James Ryan has been handed a three-week suspension after the red card he was shown during Ireland’s 24-13 defeat by South Africa at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday was upheld by an independent disciplinary committee.
Second row Ryan’s yellow card for a high hit on Malcolm Marx in the early stages of the loss to the Springboks was subsequently upgraded to a 20-minute red card.
The independent committee determined that by applying World Rugby’s sanctioning provisions, a mid-range entry point of six weeks was appropriate.
That has been reduced to three weeks, however, in light of Ryan accepting the red card, his clean record and other mitigating factors.
The sanction could be further reduced to two weeks should Ryan complete World Rugby’s Coaching Intervention Programme as a substitute for the final week of his suspension.
That option is aimed at modifying specific techniques and technical issues which contributed to the incidence of foul play.
As it stands, Ryan is ruled out of Leinster’s United Rugby Championship game against Dragons this weekend and the Investec Champions Cup matches at home to Harlequins on 6 December and away to Leicester Tigers on 12 December.
Nov. 21 (UPI) — Former U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, has decided not to run for governor of his state in 2026.
“After careful consideration, much prayer and reflection, and after long conversations with my family, my closest friends and advisors, I’ve made the decision not to run for governor in 2026,” Ryan said in a statement.
Gov. Mike DeWine can’t run again due to term limits.
Ryan has faced criticism from Democrats for his ties to cryptocurrency. He represented some of the Akron and Youngstown areas for 20 years in Congress and ran for Senate in 2021, but lost to Vice President JD Vance.
Recently, he has been considering running for governor. An advisor said Ryan’s interest in running for governor was “renewed and heightened” by former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown‘s decision to run for Senate again instead of Ohio governor, Cleveland.com reported.
How do you find inspiration? Say you’re doing your holiday shopping and you’re struggling to find the perfect gift for that difficult person on your list — parent, partner, paramour. How do you let your mind drift to a place where the clouds part and you achieve a sort of awakening?
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, back in your inbox for the next few months as we sail through the atmospheric river of awards season. Climb aboard.
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Cover story: The best six minutes in movies this year
(Bexx Francois / For The Times)
You might remember how much I love “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s audacious, genre-defying blockbuster that explores the intrinsic power of American blues music and Black life in the Jim Crow South within the context of a vampire horror movie.
So I was thrilled to talk with Coogler and his longtime department heads — a movie family that includes Oscar winners who have been with him since his 2013 debut, “Fruitvale Station” — for The Envelope’s first cover story of the season. There were a dozen different ways I could have gone with the piece, but our conversations kept coming back to the scene in the juke joint when young Sammie (Miles Caton) conjures spirits from the past and future onto the dance floor.
How did Coogler summon this scene? It goes back to that question I asked at the outset: How do you find inspiration?
For Coogler, “Sinners” began on Nov. 17, 2021, a date fixed in his mind because it was the day one of his favorite rappers, Young Dolph, was murdered. Coogler was devastated. And his mind drifted back to Nipsey Hussle, the L.A. rapper gunned down outside his South L.A. clothing store in 2019. Coogler was living in Los Angeles at the time, trying to get a “Space Jam” sequel off the ground.
“I felt like I had my heart ripped out, bro,” Coogler told me. “I have two younger brothers I’m really close with, and I remember reading an article in the L.A. Times about his older brother recounting what happened. It just broke me. And then I get the news that Dolph’s been killed in his hometown, and I just remember feeling, ‘I’m done with rap, man.’”
Later, Coogler spoke with his friend, “Black Panther” producer Nate Moore, lamenting that rappers who talk about their lives, beating the odds and escaping hardship, sometimes end up succumbing to the thing they thought they left behind. Moore isn’t a rap guy, but told Coogler that his favorite music, grunge, was just like that — in this case, artists addressing their struggles with depression and addiction and then, on occasion, overdosing or taking their own lives.
Toward the end of that day, Coogler was driving back from the set of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” Passing through Byron, Ga., the Oakland native looked out his window and saw, for the first time in his life, a cotton field. During our interview, Coogler pulls out his phone and finds a video his sister-in-law shot of him taking it all in and picking a sprig of cotton. Coogler kept it, eventually putting it on his work desk at home.
“That was a part of finding ‘Sinners,’” Coogler says. “The other thing that happened was I started listening to grunge music, taking a break from rap. And as soon as I put the music on, I was like, ‘Yo, this feels like my uncle’s. It led me right back to his record collection.”
That uncle, James Edmonson, loved the blues. Coogler’s cousin, Edmonson’s youngest daughter, told the filmmaker about a Bill Withers’ song, “I Can’t Write Left-Handed,” written from the perspective of a Vietnam veteran. Coogler listened to it, and it reminded him of “Rooster,” the Alice in Chains song written by guitarist Jerry Cantrell for his father, who served in Vietnam.
“So I’m playing these two songs one after another, and I’m like, ‘These genres that you wouldn’t find next to each other at a Tower Records back in the day, they’re so close,’” Coogler says. “And studying the history of it, it’s people playing it different, but it’s the same idea.”
“And that’s when I realized I had to make ‘Sinners.’”
Coogler scrolls through his phone and shows a picture of the cotton sprig on his desk. He dedicated “Sinners” to his uncle, who died about a decade before it arrived in theaters.
“So many cosmic moments came together for this movie,” Coogler says. “I was always like, ‘All right. I just gotta make sure I don’t f— it up.’”
Sarah Paulson appears to be having a blast in Ryan Murphy’s new Hulu “legal” drama “All’s Fair,” and that’s about the only good thing about the show.
The New York Times recently ran a piece extolling it’s reimagining of the power suit (down to at least one visible thong) and I suppose that’s one way of avoiding the obvious. Still, I’m going to stick with Paulson’s obvious glee in playing a villain. Her Carrington Lane was left behind to fester in the comic-book sexism of a male-dominated divorce law firm when two of her colleagues stalked away to form an all-female team and Carrington is not one to surrender a grudge.
It’s impossible not to like Paulson and she is clearly enjoying the opportunity to glare and hiss and indulge in the kind of gross but creative profanity Melissa McCarthy likes to unleash when her characters hit the brink.
As for the rest … well, let’s just say with “All’s Fair,” American culture is getting exactly what it deserves: A series that wallows in the shiny, knockoff-ready trappings of new money (immaculate and soulless homes, private jets, diamonds the size of a Rubik’s Cube), defines “sisterhood” as the belief that any personal crisis can be alleviated by vaginal rejuvenation combined with a girls’ trip to a jewelry auction and gauges power by the ability to plot and take revenge. Preferably in the form of huge amounts of money.
“All’s Fair” may or may not be, as some have said, the worst show of the year (or possibly of all time), but with its celebration of the 1%, personal feuds and financial vengeance, it is certainly the first to truly embody the culture of the Trump presidency.
Down to the reality star at its center. “All’s Fair” gives top billing not to any of the fine and seasoned actors that star — Paulson, Niecy Nash, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close — but to Kim Kardashian, who plays Allura Grant, head of the law firm Grant, Ronson and Greene.
Niecy Nash, from left, Glenn Close and Kim Kardashian are among the stars of Ryan Murphy’s new Hulu drama “All’s Fair.”
(Ser Baffo / Disney)
That Kardashian (and Kris Jenner, who serves as a producer) were able to summon such forces of the galaxy to showcase her, shall we say, limited thespian abilities could be justifiably viewed as yet another “you go girl” testament to her seemingly limitless business acumen.
On the other hand, “All’s Fair” makes the dismal final season of “And Just Like That” look like Chekhov.
Murphy, and the forces at Disney, which owns Hulu, the home of “The Kardashians,” understand Kardashian’s cult-like following and are operating under the assumption that viewers will be so entranced by her and the fashions (which include an alarming amount of hats, capes and gloves) that they won’t notice that the main player is relying on her eyelash extensions to do her acting for her.
To be fair to Kardashian, few nonprofessional actors would shine beside scene partners like Close, Watts and Nash, and the writing of the series, which flirts with camp but never fully commits, does no one any favors.
Not since “Charlie’s Angels” has there been a “feminist fantasy” with such a male gaze. (Apologies to “Charlie’s Angels,” which was in many ways a groundbreaking show.)
After suffering on the sidelines of a mostly male law firm, Allura and Liberty Ronson (Watts) decide to branch out on their own. They do so with the blessing of Dina Standish (Close), that firm’s only female partner, and take with them ace investigator Emerald Greene (Nash). When we meet them again, 10 years later, Allura also has an assistant/mentee in Milan (Teyana Taylor), who later provides a predictable plot twist.
The names alone suggest a level of parody, and, in the first episode, a send-up quality flits in and out of the proceedings, but the show chooses cynicism over satire every time.
Instead of sexist jokes, the partners of Grant, Ronson and Greene spend much of their time discussing how awful men are, with the possible exception of Liberty’s beau, Reggie (“The Handmaid’s Tale’s” O-T Fagbenle), and Standish’s ailing husband, Doug (Ed O’Neill).
That is, after all, the raison d’etre of the firm: Grant, Ronson and Greene are intent on protecting rich women from the perils of the prenup and generally making the bastards pay, sometimes through their “superior” knowledge of the law (in one storyline, this involves explaining that gifts are the sole property of the recipient, which even I knew), but more often blackmail (if you have chosen to live your life without ever seeing a butt plug the size of a traffic cone, keep your eyes shut when Emerald starts her slideshow).
A brief, and seemingly contractually required, mention of the firm raising money to help the underprivileged is laughable — “All’s Fair” is 100% après-moi television, in which extreme wealth is presented as too normal to even be aspirational, and any work not done by Emerald consists of sashaying in super slick shades from one successful throwdown to the next. With brief interludes in sumptuous cars and, as previously mentioned, overbidding on hideous brooches at a high-end jewelry auction (held by a firm client, which honestly seems potentially unethical, but whatevs).
If the dialogue were sharp, funny or even self-aware, Murphy and his team might get away with it, but it’s not — “It’s a shame your mother didn’t swallow,” Dina tells Carrington in what passes as proof that women can be as tough as men. Or that older women can talk trash. Or that Close will do her best to give a decent reading of any line. Or something.
There are brief nods to the women’s personal lives — as a divorce lawyer, Liberty is reluctant to marry Reggie, Dina is struggling with Doug’s decline, Emerald is a super-single mom — but it all feels very box-ticky. Including Allura’s disintegrating marriage, which becomes a major plot point as the gals gather round to make that bastard pay as well, and her realization that if she wants to become a mother, she’s running out of time.
Reading the zeitgeist, the creators of “All’s Fair” were clearly not looking for raves or awards, just viewers.
(Disney)
In many ways, “All’s Fair” is an American version of the excellent British series “The Split,” which follows a matriarchal family of female divorce lawyers. Early on, one of the daughters (played by Nicola Walker) leaves the family firm and, in her own way, attempts to right the wrongs often done to women facing divorce from rich and powerful men while dealing with her own marital breakdown and a family with actual children.
But “American version” doesn’t really cut it. This is Trump’s-America version, in which ethics, morals and virtually all human feeling are secondary to winning, and winning is defined by who ends up making their opponent pay.
Between Kardashian’s conspicuous nonacting and dialogue that often seems lifted from the all-caps regions of X, “All’s Fair” has, not surprisingly, received a critical drubbing. Which seems almost intentional.
Critics, after all, have long been routinely, and often viciously, disparaged (after the reviews were in, Close felt moved to post a sketch of the cast gathered around a “Fatal Attraction”-like “critic bunny stew”). More important, reviews, bad or good, do not (nor should they) predict audience reaction (see early theater reviews of “Wicked”). As Trump has proved again and again, bad press is still press and the worse it is, the more easily it can be cast as proof that the cultural elites (i.e. critics) are out to get … somebody.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that, despite a 5% score on Rotten Tomatoes, “All’s Fair” was Hulu’s most successful scripted series premiere in three years.
Reading the zeitgeist, the creators of “All’s Fair” were clearly not looking for raves or awards, just viewers. In this American moment, bad is good and shrewd operators know that if you throw in enough high-profile ingredients — Kardashian, Murphy, a bevy of fine actors — you needn’t take the trouble to ensure the mix will rise to the occasion.
As the president builds a ballroom while food banks are overrun, why wouldn’t TV audiences want to feast on fallen cake?
