Surely, someone has made a hash of the plot. Yes, he was 88, but the Czech-born, British playwright, the true 20th century heir to Oscar Wilde, would never have arranged things so banally.
“A severe blow to Logic” is how a character describes the death of a philosophy professor in Stoppard’s 1972 play “Jumpers.” But then, as this polymath wag continues, “The truth to us philosophers, Mr. Crouch, is always an interim judgment … Unlike mystery novels, life does not guarantee a denouement; and if it came, how would one know whether to believe it?”
Few people were more agnostically alive than Stoppard, who loved the finer things in life and handsomely earned them with his inexhaustible wit. A man of consummate urbanity who lived like a country squire, he was a sportsman (cricket was his game) and a connoisseur of ideas, which he treated with a cricketer’s agility and vigor.
Stoppard announced himself with “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” an absurdist lark that views “Hamlet” from the keyhole perspective of two courtiers jockeying for position in the new regime. The influence of Samuel Beckett was unmistakable in the combination of music hall zaniness and existential ruthlessness that characterized the succession of early plays that merged the Theatre of the Absurd with a souped-up version of Shavian farce.
Simple wasn’t Stoppard‘s style. The Fellini-esque profusion of “Jumpers” includes warring philosophy professors, a retired chanteuse and a chorus of acrobats, set within the frame of murder mystery that owes a debt to the gimlet-eyed social satire of Joe Orton. “Travesties,” Stoppard’s 1974 play, is built on the coincidence that James Joyce, Dadaist Tristan Tzara, and Vladimir Lenin all happened to be in Zurich during World War I — a cultural happenstance that paved the way for a dizzying alternative history, in which art faces off against politics. (Art, no surprise, wins.)
Wordplay, aphorisms and bon mots were Stoppard’s signature. Not since “The Importance of Being Earnest,” a play that Stoppard revered the way a mathematician would regard the world’s most elegant proof, has the English stage experienced such high-flying chat. Yet he acquired a reputation as a dandy, a clever humorist and an intellectual showman, distinctly apolitical and seemingly a man of no convictions.
The latter charge he no doubt would have taken as a compliment. He prided himself on having a mind unstained by certainties. But he was aware of the criticism of his work as intellectually brilliant but emotionally brittle. Virtuosity, in language and dramatic structure, was his great strength. But also perhaps his weakness — a weakness for which many lesser writers would no doubt sell their souls.
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” and “Travesties were indeed master manipulations of plot and language. They were also breaths of fresh air that won Tony Awards for best play and established Stoppard as a transatlantic force. It would have been perfectly natural for him to continue in this vein, but his writing took a more personal turn in “The Real Thing,” a play about a playwright learning both to write about love and to take in and appreciate its complex reality.
New York Times theater critic Frank Rich called “The Real Thing” “not only Mr. Stoppard’s most moving play, but also the most bracing play that anyone has written about love and marriage in years.” The 1984 Broadway premiere, starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close under the direction of Mike Nichols, won Tony Awards for its leads, Nichols’ direction, Christine Baranski’s featured performance and best play. It was Stoppard’s third such honor, and it would not be his last.
But the criticism didn’t end there. (Is it any surprise that in “The Real Inspector Hound,” his 1968 one-act, Stoppard imagined a scenario in which a critic is killed by the play he’s reviewing?) Stoppard’s cleverness, while the source of his fame and prestige, was intimidating to some and off-putting to others. Not everyone goes to the theater to be wowed by verbal pyrotechnics or daredevil plot high jinks. The blinding brilliance of his plays left theatergoers still squinting to see whether his work had much of a heart.
Stoppard ranged freely over a variety of dramatic modes. (It was this ability that made him such a valuable screenwriter and script doctor, earning him not only wealth but also a shared Oscar for the screenplay “Shakespeare in Love.”) But he had no interest in writing character studies. Domestic drama, with its psychological epiphanies and sentimental resolutions, repelled him. But neither was he drawn to the issue-laden work of his more politically minded postwar British playwriting peers, that new breed of dramatist unleashed by John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger.”
A born entertainer who had no ideology to sell or bourgeois morality to promote, he gravitated to theater as the most exhilarating form of debate. What he called “the felicitous expression of ideas” mattered more to him than academic point-scoring. Language was a theatrical resource that could do more than win arguments.
The comedy of ideas had become self-serious over time. Stoppard was determined to restore its fun without diminishing its substance.
His astonishing erudition encouraged him to tread where few playwrights before him had dared to go. But he was too much of a sensualist to cloister himself in the archives of the British Museum.
When I interviewed Stoppard at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater during rehearsals for his play “The Hard Problem,” he told me that he didn’t think he ever spent more than half an hour on research. He did concede, however, “I’ve spent many, many days of my life reading for pleasure in order to inform myself about something.
How else could he have pulled off “The Coast of Utopia,” a three-play creation centered on 19th century Russian intellectuals, romantics and revolutionaries against decades of geopolitical tumult? This marathon epic earned Stoppard his fourth Tony Award for best play.
“Arcadia,” perhaps his crowning achievement, may not be as sprawling but it’s just as intellectually ambitious. It’s also perhaps his most lyrically affecting.
A literary and biographical mystery play set in an English country estate in two different time zones (one in the age of Lord Byron, the other in the era of contemporary academic sleuths), “Arcadia” owes a debt to A.S. Byatt’s “Possession.” (In her mammoth biography “Tom Stoppard: A Life,” Hermione Lee reports that “Byatt has said that Stoppard told her he ‘pinched’ the plot from her.”) But the way Stoppard incorporates mathematical concepts as rarefied as fractal geometry to explore concepts of order and chaos as the characters hypothesize on the patterns of time is Stoppardian through and through.
Stoppard’s late works are his most personal. “Rock ’N’ Roll,” which he dedicated to Vaclav Havel, explores the rebellious, Dionysian force of popular music, an eternal source of inspiration for him, in a play set partly in Prague during the Communist era. “Leopoldstadt,” which won Stoppard his fifth and last Tony for best play, is the work in which the playwright grapples, from an artistic remove, with the history he was late to discover about what happened to his Jewish family during and after the rise of Hitler.
“The Invention of Love” is one of those Stoppard plays that leaves a critic feeling both rapturous and unsatisfied, a paradoxical state but then what can anyone expect from a play that makes the poet, classicist and closet homosexual A.E. Housman a theatrical protagonist?
No play by Stoppard can be fully appreciated in a single theatrical outing. The dramaturgy is too complex, the intelligence too quick-footed and the language too dazzling for instant assessment. My fear is that the plays are too expansive for the diminished scale of dramatic production today. But Stoppard has left theatrical riches that will entice audiences for generations through their intellectual exuberance, preternatural eloquence and omnivorous delight.
This article contains spoilers for Season 5, Volume 1 of “Stranger Things.”
If anyone visited Jamie Campbell Bower in the days before he secured the role of Vecna in “Stranger Things,” they might have been disturbed by what they found.
Bower had spent that period “kind of going crazy,” studying the audition materials he had been given — a scene from the series (with fake character names), one from the 1996 film “Primal Fear” and one from the ‘80s horror classic “Hellraiser.” He then crafted a whodunit-style vision board, pinning printed images of iconic movie villains onto his walls. He latched onto Doug Bradley’s Pinhead and incorporated Voldemort, Nosferatu, Dracula and images from “The Shining,” “Insidious” and “The Prince of Darkness.”
Bower had essentially made a shrine to villainy. But what better way is there to make a monster than to draw from the scariest and most spine-chilling in the game?
He thumbed through a neat binder with all of the reference images that were once tacked to his walls as he sat in a hotel room at the Four Seasons earlier this month that was done up in “Stranger Things” decor. Although he had pulled ideas and inspiration from several different characters and movies, he couldn’t shake Bradley’s work from his mind.
He wanted Vecna to feel “so poised, so considered and surgical, almost. And Pinhead is that. He doesn’t run. Pinhead never runs. He knows that he’s an ultimate power all the time,” Bower said. “That feels really strong for me. I really, really like that.”
In addition to playing the monster, Bower plays the man he once was, Henry Creel, in “Stranger Things,” Netflix’s supernatural sensation, which released the first batch of episodes for its fifth and final season Wednesday. Henry, who we first meet as a young boy with powerful psychokinetic abilities, evolves throughout the show from the first child test subject in Hawkins Labs to the powerful Vecna after he’s banished to the Upside Down.
As he devolves in the dark, decaying shadow dimension, he becomes less and less human in both spirit and appearance. His skin is scorched by lightning, his body is overtaken by the vines from the Upside Down, and his left hand is mutilated. He has a deep, booming voice, which is actually Bower speaking without manipulation in post-production. And in Season 4, most of what the audience sees of Vecna — the vines wrapped around his body, his mutilations and burns, the slimy texture of his skin, his startling walk and movement — was pulled off practically with prosthetics, appliances and makeup.
Bringing Vecna to life was no easy feat, with a lot of cross-departmental collaboration happening behind the scenes. In Season 4, where Vecna is first introduced, the team built full-body prosthetics based on concept art for the character that took roughly eight hours to apply on Bower.
But for Season 5, the creatives behind the show were looking to make “Vecna on steroids,” as Barrie Gower, the prosthetics wiz for “Stranger Things,” put it.
Vecna has a sharper appearance and broader stance in Season 5 of “Stranger Things.”
(Netflix)
Michael Maher Jr., a concept illustrator and visual effects supervisor who had cooked up the earliest iterations of Vecna, said the show’s creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, wanted Vecna to feel more powerful this season, “but not [in] the cliché, bigger and bulkier way.” They also wanted the extent of his injuries from the Season 4 finale, where his opponents set him on fire, shoot him repeatedly and send him flying out of a second-story window, to be evident.
Maher said he was sculpting to ideate on this new version of the character when he accidentally punched a hole in the figure’s torso. It was a serendipitous moment, however; it clicked for him that Vecna 2.0 could be simultaneously more exposed and sharper. The vines that overtook his body now have a Medusa-like quality near his head and shoulders, essentially serving as armor, Maher said.
His mutilated arm and hand, which was already terrifying with its long digits and sharp claws that he would draw close to his victims’ faces, is now extendable, as if he has become one with the vines of the Upside Down.
Because of Vecna’s souped-up look for the final season, a blend of practical and visual effects were used to accomplish the final look. Gower called it a “really beautiful marriage” of the two. The monster’s head, shoulders and right arm were made up of prosthetics, but for the rest, Bower wore a spandex suit that had a printed pattern of Vecna’s body from Season 4, serving as a reference for the visual effects team. Bower also wore foam inserts under his arms to capture the gait and broad stance of the creature.
Gower said with all of the moving parts and elements of Vecna’s body that they wanted to change for the new season, it would have been a “logistical nightmare” to pull off practically. He and Maher’s teams had lengthy conversations early on in the process to prevent overbuilding the prosthetics, Gower said. Creating the new look took about three months.
The team behind Vecna opted for a blend of prosthetics, appliances and a spandex suit to film Season 5. (Niko Tavernise / Netflix)
The character Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) and Vecna come face-to-face in Season 5. (Niko Tavernise / Netflix)
When the Duffer Brothers and Maher were initially talking about the design of Vecna, they drew from Pinhead and Freddy Krueger in the same way Bower did for his performance. The creatives had been pulling from ‘80s classic movies for the “nostalgia quality,” Maher said, but the challenge for him was creating something that still felt fresh and reflected Vecna’s power. He wanted to make it clear Vecna was “a character that is mostly powerful with his mind, that really resonates as a villain,” he said.
By 2019 as the developmental process for the concept art was moving along, the Duffer Brothers approached Gower, whose work on “Game of Thrones” and “Chernobyl” they admired. Gower has a young daughter who was an avid fan of “Stranger Things” at the time, and he said he couldn’t possibly turn down the opportunity. Even before Bower was cast, a roughly five-month process (save a pause in production for the pandemic) kicked off for Gower and his team to develop the Vecna gear. The full-body suit was made up of about 26 overlapping prosthetic pieces that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
Gower and his team used foam latex, which is lightweight and opaque, to cover large body pieces for Vecna, mainly his left arm and lower body. Silicone-based materials came into play for his face, soldiers, chest, back and right arm, since the material is clear and can be dyed to match the pigment of the creature’s skin. It’s challenging to paint the two different materials and make them appear as one, cohesive body, Gower said, but the artists he worked with are “incredible craftspeople,” some of whom are classically trained painters.
Gower said with all of the logistics involved in creating Vecna, Bower was patient and collaborative — whether that was through 2 a.m. calls to get the prosthetics applied before he was called to set or through the adjustments Gower’s team had to make as those long shoot days progressed. Gower also praised not only Bower’s stamina, but also his commitment to the performance.
Bower described the “gothy folk, black metal” music he would play as he sat in the makeup chair, which would get faster and more hardcore as they progressed. Gower said at the start of the hours-long application, Bower would crack jokes and be himself. But as they neared the end, they would “start to lose Jamie.”
Jamie Campbell Bower in his Vecna costume on the set of “Stranger Things” with showrunners Matt Duffer, left, and Ross Duffer.
(Niko Tavernise / Netflix)
“Vecna’s voice would start coming out,” Gower said. “By the end of the process, it was Vecna talking to us. It wasn’t Jamie anymore.”
“I really can’t imagine Vecna being as successful, as iconic a villain and character without it being Jamie Campbell Bower,” Gower continued. “He’s incredible.”
Becoming Vecna can be both mentally and physically taxing because of the prosthetics and the dark place it requires the actor to go. But Bower said he found playing Henry, Vecna’s human form, even more challenging this season.
For him, Vecna is devoid of any humanity, but when he is playing Henry, there’s still “elements of humanity,” though his intentions are pure evil. In Vol. 1, we see Henry targeting the children of Hawkins, but instead of presenting himself as Vecna, as he did in Season 4, he’s approaching his victims with a friendly, well-dressed front — they call him Mr. Whatsit.
“There was something that was arguably more terrifying in having the composure enough to be able to let whomever else is there make wrong choices,” Bower said. It’s a fun puzzle for him to figure out how much emotion to show and when to let the mask slip to the audience, he added.
In comparison to the monsters Bower drew from to develop Vecna, he looked to one person as inspiration for Henry in Season 5: Mister Rogers.
He’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And Bower promises we’ll see more of the wolf come out as the season progresses, though he’s careful not to reveal too much.
At the Beijing premiere of “Zootopia 2” last week, Walt Disney Animation Studios Chief Creative Officer Jared Bush encountered a wall filled with letters from people throughout China, all writing about what the original 2016 animated movie meant to them.
They highlighted the optimism of rabbit cop Judy Hopps and how they wanted to emulate her sunny outlook. They cited the unlikely friendship between Judy and her partner in crime, a fox named Nick Wilde, as hope that they could find common ground with different family members. It was a display Bush didn’t see at any other premiere.
“It’s more than just a story,” said Bush, who wrote and directed “Zootopia 2,” directing alongside Byron Howard. “A lot of the time, these characters have helped people through difficult moments of their life. They have a lot of love for these characters.”
To this day, the original “Zootopia” ranks as China’s highest-grossing Hollywood animated film, with a total box office haul there of $236 million. Marketing ahead of the new film has included promotions with 10 brands, as well as displays throughout the country, including in Shenzhen, Chengdu and Beijing.
But over the years, the China market for U.S.-made films has changed dramatically, leading to questions about whether “Zootopia,” which heads to theaters Wednesday, and its loyal following can break through the more difficult landscape that American movies face there today.
Once seen as a major — and lucrative — destination for big Hollywood blockbusters, the country now has a more robust local film industry that’s pumping out strong competitors. The fraying geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and China also hasn’t helped, nor has the increasing trend of younger audiences watching short-form content on their phones.
“It’s important to the industry that both ‘Zootopia’ and ‘Avatar’ work,” said Andrew Cripps, head of theatrical distribution for Walt Disney Studios, referring to the upcoming James Cameron-directed “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” “The overall industry needs some success at year-end, and I think this would be a tremendous sign of confidence in the marketplace.”
China was once seen as a gold mine for certain films — namely, big studio movies — that could get approval from its government for release.
A decade ago, Hollywood movies would regularly haul in more than $100 million at the Chinese box office, with massive blockbusters like 2015’s “Furious 7” and 2014’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction” drawing north of $300 million each. Some films with softer domestic debuts could count on China to supersize their box-office returns, like 2016’s “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,” which grossed nearly $160 million in China alone, but just $26.8 million in the U.S. and Canada.
In 2016, the domestic Chinese film business saw a significant slowdown in box-office growth. As a result, revenue from imported films — largely those from the U.S., such as Universal Pictures’ “Warcraft” and Disney-owned Marvel Studios’ “Captain America: Civil War” — increased by 10.9%, said Ying Zhu, author of “Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World’s Largest Movie Market.”
Those foreign films accounted for 41.7% of the total market share at the time, up from 38.4% in 2015, she wrote in an email. To help boost year-end revenue, Chinese regulators even relaxed the so-called blackout on imported films during December, which was traditionally saved for local movies.
“Zootopia” opened in China to just $22 million at the box office, but momentum grew in subsequent weeks. Though a movie from the U.S. typically got a four-week run in China, Chinese regulators made an exception and added two extra weeks, said Bush, who co-directed and co-wrote the 2016 film.
“‘Zootopia’ was somewhat of a real surprise to us here in China,” he said on a video call from Beijing while on the film’s publicity tour. “We didn’t know that it was going to turn into this phenomenon here.”
Known in China as “Crazy Animal City,” the film’s dynamic between lead characters Nick and Judy and their imperfect but caring relationship appealed to Chinese audiences, as did Judy’s backstory of moving from a small town in the countryside to a major metropolis, Bush said. Animated films have also long been popular in the market.
After the film’s success, Disney built the “Zootopia”-themed land in Shanghai Disneyland, which opened in 2023 and is the only such land in any Disney park. The studio recently held the movie’s Shanghai premiere at the themed land, as crowds of fans (both there and in Beijing) dressed up as characters from the film, including lesser-known ones like Fru Fru the shrew and Officer Clauhauser, a pop culture-obsessed cheetah.
But since 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, China has pulled back from its embrace of Hollywood films, particularly as its political relationship with the U.S. has chilled.
Earlier this year, China planned to reduce the number of Hollywood films it allows into the country, amid tariff tensions with the U.S. At the same time, China’s homegrown film industry has matured, leading to more locally-produced movies at the box office. A notable success was the animated hit “Ne Zha 2,” which raked in almost $2.2 billion worldwide, $1.8 billion of which was in China.
And similar to the U.S., the Chinese film market has also been dented by the growth of short-form content and increasing popularity of watching entertainment on phones and tablets, keeping theatergoers at home.
That’s all meant a less reliable haul for U.S. films. So far this year, the top-grossing American film in China was Universal’s “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” which brought in $79 million — a far cry from the massive returns some U.S. movies once commanded. The last Disney film that was released in China and made more than $100 million was 2024’s “Alien: Romulus.”
But there are still niches that appeal to Chinese audiences, including family movies, big blockbusters laden with special effects and animated franchises. Cripps said he was “cautiously optimistic” about the film’s reception in China, because of the franchise recognition and the themed land in Shanghai.
“Given what’s happened over the last two to three years, it’s hard to get overly excited until you see some actual data,” he said. “But certainly, it feels good going into it.”
Life has a way of taking things from us that we think we can’t do without. Often that means the death of a loved one, but sometimes it can be home — and with it, our grounding in the world. When we meet Dusty, the laconic protagonist of “Rebuilding,” he has already lost so much. His marriage is over. His parents have been dead and buried for quite a while. But as this modest drama begins, Dusty is grappling with the most crushing of blows: His cherished 200-acre family ranch in Colorado has burned down in a devastating wildfire. He survived but he might as well be a ghost.
Dusty is played by Josh O’Connor, who lately has cornered the market on sensitive, passive outsiders. With his wiry frame and shy eyes, the British actor has demonstrated in films such as “La Chimera” and “The Mastermind” an appetite for soft-spoken characters who exude a gentle masculinity. We don’t know if Dusty’s voice is noticeably hushed because of his recent tragedy, but as he tries to pick up the pieces, this lonesome cowboy drifts through his days, doing his best to pretend he’s holding up OK.
Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s second feature shares with his first a sympathy for strong, silent types. His flinty 2022 debut “A Love Song” was drenched in melancholy, casting Dale Dickey and Wes Studi as aging childhood friends reunited, a tentative romance faintly sparking. Similarly, “Rebuilding” is a tale of grief and what-ifs populated by everyday folks who speak in terse tones. The movie radiates the spare, rugged poetry of a short story or a John Prine song. (Fittingly, the musician appears on the soundtrack.)
O’Connor keeps Dusty’s inner life a mystery as he reluctantly moves into a beat-up trailer at a temporary FEMA camp, struggling to make it hospitable for his grade-school daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre), who primarily lives with Dusty’s ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and Ruby’s boyfriend, Robbie (Sam Engbring). Dusty is not a bad father or a snide former spouse — everybody in his orbit likes him, including Ruby’s ailing mother Bess (Amy Madigan). But when Callie-Rose informs Dusty that Ruby said he underachieved in school, we believe her. “Rebuilding” doesn’t reveal much about Dusty before the ranch was incinerated, but what eventually becomes clear is that he’s always been something of a disappointment.
It’s a performance that requires O’Connor to hint at an ineffable void. The character operates at a remove from even those closest to him — he has a kindly spirit, but he can’t quite connect. Dusty and Ruby were adolescent sweethearts, but the audience doesn’t need to know the whole backstory to guess why they broke up. He’s the kind of guy weighed down by an internal inertia, asleep while standing up, stuck in a rut. At least he had his ranch. But after the wildfire, Dusty’s omnipresent cowboy hat is all that remains from the only life he’s ever known.
In keeping with Walker-Silverman’s naturalistic approach, “Rebuilding” eschews a conventional plot, instead observing Dusty’s negotiation of an outside world he’s tried to avoid. He gingerly makes friends at the FEMA camp, most memorably with Mila, depicted with gruff authenticity by Kali Reis. This de facto support group has no big inspirational speeches to offer Dusty, just a weary resilience to keep going because, really, what else can they do? Some of the film’s finest moments involve O’Connor ceding the spotlight to his co-stars, each of them so offhandedly genuine one might assume Walker-Silverman gathered actual wildfire survivors.
The movie’s verisimilitude may trigger some Los Angeles viewers who know all too well the pain of recovering from a natural disaster. When “Rebuilding” premiered at Sundance in January, Southern California festivalgoers couldn’t help but feel a queasy déjà vu: The Eaton and Palisades fires were still raging, destroying communities and displacing so many. That horror and sorrow loomed heavy over those initial screenings, and no doubt for many in our city, 10 months will hardly be enough time to enter the proper headspace to appreciate Dusty’s processing of his disorienting new normal.
But while Walker-Silverman couldn’t have imagined his movie’s jarring real-world parallels, “Rebuilding” is as much a character study as it is a warning about our increasingly fragile planet and the beloved places we call home. The story’s studied minor-key tone can occasionally come across as mannered, yet “Rebuilding” possesses its own delicate grace, especially once Dusty endures other losses — some personal, others more existential. Walker-Silverman introduces a minor twist near the end that comes across as a little too narratively convenient, but one can hardly begrudge him seeking a sliver of hope for those whose sense of place has been obliterated. As Dusty learns, when you’ve lost nearly everything, all you’ve got is whatever’s left behind.
‘Rebuilding’
Rated: PG, for thematic elements, some drug material, and brief language
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Playing: Opens Friday, Nov. 21 at AMC Century City 15 and AMC Burbank 16
Coronation Street spoilers have teased more concern for Todd Grimshaw next week as Theo Silverton fumes, while a character’s disappearance leaves one resident confused
There’s worrying scenes on Coronation Street next week(Image: ITV)
There’s worrying scenes on Coronation Street next week, as Todd Grimshaw once again faces the wrath of Theo Silverton.
Todd is struggling with the constant running Theo is forcing him to do, and so James Bailey pops round and offers to help Todd after dropping off some equipment. While Theo and Todd are preparing lunch, Todd appears to reveal he’s suffering from aches and strains in his legs.
In the preview clip, Todd is on the floor in his dressing gown while James is trying to ease the pains in his legs. The pair are joking around, as Todd suggests he’s torturing him in exchange for an invite to lunch.
While this is all going on, Theo is staring darkly towards them both, his infuriation building. Todd notices this and looks alarmed, and swiftly makes a point of saying James can’t stay.
James realises he has somewhere he needs to be, and jokes about Todd making sure he’s dressed next time and putting some pants on. As Todd laughs, Theo is not amused and just stares, while saying goodbye to an oblivious James.
When Todd gets up, he laughs and comments that his legs are feeling a lot better. But as he stares at Theo, his face drops as he quickly realises Theo is unimpressed.
Fearing the consequences after Theo’s recent outbursts, as well as his controlling and manipulative behaviour, Todd watches on as Theo’s face continues to darken. But is Todd in danger?
Also next week, Kit Green grows concerned about his boss DI Costello who appears to go missing. At the station, he’s noted that Costello hasn’t shown up for work and it’s not like him.
As time passes and he’s still a no-show, Kit asks a colleague about him, and wonders where he is. While the colleague doesn’t seem to be alarmed, it’s clear Kit is a bit concerned by Costello being AWOL and not declaring his whereabouts.
Of course Kit has every reason to be worried, as spoilers have revealed that Costello is attacked next week. When Kit finds out, he’s quick to inform his colleague Lisa Swain about their boss’ state.
That’s not all though, as he soon shares his concerns with Lisa that her ex Becky Swain may be responsible after recent drama between the pair. But how will Lisa react to this claim, and might Kit be on to something? If he is, he may want to watch out before taking Becky on.
Emmerdale fans think the game will soon be up for villain Celia Daniels in a revenge takedown, amid hints from actress Jaye Griffiths that she will leave the ITV soap
We are at the dawn of the era of “experimental cinema.”
At least that is the pitch by entrepreneurs such as Jeb Terry of Cosm and James Dolan of Sphere, whose domed venues have embraced the idea of reviving older films to augment them with new technologies. Terry used the phrase Tuesday in his introduction to a resuscitation of 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” which debuts this week at Inglewood’s Cosm with modern, CGI animation, aiming to emphasize the whimsy and childlike wonder of the Gene Wilder picture.
“Wonka” is the sophomore attempt by Cosm to redefine the moviegoing experience — “The Matrix” got the Cosm treatment last summer and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” will follow next year. Seeing a film in what the venue calls “shared reality” can be all-encompassing and yet intimate as well as communal and, if everything works out, somewhat thoughtful. The 87-foot diameter spherical screen wraps above, below and behind us, but an emphasis on couch seating invites a cooperative environment. And guests are encouraged, for instance, to pull out their phones and capture and share the moment.
The spherical screen can give the illusion of dimension.
(Cosm)
It’s good fun, if you don’t take it too seriously, as experiential, in the case of “Wonka,” means a film dedicated to the power of imagination sometimes leaves a little less to it. Spirited and bright, Cosm’s approach to “Wonka,” a collaboration with experiential firm Secret Cinema and visual effects house MakeMake, is to ensure audiences are never not surrounded by eye candy. The result is alternately charming and clashing — why, I wondered, isn’t the animation done in a 1970s style to better complement the film?
In turn, has the film’s new magic replaced its subtle mystery? Or is that the wrong question to ask at screenings meant to feel like a social event, complete with chocolate tarts filled with peanut butter mousse and bright red vodka drinks with gold glitter salt rims?
“Willy Wonka” is the second Hollywood film, following “The Matrix,” to run at Cosm.
(Cosm)
For this is experiential at its most maximal. Opening credits that unfold in the film with streams of chunky chocolate are now accompanied with smoothed-out images that look partly inspired by “Super Mario Bros.,” as tubes and pipes aim to place the audience inside a milky-chocolate-pouring factory. It’s cute, and you’ll find yourself diverting your attention from the framed screen of the film to take in the toy-like animated mechanisms. My only qualm here was the edges of the filmed footage have been sharpened away by gleamingly untroubled animation.
Elsewhere, news reports in the film are elongated to show us an entire, cartoon-like studio, scenes of galloping children on the sidewalk rush by as added assembly lines churn out chocolate below them and the movie’s first major song and dance moment, “The Candy Man,” is now surrounded by carnival-inspired visuals with swirling Candy Buttons, slot-machine-like flowers and gentle prods to, if not sing along, at least mouth the lyrics.
“Wonka,” a moderate success when it was released, grew in stature over time as Sammy Davis Jr. turned “The Candy Man” into a hit and second-run screenings on television made it vital at-home viewing for generations to come. It is, at times, delightfully demented, a family film with a weird streak — perhaps at times even a slightly sinister one. And yet I went to Cosm’s “Wonky” premiere not as a film critic but as someone curious about burgeoning movements in the immersive industry, interested more in how Cosm could use its tech to enhance, revitalize or find ways to illuminate a second-run film.
At Cosm, when Charlie discovers his golden ticket, digital fireworks erupt.
(Cosm)
Illuminate is a key word, as when young Peter Ostrum as Charlie unwraps a candy bar with the much-sought-after golden ticket, the animated images around the framed screen erupted in fireworks. I remember watching that scene as a kid and feeling a bit tense, fearing, perhaps, the ticket would be snatched from him by the crowd that consumes him. Yet Cosm aims to turn “Wonka” into pure joy. Such a moment was a reminder at how much sway over the emotional tonality of the film such supplemental material can possess.
In that sense, the immersive ambitions of Cosm differ from experiments of the past — interactive dalliances in the ’90s that recently lived again on Netflix (see “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”), or more recent 4DX theaters with movement-enabled seats (see the light, water and wind effects of “Twisters”). Perhaps that’s why what I thought worked best leaned more abstract, when, say, cartoonish cityscapes gave way to black-and-white pencil-like effects, or when the animations played up the wackiness of Wonka’s factory rather than try to flesh it out.
A whimsical scene featuring the Oompa Loompas.
(Cosm)
I was distracted, for instance, when Wilder’s Wonka made his grand limping entrance, as the sheepish building behind him was now dwarfed by sparkly, shiny warehouses. Yet I was transfixed when Wilder’s character near the end was framed amid blindingly fast streaks of light, or when the helper Oompa Loompa characters were depicted out of frame as colorful orbs that looked like strands of DNA.
‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ at Cosm
I do feel it’s important to note that I’m more than two decades removed from having seen the original “Wonka.” Fresher in my mind are more recent cinematic explorations of the material and characters. While I chose to revisit “The Matrix” before taking that film in at Cosm, I opted for a different approach with “Wonka,” and I believe one’s likelihood to embrace what Cosm is attempting will increase exponentially by one’s attachment to the source material. Having forgotten wide swaths of the film, I found myself conflicted — watch the original film, or focus on Cosm’s accouterments — whereas with “The Matrix,” the material was recent on the mind and I was therefore more comfortable to wander and take in the dome’s impressive screen.
And it is impressive, indeed. When Charlie starts floating in Wonka’s factory, Cosm lifts the frame of the film, surrounding it with bubbles. Soon, depending on your seat, you may find yourself looking straight up. Cosm’s visuals are so crisp that at times they can simulate movement and dimension, and we get dizzyingly lost when the characters are trapped in a seemingly doorless room.
Elsewhere, Cosm takes on a buoyancy when Denise Nickerson’s Violet transforms into a bouncy blueberry. Another clever moment: When Charlie’s wall of moving hands is stretched beyond the screen and starts waving to the audience.
It’s in these instances when the film comes alive, and Cosm’s take on experiential cinema no longer feels like a novelty and becomes an experience.
Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka and Julie Dawn Cole’s Veruca Salt in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” as presented by Cosm.
Want to hear Ariana Grande, actor, playing Ariana Grande, pop star? Make sure you have a ticket for her Eternal Sunshine Tour next summer, because after that she’s not planning to do another one any time soon.
In fact, she’s calling the tour her “one last hurrah.”
“I’m very excited to do this small tour, but I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long time,” she said Tuesday on the “Good Hang With Amy Poehler” podcast. “So I’m going to give it my all and it’s going to be beautiful and I think that’s why I’m doing it, because it’s like, one last hurrah.”
One. Last. Hurrah.
Grande is a mere 32 years old. That said, her last tour had 97 shows on two continents in less than a year. We would be tired of it too.
The 2026 tour, which runs from June 6 to Sept. 1, hits only 10 cities with multiple dates in each. Tickets went on sale a couple of months back, but there’s always the resale market.
Also, Ariana Grande the actor is very busy at the moment, with more going on than simply “Wicked: For Good” promotion. That obligation, though, has taken her all over the world for multiple premieres, including one in Singapore last week where she was accosted on the yellow carpet by a self-proclaimed troll looking to glom onto her fame and make it his own. (He is currently in jail.)
She has also been busy filming “Focker In-Law,” the fourth installment in the somewhat unlikely “Meet the Fockers” franchise.
“It’s just so great to sort of experience a new, new journey and learn from those around me,” one that includes Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro and Beanie Feldstein, she told Poehler.
The host said it sounded like this movie was “much less physically exhausting” than her work in “Wicked,” but Grande begged to disagree.
“I’m not sure I’m supposed to say this, but I have to say it ’cause you’re going to laugh your ass off. My character’s a triathlete,” she explained.
“I spent yesterday doing burpees and high knees with Robert De Niro, and he’s like, ‘Good job, Olivia. Good job,’” said the “Thank U, Next” singer, whose character is named Olivia Jones. “It’s like the craziest, most — I’m like, what is this movie? What are we doing? But I’m having a blast.”
There’s no corset, like Glinda wore, in “Focker In-Law.” No posture-altering shoes, according to Grande. But Stiller and De Niro are both big runners in their free time, which apparently starts in the neighborhood of 4:40 a.m. As for Ariana?
“There’s a lot of biking in this movie. Like a lot lot lot lot.”
Hugh Jackman never thought he’d be a karaoke guy. But then Neil Diamond happened.
Starring opposite Kate Hudson in the Christmas Day release “Song Sung Blue,” the 57-year-old Australian actor portrays not the legendary Grammy winner and shaggy-haired sex symbol, but rather a Neil Diamond “interpreter,” the real-life Mike Sardina, who, with his wife and stage partner, Claire (Hudson), found unexpected success with a tribute band in mid-1990s Milwaukee.
It was this film that recently brought the “Greatest Showman” star to Diamond’s Colorado ranch, where the two participated in a singing session that convinced Jackman to buy his own karaoke machine.
The only guide you need for holiday entertainment.
“Normally, I’m like, ‘I don’t want to do that,’” says Jackman, over Zoom from a New York hotel room, as if he’s confessing a mortal sin. “But I did karaoke with Neil, and I’m like, ‘All right, now I’m in.’”
What did they sing? Diamond soloed on “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Misérables,” paying tribute to Jackman’s musical theater bona fides, before the two duetted on Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love” and, of course, Diamond’s own “Sweet Caroline.” The good times never seemed so good.
It was a hang session so epic that Hudson, joining the call, seems green with an envy that matches her sweater. “I can’t believe I missed this karaoke party,” she says. “I have a whole karaoke setup at my house with a microphone and everything. I feel very left out.”
Thankfully, when it came to making “Song Sung Blue,” it didn’t seem so lonely for her. Based on Greg Kohs’ 2008 documentary of the same name, the film is as much Claire’s tale as it is Mike’s, following the real couple’s love story set to the tune of Diamond’s extensive songbook. At the height of their success, which included playing with Pearl Jam at Eddie Vedder’s request, the Sardinas became local celebrities, billed as the duo “Lightning & Thunder.”
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”
(Focus Features)
A Vietnam vet and mechanic with a dream of entertaining, Sardina seems a role tailor-made for Jackman, who can go from Wolverine to Broadway in a single season. “Song Sung Blue” writer-director Craig Brewer, who first saw the documentary at a small film festival in Memphis, Tenn., never envisioned anyone but Jackman as the insatiable Wisconsinite.
“It was always Hugh because there’s not anybody else out there who could understand the wild showmanship that Mike Sardina had,” says Brewer, calling from his Memphis home. “He’s doing two layers of a character. He’s playing this working-class guy that loves to entertain any way he can. If he’s got to wear sequined shirts, he’s going to. He’s going to give you everything he has.”
The role presented a puzzle for Jackman, despite having played career impresarios like pop idol Peter Allen and P.T. Barnum. “I had to lose Hugh Jackman to be Mike,” says the actor, relaxed in an umber-colored button-down shirt. “How does Mike find himself within his love of Neil? It took me a second to find him and lose my shtick, because I’m a performer too.”
Ultimately, the solution wasn’t his Neil Diamond impersonation, though Brewer encouraged Jackman to make a meal of that. “You can lay a little bit more butter on it,” the director remembers telling him.
Instead, Jackman’s breakthrough came via deep self-identification.
“His dream was always huge but this was not how he thought it was going to go,” Jackman says. “It was that ‘one plus one equals three’ thing where, all of a sudden, they found themselves being the next big thing.” Similarly, Jackman never intended to become a movie star synonymous with musical theater. He’d never even sung before a post-university audition changed the course of his life.
“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Kate Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection.”
(Victoria Will / For The Times)
Hudson is a less-obvious casting choice. Though she’s made a career playing rom-com heroines, with “Song Sung Blue,” she’s already generating awards buzz for her turn as a guileless Midwestern mom miles away from the glittering women Hudson typically portrays, and one with her fair share of trauma. She has to go to some dark places, channeling Claire’s depression, addiction to painkillers and more — but despite her penchant for playing more carefree women, Hudson says she wasn’t intimidated by the role’s meatier aspects.
“When you grow up with storytellers,” she says, referencing her actor parents Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, “you forget the camera’s there. You’re not thinking about anything glamorous. You’re looking at the role and what it needs. It’s what you long for as a performer. It allows you to almost leave your body.”
For Hudson, the opportunity also dovetailed with a new act in her own life as a recording artist. Even though she released her debut album “Glorious” only last year, Hudson has long identified as a singer-songwriter. “I was always so scared of it,” she confesses of her fear of going public about her songwriting. “But the studio is where I’m very happy. I’ve been in the studio since I was 19, but I just never shared my music because I was too scared to put it out.”
It was a discovery Jackman made while they were recording their vocal tracks for the film. “I said, ‘You’re a musician,’” he recalls, Hudson beaming at him. “You were so relaxed and in your home.”
“I’ve always had a lot of cheerleaders for me to do music,” Hudson replies, sheepishly.
Some might see it as a full circle moment for Hudson, who received an Oscar nomination for her performance as the groupie Penny Lane in Cameron Crowe’s 2000 rock memoir “Almost Famous.” It was such a formative experience that Hudson still remains close with Crowe. She tells me she’s reading his new book, “The Uncool,” to prepare to interview him on his tour.
But no matter how much Penny Lane has shaped her life, Hudson doesn’t see a through line from her to Claire. Instead, she draws a line between fandom and musicianship, specifically the distinction between those who chase the high of being in the room or backstage living the lifestyle, and those who have a song they have a visceral need to share.
“With Claire, it needs to come out,” she continues. “It doesn’t matter where or what we’re doing or how we’re doing it — we just need to do it. That is also how I feel about music.”
The real-life Claire Sardina and her two children (played by Ella Anderson and Hudson Hensley on-screen) threw their full support behind “Song Sung Blue.” But Hudson’s instinct was to build her own version of Claire without too much outside influence. “You want to make a choice in a film because it’s the right choice for the character, not because you’re trying to mimic something,” says Hudson.
Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in the movie “Song Sung Blue.”
(Focus Features)
That need to avoid mimicry and feel the moment was particularly crucial for the film’s heartbreaking second act, in which Claire is hit by a car in her front yard and loses a leg, plunging into self-loathing, depression, body dysmorphia and addiction. Hudson had to do extensive physical work to prepare to authentically represent Claire’s lived experience. “Movement is a huge part of what actors do,” she says. “There’s the emotional part but the physicality is like rebalancing your brain.”
In addition to watching YouTube videos of amputees and speaking with those in the disabled community, Hudson got useful advice from another screen legend — her dad.
“Kurt said that Claire is like Rocky,” she says, referring to the iconic character’s grit and determination to go the distance. “The part that really got my dad emotional was that she just wanted to figure out how to get on her feet.”
Jackman marvels at the bravery and skill of Hudson’s performance, noting that she even captured something the real Claire told him off-camera.
“Claire said, ‘The thing is Mike was a leg guy,’” he remembers. “Kate played that so well. That feeling of shame about: Is my partner attracted to me anymore? I found that incredibly moving.”
Hudson welcomed the challenge, but she did worry about one thing outside her control. For “Song Sung Blue” to work, the actors playing Claire and Mike need to be in perfect alignment: one the words, the other the tune.
“One of the hardest things to do is fake chemistry,” Hudson says. “You can’t do that. You have to actually fall in love with each other and find the chemical connection. That was my biggest anxiety.”
Jackman shared this concern. “I remember the first day after our table reading, you said, ‘This movie works if we work,’” he reminds her.
They needn’t have worried. “They were a net for each other as the other one was up on a tightrope,” Brewer says. “It was incredibly inspiring for the crew to see that kinship and respect.”
Their mutual generosity is evident in the way Jackman checks in with Hudson after each anecdote during our interview, confirming she has nothing to add or correct. Though this is their first film together, their repartee is so easy and warm it’s hard to believe they haven’t co-starred in at least a dozen movies.
“It felt easy to just inhabit these characters,” Jackman says. “The word that comes to me is trust. All of the scenes, particularly in that darker period, we could just live in that — the frustration, the paranoia, the anger, the loss, the fear. Every take felt really very different. I felt very free.”
Hudson agrees, adding with a giggle, “I told Hugh, ‘I’m really tactile. Just tell me if I make you uncomfortable. I’m going to kiss you all the time.’”
It helps that Hudson and Jackman are naturally sunny, curious people, celebrities who’ve never cared for the sound of being alone. “We like to connect with people,” Hudson says. “There’s no internal process that removes us. We’re both community people. We like to be in the circus. When we’re on set, we sit on set. There’s no separation of crew and cast. It’s very rare that you work with someone who is like that.”
Ultimately, that openness allowed Hudson and Jackman to approach Claire and Mike with honesty, essential for a film that’s a fullhearted paean to dreamers at their highest and lowest.
“Eddie Vedder told me something that moved me so much,” Jackman says, a note of emotion in his voice. “He goes, ‘Some might say these people led small lives. Their dreams were so huge and perhaps, naive. But dreams are so powerful that 30 years later, it’s come true.’”
From playing Milwaukee dive bars to becoming the subjects of a major motion picture, the Sardinas have far exceeded even their own expectations. To quote another beloved Diamond tune, it’s enough to make anyone a believer.
Theater veteran Elizabeth Franz, who won a Tony Award for her bold reinvention as the wife of the everyman title character in the 1999 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” has died. She was 84.
The actor died Nov. 4 at her home in Woodbury, Conn., after a battle with cancer, her husband, screenwriter Christopher Pelham, told the New York Times. Pelham also said Franz’s cause of death was cancer and a severe reaction to the medication being used to treat her.
The Ohio-born actor’s take on Linda Loman, the wife of Brian Dennehy’s Willy Loman, in the 50th anniversary production of “Death of a Salesman,” was a departure from the character’s usual defeated energy that took even playwright Miller by surprise: “She has discovered in the role the basic underlying powerful protectiveness, which comes out as fury, and that in the past, in every performance I know of, was simply washed out,” Miller said in a 1999 interview with the New York Times. The production, which originated at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre before Broadway, eventually made its way to L.A.’s Ahmanson Theatre.
Alongside Dennehy, Franz later reprised the role of Linda in Showtime’s TV adaptation of the play in 2000, which earned her an Emmy Award nomination.
She previously received a Tony nom in 1983 for her turn as Matthew Broderick’s onstage mother in Neil Simon’s “Brighton Beach Memoirs.” And later earned another nod in 2002 for “Morning’s at Seven,” in which she played the youngest of four Midwest sisters. Her other stage credits include “The Cherry Orchard,” “The Cemetery Club” and — in her final role on Broadway in 2010 — “The Miracle Worker.”
Franz’s TV credits included “Judging Amy,” “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Roseanne” and “Homeland.” A generation, though, came to know her as Mia Bass, the owner of the Independence Inn in Stars Hallow, in a Season 2 episode of “Gilmore Girls.” The minor, but essential-to-the-lore character was later recast in Season 7. She also appeared in the films “Sabrina,” “School Ties,” “A Fish in the Bathtub” and “Christmas With the Kranks.”
In addition to Pelham, Franz is survived by a brother, Joe.
Clad in close-fitting black outfits, two performers get into stance for a fight scene. The cameras surrounding the massive stage in Playa Vista start rolling.
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One turns around slowly, pantomimes being shot, and carefully, deliberately, arches himself backward, clawing at the air before a stunt coordinator helps ease him toward a black mattress.
That movement is translated into dots and lines on a nearby computer, transmitted by the round, white sensors embedded in the suits’ colorful almond-shaped patches. Later, those will be fleshed out into characters and scenes in the new “Call of Duty: Black Ops 7” game, which debuts Friday.
It’s all part of the blockbuster production effort that goes into making one of the most popular video game franchises ever. “Call of Duty,” from Santa Monica publisher Activision, has ranked as the top-selling video game series in the U.S. for 16 straight years and has sold more than 500 million copies globally since the first installment was released in 2003.
And as one of the few franchises with an annual release schedule, hitting that deadline takes an army. About 3,000 people worked on “Black Ops 7” over the course of four years.
Activision executives declined to discuss the game’s budget but called it a “significant investment.” Top video game franchises can have production costs of $250 million or more — higher than most big-budget Hollywood films.
“It’s like, every year we have to launch a new ‘Star Wars.’ Every year we have to launch a new ‘Avatar,’ ” said Tyler Bahl, chief marketing officer at Activision. “So we have to think about, how do we do this in an unexpected way?”
“Ultimately, we want to treat our games like an absolute blockbuster,” said Matt Cox, general manager of “Call of Duty” at Activision, who has worked on the franchise for more than 10 years. “The investment is there for them.”
Activision’s Treyarch game production studio is where Call of Duty video game is produced.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The franchise has become a key driver of Activision’s success, analysts said.
The base game consistently sells more than 20 million units annually, not including the live services components that update after a game’s launch and keep players engaged, monthly battle passes that unlock rewards or even the mobile game, all of which add up to an estimated annual sales of about $3.5 billion to $4 billion, said Eric Handler, media and entertainment analyst at Roth Capital.
“It revolutionized the first-person shooter and has done a great job, year in and year out, of being the best of breed, building the largest community and evolving, pivoting to where video game players are all over the world,” Handler said. “There are other [shooter] franchises that are trying to replicate its success … but nobody’s been able to match the consistency of ‘Call of Duty.’”
To maintain its annual cadence, Activision rotates game development among several of its studios, including Playa Vista-based Treyarch, which co-developed “Black Ops 6” and “Black Ops 7” in parallel — the first time that two “Call of Duty: Black Ops” games came out in subsequent years.
The previous game is set in the ‘90s, while the newest installment jumps ahead to 2035, meaning designers and animators had to envision what gear and gadgets might look like in the future (“Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” was eerily accurate in its predictions for the year 2025).
“It was a huge opportunity for us to tell two unique but also connected stories at the same time,” said Yale Miller, senior director of production at Treyarch.
Unlike the linear nature of film production, many things happen in tandem when producing a game like “Call of Duty.” The game has a campaign mode that follows a story, a multiplayer option to play with friends and the ever-popular zombies portion, meaning each designated team is thinking in parallel about things like tone, features and playable moments that they want fans to experience, Miller said.
While an actor is recording lines, another team may be building the weapon they mention and making it interactive, while another group builds the explosion that the lines and weapon will be part of.
“It’s not just, ‘Oh, we got the shot. We’re done for the day,’ ” Miller said. The acting performance is “an anchor for a lot of the things that we build, but then it’s the whole world in parallel, and that’s how we get to such big teams working on stuff, and everything has to get thought about.”
The franchise has become known for its intense, cinematic quality, a reputation enhanced by the live-action film and television backgrounds of many who work on the games, including some stunt performers and Treyarch performance capture director Mikal Vega, who worked on the 2017 NBC drama “The Brave” after a long career in the military.
“It’s theater-in-the-round,” he said during a Zoom call from the stage. “A lot more like theater-in-the-round than film in some cases, and very much like film in other phases of it.”
And there is a bit of a learning curve, particularly because of the motion-capture technology used, which can make movements awkward.
In the new game, “This Is Us” star Milo Ventimiglia plays Lt. Cmdr. David Mason, a character who first appeared in 2012’s “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2” and is now on the hunt for a former arms dealer who caused the death of his father and was previously believed dead.
Acting in “Black Ops 7” was “more technical” than his previous film and TV roles since it required getting used to a boom mic or camera that jutted out in front of him, he said. In one early instance, Ventimiglia went to scratch an itch on his cheek and was told by the crew not to put anything between his face and the camera, and to pantomime scratching outside of the camera, not realizing it wasn’t acting.
Then there were four-hour sessions in the sound booth, saying lines dozens of times in dozens of ways with any number of weapons.
“It’s super, super taxing, hard work, but fun at the same time,” Ventimiglia said. “When are you going to talk about calling out grenades and flash bangs and using different weapons? Very rarely.”
Adding to the cinematic quality are the hyper-realistic portrayals of actors, gear and costumes, which are the result of scans on a light stage that can re-create items in 3-D. Principal and background characters sit on a chair inside the sphere and do poses, surrounded by 16 DSLR cameras and dozens of hexagonal lights that emit a hazy glow. In 1.3 seconds, more than 256 images will be shot. Principal characters like Ventimiglia will typically do up to 120 poses — all to make sure the nuances of someone’s face are captured.
Evan Buttons, Activision director of technical projects, is photographed inside the face scanning studio.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
In a nearby room with a 22-foot ceiling and black, soundproof walls, an even larger sphere with more than 140 cameras and several video cameras are used to capture full body scans, gear and costumes. Everything captured then goes to the character art team, which will tweak it to their specifications and put it in the game.
Even in the days leading up to the game’s release, the team was still busy. In an era when internet speeds are faster, work doesn’t end with a game’s initial release. Content will be released regularly in the months after “Black Ops 7” debuts, all to keep it fresh for players, who can put more than 1,000 hours into the game.
“The No. 1 reason why they play ‘Call of Duty’ is actually because their friends are there,” said Bahl of Activision. “Those bonds and those social connections, I think, is really what makes this game different and stronger, and it’s made it last for so long.”
I can’t name a single song by the Jonas Brothers, but I can tell you their names — Joe, Kevin and Nick — and that they made a sitcom, “Jonas” (second season titled “Jonas L.A.”), back in 2009 that I liked a lot. The memory of that show was enough to get me kind of excited for “A Very Jonas Christmas Movie,” premiering Friday on Disney+ — which, as it happens, I also like. The humor is self-deprecating, the setting international, the weather wintry, the company good.
The plot, which is basically “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” minus Steve Martin, John Candy and Thanksgiving, plus the Jonas Brothers, Christmas and magic, finds the boys — are they boys or are they men, it’s a point of discussion — in London, a few days before Christmas on the last night of a six-month tour. While they are good at being the capital-B Jonas Brothers onstage facing screaming thousands, they are less adept at being the small-b brothers after the curtain comes down. Their relationship seems pretty normal to me, but to each his own necessity.
Here they delineate their characters.
Joe (to Nick): You’re the uptight responsible one.
Kevin (to Joe): You’re the relatable tramp. I’m the relatable —
Nick: — human cardboard.
Joe: — forgettable Curly.
Nick: — the world’s most unlikely rock star.
Joe: Not Nick or Joe.
Kevin: I was going to say “handsome, relatable everyman,” but fine.
Anyway! The tour is over and the relatable tramp wants to go out and party, suggesting it could be epic. “We are three extremely exhausted dads in our 30s,” replies the uptight one, “how epic could it be?” And so, while his siblings FaceTime with their IRL families, Joe finds himself on a British barstool — a pubstool — beside a bearded stranger in a red leather jacket. You will recognize the actor as Jesse Tyler Ferguson and the character as St. Nick, barely disguised. Touched by Joe’s story of sibling alienation — “Our Christmas plans are to get the hell away from each other” — Santa works his wonders to keep them together until they get their brotherly magic back. For a start, he sends lightning to blow up the plane they’re scheduled to fly home on. (No one was aboard, we assume.)
“We should be able to function in the real world,” says Nick to Joe, who is about to phone their manager (Randall Park) to fix things.
“That would be ideal,” replies Joe, “but we’ve been famous since we were little kids, so it is what it is.”
Further supernatural complications ensue, allowing Joe to have a “Before Sunrise” episode with childhood friend Lucy (Chloe Bennet), cute-met on a train that should be going to Paris but is headed to Amsterdam, and Nick to hate-duet with frenemy Ethan (Andrew Barth Feldman), whose father he played in a fictional version of “Home Alone: The Musical” (“Being home alone / It’s like being with no / With no people”). Other talents swelling the ranks: Laverne Cox as their agent; Billie Lourd as travel agent Cassidy; Will Ferrell as Will Ferrell, No.1 Jonas fan; and Andrea Martin as a rideshare driver.
The songs feel mechanical — easy on the auto-tune, fellas, I’ve seen your Tiny Desk concert and you don’t need it — though the accompanying production numbers are fun. (You knew there would be production numbers.) But like the Beatles and Monkees before them, the brothers are natural, genuine actors; it’s my own Christmas wish that they find more to do in this line. A little breeze would blow the plot away, but keep the windows shut and you’ll be fine.
“South Park” is known for pushing the envelope, but the latest episode has been described by fans online as “nightmare fuel.”
In what is arguably one of the most disturbing episodes of the year, “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone explore just how easy it is to create artificial intelligence-generated videos — and how easy it is for some people to fall for them, or to be convinced that real videos are fake.
The conversation about Wednesday’s episode has largely revolved around President Trump and Vice President JD Vance being depicted having sex. They tell reporters the leaked video of their affair was a fake, created with Sora 2, the latest version of OpenAI’s video generator.
In the same episode, titled “Sora Not Sorry,” the children of South Park generate revenge-porn videos using Sora as a means of getting back at each other. Butters creates an explicit video of Red with Santa Claus, and then she creates a similarly explicit video featuring Butters and Totoro, of the Studio Ghibli classic “My Neighbor Totoro.”
Chaos then ensues as the children make a frenzy of AI-generated videos featuring well-known (and copyright-protected) animated characters. The South Park police force is dumbfounded by the videos, believing they are real.
Droopy Dog, Rocky, Bullwinkle, Popeye and even the beloved preschool character Bluey are mentioned or make appearances in the episode. Representatives for Studio Ghibli also appear, offering a voice of reason in the madness, saying, “You cannot just do whatever you want with someone else’s IP.”
It echoes the real response Studio Ghibli had when Sora 2 emerged, arguing that OpenAI likely used its content and other Japanese art as machine learning data. The Content Overseas Distribution Assn., an anti-piracy organization representing Japanese IP holders, released a letter in late October saying the organization believes OpenAI’s actions “may constitute copyright infringement.” CODA demanded that OpenAI stop using Japanese content for machine learning and requested that the company respond to claims of copyright infringement “sincerely.”
The latest update to Sora, released at the end of September, is “more physically accurate, realistic, and more controllable than prior systems,” according to OpenAI, and it also features synchronized dialogue and sound effects.
The company sparked swift backlash as it rolled out the new version because it was operating under a system where intellectual property owners had to opt out of the app, which meant users could create videos featuring popular actors, characters, voices and likenesses until the rights holders made the opt-out request.
Unauthorized deepfakes of celebrities, dead figures and copyrighted characters began circulating quickly, including videos of Robin Williams, Michael Jackson and Martin Luther King Jr. in what the company called “disrespectful depictions of Dr. King’s image.” OpenAI and King’s estate released a joint statement in October saying the app would block the ability to create generations featuring King as the company “strengthens guardrails for historical figures.”
After a slew of Hollywood studios and agencies expressed their frustration with this policy, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman wrote in a blog post that the AI company will be giving rights holders “more granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.”
Some studios have expressed interest in the user-generated content space, with Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger saying on a recent earnings call that the company was having “productive conversations” with unnamed AI companies in an effort to reach an agreement that would also “reflect our need to protect the IP.”
Back at South Park Elementary, as the battle of disturbing AI-generated videos heats up, Kyle questions how creating that kind of content, especially with copyrighted characters, is legal. “Nothing is sacred, Kyle,” Butters tells him. “All you can do is fight fire with fire.”
The episode seems to address Parker and Stone’s own frustrations with their work being replicated, as evidenced by a line from billionaire Peter Thiel, who also appears in the episode: “With Sora 2, I can make the South Park kid do just about anything.”
It’s the one-two punch of an earthquake and a piece of scrumptious white chocolate from Belgium, a country famous for its sweet confections, that awakens 2½-year-old Amélie (voiced by Loïse Charpentier) to the wondrous and perilous world around her.
Rambunctious and astute, the toddler heroine of the sublimely beautiful animated film “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain” first communicates in voiceover from the void of nothingness before birth. She declares herself a powerful deity and explains that God is essentially a “tube” that constantly ingests and secretes experiences and things. That description could also apply to human existence in a general sense if you take away the philosophical complications that give us meaning. (We are, thankfully, more than all-consuming vessels.)
But until she’s stirred by the earthquake and chocolate, Amélie refuses to engage with reality, observing without making any effort to move or talk, as if displeased with having been born. Her absolutist views of what it means to be alive slowly peel away in the life-affirming first feature from co-directors Liane-Cho Han and Maïlys Vallade, a screen adaptation of Amélie Nothomb’s autobiographical 2000 novel “The Character of Rain,” popular in French-speaking countries.
Akin to impressionistic paintings, the animation here decidedly lacks intricate designs and opts for flat hues coloring figures without visible outlines. The stylistic choices result in a striking, distinctly pictorial aesthetic in line with earlier projects that Han and Vallade worked on, such as “Long Way North” and “Calamity,” both directed by Rémi Chayé.
The third child of a Belgian family living in 1960s Japan, young Amélie develops an endearing relationship with housekeeper Nishio-san (Victoria Grobois). While her parents have their hands full with her older siblings, Amélie explores nature and becomes enamored with Japanese culture. That the affectionate Nishio-san doesn’t impose her perspective on the girl, but quite literally tries to perceive each moment from her height, signals a bond that’s closer to one between mutuals.
It’s through Amélie’s gaze — or, more precisely, how these filmmakers interpret it visually — that we begin to understand her invigorating whimsy. Early on, it seems like her rapidly changing moods affect the weather; later, Amélie steps into the ocean and it parts as it did for Moses (if only in her restless imagination). A person her age is inherently self-centered, unaware that she is part of a bigger whole.
To illustrate Nishio-san’s account of how she lost her family during World War II, animators Han and Vallade zero in on the dish she is cooking: Chopped vegetables fall into a pot like missiles, a gust of pot steam represents a fiery aftermath, rice under water shows how Nishio-san had to dig her way out of being buried alive. The gruesome subject matter is translated into immediate household imagery that someone Amélie’s age could grasp.
When Nishio-san shares with Amélie that the Japanese word “ame” means rain (so close to her own name), the girl takes this as confirmation that her kinetic, unbridled and visceral impulses are natural. Her feelings of kinship with precipitation are transmuted into a delightfully conceived scene in which little versions of Amélie appear inside every falling raindrop. These fanciful instances benefit from Mari Fukuhara’s score, a drizzle of aural luminosity.
Amélie’s rowdy approach becomes more nuanced when she is confronted with a loved one’s death, as well as her own mortality in the aftermath of two accidents. Han and Vallade also make room for her realizations about life’s unfairness and the inevitability of sorrow — all communicated via flights of fancy that only animation can materialize.
In turn, it comes as a shock for Amélie to learn that she is not Japanese, even if that’s the country she considers home. Her future may be determined by Kashima-san (Yumi Fujimori), the landlady who owns the house Amélie’s family is renting and who brought Nishio-san on to help them. Kashima-san distrusts westerners — her wounds of wartime haven’t healed — and to see Nishio-san smitten with Amélie feels like a betrayal.
The larger implications of her presence escape the little one, but the fact that Amélie, even at her age, is able to empathize with Kashima-san’s despair speaks to the thematic richness and emotional maturity that Han and Vallade channel in their brisk, arresting feature. The gently transcendent, tear-inducing conclusion that “Little Amélie” reaches suggests that memory serves as our only remedy for loss. As long as we don’t forget, what we cherish won’t become ephemeral.
‘Little Amélie or the Character of Rain’
In French, with subtitles.
Rated: PG, for thematic content, peril and brief scary images
Opera has housed a long and curious fetish for the convent. Around a century ago, composers couldn’t get enough of lustful, visionary nuns. Although relatively tame next to what was to follow, Puccini’s 1918 “Suor Angelica” revealed a convent where worldly and spiritual desires collide.
But Hindemith’s “Sancta Susanna,” with its startling love affair between a nun and her maid servant, titillated German audiences at the start of the roaring twenties, and still can. A sexually and violently explicit production in Stuttgart last year led to 18 freaked-out audience members requiring medical attention — and sold-out houses.
Los Angeles Opera got in the act early on. A daring production of Prokofiev’s 1927 “The Fiery Angel,” one of the operas that opened the company’s second season in 1967, saw, wrote Times music critic Martin Bernheimer, “hysterical nuns tear off their sacred habits as they writhe climactically in topless demonic frenzy.”
Now we have, as a counterbalance to a lurid male gaze as the season’s new opera for L.A. Opera’s 40th anniversary season, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s sincere and compelling “Hildegard,” based on a real-life 12th century abbess and present-day cult figure, St. Hildegard von Bingen. The opera, which had its premiere at the Wallis on Wednesday night, is the latest in L.A. Opera’s ongoing collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, which commissioned the work.
Elkhanah Pulitzer’s production is decorous and spare. Snider’s slow, elegantly understated and, within bounds, reverential opera operates as much as a passion play as an opera. Its concerns and desires are our 21st century concerns and desires, with Hildegard beheld as a proto-feminist icon. Its characters and music so easily traverse a millennium’s distance that the High Middle Ages might be the day before yesterday.
Hildegard is best known for the music she produced in her Rhineland German monastery and for the transcriptions of her luminous visions. But she has also attracted a cult-like following as healer with an extensive knowledge of herbal remedies some still apply as alternative medicine to this day, as she has for her remarkable success challenging the patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
She has further reached broad audiences through Oliver Sacks’ book, “Migraine,” in which the widely read neurologist proposed that Hildegard’s visions were a result of her headaches. Those visions, themselves, have attained classic status. Recordings of her music are plentiful. “Lux Vivens,” produced by David Lynch and featuring Scottish fiddle player Jocelyn Montgomery, must be the first to put a saint’s songs on the popular culture map.
Margarethe von Trotta made an effective biopic of Hildegard, staring the intense singer Barbara Sukowa. An essential biography, “The Woman of Her Age” by Fiona Maddocks, followed Hildegard’s canonization by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
Snider, who also wrote the libretto, focuses her two-and-a-half-hour opera, however, on but a crucial year in Hildegard’s long life (she is thought to have lived to 82 or 83). A mother superior in her 40s, she has found a young acolyte, Richardis, deeply devoted to her and who paints representations of Hildegard’s visions. Those visions, as unheard-of divine communion with a woman, draw her into conflict with priests who find them false. But she goes over the head of her adversarial abbot, Cuno, and convinces the Pope that her visions are the voice of God.
Mikaela Bennett, left, as Richardis von Stade and Nola Richardson as Hildegard von Bingen during a dress rehearsal of “Hildegard.”
(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)
Hildegard, as some musicologists have proposed, may have developed a romantic attachment to the young Richardis, and Kirkland turns this into a spiritual crisis for both women. A co-crisis presents itself in Hildegard’s battles with Cuno, who punishes her by forbidding her to make music, which she ignores.
What of music? Along with being convent opera, “Hildegard” joins a lesser-known peculiar genre of operas about composers that include Todd Machover’s “Schoenberg in Hollywood,” given by UCLA earlier this year, and Louis Andriessen’s perverse masterpiece about a fictional composer, “Rosa.” In these, one composer’s music somehow conveys the presence and character of another composer.
Snider follows that intriguing path. “Hildegard” is scored for a nine-member chamber ensemble — string quartet, bass, harp, flute, clarinet and bassoon — which are members of the L.A. Opera Orchestra. Gabriel Crouch, who serves as music director, is a longtime member of the early music community as singer and conductor. But the allusions to Hildegard’s music remain modest.
Instead, each short scene (there are nine in the first act and five — along with entr’acte and epilogue — in the second), is set with a short instrumental opening. That may be a rhythmic, Steve Reich-like rhythmic pattern or a short melodic motif that is varied throughout the scene. Each creates a sense of movement.
Hildegard’s vocal writing was characterized by effusive melodic lines, a style out-of-character with the more restrained chant of the time. Snider’s vocal lines can feel, however, more conversational and more suited to narrative outline. Characters are introduced and only gradually given personality (we don’t get much of a sense of Richardis until the second act). Even Hildegard’s visions are more implied than revealed.
Under it all, though, is an alluring intricacy in the instrumental ensemble. Still with the help of a couple angels in short choral passages, a lushness creeps in.
The second act is where the relationship between Hildegard and Richardis blossoms and with it, musically, the arrival of rapture and onset of an ecstasy more overpowering than Godly visions. In the end, the opera, like the saint, requires patience. The arresting arrival of spiritual transformation arrives in the epilogue.
Snider has assembled a fine cast. Outwardly, soprano Nola Richardson can seem a coolly proficient Hildegard, the efficient manager of a convent and her sisters. Yet once divulged, her radiant inner life colors every utterance. Mikaela Bennett’s Richardis contrasts with her darker, powerful, dramatic soprano. Their duets are spine-tingling.
Tenor Roy Hage is the amiable Volmar, Hildegard’s confidant in the monastery and baritone David Adam Moore her tormentor abbot. The small roles of monks, angels and the like are thrilling voices all.
Set design (Marsha Ginsberg), light-show projection design (Deborah Johnson), scenic design, which includes small churchly models (Marsha Ginsberg), and various other designers all function to create a concentrated space for music and movement.
All but one. Beth Morrison Projects, L.A. Opera’s invaluable source for progressive and unexpected new work, tends to go in for blatant amplification. The Herculean task of singing five performances and a dress rehearsal of this demanding opera over six days could easily result in mass vocal destruction without the aid of microphones.
But the intensity of the sound adds a crudeness to the instrumental ensemble, which can be all harp or ear-shatter clarinet, and reduces the individuality of singers’ voices. There is little quiet in what is supposed to be a quiet place, where silence is practiced.
Maybe that’s the point. We amplify 21st century worldly and spiritual conflict, not going gentle into that, or any, good night.
‘Hildegard’
Where: The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills
When: Through Nov. 9
Tickets: Performances sold out, but check for returns
The first shot of director Lynne Ramsay’s stubborn and exasperating postpartum nightmare “Die My Love” would be a great opener for a horror movie. The camera lurks in the kitchen of an isolated ranch house, as still and foreboding as a ghost, while a couple named Grace and Jackson (Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson) poke around the front porch of their newly inherited property. The two take several beats to go inside, long enough that we suspect these crazy kids are making a dangerous mistake. Just look at the wallpaper. Those florals would make anyone crack.
“It’s not New York but it’s ours,” Jackson says of the rural home, left to him by his uncle who died violently upstairs in a way that Grace finds hilarious. He grew up in the area and his parents, Pam and Harry (Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte), still live nearby. Neither Jackson nor Grace say anything about their past lives back in the city, but he yearns to play drums and she once claimed to write. There’s a sense that their dreams have stalled out, either due to finances, passion or talent. So they move in, have a baby and pivot to domestic chaos.
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Lawrence and Pattinson are such a natural, overdue pairing that it’s a surprise to realize this is the first time they’ve teamed up to make the kind of polarizing, go-for-broke prestige film they both enjoy. The two stars launched into the public consciousness roughly around the same time, then followed the same trajectory from teen franchise idols to creatively ambitious A-listers and now, more recently, newish parents making a movie about miserable parents whose hopes have run aground. Lawrence has two tots under 3; Pattinson, a toddler. Their kids shouldn’t watch this movie until college.
In a dynamic montage, Ramsay sets up their boyfriend-girlfriend pair as lusty but strange. Jackson and Grace flirt by fighting like wild beasts. Nuzzling, sniffing, biting, wrestling — that’s foreplay (and she’s more into it than he is). But they can’t communicate with words. “If you’re not feeling good, maybe we should, like … talk?” Jackson says tentatively to his increasingly restless and unstable partner. Grace isn’t interested in talking, though occasionally she’s game to scream. When they fight for real, their bodies twist into spasms of outrage. And when the other one isn’t looking, each seems to power down — Lawrence’s Grace physically collapsing like an unplugged air dancer — a clue of how much energy they must privately expend to make it work.
“Die My Love,” adapted by Ramsay, Enda Walsh and Alice Birch from the 2012 novel by Argentine author Ariana Harwicz, makes parenthood feel like being handcuffed to an anchor that’s sinking into a swamp. Lawrence’s Grace needs help and the more she flails, the worse she makes things. The book is an inner monologue of poison: “How could a weak, perverse woman like me, someone who dreams of a knife in her hand, be the mother and wife of those two individuals?” the first paragraph seethes. But Ramsay rejects putting its angst into words. As with Joaquin Phoenix in “You Were Never Really Here,” she prefers characters who silently roil under their skin.
The tension in this home starts quiet — too quiet — with Grace cranking up kiddie albums by Alvin and the Chipmunks and Raffi to drown out whatever noise is happening in her head. After Jackson brings home a stray dog, the racket becomes unbearable, with sound designers Tim Burns and Paul Davies skillfully and cruelly making sure that no matter how far Grace roams, she can still hear the darned thing bark.
Lacking much perspective into Grace, we mostly see a mentally unwell woman incensed that her sexual playtime is over. She howls with the urge to mate, prowling the house in matching fancy bras and thong sets that clash with this disheveled house and its stockpile of cheap beer. Occasionally, a mysterious leather-clad biker (LaKeith Stanfield) speeds by, considering a quickie with this bored beauty.
Grace’s erotic agony is reductive and a bit ridiculous, although I think the script is also trying to imply that Grace herself is focused on the wrong problems. The film represents her depression by coating the night scenes in so much blue tint that even Picasso might suggest dialing it back. Despite cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s efforts to put us in her headspace with lenses that make the world blur and swirl around her, you’re more afraid of Grace than for Grace, especially when the shock editing has her smashing through doors like Michael Myers.
Hurling herself into every scene, Lawrence puts her full faith in Ramsay. It’s not a trust fall so much as a trust cannonball. As good and committed as Lawrence is, there were times I wanted to rescue her from her own movie, to protect her from the fate of Faye Dunaway when “Mommie Dearest” turned another blond Oscar winner into a joke.
Yet, this is a character who hates pity and I can’t help but admire that Ramsay faces down today’s phonily upbeat and relatable motherhood discourse with this boogey-mom who keeps herself aloof. Grace treats the older women in her family like a wall of advice to be tuned out even when they’re right. “Everybody goes a little loopy the first year,” Spacek’s Pam says, offering empathy that falls on deaf ears. (Spacek delivers a lovely, endearingly layered turn.) And while Grace is so lonely she literally claws the walls, she rejects any overture of friendship, either from a perky fellow parent (Sarah Lind) or a peppy cashier (Saylor McPherson) whose attempts to start a conversation go so badly that when the poor dear asks Grace if she’s found everything she’s looking for, Grace huffs, “In life?”
Pattinson has the more recessive role but his performance is so subtle and clever that it’s worth watching closely. His Jackson is pathetic, passive and skittish around his baby’s mother, who he both longs to heal and tries to avoid. He has a few moments that play so close to comedy — say, whining to be let into the bathroom — that you wish the movie would do more to encourage our pained, guttural laughs. The punchlines are there, such as a beat after one meltdown where Jackson admits he’s getting really stressed out and Grace coolly replies, “About what?”
There’s one scene in which Grace reveals a snippet of backstory that might explain her psychology, and I think that specificity is a narrative misstep. What’s powerful about Grace is that she’s howling for all parents, even the mostly happy ones. Harwicz’s book deliberately never gave her character a name.
Even inside this movie, Grace’s anguish is universal. Yes, she wanders into the wilderness at night, but so do her in-laws Harry and Pam, for reasons of their own.There are dark vibrations emanating from almost every character, even the minor ones, although Grace is too caught up in herself to take any comfort from that. But Ramsay is comfortable suggesting that everyone feels crazy and miserable. I suspect she thinks it’s the most normal way to live.
‘Die My Love’
Rated: R, for sexual content, graphic nudity, language, and some violent content
