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In a summer of Gen Z-driven blockbusters and ancient Greek juggernauts, the 38th entry in the Marvel universe can’t help smelling like your uncle’s sweaty Comic-Con ball cap. At least the core ensemble of “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is still young, even after four “Spider-Man” movies together in nine years — unlike the mature super squad in last summer’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” who boasted an average age of 42.

“Brand New Day” stars buzzy A-listers Tom Holland and Zendaya as Peter Parker and MJ Jones-Watson, sweethearts estranged after he was forced to save the multiverse by wiping all memories of his existence at the end of 2021’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home”. Adding drama to the couple’s onscreen breakup, the actors recently got married in real life. So kudos to the extras who steal scenes from them in the background, flailing like avant-garde dancers when a vicious mental parasite leaps from grandmothers to joggers to security guards on a quest to find something awful. Choreographed by Nathan Kim, the practical effect looks fantastic.

Fittingly for a film with body-snatching, director Destin Daniel Cretton (“Short Term 12,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) has made a story about letting people in. New York City’s brain-barging antagonist (“Stranger Things’” Sadie Sink in a fun character reveal) disrespects personal boundaries. Meanwhile, Peter, scarred by the murder of his dear Aunt May (Marisa Tomei) in 2021’s “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” keeps to himself in fear of revealing his secret identity. Forced to skip college while his former high school friends MJ and Ned (a lovable Jacob Batalon) attend MIT, this Spider-Man endures the rise-and-grind routine of an anonymous gig worker. His phone app pings; he puts on his protective mask and heads out wearily to fight crime. It’s a living. Barely.

Peter’s only physical connection to humanity is via webs and fists. Otherwise, he’s restricted to impersonal helpers — a detective (Liza Colón-Zayas) willing to take his phone calls, an AI assistant (ew) and a network of facial recognition cameras (double ew). He’s so isolated that his closest friend is a frenemy: Jon Bernthal’s Punisher, an equally lonely brute.

Screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers add too much padding with their need to include the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), the new Black Widow (Florence Pugh) and the government’s increasingly radicalized Department of Damage Control before this December’s “Avengers: Doomsday.” Perversely for a film with a two-hour-and-25-minute running time, the climax still feels rushed.

Cretton must shoulder an overburdened franchise. His film is likable as heck but never quite achieves liftoff. The soundtrack’s needle drops of Tame Impala and Bad Bunny add swagger. Better, Cretton seizes small moments to put his stamp on this installment. Just as Zendaya’s aspirationally chill MJ insists she won’t work for some “soulless corporation,” he’s quietly made a humanist super-flick: A shot of agents in black SUVs separating a telekinetic family could come right from the news. Likewise, Cretton allows the Punisher his rage while silently noting that the vigilante’s gun-toting tactics usually make things worse.

Peter’s inner despair gets externalized when he invents a genetic inhibitor neck implant to tamp down his sensitivity. The arachnid hormones in his body are surging, causing his pupils to turn black and his temper to explode. His emotions — and that sticky goo in his wrists — are about to burst. On a related note, between this second spider-puberty and Holland’s supporting turn as a mother-henned Telemachus in Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” will Hollywood ever allow 30-year-old Holland to play a grown man? I suppose when he proves he can carry his own movie. For now, he keeps squandering his Marvel breaks on whiffs like “Cherry” and “Uncharted.”

At least he’s an earnest, open-faced hero — the best live-action Spider-Man of the bunch. Holland holds onto his buoyancy even as his character battles the blues. His Peter fends off despair by insisting that he’s fine. The bruises on his body disagree. So does the glowing inhibitor on his spine, which seems to ask if we’re too quick to prescribe medication for our problems.

Cretton is the rare former indie filmmaker who pushes himself to stage clever action sequences. The web-slinging scenes in “Brand New Day” are designed to let the audience ride Peter’s mood swings. When he’s up, we soar from girder to girder in a tight POV that allows us to barely make out the tips of his boots. When he’s unsteady, every leap is perilously close to a free fall.

During the best fight scene, Peter takes on a squadron of gravity-defying ninjas in a brawl that takes place as much in the air as on the ground. Brett Pawlak’s camera spins a cartwheel alongside a flying kick, then plunges into the eye of a tornado of bad guys trapped in a web. Overall, there’s too much use of hurled rubble. But I dug how Cretton gooses our spidey senses with dramatic sound effects. The thud of a hammering Hulksmash rattles our seats; later, a cocked rifle is so crisp we perk up like a dog hearing the mailman.

“Brand New Day” manages a few strong images: a dive-bombing pigeon, a cityscape at dusk, a close-up of headstrong MJ getting yanked through the sky, still determined not to let a stranger sweep her off her feet. And, of course, there’s that army of extras each making the most of their five seconds of fame. After order is restored just enough to prod us to a sequel, Cretton circles back to those civilians in an end credits montage of normal New Yorkers hanging out on stoops and playing chess in the park. These faces couldn’t matter less to the plot. But Cretton’s affection for people over pixels is his entire point.

Almost five years ago, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” swung into theaters in the teeth of a COVID-19 surge and did what almost nothing else could that winter: drove cooped-up moviegoers to cinemas and opened to one of the biggest domestic debuts on record, pulling in $260 million.

This weekend, Peter Parker is back — a little older, more world-weary and facing a far less forgiving market.

The genre’s floor has dropped out since then.

Annual box office revenue for superhero movies is down, on average, about $3.5 billion, about half of what it was during the pre-pandemic years of 2017 to 2019, according to data from the FranchiseRe industry newsletter. Sony Pictures is betting that more real-world stunts, a relatable narrative and Spidey’s lasting popularity are enough to put “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” on the other side of that trend.

Whatever the approach, the commercial appetite is there. Pre-sales for the film, which stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, have been robust, and industry tracking estimates an opening weekend haul of at least $195 million in the U.S. and Canada. If that holds, it would be the year’s biggest domestic debut, beating Walt Disney Co. and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” ($159.7 million). The movie cost about $225 million to produce and is produced by Sony’s Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios and Pascal Pictures.

“This movie takes a grounded, emotional approach to the story, and I actually believe that’s what audiences are hungry for,” said Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony’s motion picture group. “It’s got all the whiz-bang wow visuals. But at its heart, it’s more a superperson movie, if you will, rather than a superhero movie.”

“Brand New Day” picks up where the last film left off. A spell has erased Peter Parker from the world’s memory — the price of undoing the public exposure of his identity — leaving him a stranger to his best friend, Ned, and to MJ. Without those friendships, he pours himself into his crime-fighting work to stave off his loneliness.

That feeling of being adrift without knowing where to turn is what the filmmakers built the movie around.

“We’re all really isolated from each other,” said Amy Pascal, one of the film’s producers who has overseen the entire franchise. “That kind of longing for connection between people and not knowing how to make it happen and living in a world where we become more and more remote, matched the moment that people are going through.”

The smaller scale was also a reaction to what came before it. “No Way Home” brought back Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in a time-bending multiverse crossover, and there was no topping it.

“That was a movie that was 20 years in the making,” Pascal said. “There was no way to be bigger than that. So we went smaller. We went internal instead of external, and we found the bigness in that.”

Peter Parker’s isolation is what drew director Destin Daniel Cretton, who made 2021’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and was an executive producer on the Marvel Television series “Wonder Man.” He said he related to the pain and tragedy the character goes through, and to the idea of a superhero story that felt like it was happening in a real place.

The production’s rule of thumb became trying to execute scenes practically, in front of a lens, wherever possible.

That included a tank chase shot largely on a street in Glasgow, Scotland, on the first day of filming, complete with a rig that let an actor swing with explosions going off behind him. Thousands of people showed up to watch, which was “a big adrenaline rush on day one,” Cretton said.

A later set piece — Spider-Man against a group of red-clad ninjas known as the Hand — was shot at a former prison outside London.

Cretton’s insistence on real locations has an argument behind it. At a moment when audiences want to know what goes into moviemaking and are increasingly unsure whether the myriad images they’re looking at were generated by artificial intelligence, the answer is visible labor.

“Right now, more than ever, I think it’s important for audiences to really feel that people made the thing that they’re watching, and people went through an experience to make the thing they’re watching,” said Cretton, who grew up watching behind-the-scenes segments on his favorite DVDs. “All of that, I think, is just as important as the thing that they’re watching.”

Effects alone don’t carry a superhero movie — or any movie, for that matter — anymore, Cretton said.

“The action can be great, the [visual effects] can be fantastic, the explosions can be huge, but if there isn’t some type of emotional spine that connects with people where they are and what they’re going through, it’s just another big, explosive movie,” he said.

The slump itself isn’t in dispute. Many of Marvel’s newer films haven’t come close to the heights its predecessors once cleared, and this year, movies like Amazon MGM Studios’ “Masters of the Universe” and Warner Bros. and DC Studios’ “Supergirl” underperformed in theaters.

What’s driving it is contested.

“I don’t think it’s fatigue of the genre,” Rothman said. “I think it’s the audience wanting new things and less predictability.”

For Marvel, long treated as the genre’s gold standard, part of the problem was volume; a dense web of interconnected films and TV shows that made casual viewers feel like they had too much homework to do before a new premiere.

The likeliest near-term explanation for that estimated $195-million opening, though, may have less to do with tone than with supply and brand. “Brand New Day” is the first Marvel superhero film since last year’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” and Spider-Man remains one of the most commercially durable characters in the genre.

The calendar is also less accommodating than it was. The latest “Spider-Man” installment opens against Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and holdovers including “Toy Story 5” — a considerably more crowded field than the thin, pandemic-era slate its predecessor benefited from on the way to $1.9 billion.

And the movie has a second job. With Disney and Marvel’s “Avengers: Doomsday” arriving at the end of the year, “Brand New Day” has to leave audiences wanting it.

“It’s got a lot riding on it,” said Steve Granelli, a teaching professor and division head of communication studies at Northeastern University. “Not just in terms of this being yet another ‘Spider-Man’ film, but also this being a huge storytelling device in the larger [Marvel franchise].”

Which is the tension at the center of the pitch. The filmmaking team went internal on purpose, and built a movie about a young man nobody remembers. It also has to set up the largest external event on Marvel’s calendar.

Kavinsky, the French electronic musician and DJ whose moody single “Nightcall” scored the hit film “Drive,” has died. He was 50.

French newspaper Le Figaro and TV station BFM reported that Kavinsky, born Vincent ‌Belorgey, died from a suspected stroke. Paris prosecutors investigated and found “no suspicious elements,” they said.

Kavinsky was a defining act of the Paris electronic scene of the 2000s and 2010s, whose neon-smeared synths and noirish atmospheres lent themselves to L.A. freeways and Montmartre nightclubs alike.

Adopting a droll persona — a red-eyed electronic producer who returned from the dead after a Ferrari crash — Kavinsky was a major figure in the second wave of the “French touch” dance scene.

His popular breakthrough came with “Nightcall,” a collaboration with CSS’ Lovefoxxx and Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. The song was a propulsive theme of Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 film “Drive,” a brutal and romantic revenge thriller beloved for its slinky, retro-futuristic soundtrack. Kavinsky performed the song to close out the 2024 Paris Olympics, performing with the French band Phoenix and the Belgian singer Angèle.

While he only released two studio LPs, including the 2013 singles collection “OutRun” and “Reborn” in 2022, he was influential to major acts that came after him. The Weeknd, who sang on an edit of Kavinsky’s “Odd Look,” wrote on X: “So heartbreaking to hear the news. An inspiration to so many, including myself. I will continue to honor your name and your music. Rest easy Kavinsky.”

French President Emmanuel Macron also wrote a tribute on Instagram, calling Kavinsky an artist France could be proud of forever.

Days after a classicist who translated Homer’s “The Odyssey” in 2017 eviscerated the Christopher Nolan film based on the poem, Joyce Carol Oates has entered the debate.

She’s Team Nolan.

The National Book Award-winning author is known for her (sometimes controversial) hot takes on social media, and on Wednesday, she stepped up to the plate in opposition of translator Emily Wilson’s brutal takedown of Nolan’s big-screen adaptation of “The Odyssey.” Nolan had previously said Wilson’s translation inspired him in making the film. But Wilson wrote that she would be ashamed to have written any part of the script.

“Her tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note,” Oates said of Wilson’s review in a post on X. “Rather than disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner, this person, who has benefited enormously from Nolan’s film, speaks in the crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.”

Wilson’s biting missive, published in the London Review of Books this week, went so viral that it reportedly crashed the outlet’s website for a few hours Monday. The British American classicist’s take on the film was especially notable because, last fall, Nolan quoted Wilson’s translation when telling Empire magazine why he was drawn to the story. “I think it’s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man,’” he said.

Wilson’s version of “The Odyssey” subsequently spiked in sales. A representative for Audible told The Times on Wednesday that, year over year, purchases of Wilson’s “Odyssey” translation were up by more than 600% across Audible’s U.S., U.K. and Canadian marketplaces. Daily global title sales rose nearly sixfold during the week the movie premiered. And in the nine days following wide release, daily global sales averaged around 20 times more than the rate before the premiere, showing sustained demand for Wilson’s translation.

Oates, who penned the Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Blonde,” said that, within the world of translators, Wilson’s review “seems all the more surprising since all translations are, presumably, subjective & not equivalent to the original text.”

“One would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is,” Oates wrote.

In separate posts on the social platform, Oates said she highly recommended Nolan’s adaption and that she wasn’t a fan of Wilson’s translation. “What I’d read of Emily Wilson’s translation was not for me,” she wrote, adding that she assumes it was “deliberately written to appeal to an audience comfortable with YA (young adult) directness & spareness of vocabulary — that is, with the intention of being marketable, adopted by high school classes.

“With a more poetic, elevated speech, you are naturally limiting your audience,” continued the author, who further noted that there was nothing wrong with a direct, commercial approach. “Why not profit from a classic work not protected by copyright?”

In the viral review by Wilson, who also translated Seneca and Euripides, as well as Homer’s “Iliad,” she likened Nolan’s nearly three-hour epic to Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “Game of Thrones.”

Her sharpest critiques were aimed at Nolan’s rendering of Homer’s female characters, of which she said there were more than in his other films “thanks to the source material” but that, in contrast to the poem, none of them “had much to say.” Wilson said Nolan’s race-neutral casting was essentially a wash as “[m]ost of the non-white actors — Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott — play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist.”

And don’t get her started on the whole point of the poem — the cost of war — of which Wilson quipped, “We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it — a very different point.”

On the heels of the trailer reveal for the big-screen adaption of “Children of Blood and Bone,” the book’s author is claiming in a new video that an on-set ordeal traumatized her — and fans have been left with more questions than answers.

On Wednesday, Tomi Adeyemi upped the ante when discussing the ongoing behind-the-scenes drama that’s overshadowed the new film. Although the author, in her latest video on the falling-out, hinted at a painful ordeal that unfolded on set, fans are still scratching their heads as to what exactly happened and who was involved.

“I’m gonna post this so ideally I won’t have to talk about this anymore,” she said in a five-minute, 40-second video posted to social media. “And what I’m about to share is not a secret to the people involved. It’s a reality that I’ve had to live with for about a year and a half, and everyone involved, at least at the highest level, has been made aware of this reality, and they haven’t done anything to make it better. If anything, they’ve only antagonized me, and I accept that, but I also accept if I don’t say something, I think it’s just going to be worse.

“I’m not gonna speak on what I endured to make it through the young adult trilogy, and I’m not going to speak about everything that I also suffered through to make the adaptation a reality,” she continued. “I’m actually only going to speak about what happened after I left that set of my own film adaptation, hyperventilating and sobbing, and there are many witnesses, so it’s not really a secret.”

The author continued that, when she returned to America from an overseas filming location, she suffered “such severe somatic pain and so many panic attacks” that she knew she would never be able to watch the film.

“But as it is being marketed, and as I am still being antagonized behind the scenes, which is where I hoped all of this would stay, it’s become apparent to me that reality needs to at least be made known so that you guys can understand how this film — which I worked on to make it a little better for us to be alive — is also the worst thing I have ever had to live through, and I don’t wish to speak on it anymore.”

Adeyemi concluded that she never wants to hear about the film adaption again, and then she seemingly threw shade at director Gina Prince-Bythewood, whom she co-wrote the screenplay with, saying, “I don’t have anything to say about the people who made it. I do not care anymore. I’m trying to move on. This video might make it worse, but I don’t know how it can be any worse.”

Representatives for Prince-Bythewood and Paramount Pictures did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Earlier this month, the Nigerian American author posted a since-deleted video on TikTok that also left her followers puzzled in which she said there was a reason she stopped promoting the forthcoming film. Although she didn’t spell out the reason, she posted a screen shot of a February 2025 text exchange with one of the film’s stars, Amandla Stenberg, in which she told the actor not to use her name in interviews and then blocked her.

Stenberg, who is African American and Danish, had been at the center of a casting controversy due to claims that colorism was at play when she landed the role of Princess Amari. (Read more about the controversy here.)

On Monday, Paramount held a “Children of Blood and Bone” trailer launch event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. In a discussion moderated by “Master of None” actor Lena Waithe, Prince-Bythewood and the A-list cast talked about the making and almost-not-making of the film, and Prince-Bythewood seemed to reveal her stance on the fallout over Stenberg’s casting.

The director said her big-screen adaptation was “beautifully inspired by Nigeria and also inclusive of the whole diaspora. We wanted all of us to be able to see ourselves within this, just our complete and utter humanity, all the beautiful hues.”

In the comments section under Adeyemi’s Wednesday video, frustrated fans asked the author to be more transparent while others suggested maybe a non-disclosure agreement was hindering her ability to offer any specifics on the incident.

“Children of Blood and Bone” is slated to hit theaters Jan. 15.

The official trailer for the film adaptation of the African fantasy novel “Children of Blood and Bone” is making a splash online, and the director just revealed that she almost didn’t make the film.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Woman King”), the film stars a slew of A-list actors including Regina King, Damson Idris, Cynthia Erivo, Amandla Stenberg, Idris Elba, Tosin Cole, Viola Davis, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lashana Lynch and Thuso Mbedu.

The adaptation of the first installment of author Tomi Adeyemi’s bestselling “Legacy of Orïsha” fantasy trilogy is slated to hit theaters Jan. 15. The story follows Zélie Adebola, a courageous young woman with dormant magical abilities who has drawn the attention of tyrannical King Saran, the ruler of the kingdom of Orïsha, a fictional country in an alternative precolonial Nigeria inhabited by two distinct ethnic groups: divîners (inherently magical people who have had their magic stolen by King Saran) and the non-magical kosidán.

On Monday, Paramount held a “Children of Blood and Bone” trailer launch event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. In a discussion moderated by “Master of None” actor Lena Waithe, Prince-Bythewood and the cast talked about the making and almost-not-making of the film.

According to Prince-Bythewood, helming “The Woman King” felt like the thing she’d been working toward her entire career. “And then this came and it was something even bigger and in a space that we hadn’t got to see ourselves in, which was big epic fantasy,” she said. “And as much as I needed a little rest, I couldn’t say no. And the beauty of this is that I was actually offered this film two different times over the last seven years. And both times I turned it down.”

Prince-Bythewood admitted that she wasn’t emotionally ready to hop on board and that she didn’t know how to make an epic fantasy film yet. “But there was something about this third time when they came to me,” she said.

“I still said, ‘I already turned it down so you’re wasting your time.’” She continued that she had realized, in retrospect, that the third offer came when it was supposed to come. Plus, with “The Woman King” under her belt, now she knew how to make the movie.

“There was something so deep and guttural about my connection this time when I read it,” she said. “I felt so connected to this young hero who’s fighting to find her purpose. There is so much going on in the world right now, and there’s so many themes within this that speak to that.”

Prince-Bythewood gushed about loving the book, the story and the characters. “Now how do I actualize it? How do I make it a film? And that’s the exciting and scary part. How do we make magic feel cultural?”

The director said her big-screen adaptation was “beautifully inspired by Nigeria and also inclusive of the whole diaspora. We wanted all of us to be able to see ourselves within this, just our complete and utter humanity, all the beautiful hues.”

The remark is notable in light of behind-the-scenes drama that has unfolded over the last year and a half. Prince-Bythewood co-wrote the script with Adeyemi, but the author recently distanced herself from the book-to-screen project and said she would not see the film after a casting controversy involving Stenberg, who portrays Princess Amari in the film.

In February 2025, Stenberg posted a since-deleted nine-minute TikTok addressing backlash that suggested colorism was at play when she landed the gig. She told followers that Adeyemi had given the actor her blessing when cast as the series’ princess.

“I am four months into training for ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ and I am getting my ass whooped,” Stenberg joked in the video, per BET.

“I had the opportunity to meet Tomi, the novelist, for the first time. … And she goes, ‘Amandla, I want you to know that when you were a little girl and you were cast as Rue in ‘The Hunger Games,’ and people said that Rue’s death wouldn’t be as sad because you’re a Black girl — that inspired me to write this series so that Black girls like you and Black girls of all shades could have a story written about them.’”

Shortly after Stenberg said Adeyemi gave the actor her blessing, they had a text exchange that hinted at a change of heart or different story entirely.

This month, the Nigerian American author posted a since-deleted video on TikTok addressing fans who had been — according to her — asking her the same question, “Why don’t you post about the adaptation of your first film adaptation anymore?”

“There is a reason I will not post anything about the adaptation of my work,” the author wrote in what appeared to be screenshots of a group chat. “I have not seen the film, and I will not watch it.”

Alongside the screenshots of her comments in the group chat, she shared a February 2025 exchange with Stenberg. Adeyemi shared only her final message to the actor, which read, “Do not ever use my name in an interview or video again. Do not text me. Do not call me.” That exchange is followed by a notification that she blocked Stenberg.

The message from Stenberg that preceded Adeyemi’s reply was not shown in full.

EDDIE MARSAN is to play Harry Redknapp in a film about one of football’s most incredible stories, I can reveal.

The actor, a Spurs fan, will put his allegenices to one side when he takes on the role of the West Ham favourite when he was their assistant boss in 1994.

The film by Sir Ridley Scott re-tells the moment Harry actually invited a loudmouth Hammers fan to play up front for the Premier League outfit after hurling abuse at players from the stands — and he went on to score.

Eddie plays gaffer Harry in Halftime Hero, alongside Anson Boon as angry fan Steve Davies.

West Ham were struggling against non-league Oxford City in the pre-season friendly when Steve was told to put on a kit and prove he could do better . . .  and did.

A source said: “Eddie has been cast as Harry in Halftime Hero and will be filming his scenes in the coming weeks.

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“As a huge football fan, Eddie knows this tale well and to take on such a prominent part in a film about such a huge moment in the game is hugely exciting for him.”

Like me, Sherlock Holmes actor Eddie is a Tottenham fanatic, so it will be a dream role to play Harry, who went on to manage Spurs years later.

It’s just a shame he’s going to have to wear a West Ham coaching kit to do it.

I revealed last month that Ridley’s production company was working on the film about Harry’s famous game, which has become part of football folklore.

Steve could be heard heckling striker Lee Chapman and repeatedly branded him a “donkey” for his poor performance.

Harry went into the stands and got him to play, with Steve going on to score and helping West Ham to a 4-0 win.

The historic moment was never caught on camera, so now Anson, Eddie and Ellie Bamber — who plays Steve’s girlfriend — are bringing it to life.

Harry has spoken fondly about the wild episode over the years, admitting he told the stadium announcer that he was bringing on a “great Bulgarian” called “Tittyshev”.

Steve previously said: “It was the greatest moment of my life.

“After that, I was exhausted.

“I was on 30 cigarettes a day back then.

“I had a couple of cigs and a couple of beers in the first half.”

Good on you, Steve.

Me, I’m Jase relaxing

TAKE THAT have just finished their hit Circus Tour, but there’s been no clowning around for former member Jason Orange.

The ex-boybander, who quit the group in 2014 to lead a quieter life, was seen enjoying a peaceful afternoon in a park in Cheshire on Monday.

He now has a successful property portfolio and has declined offers to rejoin the group.

And judging by how zen he looks here, I can’t say I blame him.

LEIGH-ANNE PINNOCK is feathering her nest with a few quid from her fans by becoming a mumfluencer as she prepares to give birth to her third child.

The Little Mix star has started a page where fans can subscribe for £5 a month for “behind the scenes content” and a “private community” to find out what’s going on with her pregnancy.

Announcing the move, Leigh-Anne said: “I’m excited to announce I’ve started a Patreon to share more of my pregnancy, bump updates, everyday life and all of the things in between as I prepare to be a mum of three.

“This is going to be a complete safe space to be open and honest, share advice and give you a little more insight into life right now.”

Leigh-Anne, who will perform at Brighton Pride on Saturday, already has twin daughters with her footballer husband Andre Gray.

Kaia and Homer channel parents

KAIA GERBER and Homer Gere looked like proper Hollywood stars at the premiere of new Disney+ thriller series The Shards – maybe because of their A-lister parents.

Kaia’s supermodel mum Cindy Crawford wed Homer’s old man, Richard Gere in 1991, although the golden couple divorced four years later and went on to have kids with new partners.

Now, their actor offspring are appearing opposite each other in the Shards, which launches next week.

Speaking on the red carpet, Kaia said of Homer: “I’d never met him but I was really, really excited to meet Homer and he’s such a wonderful actor, my god.

“This is his second thing he ever did and he has this confidence and charisma – he’s so magnetic to watch.

“He made my job much easier because of how talented he is.”

Looking forward to tuning in.

Niall hits the clubs

IT’S tee time for golf nut Niall Horan ahead of his Dinner Party Live Tour.

The ex-One Direction singer hit the greens at Royal Lytham & St Annes in Lancashire before the AIG Women’s Open this weekend.

He will soon be heading out on the road, kicking off his tour at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena on September 22.

But the long spells playing shows across the UK, Europe, Australia and North America until next May won’t stop him hitting the greens.

He said earlier this year: “It’s Niall’s golf tour with music, especially in the States.

“Florida is great.

“There’s so much good golf in Florida, and we’ll hit random places in Ohio.

“If we do 30-something shows, I’ll try to get in ten rounds.”

TULISA HAS MAXED OUT ON LOVE

TULISA’s romance with medicinal cannabis kingpin and influencer Maximillian White has gone up in smoke, it seems.

One of my pals has spotted the N Dubz singer back on celebrity dating app Raya.

I told you last autumn that the pair had started dating.

But on Raya, the former X Factor judge has listed her occupation as “singer/investor/author” while her bio simply says, “Lara Croft”.

As for her interests, she’s into, “Music, fitness, deep belly laughs, cheeky bottle of red, all things weird and wonderful.”

Sounds like a fun time to me.

Harry Potter actor Tom Felton and Kingsman star Taron Egerton have both been spotted on the exclusive app, so she has her pick of handsome fellas.

Mel C met her husband Chris Dingwall on Raya, and Lily Allen found her now-ex David Harbour on there too, although the less said about that, the better.

Tulisa was also on there before meeting billionaire Maximillian but insisted she was a “spectator” and said: “I never like or message anyone first . . .  just letting you know.

“I’ve only gone on one date from there, and that was because of a recent rebound.”

Live a little, Tulisa.

ELLIE MUSIC OF LOVE FOR HER BEAU

IT has been dubbed her “divorce album” but Ellie Goulding’s new record will feature at least one song about falling head over heels for her new beau, called, err, Beau.

I first revealed their romance last July when I told how she had jetted off to Italy with actor Beau Minniear, when they stayed at the Four Seasons in Florence together.

Now Ellie, who gave birth to their daughter Iris in March, has written a song about how she was swept off her feet by him during the trip to that very hotel.

On the track, titled 4 Seasons, she sings: “Daydreaming, faint feelings, f**k around at the Four Seasons. I think that I might be falling in love with you.

“I need it, wanna keep it. We mess around, put the damn key in. I think that I might be falling in love.”

The song will be on her sixth album, I Know Too Much, which will be released on September 4.

And from what I’ve heard so far, it’s going to be another brilliant record.

PRINCE’s cult movie Purple Rain is being adapted for the stage and will debut on Broadway next March.

The hit film was accompanied by Prince’s album and song of the same name, with the projects being released in 1984.

The news of the stage musical was announced on the 42nd anniversary of its release and will launch next spring.

ARIANA SUES SONG HACKERS

ARIANA GRANDE has understandably seen red and filed a lawsuit against hackers who leaked unreleased tunes.

The Thank U, Next singer has alleged that two unidentified hackers broke into devices from people she had worked with to get songs and footage of her which was sold for “significant sums of money” on the dark web.

Legal papers have been lodged in Los Angeles to try and unmask those responsible.

The documents claim: “In 2023 alone, 45 unreleased songs belonging to Ms Grande were hacked, stolen, and leaked.

“Since her music debut in 2011, hundreds of similar leaks have taken place.”

And it sounds like Ariana, whose new album Petal will be out on Friday, won’t stop pursuing them until they’re in prison.

Emily Wilson, whose translation of Homer’s “The Odyssey” published in 2017 served as inspiration to Christopher Nolan when crafting his blockbuster adaptation of the nearly 2,800-year-old poem, has some thoughts on the film.

In a biting missive for the London Review of Books, the British American classicist dissected Nolan’s work with a scalpel so sharp that he may need to borrow some of Matt Damon’s armor to read it all the way through. Last fall, the acclaimed director quoted Wilson’s translation when telling Empire magazine why he was drawn to the story. “I think it’s the Emily Wilson translation that begins, ‘Tell me about a complicated man,’” he said. “The genius of the character, the cleverness, the inventiveness of him, that was a huge part of what interested me. He’s not just a soldier. He’s an amazing strategist, a very wily person.”

Wilson, although admittedly “humbled” by the nod from the filmmaker, wrote: “But I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script.”

A professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Wilson has also translated Seneca and Euripides, as well as Homer’s “Iliad.” In her takedown of the film, she likens Nolan’s nearly three-hour epic to Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “Game of Thrones” and says that, by the end, she “almost expected everyone to break into Elvish.”

Earlier this month, The Times’ film critic, Amy Nicholson, wrote that “Nolan has sacrificed Odysseus himself to serve his own needs, scrapping the character’s prickly personality to Trojan-horse a message about how empires collapse. … Aghast at the ways of men, he’s dug his own Circe-like fingers into Homer to manipulate the tale into a moralistic ‘Oppenheimer’ prequel.”

Wilson appears to share the sentiment.

“Unlike some of Nolan’s other films,” she wrote, “‘The Odyssey’ is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display — and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.”

When casting was announced for the film, it was no surprise that culture wars broke out over the choice of Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o to play Helen of Troy, with Elon Musk leading the charge.

Nolan responded, telling the Telegraph earlier this month before the film hit theaters, “These conversations that happen before people see the film — they’re always irrelevant, because no one having them knows what the film actually is yet.”

According to Wilson, Nolan’s race-neutral casting had “nothing progressive about it.”

“Most of the non-white actors — Zendaya, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Corey Antonio Hawkins, Travis Scott — play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist,” she wrote.

Wilson zeroes in on the portrayal of Homer’s female characters in another major critique: “There are more female characters than in most Nolan movies, thanks to the source material. But none of them has much to say, in contrast to the [characterizations] in the poem.”

Where Charlize Theron’s Calypso ought to have been angry, funny, skilled in rhetoric and libidinous, according to Wilson, she’s “an unpaid therapist.” On Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, Wilson writes that the script “gives her nothing to do except yearn for Matt Damon, for reasons unknown.” And Zendaya’s Athena “turns out to be a vulnerable victim of war, or perhaps a projection of Odysseus’ conscience — not a scheming and bloodthirsty war goddess.”

And then there’s the human cost of war — the central theme of the film, and one that Wilson says contradicts Homer’s poem.

“The representation of Odysseus as a reluctant warlord makes a nonsense of the movie’s imagined world,” she writes. “We are not shown that war or killing are bad, only that good men sometimes feel bad about it — a very different point. Any serious depiction of violence, ancient or modern, must show the perspectives of the victims as well as the perpetrators, and the Homeric poems easily clear the bar — but Nolan doesn’t.

“The film asks us both to be horrified at war and to celebrate the action-movie sequences in which the reluctant warrior finally gets his hands on his bow and the blood starts flowing.”

Since Nolan announced “The Odyssey” back in December 2024, various versions of the poem have been in high demand at bookshops and libraries — especially the only English version written by a woman: Wilson’s 2017 translation. Louise Brockett, spokeswoman and head of communications at W.W. Norton, told USA Today that domestic sales of Wilson’s translation surpassed a million copies this year.

Concluding her critique of Nolan’s “Odyssey,” Wilson says the release of the movie is “still an event to celebrate.”

“In what we are told is the streaming era, this epic is bringing audiences back to cinemas. In what we are told is a time of declining literacy and the ‘death of the humanities,’ translations of The Odyssey, including mine, are flying off the shelves.”

Nolan spent $250 million making “The Odyssey,” and on opening weekend the film brought in a total of $264.1 million worldwide, according to studio estimates.

Universal Studios has issued a stern warning after an unauthorized copy of its hit film “The Odyssey” was leaked over the weekend.

“We became aware of the unauthorized posting of the film and immediately initiated takedown protocols,” the studio said in a statement. “We take copyright infringement seriously and will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.”

The studio was responding to a post on X that shared a high-quality copy of the Christopher Nolan film. The post was viewed more than 2.1 million times before a takedown notice replaced the copy of the film.

The post was shared Saturday on X at 2:25 p.m. Pacific, and the account was suspended within three hours, according to Variety.

“The Odyssey” continues to be a top attraction for filmgoers, drawing huge crowds on its second weekend. Demand for advance tickets caused AMC’s app to crash in June. At the time, users on social media said wait times had reached an hour.

The film in its second weekend pulled in $87 million, acccording to Rentrak, a data analytics company that tracks box office sales.

Tax incentives for film and television productions have not been enough to counter a still-sluggish environment for filming in the greater Los Angeles region, according to a new report.

For the three-month period that ended June 30, there were a total of 4,711 shoot days in the greater L.A. area, a nearly 13% decline from the same time last year, according to second-quarter data from FilmLA, a nonprofit that tracks local filming.

Compared to the five-year average, that second-quarter figure is a drop of about 36%.

Feature film shoots were down 20% in the second quarter compared to last year, while TV production decreased by 30%.

Incentivized productions are, however, making up a growing number of shoot days. For instance, 33% of the 443 total shoot days for feature films in the second quarter came from productions that received a tax credit. For the TV category, roughly 28% of the 1,607 shoot days last quarter were for projects that benefited from the tax incentive, particularly for dramas and comedies.

“While there is still much work to do, FilmLA’s quarterly report is proof that incentives are working: local incentivized productions are on the rise,” said L.A. Mayor Karen Bass in a statement.

Shoot days for TV dramas were down 6.4% to 732 days this past quarter, with just over 38% of those days coming from incentivized projects. TV comedy production saw a 43% decline to 57 days, with 21 of them coming from projects that received a tax credit. FilmLA noted that many local comedy productions are based on stage and not accounted for in the latest research.

“Because scripted television production supports more industry jobs than any other production category, helping to attract these types of productions is an important step towards bringing filming back to the region, restoring jobs and strengthening our local production economy,” said FilmLA Chief Executive Denise Gutches in a statement.

But any boost from the incentives was offset by serious declines for productions that are not eligible for the state’s film and TV tax credit program.

Shoot days for reality TV, for instance, were down 40% to 676 days compared to the second quarter of 2025. While large-scale competition shows are eligible for the state’s tax credit, such as Jimmy Kimmel’s “Schooled!” science experiment series for kids, other kinds of popular reality TV shows cannot apply for production incentives.

Filming for commercials in the second quarter was down nearly 22% from last year to 543 days. That total marked a 46% decline compared to the five-year average.

In a bright spot, FilmLA’s “other” category, which captures shoot days for student productions, still photography, documentaries and music videos, climbed 10% in the second quarter to 2,118 days.

That boost came largely from online content shoots, which rose by 47%. Filming for short films and documentaries were also higher in the second quarter, though those two segments had much smaller numbers of shoot days, FilmLA said.

Netflix has just released a trailer for a brand new period drama, but some are not impressed

Netflix trailer for a remake of a “brilliant” Sam Neill film has left some fans fearing the worst.

Sumptuous six-part period drama My Brilliant Career will be launching globally on Netflix next month and takes its cue from Australian author Miles Franklin’s 1901 classic novel of the same name, reports the Express.

The autobiographical book follows Sybylla (played by Philippa Northeast) as she rails against her family’s wishes to marry and instead pursues her dreams of becoming a published author.

My Brilliant Career also stars Pride and Prejudice icon Anna Chancellor, Genevieve O’Reilly from Andor, and Slow Horses actor Christopher Chung.

Netflix recently shared a trailer from the tongue-in-cheek show that sees Sybylla pushing back against society as she daydreams, writes and spends time with the swoon-worthy Harry (Chung).

The new adaptation comes after the beloved 1979 film version of My Brilliant Career starring Judy Davis as Sybylla and Sam Neill as Harry.

Many fans of the 1979 movie shared their thoughts about the forthcoming iteration of My Brilliant Career on YouTube.

One person said: “Nice try Netflix, but the original movie version with a young Judy Davis portrayed this brilliant novel written in 1901 Australia with way more authentic adolescent sass and much less millennial pop star angst.”

A second wrote: “I’m scared this new one will butcher a beloved story, like ’Anne with an E’ did for me.”

A third commented: “Nothing beats Julie Davis and Sam Neill. I wish that remakes would stop being made unless you’re going to adhere to the original story.”

However, others hit back at the detractors as one person noted: “The original will always have its place. This is just another take on it. Like all the other classic remakes. You don’t need to watch it if it’s not your cup of tea.”

Someone else said: “This series going adding more details that Miles Franklin wrote [sic].”

A third wrote: “I look forward to this. I so enjoyed the ’79 version with Judy Davis…this looks to be just as entertaining. ”

A fourth compared it to many other costume dramas: “This is like if they combined every single period piece into one movie it’s got little women, pride and prejudice, Bridgerton etc. I don’t know how they managed to fit every single trope into one.”

Yet another added: “Looks great. Loved the 1979 adaptation and not gonna miss this one.”

My Brilliant Career has been adapted numerous times, with the 1979 movie only being the first one.

The story was also adapted for the stage in a 2020 play and later turned into a musical in 2024.

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This lets members watch live and on-demand TV content without a satellite dish or aerial and includes hit shows like Stranger Things and The Last of Us.

Netflix’s TV series is just another retelling of the well-loved story of following one’s heart over the strict rules of society.

Treasured star Neill died aged 78 from pneumonia on July 16. His career spanned back to the 1970s and some of his biggest roles include Jurassic Park, Peaky Blinders, ITV’s Tutankhamun, and Event Horizon, among many others.

My Brilliant Career will be released on Netflix on August 13

At one point in the documentary, House of Hope, the protagonist, Manar Wahhab, breaks down in a classroom corner in the school she founded with her husband in the occupied West Bank. The cameras keep rolling.

“To step into someone’s life with a camera at the moment when they’re really down, it feels a little bit uncomfortable, but we made the choice together to keep filming during these moments. I wanted the audience to be there with them,” director Marjolein Busstra told Al Jazeera.

The film follows Wahhab, a Palestinian woman who established a Waldorf school with her husband, Milad Vosgueritchian, in al-Eizariya in the occupied West Bank.

House of Hope Vision Kindergarten & School teaches the Waldorf philosophy of non-violent resistance and offers children a space to express their emotions and cope with the trauma and difficulty of living under occupation.

“The school protects the children’s dignity in the present moment. It’s more about refusing to let occupation shape their inner world, so that they can actually be children and have agency,” Busstra said. “It’s in Waldorf philosophy that they make space to express the feelings.”

Working with a Palestinian crew, Busstra spent three years with Wahhab, travelling to the occupied West Bank nine times throughout the course of the documentary. She first met Wahhab 18 years ago during a film workshop in the West Bank.

Although the documentary centres around the elementary school, Wahhab is the story’s driving force. The story follows Wahhab and Vosgueritchian, both at the school and at home with their children.

“I started filming the school, but right away, I knew I wanted to do it about Manar’s inner life,” Busstra said. “I think hope is a difficult word at the moment, but I have a deep awe for Manar, who keeps creating and teaching even while carrying so much herself.”

For Wahhab, her respect for Busstra and their existing friendship helped her trust the film crew during vulnerable moments.

“We both believe deeply in education, in children’s creativity and freedom and in seeing the human being as something whole and beautiful in mind, soul and spirit. Those shared values created openness and trust between us and helped shape a film that is not only about events but also about humanity,” Wahhab told Al Jazeera.

The film was produced by Think-Film, the company behind The Voice of Hind Rajab, which tells the story of the five-year-old Hind killed by Israeli forces in 2024. Soldiers fired 335 bullets into the car carrying the girl and six of her family members – a story that became a symbol for the system failure to protect children in Gaza.

Although sometimes difficult, Wahhab said she made an effort to let the crew document multiple facets of her life.

“Over those three years, the crew met many versions of Manar. Sometimes they arrived, and I was fresh, energetic and cooperative. Other times, they found me exhausted, angry, overwhelmed, or ill,” she said. “I understood that I had to be as authentic as possible, because I was representing not only myself, but also my community, hope, peace and the voice of Palestinians.”

Wahhab and Vosgueritchian founded the school out of a desire to offer a different kind of education to Palestinian children and to provide a place where they felt safe and could share their emotions.

“The school was born many years ago when we saw the hardships surrounding our community and wanted to create something different, a space of love, safety, creativity and healing,” Wahhab said. “House of Hope is an idea, a mission and an energy that we carry wherever we go.”

In an increasingly violent Israeli occupation, Wahhab considers the Waldorf philosophy essential.

“I do not see nonviolence as weakness. Actually, I believe the opposite. Violence is easy. Nonviolence requires courage, awareness, patience and inner work. It asks us to see beyond our own pain and ego and to hold on to our humility even when circumstances are trying to pull us away from it,” she said.

“The world absorbs the energy that we create, and right now, there is so much fear, anger and violence in our world. I think we need more peace within ourselves, peace with one another and peace with nature,” Wahhab added.

After Hamas’s incursion into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, came Israel’s brutal military response. Life became increasingly difficult for Wahhab, Vosgueritchian and the children at House of Hope, but the crew continued to document their realities.

“The story I wanted to create with Manar stayed the same, but after October 7, everything became heavier. They were so down for a while. They were like different people, like they lost all hope,” Busstra said. “The school built this safe haven, but the occupation is always rattling at the door.”

Israel’s intensified military actions in the West Bank, including the shooting and killing of children, are a constant spectre. In another scene, Wahhab watches her son leave for school and checks to see if he has a phone charger and spare clothes in case he is held at a checkpoint for hours.

“The energy is so heavy now. I hope people understand that we are not asking for something extraordinary. We are asking for basic human rights, the right to live with dignity and freedom, the right to safety and the right to be fully human beings,” Manar said.

Busstra, who closely followed Wahhab for three years, said she wants audiences to go “beyond the framing of us vs them”.

“I hope that this stays with people, not as something distant that happens to others, but something they can locate within their own understanding of what it means to love someone in an unsafe world.”

Wahhab believes the film offers a more nuanced perspective of Palestinians.

“I think that in the West, many people see a very limited picture of Palestine and the Middle East. Sometimes they see us through stereotypes as terrorists, as people who are undeveloped or somehow less than themselves,” she said. “I hope this film helps people look beyond those images. The news does not tell the full reality. It often shows only violence and people killing one another. It doesn’t show the essence of people’s lives. It shows negativity,” she said.

Wahhab encouraged people to consider the documentary through a lens of shared humanity.

House of Hope won the best international feature documentary prize at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in May 2026 and was recently screened at UNESCO in Paris. It will soon be screened at the Jerusalem Arab Film Festival.

“Even though our story is deeply rooted in the West Bank, its message is universal. Our hope is that people everywhere can see our story and take something meaningful from it.”

If I see one more person saying that the only way to truly experience Christopher Nolan’s vision of “The Odyssey” is to see it in Imax 70mm, I am going to start turning cinephiles into swine.

I understand that this is a technically true statement. As we all know by now, Nolan went on his own hero’s journey with this film, using an unwieldy and extremely loud Imax camera to shoot it (a feat only he and perhaps a few other directors would be given the finances to do). Like many, I applaud his efforts and those that were made to increase the number of theaters capable of projecting Imax 70mm (and 70mm in general).

There is an undisputed cultural magnificence to reimagining a nearly 3,000-year-old tale in the most artistically immersive format currently available to filmmakers. Unfortunately, the vast majority of filmgoers will never be able to see this master vision; only 25 theaters in the country are capable of showing the film in Imax 70mm — eight in California (including four in the L.A. area); two in Colorado, New York, Texas and Tennessee; and one in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

So a little more than twice the number of U.S. World Cup venues this year. But then, you could watch the World Cup on TV.

Not that you’ll be able to watch “The Odyssey” on TV anytime soon. As a rigorous defender of the theatrical experience, Nolan requires that his films stay in cinemas and off streamers for much longer than the average movie — “The Odyssey” will likely not be available on NBCUniversal’s Peacock until early 2027.

It is a noble mission; movie theaters need all the help they can get and heading into its second weekend, “The Odyssey” has already more than recouped its $250 million production budget. It will need to make between $625 million to $750 million to break even, which seems more than doable. “The Odyssey” could well become the third-ever R-rated movie to gross $1 billion.

Film snobbery notwithstanding, however, much of that will be accomplished via non-Imax 70mm screenings, which come in a near-Homeric list of types. On top of reacquainting the populace with a story that most of us have not thought much about since that middle-school project or college classics class, “The Odyssey” is offering a lesson in “premium formats.”

On the film’s website, one can view the trailer in Imax 70mm, regular Imax, regular 70mm, Dolby Vision and large format. Given the limitation of personal screens, this only reveals the varying frame dimensions, but it’s pretty fun to flick through them.

What is less fun is trying to figure out on which, and where and when, you can actually see the damn thing. While not on par with battling carnivorous Cyclops or world-weary witches, getting a ticket to “The Odyssey,” even after opening weekend, is a voyage filled with many obstacles.

Including but not limited to the recent crash of the AMC app.

I may or may not have contributed to this crisis, having recently spent well over an hour trying to get a measly two tickets.

Though it went against all my anti-elitist beliefs, I did try to leverage my L.A. privilege and see “The Odyssey” as Christopher Nolan intended — in Imax 70mm. Alas, the only seats available for days, even in standard Imax and 70mm, were in the first row. I was forced to “downgrade” to Dolby Vision at the Burbank 16, where, by the grace of Athena, I found two non-front-row seats, albeit in the middle of a weekday. (Mercifully, this actually counts as work for me.)

I am not equipped to argue saturation levels or whatever else differentiates one format from the other, but the Dolby experience was quite immersive, both in cinematic detail (The storms! The slaughter! The suitors’ slopping wine!) and cardiac-disruptive bass notes.

Certainly, I felt a bit like Odysseus as I crept — drained, disoriented and trailing popcorn crumbs like Ithican sand — out into the sun. It was an experience like no other (seriously, to survive Imax 70mm, I might have to go into training).

So I am a bit bewildered as pundits declare that the success of “The Odyssey” reflects some larger theme about what film audiences want. Beyond, you know, a very powerful movie.

This is one of the most singular films made in recent years. So singular that it all but defies any kind of tea-leaf-reading or, heaven forbid, attempts at replication. I don’t see a future in Homeric spinoffs (unless someone wants to do a limited series on Circe, starring Samantha Morton), and while it is vital to celebrate the craft of Imax 70mm filmmaking and projection, the theatrical experience cannot afford to put all, or even many, of its eggs into that basket.

An increased reliance on “premium formats” may seem like an obvious weapon in the increasingly one-sided war between at-home and theatrical viewing, but it is not the answer. Or at least not the only answer. (For one thing, there aren’t enough Imax 70mm cameras or projectors to go around.)

Like sports fans, many cinephiles are happy to spend hours, and dollars, to have the ultimate experience — tales of folks driving across state lines and/or paying thousands to see “The Odyssey” in Imax 70mm echoed the recent stories of international visitors saving up for a year to see their team play in the World Cup.

Though marvelously affirming for film fans, this is not a sustainable business plan. Movies are supposed to be for everyone. Not just those with a neighborhood Imax 70mm theater or the ability to pay $30 for a regular Imax seat. Going to the movies should not require hours of research to choose a theater, negotiating with a scalper or finding AI-aided plots to game the system. And there shouldn’t be such an obvious and geographically rigged hierarchy.

Before you know it, Live Nation will be involved and then where will we be?

Christopher Nolan’s non-CGI visions of the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, the sacking of Troy, the transformation of men into pigs do not require an “ultimate” aspect ratio to be remarkable.

(Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures)

“The Odyssey” is a legitimate phenomenon and that’s terrific; more power to Nolan and the theaters that benefit. As a solution to flagging box office, well, if Hollywood does not want to go the way of — as Timothée Chalamet famously said — ballet and opera, it cannot afford to become dependent on premium experiences that are accessible only to a small percentage of the audience.

Of course it’s great that “The Odyssey” was shot, and is being shown, in Imax 70mm and regular 70mm, especially in a year when stories that originated on YouTube are also burning up the big screen. Art should never be an equation of replacement. Supporting all manner of work is always the best way of preserving and celebrating the splendid diversity of filmmaking.

No matter how unparalleled the form, it still must follow function. “The Odyssey,” in whatever format it is seen, is an epic adventure with emotional undertones beyond the original story and an existential message that resonates far more than its smattering of modern language. Nolan’s non-CGI visions of the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, the sacking of Troy, the transformation of men into pigs do not require an “ultimate” aspect ratio to be remarkable.

All the various formats have their proponents and the conversations about them have been entertaining and informative, but no matter the film or screen size, it’s a very good movie.

And that’s the only template Hollywood needs to follow.

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art on Thursday announced its inaugural film programming, which will be screened nonstop during museum hours in two dedicated 299-seat theaters. Entry to the theaters is included with each general admission ticket, and visitors can enter and exit at any time, creating a free-flowing set of ancillary exhibition spaces with a goal of furthering the museum’s mission of exploring storytelling in its many forms.

One of the theaters will play museum co-founder George Lucas’ student films, made between 1965 and 1969, among other rare offerings. A schedule of screenings will be provided to visitors as they enter so they can plan their day around what they’d like to see, and programming will be changed periodically through the year. The theaters will also be used for special events.

“The film program, like so much in the museum, is unique in its structure and content. It is an open-door program that runs continuously throughout the day, allowing people to come and go at their leisure,” Ryan Linkof, senior curator and head of the museum’s film programs, wrote in an email. The news was first revealed Thursday during a Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con. “In this way, it fits within the larger mission of the museum to allow visitors to choose their own path through the museum and discover content at their own pace. It is also a varied and diverse program that includes everything from the earliest cinema experiments to avant-garde film, documentaries and animation, providing a platform for many underrecognized and rarely seen films and filmmakers.”

Adjacent to each other on the ground floor, off the north lobby of the $1-billion museum, the theaters are named after two giants of film history: Robert J. Flaherty, whose 1922 silent film “Nanook of the North” revolutionized documentary filmmaking; and early Hollywood montagist, cinematic artist and experimental filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich, who also served as chair of the USC film department from 1948 to 1950, more than a decade before Lucas enrolled in the program.

Two 299-seat theaters will be located on the ground floor of the new Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opens to the public Sept. 22.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

The Flaherty theater will be dedicated to documentaries, including those that chronicle the work and artistic process of many of the artists and storytellers featured in the museum’s opening exhibitions such as Norman Rockwell, Jim Lee, Charles M. Schulz, Maurice Sendak, Diego Rivera, J.C. Leyendecker and Weegee. The museum will also screen “Seeing Is Believing: The Story of Narrative Art,” a new documentary series it commissioned from Robin Dashwood. It will also show episodes of the 2024 television series “The Power of Film,” created by Howard Suber and directed by Laura Gabbert, and the 1988 Ron Mann-directed doc “Comic Book Confidential.”

The experience will be more avant-garde in the Vorkapich theater, which will contain programming “showcasing cinematic innovation and imagination through experimental and formally inventive short films that speak to the essence of cinema: the magic of seeing still images come to life,” wrote Linkof.

Offerings include Lucas’ student films, as well as montage sequences by Vorkapich for movies like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”; silent films by Georges Méliès, Émile Cohl, W.K.L. Dickson, Edwin S. Porter and more; early animations by Winsor McCay; experimental films created by Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy; early sound animations by Walt Disney and Fleischer Studios; experimental films by Canadian animator Norman McLaren; Looney Tunes cartoons; abstract “visual music” works by Mary Ellen Bute, Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson and others; excerpts from Busby Berkeley musicals; experimental films from the 1960s by Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger; experimental animation by Vince Collins; “Cowboy Bebop”; and an episode of “Star Wars: Visions.”

The Lucas Museum opens Sept. 22. Tickets went on sale Tuesday and were going briskly, with digital wait times reported of more than four hours in queues with as many as 13,000 guests. Museum representatives declined to comment on how many sold that first day, noting, “We’re grateful for the response and early enthusiasm from our Founding Member community and first wave of visitors. We look forward to welcoming them in September.”

Over the weekend, the Academy Museum announced that it will honor Mexican and Mexican American film history in an upcoming exhibition titled “Cinelandia: Celebrating Mexican American Cinema.”

Currently scheduled to open in September 2027 — likely to coincide with the onset of Hispanic Heritage Month — the showcase will span from the silent film era to the present day and examine movies from both sides of the border.

The idea for the exhibition was first discussed back in 2019 and work on it officially began in late 2022, Academy Museum associate curator Sophia Serrano told The Times.

“It grew from a previous research and programming project we did as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles x Latin America initiative, before we opened the Academy Museum in 2021,” Serrano said.

The display will focus mostly on Mexican American cinema, but examines those films in conversation with Mexican features and other Spanish-language movies, made both in Hollywood and internationally.

Films included in the exhibit will be Day of the Dead flicks like “The Book of Life” and Disney’s “Coco” — as well as the Spanish-language version of the 1931 horror classic “Dracula,” plus director Luis Valdez’s “La Bamba” and “Zoot Suit.” Three groundbreaking works by Gregory Nava will also be honored: the Oscar-nominated “El Norte,” “My Family/Mi Familia” and the Jennifer Lopez-led biopic “Selena.”

Among the classic Mexican films included are the 1932 film “Santa,” which was the first Mexican narrative sound movie, as well as 1946’s “Enamorada.” Features from Mexico’s Oscar-winning “three amigos” of cinema — Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu — will also be highlighted.

Along with curator Serrano, “Cinelandia” is guided by a 12-person advisory panel: cartoonist  Lalo Alcaraz; UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus Rosa-Linda Fregoso; LACMA curator and head of contemporary art Rita Gonzalez; animator-director Jorge R. Gutiérrez; writer-director Cristina Ibarra; Pitzer College professor Jesse Lerner; director-writer Carlos López Estrada; University of Arizona assistant professor Orquidea Morales; director Gregory Nava; UCLA professor Chon Noriega; University of Texas at Austin professor Charles Ramirez Berg; and USC professor Laura Isabel Serna. 

Given that L.A. County’s population is almost 50% Latino, Serrano noted that part of the exhibition’s aim is to connect to the millions of Latinos in the county and show how they’ve been critical in informing the cultural landscape of L.A.

“Mexican American cinema is … a big part of Los Angeles’ history,” Serrano said. “We want this exhibition to connect with the broader Los Angeles community, as well as illuminate the history behind many of the beloved films from Mexican American and Mexican filmmakers. The exhibition is designed to offer something for everyone and bring people of all ages and backgrounds together to celebrate this important cultural heritage.”

As with previous exhibitions centered on minority populations, the Academy Museum won’t be shying away from the uncomfortable truths around Latinos in Hollywood — from the demographic’s stereotypical portrayals in film to its underrepresentation in the industry that continues to this day.

“Many of the films and artists featured in the exhibition draw attention to or push against these challenges in a variety of ways,” Serrano said. “A guiding principle of the exhibition is foregrounding the voices of film artists themselves via interviews, written quotes, and guest curations and collaborations alongside the hundreds of original objects that will go on display, and this aims to tell an earnest and engaging story about this history.”

“We are also aiming to show how vast the contributions of Mexican American artists are, and these histories are often unknown or underrecognized. It’s essential that the exhibition celebrates these moments of impact and influence in a dynamic and educational manner.” 

“Cinelandia” isn’t the museum’s first foray into identity-based exhibitions centered on underrepresented populations. In 2022, the museum opened the “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” exhibition which highlighted the work of Black creatives from filmmaking’s early days through the civil rights movement. The showcase — which closed in April 2023 — tackled such themes as the representation of Black people in early cinema (1897-1915), the era of “race films” made by Black filmmakers for Black audiences (1910s-1940s), musical films and stories born of the civil rights movement.

The museum’s ongoing showcase titled “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” explores the stories of the Jewish filmmakers and studio founders who helped cement the L.A. area as the world capital of entertainment.

It was a very warm homecoming at the box office this weekend for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” as the star-studded epic grossed $124.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, a welcome and massive jolt for theaters after a series of slower weeks.

The Universal Pictures film’s haul outperformed studio expectations of a $117 million domestic opening and set a record for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a live-action or R-rated film so far this year.

“The Odyssey” now ranks as the third-highest domestic debut of 2026, trailing only Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” ($159.7 million) and Universal, Illumination and Nintendo’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” ($131.7 million).

The film, which stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, brought in a total of $264.1 million worldwide, according to studio estimates. That marks the biggest global opening ever for a Nolan film.

“The Odyssey” was produced by Nolan and his wife and producing partner Emma Thomas for their company, Syncopy, and had a production budget of about $200 million to $250 million.

“It delivers on every sort of promise,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution. “It is totally immersive. It is great emotional storytelling. It is something that truly has to be experienced on the big screen.”

The nearly three-hour epic is the first feature to be shot entirely on Imax cameras, a feat that required extensive cooperation between Nolan and the Canadian entertainment tech company, which operates out of Playa Vista.

Nolan first told Imax Chief Executive Rich Gelfond in early 2024 that he was considering making an entire film with Imax cameras and laid out what he’d need for that to happen, including a quieter and lighter camera, a way to make film reloads easier and getting enough trained projectionists.

“It took a fair amount of time and investment” to figure out those challenges, Gelfond said. But by August 2024, the Imax team put together a series of tests to show cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. Two months later, Nolan saw the tests and was impressed.

“As filmmakers and studios integrate Imax, we become an increasingly important part of the ecosystem,” Gelfond said. “When a film is released in Imax or shot in Imax, I think it’s a signal to audiences that it’s somewhat special, and the filmmaker is really leaning in in a unique way.”

Anticipation for the film has been building for at least a year, when the first Imax 70mm tickets went on sale. Pre-sales for “The Odyssey” shattered the previous Imax record by nearly double, the company said.

Enhanced formats made up 53% of the domestic weekend’s total, with both film and digital Imax revenue comprising 23.8%. Imax 70mm comprised about 4% of that total, with Imax digital making up the rest. Non-Imax 70mm film screening revenue totaled 3%, while 35mm showings made up 0.3%.

Adding to the film’s mystique is Nolan’s reliance on old-school Hollywood practical effects, such as his use of puppetry, animatronics and robotics in scenes with the Cyclops, as well as a real Viking boat that the actors learned to sail.

The massive reception for the film is a relief for theater owners, who weathered their own rough waters in the last few weeks, as Walt Disney Co.’s live-action “Moana” underperformed in its opening at the box office and Universal and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters” had a softer debut.

“Moana” came in second at the box office this weekend with a domestic haul of $19 million. “Minions & Monsters” ($14.8 million), “Toy Story 5” ($14.8 million) and Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Evil Dead Burn” ($5 million) rounded out the top five, according to data from Rentrak.

On paper, Lauren Meyering’s debut feature “Horsegirls” sounds like it was made in a 2000s indie movie lab: It features a quirky heroine with a unique hobby, a loved one with a devastating illness and the formation of an unlikely community that rallies around our protagonist and her dream. But surprise — the events of “Horsegirls” are inspired by a true story, one close to Meyering, who based the film on her family friends Mackenzie and Sandra Breeden. Sometimes real life can be the realest indie movie of all.

“Horsegirls” might read on paper as too sickly sweet, but Meyering’s thoughtful direction and star Lillian Carrier’s performance keep it from tipping too far in that direction. Carrier stars as Margarita, a young woman with autism who lives with her cancer-stricken mother, Sandy (Gretchen Mol). The pair are inseparable, with Margarita accompanying her mother to chemotherapy treatments and their own special celebration rituals involving karaoke and sharing combo platters.

Sandy desperately wants Margarita to get a job but her first steps toward independence come when she spies a hobby horse rehearsal and becomes fixated on joining. If you’re unfamiliar with hobby horsing, it’s a sport originating from Finland that’s growing in popularity. It involves a choreographed routine involving elements of gymnastics and traditional dressage performed while using a “hobby horse” — a stuffed horse head on a stick.

For Margarita, who loves horses but isn’t allowed to interact with them due to her mother’s safety fears, it seems the perfect solution, and she persists despite the clique-ish mean girl behavior from some of the younger participants. The coach (Jerod Haynes) sees her determination and encourages her participation, so she gets a job at a Halloween store to pay for it but keeps it a secret from Sandy. As it turns out, both mother and daughter are keeping secrets from each other.

While the plot unfolds in a fairly predictable manner, it’s the character of Margarita who keeps us on our toes. Carrier, who also has autism, brings an inherent authenticity to the role as well as a sense of good humor that draws people to Margarita, a character who always says what’s on her mind, whether or not it’s polite or appropriate. But her refreshing honesty is what people respond to, and both she and Sandy know she’s going to need people in the not-so-distant future.

Meyering carefully threads the themes of parental concern and young adult independence throughout her screenplay. The anxieties are universal — any parent wants to feel assured that their child is going to be OK when they’re gone; any child wants to prove that they’re capable and free to do what they want. Characters like Margarita’s store manager Hank (Iqbal Theba) prove that strangers can “get” Margarita just as she is, without her mother’s interference or interpretation, even if it takes some time for Sandy to understand that.

Meyering and cinematographer Natalie Kingston create a naturalistic and often dark look, though “Horsegirls” is beautifully shot. The distinctive photography sets it apart cinematically from other films in this genre — just like Margarita herself, who visually stands out from the other girls.

This is a simple story executed with singular panache, and while “Horsegirls” follows expected narrative beats, it’s in the moments of surprise that it works best, often thanks to Carrier and her straightforward line deliveries, which help the tone pop. The film is a reminder that conformity is never compulsory, and that putting yourself out there is the only way to find out who’s ready to catch you.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

One year ago, when tickets first went on sale for “The Odyssey” in Imax 70mm, nearly every screening sold out instantly.

The unprecedented ticket mayhem built hype — not just for the film, but for the format. By the time a second round of tickets were made available last month, buyers swarmed with such frenzy that they crashed the AMC Theatres app.

In Los Angeles, home base for cinephiles of every stripe, scoring one of these coveted opening weekend tickets was particularly challenging. Much of the excitement revolved around the fact that “The Odyssey” was the first feature shot entirely on Imax 70mm film, a technical achievement that involved the invention of a new camera.

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Want to see The Odyssey in 70mm but couldn’t get tickets? Glendale’s historic The Alex Theatre has you covered.

For 28-year-old Van Nuys resident Chase Stanley, who tried and failed to secure a ticket, that milestone was top of mind.

“Ultimately, I’m just jealous that I’m not included,” he said. “Since it’s the first movie to capture the whole thing in 70mm Imax, it’s my due diligence to see it like that.”

Despite the enthusiasm from moviegoers, film projection has been considered a dying art since most movie theaters worldwide switched to digital projection in the early 2010s.

More than a marketing tactic, the scarcity of tickets for Imax 70mm screenings underscored both the dearth of theaters capable of projecting films in the premium large format — only 41 — and projectionists with the requisite skills.

A number of renowned directors, including “The Odyssey’s” Christopher Nolan, prefer to shoot on film and strongly encourage analog viewing. But because few theaters own the necessary equipment or employ full-time projectionists, coordinating a release as massive as “The Odyssey” is its own arduous journey.

Jimmy Gonzales is Cepheus, left, Matt Damon is Odysseus and Himesh Patel is Eurylochus in “The Odyssey.”

(Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures)

Venues new and old

There are 25 theaters in the United States showing “The Odyssey” in Imax 70mm, eight of which are located in California. One of L.A.’s favorites is the Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood, where veteran Imax projectionist Taylor Umphenour has worked for the last three years.

On his Instagram page, Umphenour shares “projectionist POV” photos and videos with more than 22,000 followers, giving them a unique glimpse into the projection booth for movies like “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another” and “Project Hail Mary.” His company, Film Leader Co., supervises film restorations and runs technical operations for a smattering of cinema houses across the country.

In addition to his work at CityWalk, Umphenour has been busy for weeks overhauling the projection setup at the historic Alex Theatre in Glendale.

Releases such as “The Odyssey” have renewed interest in film projectionists and specialty theaters, including the historic Alex Theatre.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The 100-year-old venue opened in 1925 as a vaudeville and silent movie house where Walt Disney previewed his animated shorts, but it changed identities many times over the course of its history. Now, Umphenour and his team are working with Miles Williams, the theater’s artistic director, to transform it into a “premier cinema house” in time for “The Odyssey’s” release. It marks the first time the theater has been used for a first-run film release since “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” in 1991.

“What better opportunity to relaunch this venue than to open with Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’? That’s why this project is on such a tight turn,” Umphenour said.

His team built an entirely new, massive booth in just three weeks to house sound equipment and projectors capable of running both 35mm and 70mm film. To secure the Alex a last-minute 70mm print of “The Odyssey” — which costs tens of thousands of dollars to manufacture, ship and distribute and runs about four miles long — Umphenour relied on his relationship with distribution executives at Universal.

The Alex will screen the movie in 70mm, which uses the same film stock as Imax 70mm but runs vertically instead of horizontally, making each physical frame roughly three times smaller than its Imax counterpart. Audiences seeking the larger-than-life Imax experience will have to look elsewhere — like CityWalk — but Umphenour believes that analog screenings will still draw a crowd.

“What’s special about these — about running on film, about running 70mm, about handling premium large formats — is that it does remind people how much they love going to the movies,” he said.

“What it’s all about is expanding that sense of scope and horizon, the analog color, that sense of immersion.”

Not a job for ‘popcorn projectionists’

In advance of “The Odyssey’s” release, Imax contracted 130 experienced projectionists and required each to attend an intensive, weeklong training program.

“I’ve said for years that the projectionist is the last performer in a long chain of people that started with an idea,” Umphenour said. “They are the final person to deliver the vision of the filmmakers to the audience, and therefore, one of the most crucial.” Far from simply pressing a button, film projectionists must actively guide a screening, threading and splicing reels and closely monitoring for mechanical issues.

But thanks in large part to the dwindling number of theaters projecting analog film since 2013, finding capable, actively working projectionists for releases like “The Odyssey” can be a struggle.

Sean McKinnon, director of specialty presentations and AV integration at Boston Light and Sound, is in charge of hiring these projectionists for about 60 venues across the country screening “The Odyssey” in 70mm. He did the same for “Oppenheimer” in 2023, which had the longest theatrical window of the year.

“It was pretty challenging finding people for ‘Oppenheimer,’ especially because the film was so amazing, it was in theaters for so long,” he said of the 122-day release. Staffing projectionists for “The Odyssey” has been “definitely easier,” he said, as the “word has gotten out.”

The talent pool McKinnon pulls from includes theater managers, retired projectionists, trainees from specialized college programs and even workers in other professions who take PTO for the occasion.

“We get people from really all walks of life,” he said. “It’s a special event and people want to be a part of it.”

Taylor Umphenour checks the projector’s focus at the historic Alex Theatre in Glendale.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Outside of big cities, the lack of local projectionists also means McKinnon’s company has to fly people to Morrow, Ga., or Valley View, Ohio, for instance, to run the booth for the duration of a film’s run.

Leah Saint Marie, a filmmaker and former projectionist at the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz, attributed the staffing struggle to the experience and knowledge divide between hobbyists and experts.

“Training is pretty easy if you want to be what they call a ‘popcorn projectionist,’” she said. They “can thread the movie and push start, but if there are any mechanical issues, they can’t fix it.”

“I don’t think anybody who’s going to run a 70mm Imax are popcorn projectionists, because it’s very technical,” she added. Each Imax film print of “The Odyssey” is 11 miles long and weighs roughly 600 pounds.

The most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that in 2023, there were 2,610 motion picture projectionists employed in the U.S. — an increase from 1,900 in 2022. In 2012, the BLS estimated roughly 8,000 projectionists and predicted the number would decline by 26.5% in the next 10 years — but it ultimately decreased by 76%.

“If you want to maintain expertise in the field, what you want are enough [movie] theaters out there running film that somebody can try their hand at it and get better,” Umphenour said.

Why film matters

Could the overwhelming audience demand for Imax 70mm screenings translate into a resurgence of fully equipped theaters? According to Imax Chief Executive Richard Gelfond, it’s more complicated than that.

“The problem is they haven’t made new Imax film projectors in about 50 years,” Gelfond told Variety on Wednesday. “We build new projectors every day, but film projectors, using this film, it’s not practical. So we’ve got to find them and retrofit them and rebuild them, which is what we did for ‘Odyssey.’ But can all 2,000 of our theaters be film projectors? No. There’s just not that many around.”

That said, Cinemark reportedly installed Imax 70mm projectors at three of its theaters ahead of “The Odyssey’s” release, and there are 11 more theaters projecting “The Odyssey” in Imax 70mm than there were for “Oppenheimer.”

Cinema engineer Justin Dennis is working with projectionist and production manager Taylor Umphenour to build a new projection booth capable of running both 35mm and 70mm film at the Alex Theatre.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Saint Marie recalled working as a projectionist in Pennsylvania during the period when most theaters transitioned from film to digital. While training at a new theater, she was surprised to find an old film projector still stored in the booth, and even more surprised to learn it was for Nolan’s sake.

“When he releases a [movie] on film, we have to have the projector. A lot of places around the United States kept their projectors specifically for Nolan,” she said.

Nolan isn’t the only director with an affinity for large format film and analog media. Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Ryan Coogler (whose 2025 hit “Sinners” made quite a splash in Imax 70mm) are others associated with what Umphenour dubbed “the 70mm renaissance.”

According to Saint Marie, theaters worldwide transitioned from film to digital projection mainly because the cost of shipping a Digital Cinema Package is much cheaper than shipping a film release print. But the community of skilled laborers and enthusiastic audiences who champion analog projection say it’s worth it.

“I think there’s something to be said about what film gives you as an artistic community, versus what digital gives you is just consuming as a capitalistic society,” Saint Marie said. To McKinnon, it comes down to the “tradition of humans telling a story by flickering light” harking back to prehistoric times.

For Umphenour, the story of “The Odyssey’s” release and all of the 70mm fanfare is one of preservationists triumphing over countless obstacles.

“There are 70mm theaters running this film throughout the world that, frankly, have been kept alive through the deep devotion of people who care about this format,” Umphenour said. “They really do deserve to be celebrated because, like so many things in life, if you don’t have people that care about it, you don’t end up with a thing.”

“The results of all this work are not images projected on screen,” he continued. “It’s a community brought together to hear a story well told, which allows them to create a life memory they get to carry forward for years and years.”

Film projection takes center stage at the Alex Theatre.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

This article contains many spoilers for “Heartstopper Forever.”

In the early minutes of “Heartstopper Forever” — the feature film finale of Netflix’s hit teen romantic dramedy series — Charlie Spring (Joe Locke) notices a crooked photo strip on his boyfriend Nick Nelson’s (Kit Connor) bedroom wall. Gently pulling down the pictures, taken on the beach day they made their relationship official, Charlie smiles wistfully at their younger selves: “We look like babies.”

It’s a line that applies to the characters as much as it does to Locke and Connor. Four years after being catapulted into global stardom, the pair are bidding a bittersweet farewell to the roles that have defined their own coming of age.

“Season 1 does feel like an immensely long time ago that I do look back and think, ‘Yeah, we do look like babies,’” Connor says, with Locke nodding in agreement next to him on a recent video call from London. “‘Heartstopper’ itself was this tiny little show that was clearly something quite special to us, but we didn’t really think or know anyone was going to watch. And, suddenly, it became this thing that was immensely important to a lot of people.”

Adapted by Alice Oseman from her own bestselling graphic novels, which originated as a webcomic in 2016, “Heartstopper” chronicles the endearing love story between high-strung, gay overthinker Charlie and kind-hearted, bisexual rugby player Nick at an all-boys’ school in England.

Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke) in a scene from Season 1 of “Heartstopper.”

(Netflix)

Upon its debut in 2022, the show was lauded for its unabashedly joyful, tender portrayal of queer youth — a refreshing departure from the trauma-heavy narratives that dominate other teen dramas. Even as “Heartstopper” ventured into darker thematic territory, such as Charlie’s history of eating disorders and struggles with self-harm, Oseman’s writing never lost its deft, light touch.

From the outset, Oseman knew she wanted to end “Heartstopper” with Nick going off to university in Leeds and Charlie, who is a year younger, finding independence as head boy at school. But with her cast growing increasingly more in demand every year, the author-turned-screenwriter says it would have been logistically difficult to make a fourth and final season.

After Netflix greenlit a two-hour finale instead, Oseman elected to zero in on her protagonists — not unlike her comics — rather than give each character their own, heavily condensed arc. “I think that was definitely the right decision, because we really get to spend a lot of time with Nick and Charlie and not feel like we’re missing anything,” she says.

Directed by Wash Westmoreland (“Colette,” “Still Alice”), “Forever” finds the first loves grappling with the reality of an impending long-distance relationship, leading to a rash breakup and, ultimately, an emotional reconciliation. In a surprising role reversal, as Charlie confidently steps into a leadership role as an advocate for other LGBTQ+ students, Nick is left to discover his own identity and self-worth outside of being the protective, supportive boyfriend.

On the set of “Heartstopper Forever” as Connor and Locke film a scene from the movie.

(Samuel Dore / Netflix)

Connor, who also executive produced the film with Locke, felt Charlie and Nick’s romance would be better wrapped up in a feature-length format. “There were a few very important and crucial, but short and intense [plot points] — the breakup and the time apart, and the eventual makeup and the two of them discovering who they are without one another,” he explains. “Doing it in a shorter period, I thought, would make those things hit that much harder and feel that much more visceral.”

Unlike previous seasons in which she could rely on her existing comics as storyboards for the show, Oseman was working simultaneously last year on the sixth and final volume of the “Heartstopper” comics, released earlier this month, and the “Forever” screenplay.

Juggling the same story in two different formats turned out to benefit each end product. “When I finished writing the first draft of the script, it actually made me do a really big rewrite of the comic, because it helped me see which moments were really important and which moments didn’t need to be there,” she says. (One of the pivotal scenes was the Pride parade, filmed on the last morning of production.)

As first-time producers, Locke and Connor also provided script notes that directly influenced the story. For instance, “there was no scene between Charlie and Mr. Ajayi in the original script,” says Locke, referring to the gay art teacher, played by Fisayo Akinade, whose classroom became Charlie’s safe haven from bullying before he befriended Nick. “I was like, ‘That scene in Season 1 with them is so pivotal to the story. It would be really lovely to have just a little moment for them in the film that circles on that chapter of their relationship.’ And straight away, Alice was like, ‘Yeah, great idea. Let’s do this.’”

For his part, Connor always feared that the show’s “rose-tinted” approach, though part of the story’s appeal, “would not be nuanced enough to talk about the complexities of being human and being young.”

Locke says he proposed a scene with Fisayo Akinade, who plays art teacher Mr. Ajayi, as a way to circle back on their relationship.

(Netflix)

“There was one moment where I was like, ‘Oh God, I hope these young people watching “Heartstopper” don’t suddenly forget that these kids are human, and that these kids can make mistakes and still be lovely, delightful and good people,’” Connor says. With Oseman and Locke, Connor was adamant about “finding the place [where] these characters were being treated in a way that we all felt good about.”

According to Oseman, Locke and Connor were also heavily involved in selecting a new intimacy coordinator, Robbie Taylor Hunt. Over the years, the amount of sex — or lack thereof — in “Heartstopper” has been the subject of much discourse. “It always annoyed me slightly that people were like, ‘Oh, this is so unrealistic. They’re not having sex.’ They were underage. What do you want us to do?” Locke says with a wry laugh.

Oseman has learned to tune out that online chatter, accepting that she cannot please everyone — let alone represent the entire spectrum of the young queer experience. With each season and now this film, her creative team chose to age up the story slightly. After Charlie and Nick lost their virginity to each other at the end of Season 3, the film uses physical intimacy to reveal more about their maturing relationship.

Locke says those scenes were necessary to the plot. “The pier sex scene is this carnal lust between these two people who need to get it out. The sex scene in the pillow fort is a moment of connection for them,” he says. “And the big sex scene at the end of the film is the reconciliation of their relationship.”

In the end, Nick and Charlie decide to give their relationship another shot, confident that their love can defy the conventional wisdom that teen romances rarely last. But what they learn during their split is “that you can’t put all of your hopes and dreams, your mental health and your ability to survive into one person, because it’s not fair on yourself and on that other person,” Connor says.

Over the years, the amount of sex, or lack of it, in “Heartstopper” has been the subject of online discourse. The film shows more physical intimacy.

(Netflix)

The film’s epilogue, like in the comics, offers a brief glimpse of Charlie visiting Nick for a weekend in Leeds, ending with the two of them looking through the pages of a scrapbook that still has room for new photos. While Oseman has her own vision of Nick and Charlie’s future in 10 years — they’d be newly married with a dog, she believes — the actors who play them aren’t so sure.

“I feel like the beauty of ‘Heartstopper’ is that we get to see a chapter of these two young men’s lives, and it ends in a way that doesn’t promise anything,” Connor says. “Even if they were to not end up together eventually, it wouldn’t make the experience that they shared together any less special or pivotal to who they are as people. I think that’s kind of beautiful.”

Locke is reluctant to divulge his own interpretation of the characters’ future, preferring instead to let viewers make sense of the hopeful ending. “I hope they’re happy,” he says simply. (But for the record, the actors both believe that Charlie and Nick will stay together. “Of course, we all hope so,” Connor clarifies.)

Although she is ready to tell new stories, Oseman believes that she will be revisiting Nick and Charlie, who first appeared in her 2014 debut novel “Solitaire,” “in small ways for the rest of my life.”

“I think there definitely won’t be another 10-year-long webcomic — probably not — but I love thinking about what Nick and Charlie might be up to when they’re 40 or 60,” Oseman says. However, she adds, “I think the main story of ‘Heartstopper’ has concluded, and I do feel good about that.”

Like their high school characters, Locke and Connor are ready to graduate from the “Heartstopper” universe. Wary of being typecast, they have established themselves as versatile stage actors, making their Broadway debuts in “Sweeney Todd” and “Romeo + Juliet,” respectively. Onscreen, Locke joined the Marvel universe in “Agatha All Along,” while Connor has explored vastly different cinematic genres — his next major project, the film adaptation of the dark fantasy video game “Elden Ring,” will reunite him with “Warfare” director Alex Garland.

Even on the day of our interview, Connor and Locke looked a world away from Nick and Charlie. Locke wore an all-black designer outfit, while Connor — dressed in a light blue striped button-down over a white tank and khakis — had traded Nick’s signature floppy hair for designer stubble. Yet both actors have made peace with the reality that they will forever be linked to each other and their roles. “That’s part and parcel of the job,” Connor says.

Fittingly, the last scene Connor and Locke filmed as Nick and Charlie was the anniversary scene in the park where there is a fallen tree with the letters “N+C” carved into the trunk. “It was lovely because it was back to how a lot of the ‘Heartstopper’ experience has been, which is just me and Joe,” Connor says.

“I love thinking about what Nick and Charlie might be up to when they’re 40 or 60,” says creator Alice Oseman. However, she adds, “I think the main story of ‘Heartstopper’ has concluded, and I do feel good about that.”

(Netflix)

Would they be open to revisiting Charlie and Nick’s love story as older adults? “In 10, 15, 20 years, who knows? Maybe,” Connor says. “Even if Alice were to decide that they wanted to make a TV show about another character in the universe of ‘Heartstopper’ and they wanted us to cameo or something, then, hey, maybe.”

While the “Heartstopper” team expected the series to resonate with younger audiences, they have been particularly moved by the reactions of older queer viewers, who have marveled at the strides in LGBTQ+ representation onscreen. Coming from the world of young-adult fiction — where she notes stories of queer joy are abundant — Oseman recalls being surprised that “Heartstopper” was treated as an anomaly in mainstream media. Still, she is proud to have helped move the needle on LGBTQ+ representation, particularly when such characters remain underrepresented.

“My hope is that people will be able to look back … and say, ‘Hey, “Heartstopper” did really well. Let’s make another queer show that’s got the [same] ‘queer joy’ vibes,’” Oseman says. “I hope it’s been able to give that encouragement to the people in power to let there be more stories out there because we just need more, different kinds of queer stories.”

Connor believes that anyone can enjoy the show because “Heartstopper” simply captures the universality of “human beings being happy and being in love.”

“Obviously, the [queer] representation is incredibly important. I think that the very existence of the show and the comfort and safety that it can bring people is one of the things that makes it so special,” Connor says. And the demand for such stories “isn’t going to change,” he adds. “Queer people are always going to exist.”

THE ODYSSEY

(15) 173mins

★★★★★

NO need for theme parks this summer, this is a film that will leave you feeling as though you have ­ridden the highest rollercoaster.

Sir Christopher Nolan’s epic is an all-action, mythical nightmare to behold.

It’s a monumental piece of work, which rarely even feels like a film — more a spectacle to be watched in awe and amazement.

The Ancient Greek poem of the same title, written thousands of years ago, has been retold countless times over the centuries. But never to this scale.

The story is of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his quest to return to his homeland.

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He is the King of Ithaca and the mastermind behind the Trojan Horse trick that ended the war.

His long journey back to his kingdom is to reunite with his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and son, Telemachus (Tom Holland).

They have been waiting for his return for 20 years, and Penelope has many more than 100 suitors ready to take up residency in the royal palace.

They spend their evenings eating the food and drinking the wine of their hostess, while plotting what they will do when she marries them.

One is Antinous (Robert Pattinson), a snarly, devious man who can barely hide his contempt for the family but longs for their power.

Stories run alongside this one, showing Odysseus lost on the island of Ogygia, eating lotus flowers with only the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron) for company.

She tries to get his memories from him, and he retells the journey he took to get washed up there.

It includes battles, terrifying gods, curses, hauntings, a witch (Samantha Morton) who loves to feed her prey and Zendaya as Athena.

Each tale feels like a film in itself and alongside adrenalin-spiking action, there is a lot of heart.

The basis of the story is love, protection and the attempt to right wrongs.

Damon is spectacular in a role that must have pushed him to his limits physically. While being part of huge battle sequences, he is able to show a range of emotions on his face.

The standout performance has to be Pattinson, who as the hateful Antinous, ­manages to curl his lip to perfection.

Don’t let the nearly three-hour run time put you off.

Like any great ride, the moment it is over, you want it to start all over again.

A CLOSE SHAVE

(U) 30mins

★★★★★

IT’S been more than three decades since Nick Park made us all fall for a cheese-loving bachelor and his silent inventor dog.

And to mark the 50th anniversary of Aardman, the world-famous Bristol-based stop-motion and clay animation studios behind Wallace and Gromit, the films have been given national cinema release for a whole new generation to enjoy.

In this tale, from 1995, Wallace (Peter Sallis) and Gromit are running a high-tech window-cleaning service, which introduces them to wool shop owner Wendolene Ramsbottom (Anne Reid) and her evil-genius dog, Preston.

Thanks to his new canine enemy, Gromit is jailed for crimes he didn’t commit. With the help of his clumsy buddy – who is infatuated with Wendolene – he works to clear his name. Film fans will love the parody of prison movies, and there’s an impressive, climactic cheese scene.

Having won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film and introducing the character of Shaun the Sheep – who went on to have his own TV spin-off series – this really is a delight to watch again. Brilliantly funny, with enough jeopardy and action to keep you hooked.

HEARTSTOPPER FOREVER

(15) 114mins

★★☆☆☆

AFTER three series of the incredibly successful coming-of-age Netflix drama, the story of the much-loved schoolboy couple, Nick and Charlie, is coming to an end.

This feature-film finale shows Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke) are still very much in love.

In fact, they’re obsessively infatuated. At every party they stare at each other across the dance floor. They take selfies every few minutes and all their friends fawn over how they’re the best couple ever.

But Charlie is off to university soon and newly crowned head boy Nick has another year at school. So this throws their relationship into a very mediocre level of disarray.

They go back and forth over what they’re going to do, with high levels of self-inflicted angst and many moments that feel excruciatingly cringey.

Meanwhile, their tight-knit friendship group seem to chat exclusively about their own complicated sexualities.

Written by Alice Oseman and produced by Brett Thomas, the fondness for this couple feels like it can’t forgive the incredibly lame storyline that offers little to no jeopardy.

One for the superfans.

On Netflix.

Netflix viewers meet grown-up versions of Charlie and Nick in Heartstopper Forever

Heartstopper fans should prepare for more steamy scenes in the new Netflix film.

The young adult show returns with one final chapter called Heartstopper Forever tomorrow (July 17), which sees Joe Locke and Kit Connor reprising their roles as Charlie Spring and Nick Nelson.

Based on Alice Oseman’s popular graphic novels, the film picks up as Charlie and Nick face the prospect of a long-distance relationship ahead of going to university.

We’ve watched their romance blossom over three seasons, during which they were completely inseparable. So this new milestone poses a new hurdle they haven’t faced before.

As well as a new challenge, though, fans will notice that Charlie and Nick are more intimate in the new film than in previous seasons.

When asked about the final chapter featuring “a lot more sex,” Connor told The Guardian: “It’s a line that you have to walk: ‘How far are we going to take this?'”

He went on to explain that the inclusion reflected a natural progression in the characters’ romance.

“But at the end of the day, it did feel like these two guys are really attracted to each other at the age where they probably would have been doing it,” Connor added.

Locke agreed, explaining: “It would be weird if we hadn’t shown it. Just because our show is a more earnest version of a queer representation doesn’t mean that sex [shouldn’t be shown]. It’s still a big thing for anyone in the world.”

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This lets members watch live and on-demand TV content without a satellite dish or aerial and includes hit shows like Stranger Things and The Last of Us.

The new coming-of-age drama includes traditional sex scenes as well as segments depicting masturbation, which is pretty standard for the genre.

However, Heartstopper has previously centred on the less-explicit elements of young queer relationships.

The actors were actually eager to push the envelope even further with their characters, Connor revealed.

He said: “If I’d had my way, I would have had Nick and Charlie cheating on each other and doing all those stupid things.

“Because young people do that and don’t necessarily need to be villainised for it. Heartstopper Forever takes a step in that direction of not being so rose-tinted about being human.”

Heartstopper Forever premieres on Netflix this Friday, July 17.

“Remake” has a tragic tale to tell and director Ross McElwee wastes no time revealing its grieving heart. Near the start of this funereal documentary, the filmmaker addresses his subject directly: “It’s been seven years since you died,” he says to his late son Adrian through voice-over, “and I still miss you every day.”

Across McElwee’s 50-year career, he has worked intimately without a crew to make sense of his own life by diligently recording it. In the process, he turned his friends and loved ones into the unlikely stars of his acclaimed independent documentaries.

With “Remake,” he looks back at that footage, concentrating on the images he shot of Adrian since his birth in 1989. Adrian died on Christmas Eve 2016 of a drug overdose and McElwee clearly remains shattered. For a documentarian who specializes in personal movies, “Remake” feels especially revealing — both in terms of the glimpses we get of this father-son relationship and of unsolved mysteries that linger just outside the frame.

The film’s title ostensibly refers to a surprising phone call McElwee received about 20 years ago, when he was approached by Steve Carr, the director of broad comedies like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” who was eager to adapt McElwee’s 1986 documentary “Sherman’s March” into a movie. That landmark picture features McElwee, then in his mid-30s, as he tries to chronicle the exploits of Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who laid siege to the South during the Civil War. Except, in the midst of that project, McElwee’s focus shifts, delightfully, to his disastrous love life and the fascinating women he meets in his travels, becoming a deeply humane examination of modern courtship.

Carr doesn’t seem like an obvious choice to oversee a narrative remake, but McElwee decides to sell him the rights anyway. Soon in “Remake,” though, it becomes apparent that this is just one chapter of the story — and hardly the most essential. McElwee’s last film, 2011’s “Photographic Memory,” dealt with his increasingly frayed connection to Adrian, who was already fighting substance-abuse issues. “Remake” retraces Adrian’s childhood while filling in the details of the director’s life after “Photographic Memory,” including brain surgery and the dissolution of his 24-year marriage.

But Adrian is never far from his thoughts or absent from the screen: this smiling, happy boy slowly transforming into an edgy, troubled young man whose sweetness still occasionally shines through.

The passage of time is central to McElwee’s work, but he’s rarely scrutinized the topic as aggressively as he does here. It’s not simply that we watch Adrian age or revisit some of McElwee’s “Sherman’s March” subjects. (“Sherman’s March” is now screening in a new 4K restoration at the Laemmle Royal with “Remake.”) It’s also in the way that McElwee’s formerly wry narration now sounds far more resigned, his voice grown froggy and hushed as he nears 80. McElwee has often pondered the downside of essentially treating himself like a human camera, observing the world rather than fully engaging in it. But in “Remake,” he openly questions his artistic approach and, fittingly, he lets his son be his loudest critic.

As a boy, Adrian is enchanted by McElwee’s filming. In childhood, he paints an abstract picture of God in which the Almighty eerily resembles a movie camera. But although Adrian soon picks up a camera as well, increasingly interested in being a filmmaker himself, he resents how his father intrudes on their time together by constantly shooting their conversations. McElwee’s scenes of them at the Venice Film Festival for the “Photographic Memory” premiere are especially fraught, Adrian’s prickly reaction to a movie about his drug abuse creating tension between the two men at the subsequent press conference.

In “Remake,” McElwee laments that he didn’t do enough to help him navigate addiction and the mental-health issues that exacerbated it. (Adrian was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.) Was McElwee too consumed with his own career to be there for his son? The question haunts “Remake” — he includes an indelible sequence from “Sherman’s March” in which his longtime friend Charleen upbraids him for always having the camera out. “This isn’t art,” she hollers. “This is life!” Did McElwee never come to appreciate the difference?

A eulogy that also serves as an apology, a reckoning and a confession, “Remake” is filled with moments that are crushing because of how understated they are, none more brutal than when McElwee visits Adrian near the end of his life, when he’d moved to Colorado to get a fresh start. “He seemed to be doing OK,” McElwee recalls thinking. “But I always leave knowing I’m probably not seeing the whole picture.”

Even now, poring through his footage, desperately looking for clues, McElwee pines for that larger view — the one that might somehow bring the boy back to his inconsolable father.