Ayala High basketball coach Sameer Bhatt, who also teaches AP Government, says of his senior point guard, Joshua Townsell, “He’s the epitome of what you want a student athlete to be.”
Besides being given a $1,000 scholarship, Townsell received a gift certificate for free Raising Cane’s chicken for a year. That’s what he was most bragging about.
His coach sent out an email to the entire Ayala faculty, saying, “While he may not seek the spotlight, the impact he has made on our basketball program, and the wider Bulldog community, is nothing short of remarkable.”
He has a 4.0 grade-point average and serves as a mentor to many of his teammates. He has volunteered to assist in water development projects in Nigeria and community service in Pomona. He’s also a star point guard who was first-team all-league as a junior.
Teammates will be congratulating him — and asking to accompany him when he goes for a chicken dinner.
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
“House of Guinness,” as in the famous Dublin brewery, begins with the disclaimer “inspired by true facts,” which is another way of saying, “Don’t believe everything you’ll see.” Or, in “Dragnet”-speak, “Names have not been changed, and we have no desire or obligation to protect the innocent. This is a drama, and anyway, you can’t libel the dead.” The framing may be sound, but the portraits are imaginary.
The unchanged names in the series, which premieres Thursday on Netflix, belong to the four children of Benjamin Lee Guinness, whose grandfather created the signature porter in 1778. They are Arthur (Anthony Boyle), Edward (Louis Partridge), Anne (Emily Fairn) and Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea). As we begin, it is 1868 and Benjamin Lee, just deceased, has left the brewery in equal shares to Arthur, who has been away in London for five years losing his accent and finding peace, and Edward, who has been pretty much running the place. Anne, only a woman, and a married one, is basically skipped over; and Benjamin, who has problems with drink and gambling, is given a small allowance, because, as expressed in his late father’s will, “I feel it wise not to burden Benjamin with the temptations that come with fortune.”
As seen here, neither Arthur nor Edward, whose professional expertise is mostly represented by signing papers and occasionally walking around his factory — you won’t learn anything about how Guinness is made — seems capable of running a brewery. But all that really matters to the show is that each is a tortured romantic and will have to find a way to thrive in their uneasy, unasked-for partnership.
Indeed, as a viewer in search of entertainment rather than enlightenment, it’s best to treat these characters, however much attached they are to the real people whose names they bear, as entirely fictional. There are also, of course, characters mixed up in this business who have no factual counterparts, and by virtue of their fates not being written in books or Wikipedia pages, are subject to the whims of series creator Steven Knight (“Peaky Blinders,” “A Thousand Blows,”), creating opportunities for suspense that might otherwise be lacking.
Prime among these creations are Sean Rafferty (James Norton), the Guinness family fixer, a handsome brute whom the ladies like, and the beautiful, brilliant Ellen Cochrane (Niamh McCormack), a Catholic firebrand who sees a better way toward Irish independence than throwing rocks at old man Guinness’ hearse or setting beer barrels on fire; for some reason, the Fenians, epitomized by Ellen’s “bonehead” brother Patrick (Seamus O’Hara), a grating presence and no advertisement for the movement, have decided that targeting Guinness (rich, Protestant) is going to get them somewhere.
James Norton as Sean Rafferty in “House of Guinness.”
(Ben Blackall / Netflix)
Apart from the politics, the family squabbles and the not particularly worrying fortunes of the family business — I mean, you can still order a Guinness — the main concerns of this historical melodrama, this stout opera, if you will, are beating hearts and heaving breasts. Skeptically accepting a meeting with Edward in the spirit of detente, Ellen feels electricity sparking between them, and vice versa. (More acceptably, Edward also has eyes for his cousin Adelaide Guinness, played by Ann Skelly, who has none for him.) Ben, meanwhile, is beloved by Lady Christine O’Madden (Jessica Reynolds), who foolishly believes she can reform him. Well, we’ve all seen that story.
But wait, there’s more! In this telling, at least, Arthur is gay, which is a problem for him as a person living in a super-religious country in the late 19th century and as a representative of the family and their eponymous product. If his orientation becomes known, it is suggested, the world will cease drinking his beer, and the family will be forced to subsist on the millions of pounds they have in the bank and whatever they can scrape off the several estates they own around the country. (Whenever contemporary figures are mentioned, screen-filling subtitles translate the sum into its 2025 equivalent, just so you realize how freaking rich these people were. The budget of the series is not sufficient to make that readily apparent.)
Arthur’s “complication,” which is no secret among his nonjudgmental siblings, has made him A) a target for blackmail, and B) a person in immediate need of a wife, especially as he’s about to stand for his late father’s seat in parliament. Enter Aunt Agnes Guinness (Dervla Kirwan), the story’s yenta, and marriage prospect Lady Olivia Hedges (Danielle Galligan), who is quite happy to settle for a maximum of freedom and a modicum of responsibility, and who curses in a most unladylike fashion. (But, really, the F-words and the Sh-words fly everywhere in this show.)
And what about Anne, saddled with a degenerative disease and a less-than-sexy cleric husband? She’ll sublimate her own romantic heartache in urban renewal and other good works. (Factually, the family had a philanthropic bent, and the company was so far ahead of its time in treating its workers well, including pensions beginning in the 1880s — that gets a moment here — and providing medical care to staff and their families, that much of this country still hasn’t caught up. They were less evolved, however, for many years, when it came to hiring Catholics.)
What else? There’s a curious Hobbit of a character named Byron Hedges (Jack Gleeson), an illegitimate cousin who arrives to sell himself as the man to represent their interests in America, into which Edward is keen to expand; we get some scenes set in New York. There’s Potter (Michael McElhatton), the droll, dry butler, who looks askance upon the younger Guinnesses but stays loyal, like butlers do. And Bonnie Champion (David Wilmot), a charismatic crime lord who’s also involved in the company’s export business.
There’s nothing subtle about “House of Guinness,” which makes its points in declarative sentences — sometimes gussied up with Irish-y prose — and gives its characters hardly a moment to relax and enjoy their porter, swelling the soundtrack with aggressive modern Irish rock and rap to make it exciting to the people of 2025. The show can border on the cornball; the characters are the sort you might have seen in the sort of dramas popular in 1868. But the actors inhabit their roles with commitment, so that even the bad company is good company. Good craic, as they say over there.
Ex-Labour MP Zarah Sultana has accused Jeremy Corbyn and other members of a new left-wing party of “baseless attacks” on her character and said she is consulting lawyers.
It follows an email sent to supporters inviting them to sign up for membership of the new party at the cost of £5 a month or £55 a year.
Sultana had posted on social media encouraging people to join and claiming more than 20,000 people had done so.
But ex-Labour leader Corbyn posted a statement signed by four other independent MPs involved in the party in which he claimed the emails were “unauthorised” and said any direct debits set up should be “immediately cancelled”. Corbyn declined to comment on Sultana’s latest claims.
The row over the membership portal has revealed deep splits in the fledgling party, which was launched in July and is due to hold its founding conference in November.
Members will vote on its official name but it is currently using “Your Party” in campaign material.
On Thursday, Sultana described Corbyn and others as running a “sexist boys’ club” and claimed she had been sidelined by other members of the party’s working group.
She said the membership portal was “in line with the road map set out to members”.
The party said it had referred the matter to the UK’s data protection watchdog.
In a statement posted on X on Friday night, Sultana said that “a number of false and defamatory statements have been published about me concerning the launch of Your Party’s membership portal”.
The Coventry South MP said that they were “baseless attacks on my character are politically-motivated and I intend to hold to account those responsible for making them”.
“To that end, I have this evening instructed specialist defamation lawyers,” she added.
Sultana said that at “no point was members’ data misused or put at risk” and that “all funds received from members were ringfenced and protected in the appropriate manner”.
Walt Disney Co., Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday sued a Chinese artificial intelligence firm called MiniMax for copyright infringement, alleging its AI service generates iconic characters including Darth Vader, the Minions and Wonder Woman without the studios’ permission.
“MiniMax’s bootlegging business model and defiance of U.S. copyright law are not only an attack on Plaintiffs and the hard-working creative community that brings the magic of movies to life, but are also a broader threat to the American motion picture industry,” the companies said in their complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The entertainment companies requested that MiniMax be restrained from further infringement. They are seeking damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work, as well as attorney fees and costs.
This is the latest round of copyright lawsuits that major studios have brought against AI companies over intellectual property concerns. In June, Disney and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney for copyright infringement. Earlier this month, Warner Bros. Discovery also sued Midjourney.
Shanghai-based MiniMax has a service called Hailuo AI, which is marketed as a “Hollywood studio in your pocket” and used characters including the Joker and Groot in its ads without the studios’ permission, the studios’ lawsuit said. Users can type in a text prompt requesting “Star Wars’” iconic character Yoda or DC Comics’ Superman, and Hailuo AI can pull up high quality and downloadable images or video of the character, according to the document.
“MiniMax completely disregards U.S. copyright law and treats Plaintiffs’ valuable copyrighted characters like its own,” the lawsuit said. “MiniMax’s copyright infringement is willful and brazen.”
“Given the rapid advancement in technology in the AI video generation field … it is only a matter of time until Hailuo AI can generate unauthorized, infringing videos featuring Plaintiffs’ copyrighted characters that are substantially longer, and even eventually the same duration as a movie or television program,” the lawsuit said.
MiniMax did not immediately return a request for comment.
Hollywood is grappling with significant challenges, including the threat of AI, as companies consolidate and reduce their expenses as production costs rise. Many actors and writers, still recovering from strikes that took place in 2023, are scrambling to find jobs. Some believe the growth of AI has threatened their livelihoods as tech tools can replicate iconic characters with text prompts.
While some studios have sued AI companies, others are looking for ways to partner with them. For example, Lionsgate has partnered with AI startup Runway to help with behind the scenes processes such as storyboarding.
Mario is headed to outer space for his next cinematic adventure.
Nintendo held a supersized livestream of announcements Friday commemorating the 40th anniversary of “Super Mario Bros.”: The first game in the popular franchise was released in Japan in September 1985. Among the news items shared by the company’s video game maestro Shigeru Miyamoto is that the sequel to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” is officially titled “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” The follow-up to the 2023 blockbuster is slated to hit theaters in April.
“What kinds of adventures do you think Mario and his friends will have in space?” Miyamoto, who created Nintendo’s iconic mustachioed hero, said during Nintendo Direct after sharing a brief teaser for the film. “This movie will be the main event of the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ 40th anniversary.”
“The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is another collaboration between Nintendo and the animation studio Illumination. During the livestreamed announcement, producer and Illumination chief executive Chris Meledandri shared that “while the ‘Super Mario Galaxy’ games are the core inspiration for our story, this next film holds surprises for fans of every Mario era.”
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” directors Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath are once again at the helm for “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Also returning are cast members Chris Pratt (Mario), Anya Taylor-Joy (Princess Peach), Charlie Day (Luigi), Jack Black (Bowser), Keegan-Michael Key (Toad) and Kevin Michael Richardson (Kamek), as well as composer Brian Tyler.
The announcement did not mention whether Lumalee — the cheerfully nihilistic star-shaped blue being that Luigi meets during “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” — will return for the sequel, but the teaser did include a glimpse of a yellow Luma. So it’s impossible not to hope that the character will have some sort of role in “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” since the star-shaped creatures appear in both the 2007 video game “Super Mario Galaxy” and its 2010 sequel. While the character in the movie had memorable one-liners about “the sweet relief of death” and how “hope is an illusion,” in the games these blue Lumas are more helpful merchants of life.
New characters likely to debut in the sequel include Rosalina, a sort of guardian of the cosmos and caretaker of the Lumas who first appeared in the “Super Mario Galaxy” game, as well as Yoshi, the dinosaur-like character who can grab faraway objects — and foes — with his tongue. Yoshi was teased in “The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s” post-credits scene.
The success of films like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide, is among the reasons Hollywood has recently pivoted to more video-game inspired fare. The “Super Mario” movie sequel was first announced in 2024.
This article contains spoilers for the finale of Prime Video’s “The Girlfriend.”
After reading the pilot for “The Girlfriend,” Robin Wright could see how the entire series would unfold. She was initially approached to direct the first episode, but she was so entranced by the adaptation of Michelle Frances’ 2017 novel she came on board not just as a director, but as an executive producer.
And when it came to casting Laura, a fierce matriarch committed to protecting her son, Daniel, from his new girlfriend, everyone she pictured in the role was unavailable.
“My dream was Tilda Swinton,” Wright says, speaking from the Ham Yard Hotel in London alongside her co-star Olivia Cooke, whose Prime Video series premiered Wednesday. “The time crunch was getting narrower, so Jonathan Cavendish of Imaginarium [Productions] finally said, ‘Would you consider playing Laura? You know her so well.’ What interested me was expanding on each character and developing this show beyond the book, which was already very full and rich.”
Cooke was Wright’s first choice to play Cherry, Daniel’s working-class girlfriend, who may or may not have suspicious motives and a violent past. The actors hopped on a Zoom call at the end of 2023 and were immediately on the same page about the thriller series. Both were intrigued by the idea that each episode depicted the characters’ individual takes on the events, forcing viewers to frequently change their allegiance about who is right. Is Cherry deviously trying to push Laura aside for better access to Daniel, or is Laura paranoid and overbearing?
Laura (Robin Wright) is suspicious of Cherry and her motives. (Christopher Raphael / Prime)
“I was enticed by the dual perspectives and delving more into that reality because that is how we operate,” Wright says. “That is the human condition. You perceive [something] in a different way than I do. We’re all a hero of our own story and of our own perspective, but we could be the villain in someone else’s perspective. That’s what happens with Cherry and Laura. Jealousy turns into a power struggle.”
“It’s really fun to dial up the maliciousness and the duplicitous nature of a woman,” Cooke adds. “To play all these different sides and all these different faculties. And both our characters contain them all.”
“It was almost like having the variety pack of being a female,” Wright continues. “It’s easy for the viewer to go back and forth, where you’ll be in favor of this one and then not in favor. And it’s always rooted in true emotion. Wherever Laura or Cherry is coming from, that’s her truth. That’s her story.”
“You’ve always got to champion the characters you’re playing in order to play them honestly,” Cooke says. “I completely understood where Cherry was coming from. A lot of that is lack and fear and scarcity. Not having a parachute or a safety net, and having to constantly strive and move forward. She’s a survivor and she’s scrappy, and she will be the quickest and most ferocious to her own defense.”
The conflict between Laura and Cherry aggressively ratchets up over the course of six episodes. After a rock climbing accident that puts Daniel (Laurie Davidson) into a coma, Laura convinces Cherry that he’s died. Cherry later threatens Laura with a knife — or does she? Cooke says she loved “having the excuse to go f— feral.”
“What’s fun about Laura’s perspective is Cherry seems completely unhinged and that there’s a real malevolent undertone to her behavior,” Cooke says. “But in Cherry’s perspective, it’s all coming from a place of just scrambling. She’s tried to put her best foot forward when she meets Laura for the first time and she’s tried to cover up her past a little bit by saying the odd white lie. And a mum sniffs that out immediately.”
“What’s fun about Laura’s perspective is Cherry seems completely unhinged and that there’s a real malevolent undertone to her behavior,” Olivia Cooke says. “But in Cherry’s perspective, it’s all coming from a place of just scrambling.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
Cooke describes Cherry as an “underdog trying to claw herself up.” “I want the audience to really be of two minds about her,” she says. “And women usually have to be so buttoned up.
“It’s always, ‘You can’t say that or don’t emote that,’” Wright chimes in. “This gave us an opportunity to do what a lot of women would like to say or do, but they can’t. You always have to be a diplomat. This was about being a human being. Women are very layered individuals. We can do 16 things at once. That’s why we can carry children for nine months and then raise them. I wanted to show all of those colors of a woman.”
The role gave Cooke the chance to showcase her range and expressiveness.
“Even just for my own personal life, it felt really cathartic to be able to be angry and be able to scream and be a person who wears their emotions so closely to the surface,” Cooke adds. “Cherry is effervescent. It’s always there waiting to come out. She’s so reactive. And I’m hypervigilant for the warning signs before I react. This was like a rage room.”
In the tumultuous finale, Laura drugs Daniel to keep him away from Cherry. After Cherry breaks into Laura’s house, the duo find themselves in a physical altercation in the basement swimming pool. An addled Daniel discovers them fighting and jumps in to protect Cherry, accidentally holding his mother under the water for too long. The immediate interpretation is that Laura dies at the hand of her son, which is what the actors shot on set in London last year.
“There was an aerial shot of mom dead in his arms,” Wright says. “It was beautiful. He was holding her and he looks at Cherry and mom was dead in his arms in the way I had held him in Spain. But the [producers] cut it out because it showed that she had died.”
Laurie Davidson, who plays Daniel, and Robin Wright in a scene from “The Girlfriend.”
(Christopher Raphael / Prime)
The decision to have Daniel accidentally kill (or not kill) Laura resulted from a “big discussion,” as Wright puts it. The obvious conclusion was to have Cherry purposefully murder Laura, but Wright pushed against that.
“I said, ‘It needs to be the son that kills his mother because he will never get out of her clutches when she’s alive,’” Wright says. “He’s going to be in the middle of this war zone for the rest of his life. When he comes down [to the pool], he’s in a stupor. He’s almost hallucinating. When he dives in the pool and he sees [Laura] trying to drown his girlfriend, he doesn’t know what’s happened prior to that moment, which is she’s tried to kill mom. He has no sense of time and space because he’s under the influence.”
Cooke says she didn’t play the scene as Cherry wanting Laura to die. “Maybe people will read it as that, but I didn’t,” Cooke says. “She knows it’s gone too far. That’s what I played in the moment, shouting at Daniel to snap out of it. But, you know, she did get the house.”
Shooting the pool altercation was a challenging day. Much of the series was filmed in a private house in London’s St. John’s Wood neighborhood, which had an actual swimming pool in the basement. Although the pool was supposedly heated, the actors didn’t experience any warmth.
“It was f— hard,” Wright recalls. “For me, it was like waterboarding. People think, ‘Oh, my God, so much fun to act in those scenes.’ No, it’s not. It’s really tough. We were all drowned rats and freezing cold.”
Still, Cooke says it was enjoyable to go to such intense limits emotionally.
“It’s fun being able to go to the very edge of your emotional capacity in a very safe, fun, embracing environment,” she says. “We wouldn’t have been able to do that in the pool, and be able to try and murder each other and then laugh, if it wasn’t built on trust and love. … These characters do very heightened, crazy stuff, but it’s still seeped in honesty and naturalism, which you need in order to go on this journey.”
Robin Wright recalls how difficult shooting the pool scene was: “For me, it was like waterboarding.” Nevertheless, Olivia Cooke says it was “fun being able to go to the very edge of your emotional capacity.”(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
At the end of the finale, Cherry and Daniel move into Laura’s mansion with the blessing of Daniel’s father, Howard (Waleed Zuaiter). Daniel discovers a voicemail from Laura recounting how Cherry’s mother, Tracey (Karen Henthorn), warned of her daughter’s malicious motives. But while Daniel is clearly in trouble, Wright says you’re not necessarily meant to interpret it as Laura being completely out of the picture.
“We wanted to leave it a little bit open,” she says. “You see the pregnant family living in the Sanderson house and mommy’s gone. Could Laura still be alive? Did she really die? Has she just been shunned to the priory?”
Wright says they wanted to leave it to the audience to decide what happened.
“But Daniel is awakened,” she adds. “If Laura is alive, he could go back to her and say, ‘I now believe you and now I’m with a crazy woman and afraid she’s going to kill me in my sleep.’ There are many iterations where it can go if there is a Season 2.”
As of this interview, no announcement has been made about another season. Cooke, who also stars as Alicent Hightower in “House of the Dragon,” says she would have to get permission from HBO to be part of a concurrent episodic series. Plus, as Wright notes, it’s all about the algorithm. “You always have to wait and see if it’s a semi-success,” Wright says. She adds, turning to Cooke, “If there is a Season 2, I think you should kill the cat in Episode 1, gut it and wear it as a hat.”
For Wright, that’s part of the appeal of being an executive producer — she could brainstorm all the unhinged things that could happen between the characters. She loved coming up with story ideas and character backgrounds, and helping to sculpt the ending, which differs from the novel, was pure joy.
“This was my first opportunity to develop something from the ground up,” says Robin Wright, who executive produces and is a director on the series. “I took a bunch of personal stories, things that I’ve heard, and threw them in there.”
(Jennifer McCord / For The Times)
“This was my first opportunity to develop something from the ground up,” Wright says. “I took a bunch of personal stories, things that I’ve heard, and threw them in there. Like Laura kissing her son on the lips — that came from a friend of mine. And Laura spraying Cherry with her perfume in a shop and saying, ‘Daniel loves this,’ came from someone on set. Things were constantly percolating.”
Wright directed the first three episodes, setting the visual and thematic tone for the series, while Andrea Harkin took on the latter three. The actor says there was a real freedom on set, which was helped by the rehearsals the cast was able to do before filming. She made it a point to always give the actors their own take for each scene.
“Generally, I’d use the take where they went for a free-for-all,” she says. “You get locked in a box as actors. We all do. You pick a choice and you stick with that choice. But when you throw that out the window, the s— that comes out of actors is amazing. That’s what’s so beautiful about being able to direct and being an actor myself. I love watching how it evolves and the light that comes out of them and the emotion that’s brought to the surface.”
“I’ve never acted opposite my director before,” Cooke adds. “The chain of command was so short. Robin was acting with me, but also watching to see what I do and changing her performance to my reaction, which was amazing. It makes it very alive and kinetic.”
Ultimately, it’s up to the viewer to decide whether Laura or Cherry is the villain of “The Girlfriend.” And, as Wright says, it’s simply a matter of how you see things.
“You as the viewer get to decide: Is there a truth, or is it just subjective?” she says. “Because it is subjective for each of our perspectives and we own it. It happened the way you personally know it happened. But the truth lies somewhere in between.”
Haru Urara, the mare who won over horse racing enthusiasts in Japan and abroad with her perpetual losing streak, has died. She was 29.
Yuko Miyahara, a representative for Urara’s longtime care facility Matha Farm in the southeast Chiba prefecture of Japan, confirmed to Japanese outlet Friday Digital that the animal athlete died early Tuesday of colic. She was surrounded by staff.
“Urara was 29. In human years that’s almost 90, but really, until yesterday she was doing really well,” Miyahara said in the article, which was translated to English. “It was so sudden … lately Uhara was getting visitors even from outside Japan. It’s really unfortunate.”
The horse, whose name translates to Glorious Spring, debuted in 1998 at the Kochi Racecourse. The track advertised its resilient star’s losing streak as part of its efforts to stay in business. Urara’s reputation — bolstered by her signature pink racing accessories and fan merchandise — breached the perimeters of the Kochi racetrack and made her a global phenomenon. In 2004 former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi even expressed his support for the mare.
“I’d like to see Haru Urara win, even just once,” Koizumi said. “The horse is a good example of not giving up in the face of defeat.”
Trained by her longtime trainer Dai Muneishi, Urara kept racing — she lost a total of 113 races and finished second in only four of those — until her retirement in August 2004. Her owner at the time parted ways with the Kochi racetrack and Urara disappeared for several years after her retirement. Since 2014 she had been receiving care at Matha Farms.
Her career and unexpected global fame were the subject of the 2016 ESPN documentary “The Shining Star for Losers Everywhere.”
“At the time, Haru Urara must have been a star of hope for the losers,” trainer Muneishi said in the documentary.
Interest in Urara’s legacy of losing and resilience reignited earlier this year with the global release of the mobile game “Uma Musume: Pretty Derby” in June. “Uma Musume,” initially released in Japan in 2021, is a racing simulator that re-imagines real-life racehorses as anime horsegirls. Players are “trainers” who support racers, leveling them up to climb the ranks. In the video game, Haru Urara is a horsegirl whose features are various shades of pink. Her character is also featured in the “Uma Musume: Pretty Derby” anime series.
The game’s official X (formerly Twitter) account shared the news of the racehorse’s death “with heavy hearts” and mourned the “legendary” athlete.
“We share our condolences to all the staff involved in Haru Urara’s care,” the post said.
Times staff writer Tracy Brown contributed to this report.
The festivities begin even before the characters of “One Man, Two Guvnors” enter the stage. A skiffle band (complete with washboard player) performs a pre-show set to rev up the audience for this update of a classic farce relocated to Britain on the eve of the swinging ‘60s.
The inspiration for Richard Bean’s “One Man, Two Guvnors,” now at A Noise Within in Pasadena, is “The Servant of Two Masters,” Carlo Goldoni’s mid-18th-century comedy that formalized the commedia dell’arte antics and masked characters made famous by the improvisational Italian troupes of the day. Bean’s play, set in the eccentric seaside town of Brighton, is quintessentially English by contrast. But farce is a universal language, and the hilarity is not just translated but alchemized into something riotously contemporary.
Grant Olding has written the songs that set the play’s mood, a mischievous Joe Orton-esque ambiance, only less jaundiced and more childlike. Francis Henshall (Kasey Mahaffy), a down-on-his luck busker who moves through the world like an overgrown baby, is driven more by hunger than lust, at least in the play’s first half.
His raging appetite compels him to break the fourth wall and beg the audience for a spare sandwich. When James Corden played the role in London and then on Broadway (where he won a Tony Award for his work), Francis became a figure of unstoppable gluttony. Mahaffy, who starred in the exuberant revival of “A Man of No Importance” at A Noise Within last season, is more insistently peckish — hungry rather than hangry. Sustenance is offered — a hummus sandwich, not one of the character’s favorites — but the plot won’t allow him to dig in just yet. Poor Francis has no choice but to gamely proceed with the farcical business at hand.
“One Man, Two Guvnors” was so dominated by Corden’s star-making performance (this was before his late-night talk-show days) that I assumed the play was a vehicle for a no-holds-barred clown. The effectiveness of the new production, co-directed by Julia Rodriguez-Elliott and Geoff Elliott, is the ensemble approach to the comedy, with everyone expected to contribute their fair share of mirth.
Mahaffy may not be the most natural Zanni, the commedia term for the trickster servant who’s riddled with hunger and lust and always prepared to talk his way out of trouble. He works hard for his laughs, sometimes too hard, but he’s an endearing imp — an overwhelmed freelancer trying to survive the unforgiving gig economy of his age.
Cassandra Marie Murphy, left, and Christie Coran in “One Man, Two Guvnors” at A Noise Within.
(Craig Schwartz)
When the play begins, Francis is employed as the bodyguard of gangster Roscoe Crabbe, who has mysteriously returned from the dead. In fact, Francis is working for the gangster’s twin sister, Rachel Crabbe (Christie Coran), who has disguised herself as Roscoe to extract a debt from Charlie “The Duck” Clench (Henri Lubatti).
Charlie’s dim-bulb daughter, Pauline (Cassandra Marie Murphy), was betrothed to Roscoe, a known homosexual with a sadistic temper. It was to be a marriage of convenience — convenient business-wise for both Roscoe and Charlie. But after Roscoe’s reported death freed her from a frightening prospect, Pauline has become engaged to Alan Dangle (Paul David Story), a would-be actor whose every utterance of love is as hammy as it is sickly sweet.
Rachel is trying to obtain enough money to get married herself. Her intended, Stanley Stubbers (Ty Aldridge), an upper-class twit, murdered her thuggish brother, who was against their union. If she can collect the dowry from Charlie, she and Stanley can sail to Australia to escape the police and live happily ever after Down Under.
Lacking the money to buy even a single portion of fish and chips at a local pub, Francis agrees to be Stanley’s right-hand man. Francis is determined to keep his two bosses apart, a recipe for farcical mayhem, made all the more complicated by Rachel’s convincing drag act and Stanley’s ignorance of her master plan.
In true commedia style, character is destiny. The plot is prescribed by the constellation of types. Obstacles are set up only to be overcome in a stroke of mad luck or outlandish kindness. The longer the delay, the greater the satisfaction when everything is gaily resolved.
Christie Coran and Ty Aldridge in “One Man, Two Guvnors” at A Noise Within.
(Craig Schwartz)
But the route to the happy ending matters, and the actors make this journey a rollicking one. Aldridge’s Stanley is as obtuse as he is supercilious, a dangerous combination for Francis and a hilarious one for us. Coran’s Rachel plays a clever tough guy who puts on a vicious façade to avoid an actual fight. The performance — both in and within the play — works like a dream.
Murphy’s Pauline, a vacuous blonde too literal-minded for metaphor, and Story’s Alan, a scenery-chewer who hogs the spotlight, are a perfect match. Charlie, the transactional patriarch, is as proudly corrupt as his underhanded lawyer, Harry Dangle (Lynn Robert Beg), who sets an equally bad example for his kid, Alan.
Dolly (Trisha Miller), Charlie’s bookkeeper who capably sorts out whatever crooked business is put before her, becomes the romantic object of Francis’ exploits in the second act, when food becomes secondary to love — or its Majorca vacation equivalent, the holiday he dangles before her.
Toward the end of the first act, a serving scene involving a multicourse meal and an octogenarian waiter named Alfie (Josey Montana McCoy) with an adjustable pacemaker brings Francis’ mania for food to a feverish pitch. It’s an ingeniously choreographed slapstick routine, but the bit is even funnier after Francis conscripts a plant in the audience to assist him in hoarding food.
A production of “One Man, Two Guvnors” at South Coast Repertory in 2015 failed to summon the necessary vivacity. That’s where Rodriguez-Elliot and Elliot succeed, creating a party atmosphere through not just the hard-charging band (under the music direction of Rod Bagheri) but the mod scenic design of Frederica Nascimento and the jaunty vintage flair of Garry Lennon’s costumes.
Bean’s play is impressively worked out, mathematically and verbally. The wit is crisp and the comic routines are evergreen, all the more so for the sharpness of the playing.
Mahaffy’s Francis is unfailingly vivid as the self-serving valet of commedia tradition. But this production proves that “One Man, Two Guvnors” is more than a star vehicle for an insanely hungry clown.
‘One Man, Two Guvnors’
Where: A Noise Within, 3352 E Foothill Blvd. Pasadena
SHOPPERS are going wild after spotting a Primark outfit being crowned as the ‘easiest’ Halloween costume yet.
The outfit has been hailed “perfect” for fans of a hit TV show.
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Shoppers have spotted the easiest halloween outfit in PrimarkCredit: Tiktok/@malikiss1
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The outfit has been dubbed a “perfect costume” for Sue Sylvester, from Glee
The budget retailer has been praised for stocking a bright red tracksuit that fans say is a dead ringer for Sue Sylvester, the fierce cheerleading coach from Glee.
TikToker @Malikiss1 filmed the outfit in-store and captioned it: “Run to Primark for the easiest Sue Sylvester Halloween costume.”
The clip quickly racked up comments, with shoppers writing: “I love this,” “I need this,” and “Omg they have them in the kids section too so can match with the kiddos.”
Another added: “I bought it just for this!”, proving the tracksuit is already flying off shelves as a fancy dress hack.
Halloween deals
And with Halloween only a month away, bargain hunters are also snapping up spooky deals from other high street favourites.
Among the stand-out items is a £4.99 pumpkin disco dome and a £1.79 cowboy ghost ornament called Gloria.
Pink mason jars and mugs are also on sale, alongside matching disco tea towels and table runners to complete the look.
With Primark’s tracksuit hack, Poundland’s clearance bargains and Home Bargains’ disco-inspired range, shoppers are spoiled for choice when it comes to cheap and cheerful Halloween prep this year.
Halloween is the perfect opportunity to get dressed up, take on a different persona and have fun with your look.
These days, celebrities provide the perfect inspiration for costumes, however, they also have a team of stylists, makeup artists and endless bounds of cash at their disposal.
So how do you make an outfit like theirs work for you?
A lot of stars make their outfits look sexy and your lingerie drawer is the perfect starting point.
You can use anything from a bra, fishnet tights, stockings and suspenders to add to your look, then depending on the look you’re going for add makeup according.
I.e wearing a black bodice and tights, add some red lipstick and dark eyes for a vampy look.
The rest of your wardrobe can be more inspiring than you think too – for example a plain black can be a perfect base for your costume.
If you are however happy to spend a bit of money on your Halloween costume but are running out of time then Amazon is your go too, there are so many costumes to choose from with many sitting under its Prime next day delivery option.
Or if you’re wanting to see what the in store shops have to offer, look to the supermarkets and budget stores such as B&M, Poundland and Primark which are still full of accessories and clothing to fulfil your Halloween wishes.
Finally, last year, a Halloween-daft mum left people stumped after creating incredible optical illusion costumes for her son – with people asking “what one is the kid?”.
This article contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of “Wednesday.”
In a world where teenagers grapple with accusations of withering attention spans and a lack of motivation, Wednesday Addams managed to rouse from a coma and made the back-to-school scaries feel even more like a mind trip by … summoning Lady Gaga?
“Wednesday” returned for the second half of its sophomore season on Netflix this week, picking up right after Part 1’s ominous cliffhanger to reveal its moody teenage protagonist evaded potential death and that she was ready to dive back into the twisty world of deadly family secrets, monsterly situationships and friendship woes.
In the middle of the new threats and old mysteries are the show-stopping contributions from the pop superstar (and honorary mother to all outcasts, including her legion of Little Monsters, as her fanbase is called). Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, made a roughly two-minute appearance as Rosaline Rotwood, a deceased professor at Nevermore, the school for outcasts that Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) attends, with second sight capabilities that trigger a Freaky Friday/body-swap interlude between Wednesday and her estranged friend Enid (Emma Myers). The multi-hyphenate artist also provides the song “The Dead Dance” to score what’s poised to be another social media dance trend akin to Ortega’s viral Season 1 moves to the Cramps’ “Goo Goo Muck.”
The Times spoke with creators and showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar to break down the season. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
You know where we have to start: Lady Gaga. Tell me the origin story of this casting.
Gough: It all grew out of the viral dance from the first season. Some fan, who should collect a lot of money, put Lady Gaga’s “Bloody Mary” [over the dance] — because it was “Goo Goo Muck”— and suddenly the dance became its own, whole new thing. We’ve always been huge Lady Gaga fans. And if there was anybody who was the ultimate outcast, it would be her. We just started a conversation with her and her team … is there a way for her to be involved in Season 2? We found this character — because obviously, she’s very busy and touring — that could be a small role, but it’s an impactful one. Out of that grew “The Dead Dance,” a song that she had which we heard a year ago and loved it. They’re like, “She’ll hold it for the show.” And we were like, “Oh my God.”
Millar: When we heard the lyrics, it was almost like she had written the song for the show. And we had this moment in Episode 7, which we’d always planned — we never wanted to repeat ourselves with Jenna doing a dance — but it feels like music and the show and dancing are integral now. To not scratch that itch creatively in Season 2, I think the audience would have been so disappointed. So it felt like, how do we honor the incredible Rave’N dance in Season 1, which became such an iconic moment, but do it in a way that’s different and celebrate new characters? That’s why we came up with the idea of the gala and seeing Agnes [Evie Templeton] and Enid come together. They’ve been antagonistic, and it felt like a beautiful moment of female friendship and blossoming and this incredible Gaga song was just like the icing on the cake.
I was expecting a long courting process when you’re trying to get Lady Gaga — like, writing letters.
Gough: The process wasn’t fast, but it was always very pleasant and complimentary. Everybody wanted it to work. I think that’s where we were starting from, is everybody wanted it to work.
Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams and Lady Gaga as Rosaline Rotwood. (Helen Sloan / Netflix)
There’s a lot of discussion right now about gaps between seasons, and obviously there were some factors that caused the gap here — namely the strikes, but also other projects. How do you feel about that, especially knowing the fan base skews younger? Is it harmful to maintaining that relationship with the material?
Millar: We certainly never wanted a three-year gap. I think the show feels like an event movie, in a weird way, so I think people are prepared to wait, but it’s not ideal. It’s something that we would never want ourselves, as viewers. It’s been gratifying that people have come back in the way they have, and we definitely feel their love for the show, but we had obstacles in terms of getting to that place, coming back. No one’s to blame. It’s just the reality of the strike and everything else. Now the focus is coming back quicker. We rolled right from production into the writers’ room; now we’re rolling right into production [on Season 3 in October]. We’re definitely on a faster cadence, and that’s certainly the plan moving forward.
That said, as hopefully you see on screen, it is a huge show. We have over 3,500 visual effects shots. We’re still finishing [the finale] this week. There are still shots that are going to be dropped in that monster fight on the roof, the fight in the clock tower. The most complex visual effects in the show actually is Professor Olaf, which is the Christopher Lloyd character. But that takes a lot of time and trial and error to get to the point where I think the show looks as good as it does. Certainly our imperative is to get the show back faster; I know Netflix has that goal and wish as well.
Gough: Our goal is we’ve got to create the best show we can create. As Miles said, it takes us a certain amount of time. When you get in your head like that, you can’t actually do your best work. I can guarantee you that’s something that the Netflix marketing department thinks about a lot. They certainly try to keep fans engaged online and through other ways. And the Netflix Houses now that have those [fan] experiences. Can you translate that and keep engagement? You’re right, there’s a lot of shows and movies out there and you want to be able to stay in the zeitgeist in that time when you’re not in the zeitgeist. But for us, at a certain point, we just got to create the show, try to keep all the noise outside.
In the space between Season 1 and 2, Jenna was pretty vocal about not connecting with the character choices from the first season. I’m curious how you felt as it happened? And what has “Wednesday” taught you about how to work with actors and how to consider their opinions or perspective about the material?
Gough: We’re not going to speak to some of that because we’ve spoken to it in previous interviews, but I think our philosophy has always been — from “Smallville” on down “Into the Badlands” — it is a collaboration and a conversation with the actors. We always say movies is a party, but a television show is like a family. They have to feel ownership. We had that with Jenna in Season 1 — she read all the scripts, she gave notes. She’s continued to do that in Season 2. She’s taken a more active role in terms of being in production meetings and understanding the marketing perspective and just having all of that. She’s a generational talent and she’s going to have a very long career, and the career will be more than just acting. Actors are the keeper of the world and they have to be able to [understand] their characters. We’ll take a good idea from anybody. You just want them to be engaged and to have good ideas and be thinking about their characters. It’s something we learned from John Wells, who we met with very early on, before we started running “Smallville,” to get his advice. That’s what he told us. As a creator, you have to have the vision for the show, but you have to be open to these ideas and funnel them through.
Enid (Emma Myers) and Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) in “Wednesday.” Season 2 explores the growing pains of the polar-opposite friends: “The end of Season 1, Wednesday made a friend, but then it’s like, OK, how do you be a friend?”
(Netflix)
Is it fair to say you took some of it into consideration because there was less of an emphasis on a love triangle, at least with Wednesday? We really see things build in the friendship between Enid and Wednesday.
Gough: The thing is, if your first boyfriend turns out to be a monster, there was never going to be like, “Oh, I can’t wait to dive back into a romance” idea. The show’s been in our head for six years; it was always like, Season 2 was once bitten, twice shy, especially if you’re Wednesday Addams — or once bitten, twice stabbed. That felt like the natural evolution. Again, she’s not a character who was, even Season 1 [boy crazy] and it worked great. People were invested and intrigued and wanted to know. I can tell you from having daughters — because most times it’s portrayed as the girls are loving for the boys. That’s not true in every situation. With my two daughters, it’s the boys who’ve been way more interested in the girls, and then they eventually come around or think, maybe I’ll do it. If you look at Season 1, Xavier and Tyler were way more interested in Wednesday. Wednesday had no interest and any time she even delved into what you would see as romance — she went to the dance because she thought he was a suspect. Wednesday never does anything because she goes with the flow. She’s either backed into a corner or it’s going to help her in her larger case. Even in that love triangle, we never betrayed Wednesday. She was never starry-eyed for either boy.
Millar: That love triangle worked, actually, very well. It’s the dramatic backbone of the season and leads Wednesday — because I think Wednesday, as we like to say, is often wrong; she is someone who just is very headstrong, and I think that’s what makes her so intriguing, that she’s complex and flawed. That’s an interesting thing for teenage female protagonist, who often aren’t that. It’s the journey of a teen; with Season 2, we can change it, and Jenna was in an agreement with that. It’s been a very successful partnership in terms of the steering the course of the character, and where she goes and how she behaves and what she says.
What were you interested in exploring between the Enid-Wednesday dynamic in Season 2? And how did you arrive at the body-swapping idea?
Gough: The end of Season 1, Wednesday made a friend, but then it’s like, OK, how do you be a friend? That’s something that she is still very Wednesday [about] and she still has her preconceived notions of Enid, which is, “I can’t tell her the secret, I have to save her. I can’t include her — she’s weak, she’ll lose her mind.” She doesn’t think that Enid can handle it, so she doesn’t really see her friend. With Enid, it’s even the case with Ajax, and moving on to Bruno, which is Ajax saw her one way, and she’s not that girl anymore.
The body-swap episode was a way to explore that so that they could see [what it’s like] literally walking a mile in somebody else’s shoes — in this case, their bodies — and seeing what it is that they appreciate about each other. It’s an idea that’s sitting there — they’re so polar opposites and they’re both such good actors that they’ve created characters with such specific quirks and body movement and cadences and things like that. To then put the one in the other, it just felt like, why wouldn’t we do that?
Millar: We’ve had moments of real darkness this season; we just need to have an episode where the audience is going to have the best time and it be a great ride. I remember we were on set and it was the moment where Enid wakes up in [Wednesday’s] body and starts screaming. Jenna can scream nonstop. She was screaming all day, but it was so incredible to hear. You didn’t know who it was really. It was complete transformation. It was definitely a challenge. It was more than halfway through the season, they were tired and it was a real testament to their resilience and professionalism that they really just went for it.
Gough: They would record each other doing the line so that they could hear. They studied like two A students. They really put everything into it.
The Addams family plays a bigger role this season. From left, Morticia (Catherine Zeta-Jones), Wednesday (Jenna Ortega), Gomez (Luis Guzmán) and Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez).
(Helen Sloan / Netflix)
You brought the Addams family further into the fold this season, particularly giving attention the mother-daughter dynamic between Morticia and Wednesday — their parallels, their tension.
Gough: The show‘s a comedy, it’s a satire, but it always comes down to [being] a family drama. Season 1 even went back Wednesday’s ancestor, Goody vs. Crackstone; then it was Gomez and Morticia vs. the Gates family. It all comes down to family secrets in this show. We wanted to expand that. The feedback we also got was people love the Addams Family and they’re intrigued by them because there’s no real mythology for the Addams Family. They didn’t have names until the TV show in the ’60s. Then you got a couple movies in the ’90s. People love them, but you don’t know much about them. For us, it’s great because it’s the opposite of “Smallville.” It is a clean slate where you can build the family tree. And we do it with the blessing of Kevin Miserocchi, who runs the Addams Foundation.
You got a taste of it in Season 1, with Morticia and Wednesday, and then you saw it in the Parents’ Weekend episode. But then the idea of Morticia is here, and what does that do? And the idea of this mother-daughter relationship, which especially in the teenage years, can be very fraught. They’re a lot more alike than they want to admit, on both ends. To take that very universal idea and relationship that a lot of people have experienced, but put it through the prism of the Addams Family with Morticia and Wednesday, and they solve their fights with swords and there’s more life-and-death sort of circumstances — that felt like a fun way to do it and a way to open up the show.
Millar: We really wanted to give Jenna some relief as well; she was in every scene of Season 1. It was a creative opportunity for us to explore different characters and to really expand the world of the show.
Thing, performed by Victor Dorobantu, and Jenna Ortega as Wednesday Addams in “Wednesday.” The rogue appendage received a backstory in Season 2.
(Netflix)
I loved getting an origin story for Thing.
Millar: The first thing you see of Slurp is this gloved hand coming out of the ground. We thought, “Oh, everyone’s going to know immediately; it’ll be the worst kept secret in Hollywood.” It’s been really gratifying because that’s such a great twist, if we could pull it off — it’s right in front of your face the whole time.
We talked about [whether Thing] should be attached to someone who is so evil. Obviously, he’s flawed. He’s often doing things for the right reasons; they’re sort of deranged reasons. But Isaac Night [Owen Painter] is a flawed character, but he’s also the noble genius as well. That was a debate. We had some other options we explored and went down the road with, but ultimately we thought it was this idea of transformation of seeing a zombie who then becomes human and the comic foil of Pugsley [Isaac Ordonez] choosing him like a pet dog, and then he starts eating brains — it just sounds so insane, but actually it make sense in the show.
Now I want to know the path you didn’t take with him.
Millar: We had a whole backstory for him, which is he was in a circus and he fell in love with a circus performer. It was a very much more sweet story, rather than this one, which is much more macabre, sort of inspired by Frankenstein, zombie movies.
What can you tease about Season 3? Will there be more Lady Gaga? Things ends with Enid being seemingly trapped in wolf mode and there’s Wednesday’s psychic vision of Ophelia, Morticia’s sister.
Millar: We’re in the middle of [writing] Season 3 now. Our lips are sealed. We can’t say anything, but obviously the end of Season 2 does set up that Ophelia will be coming to feature in Season 3. We’ll say that much.
Zoe Slater was heard commenting that someone was ‘alive’ as if they were meant to be dead in a scene on EastEnders on Wednesday night, as she was left fighting for her life
22:51, 03 Sep 2025Updated 23:32, 03 Sep 2025
Zoe Slater was heard commenting that someone was ‘alive’ as if they were meant to be dead(Image: PA)
Fans believe a dead EastEnders character may be about to come back to life in a twist linked to Zoe Slater.
Zoe, played by Michelle Ryan, panicked that someone was out to get her as she was shot in explosive scenes on Wednesday night. She had no idea she had accidentally been shot after Jack Branning and Ravi Gulati fought over a gun.
Fearing she was in danger, she admitted to her mum Kat Moon that someone was after her and seemed shocked when she said the words “he’s still alive”. She didn’t specify who she was referring to before she lost consciousness.
Now fans think it’s someone from the show’s past and that they could be about to make a shocking return. One theory was that she was talking about Paul Trueman, who was killed off on the BBC soap in 2004.
Fans believe a dead EastEnders character may be about to come back to life(Image: BBC)
Zoe, played by Michelle Ryan, panicked that someone was out to get her(Image: PA)
Another theory was it was about Dennis Rickman, who died in 2005. Some fans wondered if it was a living character, but Zoe wrongly assumed they were dead – with Ross Marshall named, as well as Max Branning.
Fans also questioned if Zoe’s biological father Harry Slater, who raped Zoe’s mother Kat Moon when she was 13 years old, was the one who was “still alive”. Fans took to X with their theories.
One fan said: “Who’s still alive? What if Dennis Rickman or Paul Trueman is alive and Zoe knows them?” Another fan said: “Who was Zoe looking at in the pub? She clearly saw someone. And she told Kat ‘he’s still alive’.
“Was it Joel? Was it Ross? Was it Oscar, then did she click Max was alive because he looks so much like Oscar??” Another fan posted: “Zoe said ‘He’s still alive,” when talking to Kat in the ambulance. It’s either her twin brother, or (((drum roll))) Harry Slater didn’t die in 2018!”
More will be revealed in upcoming episodes. It come as fans learned Zoe had given birth to twins in 2006, while until that flashback episode no one knew about it.
Fans predicted it was Paul Trueman(Image: BBC)
It seemed that sadly one of the twins died after childbirth, while Zoe left the little boy and fled the hospital, wanting him to be adopted. Now, fans think the father of the babies could be Den Watts.
Zoe slept with Den amid a storyline with her partner Dennis, Den’s son, and it was thought she had an abortion. Now fans think she was still pregnant and that the twins are Den’s children.
Taking to X one fan said: “If anything it’s Den’s baby.” Another said: “Wait is Dirty den the dad.” A third fan posted: “Zoe Slater is the mother of twins by Den Watts, and one of them is dead.” Another added: “No way she had Den’s baby???? No way right????” A further post read: “Is that Den’s baby?.”
Jesse Plemons is never one to chew scenery. Even when handed a role that edges on madness, he doesn’t go big. Instead, he goes deep, building tension quietly from the inside out. And in Yorgos Lanthimos’ uncategorizable, darkly comic sci-fi thriller, Plemons — reuniting with the director after playing three characters in last year’s “Kinds of Kindness” — delivers one of his most riveting performances yet. As Teddy, a rumpled, reclusive beekeeper convinced that a pharma CEO (Emma Stone) is an alien from the planet Andromeda, Plemons channels paranoia, grief and righteousness into something both absurd and unnervingly sincere. The “I do my own research” archetype could easily veer into “SNL” sketch territory but he plays it heartbreakingly straight, creating a chillingly familiar portrait of a man lost in an algorithmic maze of internet rabbit holes and desperate for clarity in a world that no longer makes sense. Teddy enlists his younger cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, an autistic first-time actor in a mesmerizing turn) to help him abduct Stone’s steely executive, drawing him into the mission in a misguided effort to protect him. Even as things spiral into chaos, Plemons (a 2022 supporting actor Oscar nominee for Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”) roots the performance in a warped but recognizably human emotional logic. The result captures the anxious, conspiratorial spirit of 2025 with eerie precision, proving once again that Plemons doesn’t need to raise his voice to deliver a performance that speaks volumes. — Josh Rottenberg
Hey, hey, they’re the Runarounds, the latest Pinocchio band to straddle the line between fiction and fact. Meet Charlie (William Lipton), guitar! He’s a romantic! Neil (Axel Ellis), also guitar! Not just a pothead! (He reads Ferlinghetti.) Topher (Jeremy Yun), lead guitar! The quiet one! Wyatt (Jesse Golliher), bass! The even quieter one! And Bez (Zendé Murdock), drums, replacing Pete (Maximo Salas), henceforth the “manager,” who surely has been named for Pete Best, or I will eat my Beatles fan club card.
They have been assembled for your fist-pumping adulation from a reported 5,000-plus hopefuls responding to an open call for musicians and dropped into the center of a teenage musical soap opera, also called “The Runarounds,” premiering Monday on Prime Video.
This rockin’ concoction comes to you courtesy of Jonas Pate, creator of the Netflix teenage treasure-hunt series “Outer Banks,” and like that show, it is a wish-fulfilling fantasy set in Pate’s native North Carolina, specifically the seaside city of Wilmington, which offers a lot of lovely scenery and adorable domestic architecture. And like that show, it is all about being young and wanting to be free, like the bluebirds. Unlike that show, everybody here keeps their shirts on, in the actual sense (though not at all in the metaphorical).
The eight-episode season begins just as high school is ending, which in dramatic terms means parties and a scene in which someone makes a graduation speech. (That will be Sophia, played by Lilah Pate, daughter of Jonas.) Charlie, who has just turned 18, is avoiding telling his parents that he’s not going to go to college, even though he’s been accepted to one. (To just one is the perhaps unintended implication.) His entire future, in his head at least, depends on “getting signed” by the summer’s end — which, in music business terms, is 20th century thinking, but like a lot of music being made today, this is an old-fashioned show. That, and getting Sophia, the beautiful, overachieving sad girl he’s been crushing on for four years, to notice him.
Charlie, Toph, Neil and Pete have been playing unspecified gigs under an unfortunate name I’ll not repeat, and they feel pretty good about the band, although strangely it takes until the pilot for them to realize that Pete is a terrible drummer. After some group soul-searching and flyer-posting, they pick up Bez, who drums so well one wonders why he isn’t in three other bands already — or why there seems to be no other groups around, or any sort of music scene. He brings along his friend Wyatt, who picks up a bass, and a new band is born. Wyatt’s interiority, shy smile and young Jeff Tweedy vibe makes him immediately the most intriguing Runaround.
Charlie (William Lipton), Wyatt (Jesse Golliher) and Bez (Zendé Murdock) in a scene from “The Runarounds,” which is set in Wilmington, N.C.
(Jackson Lee Davis / Prime Video)
Along with Sophia, who writes poems that might be lyrics, the female element is filled out by Amanda (Kelley Pereira), Topher’s controlling, capable girlfriend, who will prove a secret weapon for the band, and Bender (Marley Aliah), who goes about with cameras, likes Neil and wholly embodies a somewhat scary, casually cool, not-at-all pixieish dream girl. They don’t get to be in the band, but as actors, they do a lot to support their nonprofessional castmates. (Lipton, the only professional actor in the band — including in 328 episodes of “General Hospital” — comes across as less authentic than the untrained others, though that may be in part because he’s saddled with the heaviest storylines and has to say things like, “I want to write love songs that change the world.”)
As in “Outer Banks,” and two out of every three teen shows ever, most are at odds with their parents, catnip to young viewers who are even occasionally at odds with their own parents, over even minor things because — parents! Charlie’s are played by Brooklyn Decker, whose character teaches film, and Hayes MacArthur, whose character has spent 12 years working on a novel — that is, only working on a novel, which is to say not working; somehow they are not divorced. (And money is becoming an issue, and there is a Big Secret that will shake the family.) “What kind of work is done in a bathrobe, father?” says Charlie’s mouthy little sister, Tatum (Willa Dunn).
Neil’s father, who has health problems, assumes his son will join him in his painting business; Topher’s are conservative stuck-up pills who, like Amanda, have him slated for a career in finance. Bez’s father is also a musician but thinks his son is wasting his time with the Runarounds. Wyatt’s mother is some sort of addict, who hates him. Sophia’s father is self-medicating after the death of her mother some years before, leaving her to pick up the pieces. (“I’m doing everything right on paper but I don’t feel alive,” she says.) Wouldn’t you rather be with your friends, playing in a band?
Wyatt will find a job and a refuge, and the band a rehearsal space in a music store run by nonparental adult Catesby (Mark Wystrach), who spent 18 years in Nashville experiencing success and failure and knew Charlie’s mother once upon a time — so that’ll be a thing. (The store apparently does no business at all.) For inspiration he sends the kids way out in the country to a secret show by his old friend Dexter Romweber (a real person, now deceased, played by Brad Carter), who will shake their nerves and rattle their brains and leave them with words of encouraging and discouraging wisdom before disappearing into the night and a fictionalized fate.
Every so often, we get a performance — at a graduation party, a county fair, a wedding, a roadhouse, a prestigious opening slot, where the crowds react as if they’re extras in a TV show. (The kids can play, and the songs aren’t bad.) As they struggle toward their goal, they’ll meet disaster and resistance. They’ll fuss, they’ll feud. They’ll make mistakes, they’ll make sacrifices, they’ll make trouble, though no trouble that can’t be fixed with an apology or checkbook or someone to bail them out. (I am pretty sure in the long history of underage kids sneaking into clubs, none has ever been arrested and put in jail, but maybe things are different in Wilmington.) They’ll get high and stay out all night, talking heart to heart, which does seem authentically teenage. (The “Wizard of Oz” costumes less so.)
There are niche references for the pop-musically informed: Catesby telling Wyatt to put a couple of P13 pickups into a ’68 Silvertone guitar; moving from the two to the five chord; name-dropping storied rock clubs (the 40 Watt, the 9:30). “This isn’t some f— Squier I got for Christmas,” Neil wails when his Gretsch White Falcon disappears. When Charlie rides his bike off a roof into a swimming pool in the midst of Pete’s party, that is almost certainly in homage to the “I am a golden god” scene from “Almost Famous”; later, they’ll nick an idea from the Beatles.
As with other manufactured bands before them, the line between what’s real and what’s retail is blurred. You can buy Runarounds-branded merch (T-shirts and hoodies, a beach towel, a sweatband, lighters). You can stream their “album,” co-produced by the Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, and released by actual major label Arista, from all the usual musical platforms. They’ve got dates scheduled from mid-September to late October in the South, mid-Atlantic and Northeast in legit rock halls, though whether they will identify themselves by their character names, I don’t know. (That wasn’t a problem for the Monkees, who just used their own.) I doubt they’ll be sleeping on floors or tripled up at a Motel 6, unless things are worse than I know at Amazon. If they split the driving, I hope they’re more responsible with that than the characters they play.
It’s a fluffy show, sometimes catching something real, frequently improbable, never completely ridiculous. But the audience at which it’s aimed may be happy enough with an aspirational fairy tale that reflects their own feelings about their own feelings, for which the music itself is a megaphone and a metaphor.
“All good pop songs are a little corny,” says Charlie.
“Maybe,” replies Sophia, which is the right answer.
In the waning days of the 1960s, when Don Sutton was starting his Hall of Fame career and Don Drysdale was finishing his, kids all over the Southland could turn on Channel 9 and catch a block of cartoons. “Speed Racer” came on first, followed by “Ultraman”.
In the lore: “A 130-foot tall red and silver giant of light, Ultraman came to Earth from another galaxy to protect humanity from invading aliens and giant monsters.”
Fortunately, the meet-and-greet version of Ultraman that showed up at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday was about 6 feet tall. I dropped by to say hello, although I had been warned he did not converse with humans.
“He’ll look at you quizzically, but also with endearment, knowing you are a little carbon-based unit that would like to become his friend,” said David Kornblum, president of Tsuburaya Fields Media and Pictures Entertainment.
Ultraman turns 60 next year. Kornblum is based in Los Angeles, and his job is to take what his Tokyo-based company calls “Japan’s most beloved superhero” and revive his popularity in the United States. This fall, you’ll be able to stream new and classic episodes of Ultraman.
It’s not just that Shohei Ohtani is more popular than Ultraman in Japan these days. If you’re a Japanese company wanting to get the word out in America about your product, you’re in good company at Dodger Stadium.
“With the Dodgers, you’ve got a 50,000-seat stadium basically sold out for 80 games a year,” Kornblum said. “It’s a natural in terms of having exposure for this character in this market, the second-largest market in the country.
“You have the opportunity to showcase your character with the most popular team.”
The “Shohei economy,” as one team official dubbed it last year, has taken on a new dimension.
Japanese fans flock to Dodger Stadium, of course, taking stadium tours conducted in Japanese, enjoying a variety of national delicacies at concession stands and clutching shopping bags packed with hundreds — and sometimes thousands — of dollars’ worth of Ohtani merchandise.
And, of the 24 corporations with advertising space between the foul poles at Dodger Stadium as of Tuesday, eight are based in Asia.
What’s new: With Ohtani as a global attraction, Japanese entertainment companies have used Dodger Stadium as a platform to popularize their star attractions.
“There is not a business sector that hasn’t weighed in with us,” Dodgers president Stan Kasten said, noting the Dodgers’ league-leading attendance and global viewership. “We are an entertainment venue. We’re a place to go to get attention.
“If you’re a brand looking for attention, where else would you go?”
With each deal, Ohtani’s contract becomes even more magical for the Dodgers. Never mind, for the moment, the sponsorships with Asian airlines, retailers, beverage companies, and so on.
With four Japanese character appearances at Dodger Stadium this season, the Dodgers have made more than the $2 million they pay Ohtani in salary this year. (The other $68 million is deferred.)
And, as the entertainment companies reach customers in the United States, the Dodgers reach fans in Japan, where they have leveraged Ohtani to become the dominant major league team.
The Dodgers launched a fan club there this year. Kasten said they hope to expand their marketing presence there as Major League Baseball considers relaxing rules under which the league itself — rather than individual teams — typically controls international business ventures.
“FC Barcelona told me they have 300 million fans around the world,” Kasten said. “That’s a good role model.”
When Tokyo’s Cover Corp. opened a Los Angeles office last year, they brought their star animated character — Gawr Gura — to Dodger Stadium.
“The fact that we could say we had a collaboration with the Dodgers, that is helpful to show we are that level of a brand,” said Motoaki Tanigo, the chief executive of Cover. “That was helpful to us, to introduce ourselves.”
The Dodgers sold 8,000 tickets as part of the Cover promotion, the company said and the team confirmed, with 80% of those fans visiting Dodger Stadium for the first time, and with many showing up super early to snap up commemorative merchandise. Cover staged a larger ballpark promotion this year.
Ultraman takes down Alien Baltan before before the ceremonial first pitch on Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Ultraman brought no merchandise with him, but he did bring an evil nemesis, who tried to steal the show during the ceremonial first pitch. If the point was to identify the evil nemesis called a kaiju for an unfamiliar audience, I suggested the company dress him in a Padres uniform.
“Or in a Giants uniform,” Kornblum said. “I would love if they would allow us to have a full smackdown, with a kaiju in a Giants jersey vs. Ultraman in a Dodgers jersey.
“A beatdown at home plate would be fun. But the corporate guys won’t let me do that.”
“Long Story Short,” premiering Friday on Netflix, is the sweet, melancholy, satirical, silly, poignant, hopeful, sometimes slapstick cartoon tale of a middle-class Jewish family, told nonchronologically from the 1990s to the 2020s. For all its exaggerations — and unexaggerated portrayals of exaggerated behaviors — it is remarkably acute, and surprisingly moving, about relations between parents and children and brothers and sisters and about the passage of time and the lives time contains. The eight-episode season is bookended with funerals.
On a plane ride home, Avi Schwooper (Ben Feldman), his last name combining his parents’ Schwartz and Cooper, plays new girlfriend Jen (Angelique Cabral) a recording of Paul Simon’s “The Obvious Child,” in which a character goes from a baby to a married man in the space of a verse. “That’s time, right?” he says, setting a theme and a strategy. In the episodes that follow, we’ll see relationships begin and end; children born and grown, not necessarily in that order. Things change, things fall apart, things last.
Created by “BoJack Horseman” creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg — Avi is drawn to resemble him — and designed by Lisa Hanawalt (who inspired and designed the “BoJack” characters and created “Tuca & Bertie”), it has the look of a children’s book, bright, colorful and busy, aggressively two-dimensional, with wobbly bold lines and squiggly patterns. Deceptively sophisticated and wonderfully expressive, it is full of lifelike details, without being made to resemble life.
Avi’s parents are Naomi Schwartz (Lisa Edelstein), intense and serious, and Elliot Cooper (Paul Reiser), laid-back and humorous. Avi, who writes about music, will go on to marry Jen (blond, gentile); Hannah (Michaela Dietz) is their smart, socially isolated daughter. Avi’s sister Shira (Abbi Jacobson), the angry middle child, will start a family with Kendra (Nicole Byer), a Black woman who is Jewish by choice. Younger brother Yoshi (Max Greenfield) is a bit of a lost soul — “sometimes I just feel like the extra one,” he’ll say — diagnosed as an adolescent with ADD, dyslexia and executive function disorder. (“I never gave him enough attention,” Naomi says, rushing to claim the guilt. “Now he has a deficit.”)
Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and designed by Lisa Hanawalt, the series has the look of a children’s book, bright, colorful and busy, aggressively two-dimensional, with wobbly bold lines and squiggly patterns.
(Netflix)
Though each episode is a piece in the mosaic, each has its own story to tell: Yoshi selling mattresses that come in a tube; Avi mixed up with self-righteous parents as he campaigns to remove wolves from Hannah’s school (the wolves, by contrast, are drawn realistically); Kendra at work at a birthday arcade called BJ Barnacles; Yoshi on a nocturnal adventure in San Francisco — the show is set around the Bay Area — with a former friend of his sister, attempting to retrieve a lost bag; Shira attempting to make her mother’s knishes; an improvised shabbat in a desert motel. There are inside family jokes (“Is not a schnook,” Cousin Moishe) that will pay off after a while; a school holiday pageant (“Hanukkah, Ramadan, Kwanzaa too / We tolerate them all, but there’s nothing like Christmas,” runs a song in the background). Yoshi has a bar mitzvah; Naomi is honored for her charitable work. Occasional weird inventions are folded in: a “hambulance” delivering ham; food trucks selling potato ice cream and soup on a stick; something called Pacifier Shirt Syndrome, caused by rubbing a dropped pacifier on a short.
Although I suspect this subject is interesting only to (us) Jews, it took a long time for any sort of Jewish specificity to make it to the screen, especially given who built the movie business. (Assimilation was the name of the game for a people blamed for a scapegoated race.) Even now, it doesn’t happen all that much. You could sense it on “Seinfeld,” see it on “Curb Your Enthusiasm” a lot. There are the current Netflix rom-com “Nobody Wants This,” with Kristen Bell in a relationship with Adam Brody’s rabbi, and the recent Adam Sandler-produced “You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.” And there is the odd Holocaust drama.
But in this moment, with its confounding mix of classical antisemitism, fake anti-antisemitism brandished as a weapon against universities and what gets called antisemitism simply because it’s critical of Israel, it’s not a bad thing to get a relatively straightforward look at a contemporary American Jewish family. Together, the characters represent the spectrum of religious attitudes — from atheist to convert, selectively to very observant — but all are steeped in the culture.
Hannah, whose gentile mother makes her “not Jewish,” wonders if her wanting a bat mitzvah might be “cultural appropriation.”
“Look, if Adolf Hitler saw you, I don’t think he’d be doing the math on technically how halachically Jewish you are,” says her father. “He’d throw you in the oven with the rest of us. … If you’re Jewish enough for Hitler, you’re Jewish enough for me.”
That the show can be a little obscure from time to time — I had to look up “Moshiach” to get one joke — just deepens its world. But anyone who’s ever shared a family joke, or wanted to ask a question of someone no longer around to answer it, or compared notes with a sibling on a parent never fully understood will recognize themself here.
The glass partition wall in Lisa Hanawalt’s office is lined with reference sheets dedicated to the members of the central family in “Long Story Short.”
Each page lists a character’s name, birth month and year — along with their zodiac sign — and a dated timeline of full body images that tracks how they look at different ages. Depending on the character, this includes their designs as children, teens and middle-aged adults.
During a mid-August morning at ShadowMachine studio, Hanawalt sits at her desk, pulling up different looks of earlier incarnations of the characters that she did before their final designs were set along with newer works in progress. Raphael Bob-Waksberg sits just behind her as they point out little details that they’re fond of and bounce their thoughts back and forth on whether certain characters might drastically change their appearance one year, as people tend to do.
“It’s a fun thing you don’t get to do on a lot of animated shows,” says Bob-Waksberg, the creator and showrunner of “Long Story Short.” “To evolve with our characters and dress them up and have so many different looks for them.”
On most animated sitcoms, characters are trapped in time: perpetually the same age, usually wearing the same clothes, rarely even getting a haircut — no matter how many holiday episodes they get through the years. Not so on “Long Story Short,” where the passage of time is a feature.
“It’s really fun to get to know the characters and to think about their aesthetic,” says Hanawalt, the show’s supervising producer. “We have to draw a lot of different versions of everybody.”
Siblings Shira, left, Yoshi and Avi Schwooper in “Long Story Short.”
(Netflix)
Launching Friday on Netflix, “Long Story Short” follows the Schwoopers, a Bay Area family whose portmanteau last name is a blend of the parents’ Schwartz and Cooper, through the ups and downs of their lives. The show’s cast includes Lisa Edelstein and Paul Reiser, who voice the parents Naomi and Elliot, respectively, and Ben Feldman, Abbi Jacobson and Max Greenfield as the Schwooper children, Avi, Shira and Yoshi.
Their story unfolds over time across both everyday happenings and milestones, with each self-contained episode jumping between moments that reverberate from anywhere in the 1950s to 2020s.
“It feels cumulative, even though the episodes themselves are not necessarily connected directly,” Bob-Waksberg says. “We thought a lot about emotional arcs more than narrative arcs. Can we feel like these characters have gone on a journey, even though we’re seeing the [story] out of order?”
“Long Story Short” is Bob-Waksberg’s first new show since the conclusion of “Bojack Horseman,” the acclaimed adult animated series that ended in 2020, about a washed up former sitcom star and his struggles set in an alternate Hollywood where humans lived alongside anthropomorphic animals. While “Bojack” didn’t shy away from showing how terrible parents were the root cause of various characters’ troubles, “Long Story Short” is a more nuanced take on dysfunction where it’s not as easy to place blame.
“As you get older, you kind of realize, we’re all screwed up in different ways and most of us didn’t have parents that bad,” Bob-Waksberg says. “We had parents who were trying and in some ways succeeding, and in other ways, not quite giving us what we needed.”
The show marks the pair’s third animated series together. Hanawalt served as the production designer and producer on “Bojack” before developing her own series, “Tuca & Bertie,” on which Bob-Waksberg served as an executive producer. But their easy rapport as they comment on a short clip of sauce exploding and whether a character is the type of person to only own one suit — as well as when the conversation detours into listing actors they insist the other likes after a missed film reference — makes it obvious that their friendship runs much deeper.
Longtime friends Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Lisa Hanawalt have previously worked together on “Bojack Horseman” and “Tuca & Bertie.”
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
Bob-Waksberg and Hanawalt explain that even during their high school years in Palo Alto, where they crossed paths as theater kids and became friends, they would talk about working on projects together and dream up TV show ideas. Describing Hanawalt as one of his favorite people and artists, Bob-Waksberg says she is the first person he thinks of whenever he needs someone for artistic work.
After hearing Bob-Waksberg’s idea for “Long Story Short,” “I just immediately felt like I knew what it should look like,” says Hanawalt. “That it should look like Sunday funnies, comics and ‘Peanuts.’ … I thought this should be more hand-drawn and loose. The warmth of the show, but also playing against how serious some of the subject matter is, I thought [that style] would help warm it up a bit.”
Though Hanawalt says backgrounds are not her forte, she had a vision of what she saw for the world and started drawing houses and buildings that resembled those they grew up in. Bob-Waksberg credits that as the reason for the show being set in Northern California.
Another reason Hanawalt wanted to work on the show was because it involved designing humans — something she’s leaned away from in the past.
“All the other stuff I get sent is for animals [and] animal people,” she says. “People see me as the animal lady, which I am — I do love anthropomorphic animals and plants. But I was actually leaning toward something more realistic. … I don’t want to get pigeonholed. And doing the same thing over and over, it gets really boring to me. So this was a fun challenge, drawing humans that are as cute as animals.”
Hearing this, Bob-Waksberg is amused by how aspects from their past have come to define them.
“I was just thinking about how 13, 14 years ago, I was developing a whole bunch of TV shows,” he says. “The one that went was the animated one and now I’m a cartoon guy, which I don’t resent. It’s been very good for me. But it’s so funny, [to think that] there’s another universe in which this other show went and then I’d be known as that kind of writer.”
The Schwooper family in an episode of “Long Story Short.”
(Netflix)
Both Bob-Waksberg and Hanawalt acknowledge it’s still a tough time for the industry, including for writers looking for work and creatives trying to get things made. Both mention having pitched different ideas that they were certain would be their next projects that ultimately went nowhere.
“I’m glad to work on this because I’m happy to not be a showrunner right now,” Hanawalt admits. “‘Tuca & Bertie’ wiped me out [and] I didn’t have enough juice to keep pitching.”
Still, Bob-Waksberg believes animation is one of the few places were shows based on original ideas have a chance, and for that he and Hanawalt are both grateful because they’d rather work on their own ideas than play in someone else’s sandbox. In other spaces, studios appear to only show interest on ideas based on existing IP like a book, news article or podcast. They also remain hopeful that, in time, things will get better.
“The appetite for original, good shows and animated shows is always there,” Hanawalt says. “That’s consistent. The audience is there. It’s just a matter of getting it to them.”
Although the show centers a Jewish family in Northern California and includes nods to his upbringing, Bob-Waksberg has been clear that “Long Story Short” is not autobiographical. But it is deeply personal. He explains that discussing the novel “Interior Chinatown,” which confronts the interplay of representation and identity, with author Charles Yu was one of the things that made him think about what it would be like to address his own identity in his work.
“It felt like it opened up this new door of story possibility that I hadn’t considered before,” Bob-Waksberg says. “One of the interesting things about working on this show is unpacking [how], especially in conversation with my other writers and the actors and other people, some things that I attributed to being Jewish is just my family.”
“Long Story Short” showrunner Raphael Bob-Waksberg and supervising producer Lisa Hanawalt.
(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)
While the series addresses the “trauma” — in quotes depending on which character you ask — rooted in people’s upbringing, it’s also filled with plenty of humor and heart. Most episodes are zoomed in on whatever more personal issue the Schwoopers are facing, and the passage of time is conveyed through characters’ ages and appearances rather than by referencing specific happenings and headlines that might be associated with that story’s era.
But one global event the series does acknowledge is the COVID-19 pandemic. For Bob-Waksberg, it was important to do so because it’s a collective trauma that affected everyone and should be remembered as such.
“This was a real dividing point for our world and for us all as individuals,” Bob-Waksberg says. “I feel like it’s been underrepresented in pop culture in a weird way [and] we all were very quick to move on.”
“Let’s not pretend that it never happened,” he continued. “I do feel like, as a storyteller, it is in some ways my job to be a document of the world.”
Recalling how important it was for him to hear stories from Holocaust survivors about their experiences when he was younger, Bob-Waksberg adds: “I don’t want to forget about these things.”
“Splitsville” lands at a moment when every comedy released to theaters feels like a battle cry, an attempt to defend audiences’ rights to have a good time at the movies.
Directed by Michael Angelo Covino, who also produces, co-writes and co-stars alongside Kyle Marvin, the film continues the duo’s comic exploration of bad choices, in which men predictably make poor decisions and are depicted as vain, infantile and often motivated by their worst impulses. (It’s funny because it’s true.)
As the movie begins, Carey (Marvin) is married to Ashley (Adria Arjona), who tells him she has been seeing other people and wants a divorce. He seeks solace from his best friend Paul (Covino) and his wife, Julie (Dakota Johnson), who tell Carey they are in an open relationship. Soon Carey sleeps with Julie and all sorts of jealousies and complicated feelings arise among the four of them.
“Splitsville” — the title appears briefly onscreen as the neon sign of a dessert stand — is outwardly a satire of bourgeois aspirations, modern marriage and how no one really understands the dynamics of what goes on with other couples. But the film is actually more concerned with the absurdities of male friendship, to the extent that Covino and Marvin are perennially enamored of themselves and can’t help from centering their own antics.
Their previous movie, “The Climb,” was also about two friends locked into an up-and-down relationship alternating between of moments of betrayal and gestures of support. While they are not playing the same specific characters from “The Climb,” they are very much playing the same type. Covino is seemingly more smooth and together, though riddled with insecurities, while Marvin initially appears hapless and vulnerable, with an emotional intelligence that reveals him to be savvier than he first appears. So they basically meet in the middle.
The entire movie has a disappointing air of smug self-regard about it, with an expectation the audience will adore everything about the characters as much as they do. What at moments feels like a nascent interrogation of contemporary masculinity ultimately suffers from the very impulses it seems to want to parody. (We hear numerous times that one of them is generously endowed.)
Both Arjona and Johnson are asked to play variations on personas they have depicted elsewhere. Arjona has the same earthy warmth she did in “Hit Man,” while Johnson exhibits a placid air of controlled chaos similar to what she showed earlier this year in “Materialists.” They undoubtedly elevate the movie, though too often their characters feel like game pieces manipulated on a board controlled by the film’s male leads.
Johnson and Arjona are movie stars, beguiling and captivating. Covino and Marvin seem like a couple of guys who somehow wandered onscreen. The tension is never reconciled and is constantly throwing the story off balance.
In “The Climb,” there is a moment where Covino and Marvin briefly wrestle, a ludicrous sight of two grown men tussling on the ground. Here that beat expands into a full-blown fight scene that goes on for more than six minutes, as Paul attacks Carey after learning he slept with Julie. Smashing furniture, breaking drywall, destroying a fish tank (while saving the fish) and somehow singeing off Carey’s eyebrows, the fight scene is the movie’s centerpiece, one of its major selling points and indicative of everything that both works and doesn’t. It is funny, escalating ridiculously, but it is also too outlandish for the characters and the story and only really exists as something that Covino and Marvin simply wanted to do for themselves.
They’re good at jokes but much weaker on meaning, stumbling when it comes to making it all add up to something. With a background in advertising, Marvin and Covino are strong on short, punchy ideas conveyed through strong visuals. They may eventually be better served by making work they do not appear in — their performances are the weakest thing about their movies so far. Even as they remain a promising duo, “Splitsville” never quite fully comes together.
‘Splitsville’
Rated: R, for language throughout, sexual content and graphic nudity
A wave of purple and hot pink hair and cartoon K-pop bops is taking over multiplexes.
With summer blockbusters in the rearview mirror and only a few new films out, movie theaters expected a bit of a lull at the box office this weekend.
Then Netflix dropped a bombshell. The streamer would release its hit animated film “KPop Demon Hunters” — already a viral phenomenon on streaming — in theaters Saturday and Sunday for sing-along screenings.
The movie will be shown on more than 1,750 screens in the U.S. and Canada, with 1,150 shows sold out as of Thursday, according to industry sources. It’s an unusually high-profile move by Netflix into cinemas, which is using the big screen experience to capitalize on and promote one of its biggest wins.
Packed houses include the theaters of Dallas-based Look Dine-In Cinemas, which has locations in Glendale, Redlands, Downey and Monrovia.
“This will be the dominant force for the weekend,” said Look Chief Executive Brian Schultz. “We could put it on every screen in our auditorium.”
But is this theatrical release really gonna be golden, to paraphrase one of the musical’s most infectious earworms? We won’t know for sure. Or at least how golden.
Los Gatos-based Netflix will not release box office figures, sticking with the company’s long-standing policy that has long frustrated industry pros. All the same, based on presale numbers, the movie could haul in $16 million to $22 million, according to estimates from analysis site Box Office Theory. That total, if Netflix reported it, would unseat the expected official No. 1 domestic movie, “Weapons.”
The release is a welcome surprise for theater owners — particularly in the doldrums of summer, when even late breakout hits like Warner Bros.’ horror film “Weapons” have been out for weeks. But it also underscores the tricky relationship between exhibitors and Netflix, which has famously eschewed traditional theatrical film releases.
But the streamer has long been adamant that its focus is on growing its subscriber base — not on developing a theatrical business. Earlier this year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the theatrical movie experience was “outdated” for most people. When the company does theatrical releases, it views them as marketing efforts.
That has led to long-standing complaints from theater owners, who argue that streaming has lessened their business and trained audiences to wait until films are available at home.
“Netflix and a sizable share of theatrical exhibition have spent so many years toeing the line as frenemies, if not outright adversaries,” Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at ticket seller Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory, said in an email. “This is a weekend that again highlights how they could, and perhaps should, start working together more often to the benefit of both sides.”
The film, produced by Culver City-based Sony Pictures Animation, is the most-watched original animated movie in Netflix’s history, according to the streamer.
It’s also now the second-most-watched film ever on Netflix behind the 2021 action-comedy “Red Notice” starring Dwayne Johnson, Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. The movie’s soundtrack has also been a hit, with the song “Golden” peaking at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and continuing to hold onto a high ranking.
“KPop Demon Hunters” focuses on a popular girl group called Huntr/x that uses its music and dance moves to battle evil, including a demon boy band. The movie has spawned a number of memes, including close-ups of the characters’ expressive faces.
The music, as well as the film’s strong female characters, were a draw for Heather Hollingsworth and her 10-year-old daughter, Kayleigh, who have now watched “KPop Demon Hunters” multiple times and are planning to see a screening this weekend with Kayleigh’s best friend and her mom. “Golden” is Hollingsworth’s favorite song from the film, and the one that gets stuck in her head most.
“The songs are really catchy,” said Hollingsworth, 41, a speech language pathologist who lives in Littleton, Colo. “Also the characters’ vulnerability being their strength — that strong friendship — it’s a very powerful message.”
Though they could continue watching “KPop Demon Hunters” at home on Netflix, Hollingsworth said the appeal of the theatrical screening was the social experience.
“There’s something about having it in a movie theater that is way more fun for the kids, especially,” she said.
The sing-along screenings follow similar showings for “Wicked,” as well as concert films such as Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” and Beyonce’s “Renaissance World Tour.” Unlike “KPop Demon Hunters,” those films were exclusively in theaters first, resulting, in the case of “Wicked” and Swift, in hundreds of millions of dollars in ticket sales.
For Look Cinemas, sing-alongs have long been big business and often result in a demand for party bookings, Schultz said. Indeed, tickets for “KPop Demon Hunters” have been selling in large groups.
“It’s going to make for a very fun weekend,” he said.
Times staff writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this report.
Sterlin Harjo perfected the “art of the hang” with the co-creation of his first television series, “Reservation Dogs.” The FX drama followed a group of Indigenous teens living on a fictional Oklahoma reservation, turning their everyday routine into high art — and is one of the best television shows of the 2020s.
Now, Harjo, 45, is tackling another type of genre: crime. His forthcoming series “The Lowdown,” premiering Sept. 23 with two episodes on FX, follows self-proclaimed “truthstorian” Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) on a mission to unearth buried truths about Tulsa’s problematic history while exposing present-day corruption. He’s a disheveled figure who drives around town in a tattered van and lives above the rare bookstore that he also happens to own. But when his latest exposé for a local publication calls into question a prominent Tulsa family, his investigation takes him on a dangerous road from the city’s seedy underbelly to its highest corridors of power.
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“‘Rez Dogs’ was my love letter to rural Oklahoma and where I grew up. ‘The Lowdown’ is my love letter to Tulsa, where I currently live,” says Harjo, who produces, writes and directs on the new series. “You see the beauty and the darkness. You see everything.”
The eight-episode drama, best described as Tulsa noir, also stars Oklahoma expats Tim Blake Nelson, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Tracy Letts as well as Keith David. Appearances by “Rez Dog” alumni include Kaniehtiio Horn (a.k.a. the Deer Lady).
Harjo, who is a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and is of Muscogee descent, spoke with The Times about his love for Oklahoma, the challenges of following a celebrated show like “Reservation Dogs” and how “The Lowdown” is loosely based on his own experience working with a guerrilla journalist.
“Rez Dogs” was such an exceptional series that garnered critical acclaim across all four seasons. With “The Lowdown,” was it hard to not compete with that previous success?
I didn’t think about it. My experience in this industry has been people telling me that whatever the thing is that I want to make can’t be made, and me thinking, I’m going to make it anyway, then forging ahead. Then it finds an audience, and people enjoy it. I had pitched “Rez Dogs” a few different times, and it was always soft pitches because I was nervous of being laughed out of the room. No one was interested. But having the confidence of my friend [“Rez Dogs” co-creator and writer] Taika Waititi and FX … they were open to the way that we told the story. I think they were kind of blown away. So they made it. They never said no. But I’ve had many ‘no’s and many eye rolls.
Ethan Hawke stars in “The Lowdown” as Lee Raybon, a self-proclaimed “truthstorian” and owner of a rare bookshop. He’s based on Tulsa journalist Lee Roy Chapman.
(Shane Brown / FX)
Hawke plays Lee Raybon in “The Lowdown,” a figure who is obsessed with getting to the bottom of things, to the point where he neglects many other aspects of his life. What inspired the creation of that character?
The story is fictional, but the character was inspired by someone I worked with named Lee Roy Chapman at This Land Press magazine. He was very much a soldier for truth and I would ride shotgun and make these videos about the underground, unknown histories of Tulsa. The series was called “Tulsa Public Secrets.” We were this startup, full of piss and vinegar, trying to tell the truth and write about our community and make documentaries about our community. It was about a pent-up need for truth in this city. That push to tell the truth and find truth and tell our story and create a narrative around us. It gave us and the city an identity, something to hold on to.
“The Lowdown” unfolds at a really brisk pace, yet it also has the kick-back vibe of “Rez Dogs.”
There’s the art of the hang, where the genre is people hanging out. Look at “Rez Dogs” or “Dazed and Confused.” There’s an art to hanging and being with characters, and it feels OK to just sit there with them. I think “The Lowdown” has a good balance of that, where you could just hang with [Raybon] on his block. But there’s also this unfolding story so things never get boring.
Did the making of “The Lowdown” and “Rez Dogs” overlap?
No, but it was toward the end of “Rez Dogs” that I dusted a script off that was like 10 years old. It was a feature [film], but I thought I would love to do a crime show, so I just made it into an hourlong pilot, and it became “The Lowdown.”
Sterlin Harjo says his new series was originally a script for a feature film: “I thought I would love to do a crime show, so I just made it into an hour-long pilot, and it became ‘The Lowdown.’”
(Guerin Blask / For The Times)
Ethan Hawke starred in the last season of “Rez Dogs.” Is that how you two connected?
I had a mutual friend who introduced us because Ethan had written a graphic novel about the Apache Wars and Geronimo. It was originally a script that he couldn’t get made in Hollywood because it was told from the Native side of things. Out of frustration, he made it into a graphic novel. I read it and was interested in adapting it for a show. I met up with Ethan, and I pitched my idea of the adaptation and he loved it. We spoke the same language. So we started writing together and our friendship came out of that. And then “Rez Dogs” came out, and he wrote me to say that he really loved it. He said, “If you ever have anything for me …” Of course I’ll write something [for him]! So he became Elora’s dad.
“The Lowdown” was shot on location in Tulsa and you used much of the same crew from “Rez Dogs.” But I also hear your own family was involved, as well as some “Rez Dogs” alums.
The crew and I know how to work together at this point. It’s like a big family. And my [actual] family was there. My brother was doing locations. My kids came on set. We’re shooting on some of my land. My dad was hired to brush-hog it. My mom’s an extra. There’s a couple of “Rez Dogs” cameos. You’ll see Willie Jack [Paulina Alexis] in the opening. Graham Greene’s in it. But I don’t know how much I’m supposed to say yet. I better not say …
You started out as an indie filmmaker. Can you talk a little about that journey to series TV?
I’ve always felt like an outsider. I’m a small-town Native kid from rural Oklahoma. I never felt like I had a foot in this industry. I was an independent filmmaker forever. I sometimes felt like everything was against me, like there’s no money, and I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma, so it felt like the industry at large didn’t care about the work I was doing.
Before “Rez Dogs,” I never worked in TV and I never worked for anyone else doing films. I only had the education I got with the Sundance Directors Lab, which is the most freedom any filmmaker is ever going to have. Then I was lucky enough to make films that were so low-budget. It meant the stakes weren’t high because no one saw them. So if they hated them, I wasn’t destroyed.
Your films and previous series were rooted in Indigenous viewpoints and experiences. Those cultures have been so misrepresented across all aspects of American entertainment. What gave you the confidence to keep pitching those stories?
I attribute that to not having anything to lose. “Rez Dogs” came at this time when I thought I was going to have to move on. I was at the end of my career road, where I was about to start a nonprofit or find the next chapter of what to do. I had been the freelance filmmaker for a long time and it just got hard to pay bills. With “Rez Dogs,” it was like, I could try to play it safe right now or I could swing for the fences. I had seen opportunities come and go, but I have this shot and this one at-bat. I need to just go for it. Luckily, FX is a place that allowed me to do that. And I did it. Luckily, I’d been making independent films for years and figured out my voice, so it wasn’t hard to ground “Rez Dogs” in my voice.
“With ‘Rez Dogs,’ it was like, I could try to play it safe right now or I could swing for the fences,” Sterlin Harjo says. “I had seen opportunities come and go, but I have this shot and this one at-bat.”
(Guerin Blask / For The Times)
Were there outside influences that also helped you get there?
“Atlanta” and “Louie.” Those cracked my mind open to what TV could be and allowed me in. Because to tell an Indigenous story about a community, I had to go to different places. If I was just focused on the kids [in “Rez Dogs”], it would be one thing and that’s it. I needed to expand. And so [it was] taking some of what “Atlanta” did but having this relay, like passing the baton off to different segments of the [Indigenous] community. I was also inspired by “The Wire.”
And “Rez Dogs” was a story that I always wanted to tell. Taika [who is of Maori descent] and I would end up talking about how similar they were from both of our homes, and if you could just kind of capture what it felt like to hear your aunts and uncles telling stories and lying and exaggerating and talking about mythology and superstitions. If you could capture all that, as Indigenous people, that’s what we wanted and craved.
The key to that was making it about this community, but it was a bit of a Trojan horse. It’s about these teenagers that are dealing with life and that’s a subject that everyone knows. So you start with that, and then expand out once you have people on your side.
The motto you mentioned— “Nothing to lose”—can you still use it now that you’ve had some success, and if so, why does it still work for you?
I think it has to do with people close to me dying when I was young. It’s a big community, a big family, and I was always at a funeral. I’ve been a pallbearer like 15 times or something. It gave me the sense that you can’t be afraid to put stuff out there. I’ve always had a way of diving off a cliff. It’s like, if everything fails after this, I’m OK with it. If everything dries up, that’s cool. At least I gave it a shot. This is going to sound hippie-dippie, but I think the energy that it takes to dive off a cliff and just go for it is an act in itself that creates energy. Something good will come out of it. So as long as you’re moving forward, something comes out of it.
WASHINGTON — Bringing prominent White House support to the streets of Washington, Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday visited with National Guard troops at the city’s main train station as protesters chanted “free D.C.” — the latest tense interlude from President Trump’s crackdown in the nation’s capital. “We brought some law and order back,” the vice president asserted.
“We appreciate everything you’re doing,” Vance said as he presented burgers to the troops. Citing the protesters whose shouts echoed through the station, Vance said “they appear to hate the idea that Americans can enjoy their communities.”
The appearance, which also included White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, was a striking scene that illustrated the Republican administration’s intense focus on the situation in Washington and its willingness to promote an initiative that has polarized the Democrat-led city.
An estimated 1,900 troops are being deployed in D.C. More than half are coming from Republican-led states. Besides Union Station, they have mostly been spotted around downtown areas, including the National Mall and Metro stops.
An early morning accident involved an armored vehicle
The intersection of life in the city and a military presence produced another striking scene early Wednesday when an armored vehicle collided with a civilian car less than a mile from the U.S. Capitol. One person was trapped inside the car after the accident and had to be extricated by emergency responders, according to D.C. fire department spokesman Vito Maggiolo. The person was taken to a hospital because of minor injuries.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. A video posted online showed the aftermath of the collision, with a tan-colored armored vehicle twice the height of the civilian car with a crushed side.
“You come to our city and this is what you do? Seriously?” a woman yelled at the troops in the video.
Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said more than 550 people have been arrested so far, and the U.S. Marshals are offering $500 rewards for information leading to additional arrests. “Together, we will make DC safe again!” Bondi wrote on social media.
City officials work to navigate the situation
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, trying to balance the constituency that elected her and the reality in front of her, acknowledged the changing situation in the city as she attended a back-to-school event with teachers and staff.
“This is not the same time, is it, that we experienced in opening school last year,” she said. Bowser said she would worry about the politics and told school employees that “your job is to love on the kids, teach them and make sure that they are prepared and to trust that I’m going to do the right thing for all of us.”
Despite the militarized backdrop, Bowser said it’s important that children “have joy when they approach this school year.” Public schools around Washington reconvene Monday.
The skewer-everyone cartoon TV show “ South Park,” which has leaned into near-real-time satire in recent years, this week made the federal crackdown fodder for a new episode. A 20-second promo released by Comedy Central depicts the character “Towelie” — a walking towel — riding in a bus past the U.S. Supreme Court building and White House, where armed troops are patrolling. A tank rolls by in front of the White House.
“This seems like a perfect place for a towel,” the character says upon disembarking the bus.
“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone recently signed a reported $1.5-billion, five-year deal with Paramount for new episodes and streaming rights to their series, which began its 27th season this summer.
The season premiere mocked the president’s body in a raunchy manner and depicted him sharing a bed with Satan.
Whitehurst, Brown and Megerian write for the Associated Press. AP writers David Bauder and Michelle Price contributed to this report.
