War Is Over!. There's an unwritten rule that the Academy, among the fifteen nominated shorts, must select one which will piss me the hell off. And for the second straight year in Animated Short, they have done exactly that, choosing something akin to a soft drink commercial.

Billie Eilish and Finneas are now the youngest and second-youngest ever to win two Oscars, after Luise Rainer (Best Actress for 1936's The Great Ziegfeld and 1937's The Good Earth). That feels very, very weird. In both cases of this record.

The "I'm Just Ken" performance? Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Like Ken)??? Busby Berkeley choreography? What do the kids say? Inject that straight into my veins? It was wonderful.

And speaking of nods to cinema history, I'm so glad they led off the stunt performers tribute with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. :,)

And congratulations to Godzilla Minus One and its Best Visual Effects win! After seventy years, Godzilla is now an Oscar-winning franchise, and its win percentage is 100%! Simply wonderful!

I think the moral of the story is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has been gradually internationalizing over the last decade. And the results of that were very clear tonight. Does that mean I'm too provincial in my tastes? I don't know. But wins such as Emma Stone's, Anatomy of a Fall, The Boy and the Heron, and Godzilla are demonstrative of that.

I'm glad this season is over. I certainly hope that Killers of the Flower Moon will be looked upon more kindly by history and time, without the bells and whistles of awards campaigning and a fuller understanding of why it was made the way it was.

This month has been fun! But now it's time to see movies again without the lens of awards for a long, long while.

[broadwaydivastournament]

A Birthday Tribute to Stephen Sondheim

We interrupt your regularly scheduled Diva posts and polls with a 24-hour Stephen Sondheim lockdown to recognize an honorary Broadway Diva and certified musical theatre god.

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (1930) was a legendary composer and lyricist who essentially reinvented the American musical with his soaring scores and fiendishly clever lyrics. With Oscar Hammerstein as his mentor, he began his Broadway career writing lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959). Throughout his life, he won eight Tony Awards, including a Special Tony, more than any other composer. His dedicating to writing fascinating, flawed, fantastic roles for women (particularly women of a certain age) means his work is some of the most sought-after of our Divas.

Sondheim Theatre and Concert Credits:

I have done the research and pulled together a list of every single role our Divas have played, and every Sondheim concert they have participated in. Here are just a few takeaways.

All together, 64 Divas have had a whopping 245 roles/concerts and counting.

Eleven Divas have never (to my knowledge) performed in a Sondheim or at a Sondheim-specific concert. Seven of those are non-singing actresses, leaving just four musically-inclined Divas bereft. (Brenda Braxton, Lillias White, Linda Eder, Ute Lemper). However, all four Divas have performed Sondheim's songs in their personal concert repertoires

Eighteen Divas have done just one Sondheim, some in particularly obscure contexts.

The most common roles are The Witch (Into the Woods - 9), Mrs. Lovett (Sweeney Todd - 8), Mama Rose (Gypsy - 8), Desiree Armfeldt (A Little Night Music - 8), Phyllis Rogers Stone (Follies - 6). More on that later.

Most Frequent Sondheim Performers:

Bernadette Peters: 21 Highlights include: Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Follies, Gypsy.

Patti LuPone: 20 Highlights include: Company, Sweeney Todd, Gypsy, Anyone Can Whistle.

Marin Mazzie: 13 Highlights include: Passion, Merrily We Roll Along, Into the Woods, Anyone Can Whistle.

Audra McDonald: 11 Highlights include: Sweeney Todd, Passion, Six by Sondheim, A Little Night Music.

Donna Murphy: 11 Highlights include: Passion, Into the Woods, Anyone Can Whistle, Follies.

Christine Baranski: 11 Highlights include: Company, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Follies.

Tony Awards and Nominations:

Leading Actress in a Musical: 14 Nominations (exc. wins) | 5 Divas 9 Wins | 4 Divas

Mama Rose in Gypsy is the most-decorated role in musical theatre canon, and arguably the best role for women period. In five productions, every actress has either been nominated (Ethel Merman, Bernadette Peters), or won (Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Patti LuPone).

Both Desiree Armfeldt actresses have won their respective years (Glynis Johns, Catherine Zeta-Jones). Additional winning roles have been Phyllis Rogers Stone (Alexis Smith), Mrs. Lovett (Angela Lansbury), The Baker's Wife (Joanna Gleason), and Fosca (Donna Murphy).

Featured Actress in a Musical: 17 Nominations (exc. wins) | 4 Divas 4 Wins | 1 Diva

Some of the most common roles to be nominated for in a Sondheim show are Amy and Joanne from Company (in the original production, Elaine Stritch competed in Leading Actress), and Louise in Gypsy. No featured role has netted more than one award.

Winners: Patricia Elliott (Charlotte, ALNM), Laura Benanti (Louise, Gypsy), Karen Olivo (Anita, West Side Story), and Patti LuPone (Joanne, Company).

[weclassybouquetfun]

That's one for the history books.....

...well, it would have been had Lily Gladstone won. But awards season is OVAH! The Oscars have been handed out. Here are 2024's Best Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress and Actor winners.

They have joined a great club.

THEY ARE THE CHAMPIONS!

Best Picture OPPENHEIMER

Best Directing Christopher Nolan

Best Actor in a Leading Role Cillian Murphy

The elusive Malachy Murphy on hand.

Best Actress in a Leading Role Emma Stone

Best Actor in a Supporting Role Robert Downey Jr.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role Da’Vine Joy Randolph

*Issa Rae peeping in.

Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay) American Fiction (Cord Jefferson)

Best Writing (Original Screenplay) Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet and Arthur Harari)

Best Animated Feature The Boy and the Heron

Best Documentary Feature Film 20 Days in Mariupol

Best International Feature Film The Zone of Interest

Best Animated Short Film War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

Best Live-Action Short Film The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Best Documentary Short Film The Last Repair Shop

Best Cinematography Oppenheimer (Hoyte van Hoytema)

Best Costume Design Poor Things (Holly Waddington)

Best Makeup and Hairstyling Poor Things (Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston)

Best Original Song “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie (Music and Lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell)

Best Original Score Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson)

Best Production Design Poor Things

Best Film Editing Oppenheimer (Jennifer Lame)

Best Sound The Zone of Interest

Best Visual Effects Godzilla: Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima)

GODZILLA heels is extreme commitment to the bit.

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk 2014

"Uptown Funk" is a song by British record producer Mark Ronson featuring American singer Bruno Mars. It was released on 10 November 2014, as the lead single from Ronson's fourth studio album, Uptown Special (2015). "Uptown Funk" was written by Ronson, Mars, Jeff Bhasker, and Philip Lawrence; it was produced by the aforementioned first three. The song began during a freestyle studio session while they worked on a jam Mars and his band had been playing on tour. Copyright controversies arose after the song's release resulting in multiple lawsuits and amendments to its songwriting credits. The song is a funk-pop, soul, boogie, disco-pop, and Minneapolis sound track. It has a spirit akin to the 1980s-era funk music. Its lyrics address fashion, self-love and "traditional masculine bravado", performed in a sing-rapping style filled with metaphors, arrogance, charisma, and fun. Upon its release, the single received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the instrumental, style and influences of the track. Others criticized it for not being innovative as it tried to emulate 1980s funk music.

"Uptown Funk" topped the charts of 19 countries and reached the top 10 of 15 others, making it the most successful single of Ronson and Mars to date. In the US, "Uptown Funk" topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 consecutive weeks and spent seven weeks on the top of the UK Singles Chart. It was certified 11 times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and six times platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). The song spent 11 weeks in the number one position in France, 6 weeks as number one in Australia, and 9 consecutive weeks as number one in New Zealand. It also broke its own streaming record three times in the UK, while breaking the streaming record in the US and Worldwide at that time. As of January 2023, the official music video for "Uptown Funk" was the ninth most viewed Youtube video of all-time, having received over 5.2 billion views.

In 2015, the song won British Single of the Year at the Brit Awards, Best Pop at MelOn Music Awards and was one of the Top 10 Gold International Gold Songs at RTHK International Pop Poll Awards. The track also won BMI Pop Song of the Year at the BMI Awards, Song of the Year at Telehit Awards and Song of the Year at Soul Train Music Awards. In 2016, "Uptown Funk" received Grammy awards for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 58th Grammy Awards. It also won International Work of the Year at the APRA Music Awards, Best Collaboration at the iHeartRadio Music Awards, while it was nominated for Song of the Year. "Uptown Funk " was inducted to the 2017 edition of the Guinness World Records for achieving the most weeks at number one on Billboard's Digital Song Sales chart. In 2017, the track was one of the winners of Most Performed Songs at the ASCAP Pop Music Awards. "Uptown Funk" is the fifth biggest song of all-time to have charted on the Billboard Hot 100.

"Uptown Funk" received a total of 84,5% yes votes!

[disneytva]

"An Almost Christmas Story" New Disney Television Animation Animated Holiday Stop-Motion Short Directed By David Lowery And Produced By Academy Award-Winner Alfonso Cuarón, Coming To Disney+ This November.

Disney Branded Television announced a new Disney Television Animation animated stop-motion short film “An Almost Christmas Story” slated for a November release date on Disney+.

The musical short produced by Disney Branded Television, Disney Television Animation and Cuarón’s Esperanto Filmoj, in association with Titmouse and Maere Studios, and with animation services by 88 Pictures. "An Almost Christmas Story" is the first original short from Disney Television Animation since "Hamburger High" (2016). It joins Disney TVA's roster of stop-motion projects ("Mickey Mouse and the Magical Snowy Holiday", "Mickey Saves Christmas", "Mickey And Friends: Trick or Treats", Mickey's Christmas Tales" and "Rhona Who Lives By The River")

The celebrated creative team includes David Lowery (director, screenplay and producer), Cuarón (producer and story), Gabriela Rodríguez (producer), Jack Thorne (story and screenplay), Nicholas Ashe Bateman (creative designer) and Daniel Hart (composer).

 "An Almost Christmas Story" follows Moon, a curious young owl who unexpectedly finds himself stuck in a Christmas tree destined for Rockefeller Plaza. In his attempts to escape the bustling city, Moon befriends a lost young girl named Luna. Together, they embark on a heartwarming adventure, discovering the magic of the holiday season and forming an unlikely bond as they journey back home to their parents. “An Almost Christmas Story” is inspired by the true events of a tiny owl, Rocky - short for Rockefeller, found and rescued from the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree in 2020.

An Almost Christmas Story features the voice talents of Cary Christopher (FX "American Horror Story") as Moon, newcomer Estella Madrigal as “Luna,” Jim Gaffigan (Pixar Animation Studios "Luca") as “Papa Owl, Mamoudou Athie (Pixar Animation Studios "Elemental") as Pelly, Alex Ross Perry (Walt Disney Studios "Christopher Robin") as Dave The Dog, Gianna Joseph ("Star Trek Into Darkness") as Peaky, Phil Rosenthal ("Everybody Loves Raymond") as Punt, Natasha Lyonne (Cartoon Network Studios "Steven Universe" franchise) as Pat and John C. Reilly (Walt Disney Animation Studios "Wreck It Ralph" franchise) as The Folk Singer.

An Almost Christmas Story features a live orchestra score by Daniel Hart (Walt Disney Studios "Peter Pan & Wendy"), the short features 2 brand new original songs by John C. Reilly.

An original album featuring the songs and score of the short by Walt Disney Records will release on November 2024.