Coronation Street fans are convinced Cassie Plummer and Becky Swain are linked in some way, and now a scene on the ITV soap featuring a phone call has added fuel to the theory
22:41, 05 Nov 2025Updated 22:42, 05 Nov 2025
Fans think there’s a secret link between two Coronation Street characters(Image: ITV)
Fans think there’s a secret link between two Coronation Street characters, and the latest episode may have ‘confirmed’ this.
Cassie Plummer spoke about helping someone with business in Spain, before speaking in Spanish on the phone. With fans already suspecting prior to this that Cassie could be somehow linked to villain Becky Swain, this scene left fans wondering if it was a given now.
After all, Becky returned from the dead months ago and it was revealed for the past four years, she has been hiding out in Spain. She’s now being told she has to return there to stop her cover being blown, with Becky wanting daughter Betsy to go with her, as well as her ex Lisa Swain.
All the sudden talk about Spain, and a scene last week that involved both Cassie and Becky, has sparked a theory that they secretly know each other. So when Cassie spoke in Spanish and revealed all about her link to the country, fans wondered if this was proof that she and Becky know each other, and that Cassie knows all about her dodgy dealings.
Taking to social media, one fan said: “Cassie speaking Spanish and knowing someone in Spain… helped him with his business… she must know Becky!! The links are starting to link.”
Another fan agreed: “If this isn’t a clue to Cassie knowing or recognising dodgy business in Spain *couch* Becky I don’t know what is. Surely this isn’t coincidence.”
A third fan added: “So Cassie can speak Spanish and helped an ex out with his ‘business’ in Spain. Oh she is so gonna be the one to reveal backhand Becky’s dodgy dealings!”
A final comment read: “So, Cassie’s talking about a Spanish boyfriend, Peter’s name being dropped recently, and Becky’s been living in Alicante. Is this all a coincidence??”
It follows another theory suggesting Cassie might know Becky, and could trigger her downfall. Fans noted her watching as Carla Connor confronted Becky for kissing Lisa Swain, and she seemed very interested.
Viewers may recall Cassie was sleeping rough while she was taking drugs. She’s now in recovery, but could Cassie and Becky have crossed paths when Cassie was on drugs?
One theory is that Becky was her dealer as others wondered if she arrested her. A fan commented: “Cassie looked like she thinks she’s seen Becky somewhere before!”
Another said: “Right it can’t just be me, it’s going to transpire Cassie knows Becky somehow isn’t it? ISN’T IT?!” A third fan wrote: “That was a look of recognition for Cassie surely. Has Becky arrested her in the past?”
A theory suggested: “Oh she’s come across her before in her past… drugs?” as another read: “I reckon she was a mate of that Tia and was in the shadows and witnessed her murder/death.” A further tweet said: “Sold her drugs is more like it.”
The theories kept on coming with one reading: “Has Becky arrested her at some point?” as someone suggested they met in Spain. A final tweet said: “I’m thinking Cassie may have had some dealings with Rebecca in the past.”
When Xavier “X” Atencio was plucked by Walt Disney in 1965 to be one of his early theme park designers, he was slotted on a number of projects that placed him out of his comfort zone.
Atencio, for instance, never would have envisioned himself a songwriter.
One of Atencio’s first major projects with Walt Disney Imagineering — WED Enterprises (for Walter Elias Disney), as it was known at the time — was Pirates of the Caribbean. In the mid-’60s when Atencio joined the Pirates team, the attraction was well underway, with the likes of fellow animators-turned-theme park designers Marc Davis and Claude Coats crafting many of its exaggerated characters and enveloping environments. Atencio’s job? Make it all make sense by giving it a cohesive story. While Atencio had once dreamed of being a journalist, his work as an animator had led him astray of a writer’s path.
Atencio would not only figure it out but end up as the draftman of one of Disneyland’s most recognizable songs, “Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me).” In the process, he was key in creating the template for the modern theme park dark ride, a term often applied to slow-moving indoor attractions. Such career twists and turns are detailed in a new book about Atencio, who died in 2017. “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of an Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” (Disney Editions), written by three of his family members, follows Atencio’s unexpected trajectory, starting from his roots in animation (his resume includes “Fantasia,” the Oscar-winning short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom” and even stop-motion work in “Mary Poppins”).
For Pirates of the Caribbean, Atencio is said to have received little direction from Disney, only that the park’s patriarch was unhappy with previous stabs at a narration and dialogue, finding them leaning a bit stodgy. So he knew, essentially, what not to do. Atencio, according to the book, immersed himself in films like Disney’s own “Treasure Island” and pop-cultural interpretations of pirates, striving for something that felt borderline caricature rather than ripped from the history books.
Xavier “X” Atencio got his start in animation. Here, he is seen drawing dinosaurs for a sequence in “Fantasia.”
(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)
Indeed, Atencio’s words — some of those quoted in the book, such as “Avast there! Ye come seeking adventure and salty old pirates, aye?” — have become shorthand for how to speak like a pirate. The first scene written for the attraction was the mid-point auction sequence, a section of the ride that was changed in 2017 due to its outdated cultural implications. In the original, a proud redheaded pirate is the lead prisoner in a bridal auction, but today the “wench” has graduated to pirate status of her own and is helping to auction off stolen goods.
At first, Atencio thought he had over-written the scene, noticing that dialogue overlapped with one another. In a now-famous theme park moment, and one retold in the book, Atencio apologized to Disney, who shrugged off Atencio’s insecurity.
“Hey, X, when you go to a cocktail party, you pick up a little conversation here, another conversation there,” Disney told the animator. “Each time people will go through, they’ll find something new.”
This was the green light that Atencio, Davis and Coats needed to continue developing their attraction as one that would be a tableau of scenes rather than a strict plot.
Tying it all together, Atencio thought, should be a song. Not a songwriter himself, of course, Atencio sketched out a few lyrics and a simple melody. As the authors write, he turned to the thesaurus and made lists of traditional “pirating” words. He presented it to Disney and, to Atencio’s surprise, the company founder promptly gave him the sign off.
“Yo Ho (A Pirate’s Life for Me),” Atencio would relay, was a challenge as the ride doesn’t have a typical beginning and ending, meaning the tune needed to work with whatever pirate vignette we were sailing by. Ultimately, the song, with music by George Bruns, underlines the ride’s humorous feel, allowing the looting, the pillaging and the chasing of women, another scene that has been altered over the years, to be delivered with a playful bent.
The song “altered the trajectory” of Atencio’s career. While Atencio was not considered a musical person — “No, not at all,” says his daughter Tori Atencio McCullough, one of the book’s co-authors — the biography reveals how music became a signature aspect of his work. The short “Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom,” for instance, is a humorous tale about the discovery of music. And elsewhere in Atencio’s career he worked on the band-focused opening animations for “Mickey Mouse Club.”
“That one has a pretty cool kind of modern instrument medley in the middle,” Kelsey McCullough, Atencio’s granddaughter and another one of the book’s authors, says of “Mickey Mouse Club.” “It was interesting, because when we lined everything up, it was like, ‘Of course he felt like the ride needed a song.’ Everything he had been doing up to that point had a song in it. Once we looked it at from that perspective, it was sort of unsurprising to us. He was doing a lot around music.”
Xavier “X” Atencio contributed concepts to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion, including its famous one-eyed cat.
(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)
Atencio would go on to write lyrics for the Country Bear Jamboree and the Haunted Mansion. While the Haunted Mansion vacillates between spooky and lighthearted imagery, it’s Atencio’s “Grim Grinning Ghosts” that telegraphs the ride’s tone and makes it clear it’s a celebratory attraction, one in which many of those in the afterlife prefer to live it up rather than haunt.
Despite his newfound music career, Atencio never gave up drawing and contributing concepts to Disney theme park attractions. Two of my favorites are captured in the book — his abstract flights through molecular lights for the defunct Adventure Thru Inner Space and his one-eyed black cat for the Haunted Mansion. The latter has become a fabled Mansion character over the years. Atencio’s fiendish feline would have followed guests throughout the ride, a creature said to despise living humans and with predatory, possessive instincts.
In Atencio’s concept art, the cat featured elongated, vampire-like fangs and a piercing red eye. In a nod to Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” it had just one eyeball, which sat in its socket with all the subtlety of a fire alarm. Discarded eventually — a raven essentially fills a similar role — the cat today has been resurrected for the Mansion, most notably in a revised attic scene where the kitty is spotted near a mournful bride.
Xavier “X” Atencio retired from Disney in 1984 after four-plus decades with the company. He drew his own retirement announcement.
(Reprinted from “Xavier ‘X’ Atencio: The Legacy of An Artist, Imagineer, and Disney Legend” / Disney Enterprises Inc. / Disney Editions)
Co-author Bobbie Lucas, a relative of Atencio’s colloquially referred to by the family as his “grandchild-in-law,” was asked what ties all of Atencio’s work together.
“No matter the different style or no matter the era, there’s such a sense of life and humanity,” Lucas says. “There’s a sense of play.”
Play is a fitting way to describe Atencio’s contributions to two of Disneyland’s most beloved attractions, where pirates and ghosts are captured at their most frivolous and jovial.
“I like that,” Lucas adds. “I like someone who will put their heart on their sleeve and show you that in their art.”
You may not know Eliot Mack’s name, but if a small robot has ever crept around your kitchen, you know his work.
Before he turned his MIT-trained mind to filmmaking, Mack helped lead a small team of engineers trying to solve a deeply relatable problem: how to avoid vacuuming. Whether it was figuring out how to get around furniture legs or unclog the brushes after a run-in with long hair, Mack designed everything onscreen first with software, troubleshooting virtually and getting 80% of the way there before a single part was ever manufactured.
When Mack pivoted to filmmaking in the early 2000s, he was struck by how chaotic Hollywood’s process felt. “You pitch the script, get the green light and you’re flying into production,” he says, sounding both amused and baffled. “There’s no CAD template, no centralized database. I was like, how do movies even get made?”
That question sent Mack down a new path, trading dust bunnies for the creative bottlenecks that slow Hollywood down.
In 2004 he founded Lightcraft Technology, a startup developing what would later be known as virtual production tools, born out of his belief that if you could design a robot in software, you should be able to design a shot the same way. The company’s early system, Previzion, sold for $180,000 and was used on sci-fi and fantasy shows like “V” and “Once Upon a Time.” But Jetset, its latest AI-assisted tool set, runs on an iPhone and offers a free tier, with pro features topping out at just $80 a month. It lets filmmakers scan a location, drop it into virtual space and block out scenes with camera moves, lighting and characters. They can preview shots, overlay elements and organize footage for editing — all from a phone. No soundstage, no big crew, no gatekeepers. Lightcraft’s pitch: “a movie studio in your pocket.”
A series on how the AI revolution is reshaping the creative foundations of Hollywood — from storytelling and performance to production, labor and power.
The goal, Mack says, is to put more power in the hands of the people making the work. “One of the big problems is how siloed Hollywood is,” he says. “We talked to an Oscar-winning editor who said, ‘I’m never going to get to make my movie’ — he was pigeonholed as just an editor. Same with an animator we know who has two Oscars.”
Eliot Mack, CEO of Lightcraft, an AI-powered virtual-production startup, wants to give creators the power and freedom to bring their ideas to life.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
To Mack, the revolution of Jetset recalls the scrappy, guerrilla spirit of Roger Corman’s low-budget productions, which launched the early careers of directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. For generations of creatives stuck waiting on permission or funding, he sees this moment as a reset button.
“The things you got good at — writing, directing, acting, creating, storytelling — they’re still crazy useful,” he says. “What’s changing is the amount of schlepping you have to do before you get to do the fun stuff. Your 20s are a gift. You want to be creating at the absolute speed of sound. We’re trying to get to a place where you don’t have to ask anyone. You can just make the thing.”
AI is reshaping nearly every part of the filmmaking pipeline. Storyboards can now be generated from a script draft. Lighting and camera angles can be tested before anyone touches a piece of gear. Rough cuts, placeholder VFX, even digital costume mock-ups can all be created before the first shot is filmed. What once took a full crew, a soundstage and a six-figure budget can now happen in minutes, sometimes at the hands of a single person with a laptop.
This wave of automation is arriving just as Hollywood is gripped by existential anxiety. The 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes brought the industry to a standstill and put AI at the center of a fight over its future. Since then, production has slowed, crew sizes have shrunk and the streaming boom has given way to consolidation and cost-cutting.
According to FilmLA, on-location filming in Greater Los Angeles dropped 22.4% in early 2025 compared with the year before. For many of the crew members and craftspeople still competing for those jobs, AI doesn’t feel like an innovation. It feels like a new way to justify doing more with less, only to end up with work that’s less original or creative.
“AI scrapes everything we artists have made off the internet and creates a completely static, banal world that can never imagine anything that hasn’t happened before,” documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis warned during a directors panel at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival, held in the midst of the strikes. “That’s the real weakness of the AI dream — it’s stuck with the ghosts. And I think we’ll get fed up with that.”
How you feel about these changes often depends on where you sit and how far along you are in your career. For people just starting out, AI can offer a way to experiment, move faster and bypass the usual barriers to entry. For veterans behind the scenes, it often feels like a threat to the expertise they’ve spent decades honing.
Past technological shifts — the arrival of sound, the rise of digital cameras, the advancement of CGI — changed how movies were made, but not necessarily who made them. Each wave brought new roles: boom operators and dialogue coaches, color consultants and digital compositors. Innovation usually meant more jobs, not fewer.
But AI doesn’t just change the tools. It threatens to erase the people who once used the old ones.
Diego Mariscal has seen first hand as AI has cut potential jobs for grips.
(Jennifer Rose Clasen)
Diego Mariscal, 43, a veteran dolly grip who has worked on “The Mandalorian” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” saw the writing on the wall during a recent shoot. A visual effects supervisor opened his laptop to show off a reel of high-end commercials and something was missing. “There were no blue screens — none,” Mariscal recalls. “That’s what we do. We put up blues as grips. You’d normally hire an extra 10 people and have an extra three days of pre-rigging, setting up all these blue screens. He was like, ‘We don’t need it anymore. I just use AI to clip it out.’”
Mariscal runs Crew Stories, a private Facebook group with nearly 100,000 members, where working crew members share job leads, trade tips and voice their growing fears. He tries to keep up with the steady drip of AI news. “I read about AI all day, every day,” he says. “At least 20 posts a day.”
His fear isn’t just about fewer jobs — it’s about what comes next. “I’ve been doing this since I was 19,” Mariscal says of his specialized dolly work, which involves setting up heavy equipment and guiding the camera smoothly through complex shots. “I can push a cart in a parking lot. I can push a lawnmower. What else can I do?”
Who wins, who loses and what does James Cameron think?
Before AI and digital doubles, Mike Marino learned the craft of transformation the human way: through hands-on work and a fascination that bordered on obsession.
Marino was 5 years old when he first saw “The Elephant Man” on HBO. Horrified yet transfixed, he became fixated on prosthetics and the emotional power they could carry. As a teenager in New York, he pored over issues of Fangoria, studied monsters and makeup effects and experimented with sculpting his own latex masks on his bedroom floor.
Prosthetics artist Mike Marino asks a big question related to generative AI: What role do the human creatives play?
(Sean Dougherty / For The Times)
Decades later, Marino, 48, has become one of Hollywood’s leading makeup artists, earning Oscar nominations for “Coming 2 America,” “The Batman” and last year’s dark comedy “A Different Man,” in which he helped transform Sebastian Stan into a disfigured actor.
His is the kind of tactile, handcrafted work that once seemed irreplaceable. But today AI tools are increasingly capable of achieving similar effects digitally: de-aging actors, altering faces, even generating entire performances. What used to take weeks of experimentation and hours in a makeup trailer can now be approximated with a few prompts and a trained model. To Marino, AI is more than a new set of tools. It’s a fundamental change in what it means to create.
“If AI is so good it can replace a human, then why have any human beings?” he says. “This is about taste. It’s about choice. I’m a human being. I’m an artist. I have my own ideas — mine. Just because you can make 10,000 spaceships in a movie, should you?”
“If AI is so good it can replace a human, then why have any human beings?”
— Mike Marino, makeup artist on “A Different Man”
Marino is no technophobe. His team regularly uses 3D scanning and printing. But he draws the line at outsourcing creative judgment to a machine. “I’m hoping there are artists who want to work with humans and not machines,” he says. “If we let AI just run amok with no taste, no choice, no morality behind it, then we’re gone.”
Not everyone sees AI’s rise in film production as a zero-sum game. Some technologists imagine a middle path. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab and one of the world’s leading AI researchers, believes the future of filmmaking lies in a “human-machine partnership.”
AI, Rus argues, can take on time-consuming tasks like animating background extras, color correction or previsualizing effects, freeing up people to focus on what requires intuition and taste. “AI can help with the routine work,” she says. “But the human touch and emotional authenticity are essential.”
Few directors have spent more time grappling with the dangers and potential of artificial intelligence than James Cameron. Nearly 40 years before generative tools entered Hollywood’s workflow, he imagined a rogue AI triggering global apocalypse in 1984’s “The Terminator,” giving the world Skynet — now a cultural shorthand for the dark side of machine intelligence. Today, he continues to straddle that line, using AI behind the scenes on the upcoming “Avatar: Fire and Ash” to optimize visual effects and performance-capture, while keeping creative decisions in human hands. The latest sequel, due Dec. 19, promises to push the franchise’s spectacle and scale even further; a newly released trailer reveals volcanic eruptions, aerial battles and a new clan of Na’vi.
A scene from “Avatar: The Way of Water.” Director James Cameron differentiates between using machine-learning to reduce monotonous movie-making work and generative AI.
(Courtesy of 20th Century Studios/Courtesy of 20th Century Studios)
“You can automate a lot of processes that right now tie up a lot of artists doing mundane tasks,” Cameron told The Times in 2023 at a Beyond Fest screening of his 1989 film “The Abyss.” “So if we could accelerate the postproduction pipeline, then we can make more movies. Then those artists will get to do more exciting things.”
For Cameron, the promise of AI lies in efficiency, not elimination. “I think in our particular industry, it’s not going to replace people; it’s going to free them to do other things,” he believes. “It’s going to accelerate the process and bring the price down, which would be good because, you know, some movies are a little more expensive than others. And a lot of that has to do with human energy.”
Cameron himself directed five films between 1984 and 1994 and only three in the three decades since, though each one has grown increasingly complex and ambitious.
That said, Cameron has never been one to chase shortcuts for their own sake. “I think you can make pre-viz and design easier, but I don’t know if it makes it better,” he says. “I mean, if easy is your thing. Easy has never been my thing.”
He draws a line between the machine-learning techniques his team has used since the first “Avatar” to help automate tedious tasks and the newer wave of generative AI models making headlines today.
“The big explosion has been around image-based generative models that use everything from every image that’s ever been created,” he says. “We’d never use any of them. The images we make are computer-created, but they’re not AI-created.”
In his view, nothing synthetic can replace the instincts of a flesh-and-blood artist. “We have human artists that do all the designs,” he says. “We don’t need AI. We’ve got meat-I. And I’m one of the meat-artists that come up with all that stuff. We don’t need a computer. Maybe other people need it. We don’t.”
Reshaping creativity — and creative labor
Rick Carter didn’t go looking for AI as a tool. He discovered it as a lifeline.
The two-time Oscar-winning production designer, who worked with Cameron on “Avatar” and whose credits include “Jurassic Park” and “Forrest Gump,” began experimenting with generative AI tools like Midjourney and Runway during the pandemic, looking for a way to keep his creative instincts sharp while the industry was on pause. A longtime painter, he was drawn to the freedom the programs offered.
“I saw that there was an opportunity to create images where I didn’t have to go to anybody else for approval, which is the way I would paint,” Carter says by phone from Paris. “None of the gatekeeping would matter. I have a whole lot of stories on my own that I’ve tried to get into the world in various ways and suddenly there was a way to visualize them.”
Midjourney and Runway can create richly detailed images — and in Runway’s case, short video clips — from a text prompt or a combination of text and visuals. Trained on billions of images and audiovisual materials scraped from the internet, these systems learn to mimic style, lighting, composition and form, often with eerie precision. In a production pipeline, these tools can help concept artists visualize characters or sets, let directors generate shot ideas or give costume designers and makeup artists a fast way to test looks, long before physical production begins.
But as these tools gain traction in Hollywood, a deeper legal and creative dilemma is coming into focus: Who owns the work they produce? And what about the copyrighted material used to train them?
In June, Disney and Universal filed a federal copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, accusing the company of generating unauthorized replicas of characters such as Spider-Man, Darth Vader and Shrek using AI models trained on copyrighted material: what the suit calls a “bottomless pit of plagiarism.” It’s the most high-profile of several legal challenges now putting copyright law to the test in the age of generative AI.
“Forrest Gump” director Robert Zemeckis, left, with production designer Rick Carter at an art installation of the movie’s famed bench. (Carter family)
(Carter family)
Working with generative models, Carter began crafting what he calls “riffs of consciousness,” embracing AI as a kind of collaborative partner, one he could play off of intuitively. The process reminded him of the loose, improvisational early stages of filmmaking, a space he knows well from decades of working with directors like Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg.
“I’ll just start with a visual or a word prompt and see how it iterates from there and what it triggers in my mind,” Carter says. “Then I incorporate that so it builds on its own in an almost free-associative way. But it’s still based upon my own intuitive, emotional, artistic, even spiritual needs at that moment.”
He describes the experience as a dialogue between two minds, one digital and one human: “One AI is artificial intelligence. The other AI is authentic intelligence — that’s us. We’ve earned it over this whole span of time on the planet.”
Sometimes, Carter says, the most evocative results come from mistakes. While sketching out a story about a hippie detective searching for a missing woman in the Himalayas, he accidentally typed “womb” into ChatGPT instead of “woman.” The AI ran with it, returning three pages of wild plot ideas involving gurus, seekers and a bizarre mystery set in motion by the disappearance.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I would never have taken it that far. The AI is so precocious. It is trying so much to please that it will literally make something out of the mistake you make.”
Carter hasn’t used generative AI on a film yet; most of his creations are shared only with friends. But he says the technology is already slipping into creative workflows in covert ways. “There are issues with copyrights with most of the studios so for now, it’s going to be mostly underground,” he says. “People will use it but they won’t acknowledge that they’re using it — they’ll have an illustrator do something over it, or take a photo so there’s no digital trail.”
Carter has lived through a major technological shift before. “I remember when we went from analog to digital, from ‘Jurassic Park’ on,” he says. “There were a lot of wonderful artists who could draw and paint in ways that were just fantastic but they couldn’t adapt. They didn’t want to — even the idea of it felt like the wrong way to make art. And, of course, most of them suffered because they didn’t make it from the Rolodex to the database in terms of people calling them up.”
He worries that some artists may approach the technology with a rigid sense of authorship. “Early on, I found that the less I used my own ego as a barometer for whether something was artistic, the more I leaned into the process of collaboratively making something bigger than the sum of its parts — and the bigger and better the movies became.”
Others, like storyboard artist Sam Tung, are bracing against the same wave with a quiet but unshakable defiance.
Tung, whose credits include “Twisters” and Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of “The Odyssey,” has spent the last two years tracking the rise of generative tools, not just their capabilities but their implications. As co-chair of the Animation Guild’s AI Committee, he has been on the front lines of conversations about how these technologies could reshape creative labor.
To artists like Tung, the rise of generative tools feels deeply personal. “If you are an illustrator or a writer or whatever, you had to give up other things to take time to develop those skills,” he says. “Nobody comes out of the womb being able to draw or write or act. Anybody who does that professionally spent years honing those skills.”
“Anything I’ve made with AI, I’ve quickly forgotten about. There’s basically nothing I get from putting it on social media, other than the ire of my peers.”
— Sam Tung, storyboard artist on “The Odyssey”
Tung has no interest in handing that over to a machine. “It’s not that I’m scared of it — I just don’t need it,” he says. “If I want to draw something or paint something, I’ll do it myself. That way it’s exactly what I want and I actually enjoy the process. When people tell me they responded to a drawing I did or a short film I made with friends, it feels great. But anything I’ve made with AI, I’ve quickly forgotten about. There’s basically nothing I get from putting it on social media, other than the ire of my peers.”
What unsettles him isn’t just the slickness of AI’s output but how that polish is being used to justify smaller crews and faster turnarounds. “If this is left unchecked, it’s very easy to imagine a worst-case scenario where team sizes and contract durations shrink,” Tung says. “A producer who barely understands how it works might say, ‘Don’t you have AI to do 70% of this? Why do you need a whole week to turn around a sequence? Just press the button that says: MAKE MOVIE.’ ”
At 73, Carter isn’t chasing jobs. His legacy is secure. “If they don’t hire me again, that’s OK,” he says. “I’m not in that game anymore.” He grew up in Hollywood — his father was Jack Lemmon’s longtime publicist and producing partner — and has spent his life watching the industry evolve. Now, he’s witnessing a reckoning unlike any he, or anyone else, has ever imagined.
“I do have concerns about who is developing AI and what their values are,” he says. “What they use all this for is not necessarily something I would approve of — politically, socially, emotionally. But I don’t think I’m in a position to approve or not.”
Earlier this year, the Palisades fire destroyed Carter’s home, taking with it years of paintings and personal artwork. AI, he says, has given him a way to keep creating through the upheaval. “It saved me through the pandemic, and now it’s saving me through the fire,” he says, as if daring the universe to test him again. “It’s like, go ahead, throw something else at me.”
‘Prompt and pray?’ Not so fast
Many in the industry may still be dipping a toe into the waters of AI. Verena Puhm dove in.
The Austrian-born filmmaker studied acting and directing in Munich and Salzburg before moving to Los Angeles, where she built a globe-spanning career producing, writing and developing content for international networks and streamers. Her credits range from CNN’s docuseries “History of the Sitcom” to the German reboot of the cult anthology “Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction” and a naval documentary available on Tubi. More recently, she has channeled that same creative range into a deepening exploration of generative tools.
Puhm first began dabbling with AI while using Midjourney to design a pitch deck, but it wasn’t until she entered a timed generative AI filmmaking challenge at the 2024 AI on the Lot conference — informally dubbed a “gen battle” — that the creative potential of the medium hit her.
“In two hours, I made a little mock commercial,” she remembers, proudly. “It was actually pretty well received and fun. And I was like, Oh, wow, I did this in two hours. What could I do in two days or two weeks?”
What started as experimentation soon became a second act. This summer, Puhm was named head of studio for Dream Lab LA, a new creative arm of Luma AI, which develops generative video tools for filmmakers and creators. There, she’s helping shape new storytelling formats and supporting emerging creators working at the intersection of cinema and technology. She may not be a household name, but in the world of experimental storytelling, she’s fast becoming a key figure.
Verena Puhm, a director, writer and producer, has used generative AI in a number of her projects, says it’s breaking down barriers to entry.
(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)
Some critics dismiss AI filmmaking as little more than “prompt and pray”: typing in a few words and hoping something usable comes out. Puhm bristles at the phrase.
“Anybody that says that tells me they’ve never tried it at all, because it is not that easy and simple,” she says. “You can buy a paintbrush at Home Depot for, what, $2? That doesn’t make you a painter. When smartphones first came out, there was a lot of content being made but that didn’t mean everyone was a filmmaker.”
What excites her most is how AI is breaking down the barriers that once kept ambitious ideas out of reach. Luma’s new Modify Video tool lets filmmakers tweak footage after it’s shot, changing wardrobe, aging a character, shifting the time of day, all without reshoots or traditional VFX. It can turn a garage into a spaceship, swap a cloudy sky for the aurora borealis or morph an actor into a six-eyed alien, no green screen required.
“I remember shopping projects around and being told by producers, ‘This scene has to go, that has to go,’ just to keep the budget low. Now everything is open.”
— Verena Puhm, Head of Studio at Dream Lab LA
“It’s such a relief as an artist,” Puhm says. “If there’s a project I’ve been sitting on for six years because I didn’t have a $5 million budget — suddenly there’s no limit. I remember shopping projects around and being told by producers, ‘This scene has to go, that has to go,’ just to keep the budget low. Now everything is open.”
That sense of access resonates far beyond Los Angeles. At a panel during AI on the Lot, “Blue Beetle” director Ángel Manuel Soto reflected on how transformative AI might have been when he was first starting out. “I wish tools like this existed when I wanted to make movies in Puerto Rico, because nobody would lend me a camera,” he said. “Access to equipment is a privilege we sometimes take for granted. I see this helping kids like me from the projects tell stories without going bankrupt — or stealing, which I don’t condone.”
Puhm welcomes criticism of AI but only when it’s informed. “If you hate AI and you’ve actually tested the tools and educated yourself, I’ll be your biggest supporter,” she says. “But if you’re just speaking out of fear, with no understanding, then what are you even basing your opinion on?”
She understands why some filmmakers feel rattled, especially those who, like her, grew up dreaming of seeing their work on the big screen. “I still want to make features and TV series — that’s what I set out to do,” she says. “I hope movie theaters don’t go away. But if the same story I want to tell reaches millions of people on a phone and they’re excited about it, will I really care that it wasn’t in a theater?”
“I just feel like we have to adapt to the reality of things,” she continues. “That might sometimes be uncomfortable, but there is so much opportunity if you lean in. Right now any filmmaker can suddenly tell a story at a high production value that they could have never done before, and that is beautiful and empowering.”
For many, embracing AI boils down to a simple choice: adapt or get cut from the frame.
Hal Watmough, a BAFTA-winning British editor with two decades of experience, first began experimenting with AI out of a mix of curiosity and dread. “I was scared,” he admits. “This thing was coming into the industry and threatening our jobs and was going to make us obsolete.” But once he started playing with tools like Midjourney and Runway, he quickly saw how they could not only speed up the process but allow him to rethink what his career could be.
For an editor used to working only with what he was given, the ability to generate footage on the fly, cut with it immediately and experiment endlessly without waiting on a crew or a shoot was a revelation. “It was still pretty janky at that stage, but I could see the potential,” he says. “It was kind of intoxicating. I started to think, I’d like to start making things that I haven’t seen before.”
After honing his skills with various AI tools, Watmough created a wistful, vibrant five-minute animated short called “LATE,” about an aging artist passing his wisdom to a young office worker. Over two weeks, he generated 2,181 images using AI, then curated and refined them frame by frame to shape the story.
Earlier this year, he submitted “LATE” to what was billed as the world’s first AI animation contest, hosted by Curious Refuge, an online education hub for creative technologists — and, to his delight, he won. The prize included $10,000, a pitch meeting with production company Promise Studios and, as an absurd bonus, his face printed on a potato. But for Watmough, the real reward was the sense that he had found a new creative identity.
“There’s something to the fact that the winner of the first AI animation competition was an editor,” Watmough says. “With the advent of AI, yes, you could call yourself a filmmaker but essentially I’d say most people are editors. You’re curating, selecting, picking what you like — relying on your taste.”
Thanks to AI, he says he’s made more personal passion projects in the past year and a half than during his entire previous career. “I’ll be walking or running and ideas just come. Now I can go home that night and try them,” he says. “None of that would exist without AI. So either something exists within AI or it never exists at all. And all the happiness and fulfillment that comes with it for the creator doesn’t exist either.”
Watmough hasn’t entirely lost his fear of what AI might do to the creative workforce, even as he is energized by what it makes possible. “A lot of people I speak to in film and TV are worried about losing their jobs and I’m not saying the infrastructure roles won’t radically change,” he says. “But I don’t think AI is going to replace that many — if any — creative people.”
What it will do, he says, is raise the bar. “If anyone can create anything, then average work will basically become extinct or pointless. AI can churn out remakes until the cows come home. You’ll have to pioneer to exist.”
He likens the current moment to the birth of cinema more than a century ago — specifically the Lumière brothers’ “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat,” the 1896 short that famously startled early audiences. In the silent one-minute film, a steam train rumbles toward the camera, growing larger. Some viewers reportedly leaped from their seats, convinced it was about to crash into them.
“People ran out of the theater screaming,” Watmough says. “Now we don’t even think about it. With AI, we’re at that stage again. We’re watching the steam train come into the station and people are either really excited or they’re running out of the theater in fear. That’s where we are, right at the start. And the potential is limitless.”
Then again, he adds with a dry laugh, “I’m an eternal optimist, so take what I say with a grain of salt.”
The hair of the dog is no miracle remedy. Colin Farrell knows this from experience.
The Irish actor learned the limits of the folk remedy many moons ago while filming “Minority Report,” the Steven Spielberg-directed tech noir film based on Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novella of the same name.
That fateful day on set, as Farrell told it Tuesday on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” was perhaps even more disturbing than the surveillance-state setting wherein the 2002 film unfolds.
It all started on the eve of Farrell’s birthday, he said. That night, he “got up to all sorts of nonsense” that landed him back home in the wee hours. At the time, Farrell was struggling to kick a longtime substance abuse habit.
“I remember getting into bed, and as soon as I turned off the light the phone rang,” the Academy Award winner said. He was 10 minutes late for his 6 a.m. pickup.
“I went, ‘Oh, s—.’”
Farrell said he had hardly fumbled his way out of his car when assistant director David H. Venghaus Jr. intercepted him, insisting, “You can’t go to the set like this.”
In response, the young actor requested six Pacifico beers and a pack of Marlboro Reds.
“Now listen, it’s not cool because two years later I went to rehab, right?” Farrell told Colbert. “But it worked in the moment.”
Did it, though?
In the end, Farrell said it took him 46 takes to deliver one single line, albeit a verbose one: “I’m sure you’ve all grasped the fundamental paradox of pre-crime methodology.”
“Tom wasn’t very happy with me,” Farrell said. Lucky for Cruise, he got a consolation prize in the form of a Saturn Award nomination from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. Plus, “Minority Report’s” $35.6-million domestic opening didn’t hurt.
At first, the transition was difficult to manage, Farrell said: “After 15 or 20 years of carousing the way I caroused and drinking the way I drank, the sober world is a pretty scary world.”
But “to come home and not to have the buffer support of a few drinks just to calm the nerves, it was a really amazing thing,” he said.
With its dramatic, rugged mountain skyline, winding roads and ever-changing weather, the Isle of Skye has long appealed to lovers of the wild. Over the last decade, however, the largest island in the Inner Hebrides has been drawing visitors for other reasons – its dynamic food and drink scene. Leading the way are young Sgitheanach (people from Skye) with a global outlook but a commitment to local, sustainable ingredients. It’s also the result of an engaged community keen to create good, year-round jobs that keep young people on the island.
Calum Montgomery is Skye born and bred, and he’s passionate about showcasing the island’s larder on his menus at Edinbane Lodge. “If someone is coming to Skye I want them to appreciate the landscape, but also the quality of our produce,” he says. “Our mussels, lobster, scallops and crab are second to none.” Montgomery is mindful of the past: “It means everything to me to use the same produce as my ancestors. My grandpa was a lobster fisherman and we’re enjoying shellfish from the same stretch of water, with the same respect for ingredients.”
Loch Fada near Portree, Skye. Photograph: Denis Chapman/Alamy
Montgomery’s A Taste of Skye menu lists the distances his produce has travelled. I eat fat scallops hand-dived in Loch Greshornish (zero miles), and creel-caught lobster from Portree (12 miles) with vegetables, foraged herbs and edible flowers from the kitchen garden and seashore (zero miles). That connection to produce and producers is key. “Last week I took a young chef out with a scallop diver so he could learn what they do. We shucked scallops straight from the water and ate them raw with a squeeze of lemon. ‘That’s the best scallop I’ve ever eaten,’ he said. That’s what we want to bring to the restaurant.”
Driving south, in the shadow of the mighty Cuillin mountains, I meet another culinary ambassador for Skye, Clare Coghill, at Café Cùil. This year Coghill represented Scotland at Tartan Week in New York, serving lobster rolls with whisky butter, and haggis quesadillas from a Manhattan food truck. She initially launched Café Cùil in Hackney, London. Returning home to Skye during the pandemic, a series of pop-ups proved there was a market here too.
Café Cùil’s blood orange and beetroot-cured trout on sourdough and creme fraiche. Photograph: Lynne Kennedy Photography
Over a machair matcha (topped with dried machair flowers) and delicious blood orange-cured trout, Coghill tells me: “I’m really proud I opened in London, but I couldn’t do what I can do here. Getting fresh ingredients was a huge mission, but here the scallops come straight from the sea to my door. My creel fisherman only speaks to me in Gaelic.” Her love of Skye’s produce, people and landscape is clear across her colourful, creative dishes, all imbued with local flavours, with a twist of Gaelic. “My connection to Gaelic culture and language is so important,” she says. Visitors can use little lesson cards on the tables to learn a few words while they eat.
Skye’s more longstanding food destinations are not resting on their laurels. Kinloch Lodge, a boutique hotel run by Isabella Macdonald in her family’s ancestral home, has long been a foodie destination. Isabella’s mother, Claire, Lady Macdonald OBE, writes well-loved books on Scottish cookery.
The kitchen continues to innovate, with a dynamic young team led by head chef David Cameron. When they’re not in the kitchen the chefs grow herbs and spices in the hotel greenhouse, and forage for wild greens in the gardens and sea herbs like sea aster and scurvygrass from the shoreline of Loch na Dal. In autumn they follow deer trails to find mushrooms in the woods.
Hogget with asparagus and spinach, at Edinbane Lodge Photograph: Lynne Kennedy
I feast on Skye scallops, pak choi and peanuts in a delicious dashi; Shetland cod with Scottish asparagus, and house-smoked lobster. Kinloch’s ghillie, Mitchell Partridge, takes guests out for activities including foraging and fishing “There’s a huge appetite for experiences from our guests,” says Macdonald. “People want to come and really get to know the island and the landscape.”
The whisky industry is also helping to keep young people on Skye, in jobs that last beyond the peak tourism months. Dougie Stewart, operations manager at Torabhaig distillery, tells me: “The fish farm was a big employer in the past, but now most of the jobs are automated. House prices have gone up so much it’s harder for young people to stay. The whisky industry has become a really important employer.”
Iona Fraser at Torabhaig distillery. Photograph: Erik McRitchie
“Distillers wanted, no experience necessary” was the notice that a then 21-year-old Iona Fraser spotted in her local paper, landing her a job at Torabhaig. “I just took a punt,” she says, “I never thought I’d get a production job, but it was a dream of mine.” Fraser had an interest in whisky, but no relevant qualifications. “To be able to train onsite and learn online was amazing.” Today she is a senior distiller, helping to train new distillers, and has recently created her own whisky using a chocolate malt, which is maturing in barrels when I visit. In other distilleries, that’s an honour usually reserved for retiring distillers. The visitor centre and cafe employ many people from around the Sleat peninsula. “We meld into the community because we brought the community here,” says tour guide manager Anne O’lone.
To pick up supplies for my journey home I stop by Birch, a speciality coffee roaster and bakery serving gleaming pastries and colourful brunch dishes. It’s owned by Niall Munro, who also founded the hugely successful Skye Live music festival. His brother Calum Munro is chef-owner at fine-dining restaurant Scorrybreac in Portree, somewhere I’m desperate to try, but I’ve sadly run out of mealtimes. More local success stories, and incredible food.
“We’re all deeply rooted in Skye,” says Calum Montgomery. “A lot of us left and worked elsewhere. We’d be seeing the produce we knew arrive miles from where it was landed, and it’s just not as good as what we grew up eating. I’m so proud of the whole place now.”
Journeying across Skye, I’m constantly asked where I’ve been and where I’m eating next. It’s a real testament to this food community that everyone is keen to champion other island businesses. It’s collaborative, not competitive, and the quality? Skye-high.
Accommodation was provided by Perle Hotels. Luxury pods at Bracken Hide in Portree from £145 B&B, double rooms at the Marmalade Hotelfrom £125 B&B
Beyond the Cuban diaspora, the genre known as reparto is overwhelmingly unknown. But on the streets of Havana and Hialeah, Miami, reparto is inescapable, pulsing from balconies and portable speakers on the beach.
Born in Cuba’s working-class neighborhoods — known colloquially as repartos — this hyperkinetic fusion of reggaetón, timba and Afro-Cuban rhythms has become the island’s score. In the mid-2000s, artists like Chocolate MC and Elvis Manuel built the genre’s sound on distorted synth stabs, shouted call-and-response hooks, and the distinct Cuban clave beat that makes your body move before your brain can even catch up.
It’s also become a platform for youth navigating scarcity, surveillance and dreams of escaping poverty. The lyrics, characteristically and unapologetically obscene, reflect the realities of life in marginalized communities. But alongside its rhythmic bravado, reparto’s explicit language often veers into the dehumanizing and misogynistic.
The music centers on women, but more often than not, as objects: the perra to conquer, the diabla to tame, the culo to catalog in explicit detail. And it’s no surprise: The genre’s blunt portrayal of women mirrors the machismo deeply embedded in everyday Cuban life.
It’s a refrain you’re bound to hear in any and every nightclub: “¿Donde están las mujeres?” But the next time 10 reparteros link up for a track, they probably won’t call a woman. Within a genre that revolves so heavily around their bodies, women’s voices still remain rare.
So, ¿dónde están las mujeres? Or, where are the women making reparto?
“Chocolate is the king, but who is the queen?” says Seidy Carrera, known artistically as Seidy La Niña. “There’s a space that needs to be filled with women. There’s no f—ing women!”
At the onset of reparto, early reparteras like Melissa and Claudia slipped brief female cameos into club anthems. More than a decade later, due to Cuba’s only recent, and still extremely limited, internet access, these artists and their collaborations have a seemingly untraceable digital footprint. Still, most playlists orbit male voices, and collaborations rarely invite women to the booth: “When reparteros come together on a track, they never call a woman,” she says.
Carrera, 32, was born in the reparto El Cotorro and raised in Miami since she was 6. The self-proclaimed queen of reparto, the paradox defines her career: She fights for space in a scene whose appeal lies in her raw neighborhood realism, but detractors question her authenticity as a gringa, or as they would call her, yuma.
“I feel resistance every day, every single day,” she says. In response, she reclaims the discriminatory language used against her; onstage, she chants “más perra que bonita,” flipping the curse-word from insult to empowerment.
“It’s empowering to say, I’m more perra than pretty. To me, being a perra is being a woman who’s exclusive, who makes her own money. In my case, … nobody opened the door for me, nobody gave me a hand.”
For Havana-based singer-composer Melanie Santiler, 24, the double standard hits her before she can even sing her first note: “I feel that I have to do twice as well. I have to put in double the thought, double the effort, double the talent, always having something more to say,” she says.
“It’s exhausting. It’s exhausting being a woman, having to get up and tell yourself, damn, I have to look pretty and put together. I spent my whole life in school with an onion bun because I didn’t want to do my hair,” Santiler says and laughs, messy bun flopping around her face.
Reaching almost 5 million YouTube views on her 2025 viral collab, “Todo se Supera” with Velito el Bufón, she’s broken into the reparto space as one of the genre’s most distinctive voices. Beside this rise, she’s faced a newfound pressure to dress a way she normally wouldn’t, a beauty standard her masculine counterparts don’t face.
Aliaisys Alvarez Hernández — better known as Ozunaje — says she doesn’t face the same criticism in the urban Cuban music scene, likely due to her sexuality and more masculine appearance. “Reparto is a genre for men, that’s how I see it,” she says. “I dress like a man, I practically live my life like a man, so what I write resembles what men are already saying. That also gave me an impulse, where I feel like more feminine artists, they have to work harder.”
A former rhythmic gymnast from La Habana, Hernández, 23, stumbled into music when friends recorded her singing a demo of “Cosas del Amor” in her living room. Someone uploaded the video, it went viral, and suddenly, she had a career. Since that start, Hernández refuses to only be compared with other reparteras.
Her goal has always been to be measured against men, since “that’s who people actually listen to.” Dressing in traditionally masculine clothing, paired with a deep, raspy delivery, helps her lyrics resonate with locals without the extra hurdle of hyper-sexualized expectations.
Hernández’s androgynous wardrobe and open queerness bring another layer of potential discrimination, but despite the rampant homophobia persistent in present-day Cuba, she doesn’t feel much resistance. “The worst word they throw at me is tortillera, but it doesn’t affect me,” she says, adding, “People like my style, they like that I dress like a guy. Everybody tells me, you have tremendo flow, I love your aguaje, so I haven’t faced any bullying. Never.”
Misogynistic currents in reparto mirror those in early reggaetón, reflecting the average street machismo. The genre’s marginal roots complicate blanket condemnations, since the same raunchy lyrics often encode critiques of class exclusion. Still, reaching bigger stages will require editing the most gratuitous slurs, if only to broaden the music’s export potential. At least, Ozunaje thinks so.
“Reparto came from people who were poor, who had nothing, who were desperate to get out. Nobody imagined it would get this big. Now it’s reaching the whole world, so the vocabulary has to evolve,” she says.
Santiler echoes this critique. “It’s become really repetitive. I think right now, everyone is talking about the same thing. It’s been really easy. Facilista,” she says, using the Spanish term for taking the easy way out. Santiler loves reparto’s swing, but calls most of it objectifying, pointing to Bad Bunny’s “Andrea” and “Neverita,” along with C. Tangana’s “El Madrileño,” as proof that urban music can expand beyond bedroom conquests.
“The street already says these things, and reparto just writes it. It’s an image of what’s happening. But I grew up with other types of music and other types of references, so I’d like to expand beyond that, to make something fresh.”
Santiler adds that the basis of reparto, both in her gratitude and her criticism, comes from pride.
“I love Cuba, I love my country. The current generation of Cuba doesn’t reject their identity — they’re doing the opposite. They want to create a new culture, to create a new movement, and they want the world to know Cuba again,” she says.
“We’ve been doing this for a while now,” laughs Channing Tatum, “and every once in a while a new thing comes out I haven’t heard.”
Tatum’s responding to the latest revelation of the press tour for his new film “Roofman”: Director Derek Cianfrance’s claim that he was the fastest checker in Walmart history. (“They gave you a raise if you got 18 rings a minute,” says Cianfrance. “I averaged 350.”)
The point, for Cianfrance, is that the characters at the heart of “Roofman” — good-hearted thief and unauthorized Toys “R” Us tenant Jeffrey Manchester (Tatum) and working mother Leigh (Kirsten Dunst) — are his kind of people.
And “Roofman,” which in its themes of personal responsibility, community and acceptance holds much in common with the work of Frank Capra, is his kind of film. The director behind the 1946 Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” loomed over Cianfrance’s film from the start. “As we were selling this movie, trying to get it financed, I was pitching it to everyone as a Capra movie and what I kept hearing is, ‘We don’t make those movies anymore.’”
Cianfrance always knew he wanted “Roofman” to be a Christmas movie, which often features characters rediscovering themselves in a small town and magical happenings like, as he says, “a fish shows up with wings.” Or, in this case, that Manchester — on the lam after escaping prison — ends up falling in love with Leigh and being embraced by her family and community.
Tatum as Jeffrey Manchester in “Roofman.”
(Davi Russo / Paramount Pictures)
“I love the populist filmmaker who’s making movies about regular people,” says Cianfrance. “You never feel like Capra’s ever judging people, or being snobby about the people he’s making movies about. He’s making movies about the people who go to the movies.” And while the film’s true-life tale is certainly stranger than fiction, Cianfrance avoided turning “Roofman” into Hollywood escapism. Instead, he says, he wanted to illustrate his respect for working people’s dreams and aspirations: “The thing that transformed it for me was when Leigh told me that Jeff was the greatest adventure of her life, and that she didn’t regret a thing.”
With that in mind, he urged the cast to live their characters’ suburban North Carolina lives. He encouraged actor Peter Dinklage, who plays the Toys “R” Us store manager, to actually manage the store. Dunst’s Leigh, a new hire, was given an actual job interview by Dinklage himself. “He would not give me an inch in that interview,” says Dunst. “I respect him so much as an actor, I think I was also just intimidated by him as well.”
Cianfrance calls the set “an aquarium for actors” — a place where, to pull another Christmas reference he drops, everyone was Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the island of misfit toys. Actors like Emory Cohen and Juno Temple expanded their characters beyond the page. Cohen, who plays bullied employee Otis, conjured up his character’s love for peanut M&M’s, while Temple, who plays the girlfriend of one of Manchester’s friends, saw her character as a hairdresser.
Even a scene where the Toys “R” Us is decorated for Thanksgiving gave Cianfrance and production designer Inbal Weinberg the opportunity to debate where to have Dunst place an inflatable turkey. “I was like, we’re gonna let the actors decide. Kirsten came to set. She got the turkey. And she started to decide where it went, and she put it where my production designer wanted it,” Cianfrance says. “And Peter Dinklage came out and was like, ‘No, the turkey goes here.’”
“As we were selling this movie, trying to get it financed, I was pitching it to everyone as a Capra movie and what I kept hearing is, ‘We don’t make those movies anymore,’’’ says “Roofman” director Derek Cianfrance.
(The Tyler Twins / For The Times)
Dunst had been wanting to work with the director since auditioning (unsuccessfully, the pair joke) for his 2016 feature “The Light Between Oceans.” “I would have done this movie without reading any script,” she says. “How he makes a set — he wants to capture all the nuance and the things that make us humans interesting.”
Tatum concurs. He knew immediately the role would challenge him as a performer. The actor had heard stories of how Cianfrance worked with performers to get authentic responses, like giving Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams — playing a married couple in 2010 drama “Blue Valentine” — contrasting information in scenes to heighten tension.
Dunst recalls a similar moment on “Roofman,” where Jeff scares Leigh by driving a car too fast with her and her daughters inside. “Derek held my arms and he was like, ‘Push against me as hard as you can,’” she says. “I did that and he held tight and then we went into the scene immediately after. It brought up emotions of being trapped and a feeling like everything was out of your control … but that really helped me a lot.”
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“I only told [Cianfrance] no one time,” says Tatum, “and that’s when he wanted me to sing.” That might surprise viewers considering Tatum has an extended nude sequence where Jeff tries to escape from Dinklage’s Mitch — the first time Dinklage and Tatum met, as it happens.
“[Derek] always jokes, ‘You read the script,’” says Tatum. “I’m like, ‘Yeah, I know I read the script. I just assumed you had a plan … a blocking plan.” The scene itself, which involved Tatum running through the toy store and leaping onto a small roof, took 15 takes to accomplish over almost eight hours. Tatum, Dunst and Cianfrance laugh about how the director broached the subject of keeping Tatum’s nudity tasteful. “He’s like, ‘You want me to blur it?’” says Tatum. “I’m like, ‘Don’t blur it. That’s even weirder.’”
As Dunst, Tatum and Cianfrance discuss the production, the conversation seems to be as much about the memories they made on set as the making of a film — which underscores Cianfrance’s approach to directing.
“I’ve always tried to make sure [the actors] have environments … so that they can have these accidents and surprises. Moments can happen one time that you can’t replicate, and they become the moment that you watch forever. They become immortalized because of that.”
Get ready to enter the Grid: “Tron: Ares” has finally hit theaters.
Directed by Joachim Rønning, “Tron: Ares” is the third installment of the classic sci-fi franchise that kicked off with the 1982 film “Tron.” And like many modern movies that are part of an expansive Hollywood franchise, “Tron: Ares” makes sure to leave the door open for future storytelling.
“Tron: Ares” does so in the closing moments of the movie’s main story as well as in a stinger that plays after the credits start to roll.
The film, which picks up sometime after the events of “Tron: Legacy” (2010), stars Jared Leto as an advanced AI program named Ares created by Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters), a programmer and rising CEO of a tech corporation. Greta Lee portrays Eve Kim, also a programmer and the CEO of the tech company once led by original “Tron” hero Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).
Although extensive knowledge of the previous films is not necessarily required to understand “Tron: Ares,” fans of “Tron” and “Legacy” will be the first to recognize the significance of the doors that the film leaves open. (Turn back now if you want to avoid spoilers.)
Evan Peters as Julian Dillinger in “Tron: Ares.”
(Leah Gallo / Disney)
The mid-credits scene is a callback to ‘Tron’
“Tron: Ares” ends with Julian — the grandson of Flynn’s original “Tron” rival, Edward Dillinger — escaping into Dillinger Corp.’s Grid.
The mid-credits scene shows Julian taking in the wreckage of his digital world before noticing and activating his identity disc. After taking ahold of the glowing circular object, his digital suit starts to form in a familiar silhouette.
Those who have seen “Tron” will recognize that Julian’s suit resembles that of Sark, the villainous program written by Ed Dillinger, who led the original film’s Master Control Program army. In “Tron,” Sark was played by David Warner, who also portrayed Ed.
The scene further cements Julian as the successor to his grandfather’s legacy and leaves the possibility open for his return as a villain in a future “Tron” installment.
Jared Leto as Ares in “Tron: Ares.”
(Leah Gallo / Disney)
‘Tron: Ares’ ends by teasing a future link-up with ‘Tron: Legacy’
The new “Tron” movie ends by hinting that Ares’ story is not quite over, either. In the final moments of the film, Ares is shown looking at images of Quorra, a character portrayed by Olivia Wilde in “Tron: Legacy.”
Quorra, like Ares, started her existence in the Grid and eventually made her way out into the real world. But Quorra isn’t a man-made program; she is an “isomorphic algorithm,” or a digital being who spontaneously came into existence in the Grid. She was introduced in “Legacy” as Flynn’s charge who was learning about humanity from him.
Could a meeting between Ares and Quorra be in the “Tron” franchise’s future? Only time (and likely “Tron: Ares’” box office returns) will tell.
Welcome to Screen Gab, the newsletter for everyone who feels as cantankerous as Jackson Lamb by the end of the workweek.
The fifth season of “Slow Horses” premiered this week. And everyone’s favorite team of disgraced British spies are back to connect the dots of a new mysterious threat. Once an underrated gem, the spy thriller’s move into the awards spotlight has brought more attention to the critical darling. But in following the very British model of releasing six-episode seasons, the entertaining ride can feel fleeting — luckily, two more seasons are already in the works. Will Smith, the show’s head writer, who is stepping down after this current season, stopped by Guest Spot to talk about the sleeper hit.
Also in this week’s Screen Gab, our streaming recommendations include an Italian-set action-drama about a fixer at a luxury resort and a beloved baking competition series that always serves up a refreshing dose of wholesome goodness and showstopping sweet treats.
P.S.: Last week’s newsletter incorrectly stated that new episodes of ABC’s “High Potential” air on Wednesdays. They air on Tuesdays, and are available to stream on Hulu and Disney+ the next day. Don’t tell Morgan or she’ll add us to the murder board!
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Tim Curry, center, as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in 1975’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
How Beyond Fest became L.A.’s best film festival: An event that started off as a bluff has outgrown its genre roots to become a legitimate destination for rabid film fans, boasting rarities and prestige titles alike.
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Jordan Alexandra as Genny and Jesse Williams as Daniel De Luca in a scene from “Hotel Costeria.”
(Virginia Bettoja / Prime)
“Hotel Costiera” (Prime Video)
A charming Jesse Williams, the “Grey’s Anatomy” alum, plays Daniel De Luca, a sort of action concierge at a high-end boutique hotel on the Amalfi Coast in this easygoing mix of “The White Lotus” and a midcentury Continental adventure show, like “The Saint” or “The Protectors.” A long-arc plot involving the missing daughter (Amanda Campana) of Daniel’s hotelier boss (Tommaso Ragno) runs alongside episodic stories — the search for a missing guest, sourcing a flight-worthy coffin, stealing an important bracelet from a local crime figure — mixing mysteries with human interest and a lot of local color. (Williams speaks Italian with persuasive fluency.) Assisting Daniel in his investigations is a team of classic types — a beautiful yet brainy woman (Jordan Alexandra); a comical aristocrat (Sam Haygarth), like Bertie Wooster by way of Mr. Bean; and a rotund restaurateur Bigné (Antonio Gerardi), at whose trattoria they all hang out, plotting whatever needs to be plotted. It’s saying nothing against the rest of this pleasantly diverting series that these scenes are the heart of the show, and, yes, I would like a cappuccino, grazie. — Robert Lloyd
Paul Hollywood, left, Alison Hammond, Prue Leith and Noah Fielding in a promotional still from “The Great British Baking Show.”
(Mark Bourdillon / Channel 5 / Netflix)
“Great British Baking Show,” Collection 13 (Netflix)
September means the arrival of fall and another season of the best baking show on TV. Over the years, the series has stuck to a simple yet effective recipe of beautiful bakes, friendly competition and soothing voiceovers (thanks to Noel Fielding). This season’s contestants are just as talented and endearing as previous ones, but now that we’re three episodes in — and past the dreaded Bread Week — we’re down to nine bakers. Among them are Nataliia, a Ukrainian immigrant living in East Yorkshire; Iain, a short king and self-proclaimed “yeastie boy” from Belfast; and Jasmine, an ever-smiling 23-year-old medical student. In this week’s back-to-school-themed episode, the bakers’ challenges include making flapjacks (in the U.K., they’re like a granola bar) and school cake (a sponge with icing and sprinkles). They sound simple, but no recipe is what it seems on this show. And those low-stakes surprises and competition are precisely what makes “Baking Show” a balm for the soul right now. — Maira Garcia
Guest spot
A weekly chat with actors, writers, directors and more about what they’re working on — and what they’re watching
Rosalind Eleazar, left, Christopher Chung, Saskia Reeves, Aimee-Ffion Edwards and Jack Lowden in “Slow Horses.”
(Jack English / Apple TV+)
Do you ever look at your boss and feel both deep gratitude and disappointment because they’re not Jackson Lamb? There’s at least a new season of “Slow Horses” to vicariously experience the walking HR nightmare and his joyously rumpled, smelly and messy leadership style, as expertly portrayed by Gary Oldman. Based on Mick Herron’s “Slough House” novels, the espionage thriller/workplace dramedy centers on a misfit crew of MI5 outcasts — led by Lamb — who’ve blown their careers and now find themselves banished to Slough House, a dumping ground where the agency hopes they’ll be forgotten. The Apple TV+ series returned this week with its eponymous group of spies investigating a series of coordinated terror attacks that have struck London. A new episode will be released every Wednesday until the season finale on Oct. 29. In his last season as head writer, Will Smith stopped by Guest Spot to discuss his creative collaboration with Oldman, his pick for most the competent agent and the best show he’s seen in years. — Yvonne Villarreal
This once–sleeper hit has become such a force with critics and fans. Knowing Season 5 would be your last as head writer, did it feel any different writing this first episode? What was the most important decision you made in this season opener?
You just always want to make it the best it can be and you don’t want to repeat. You need to give the audience enough of what drew them to the show in the first place without making them think, “I’ve seen this,” and you need to give them enough that’s new without them going, “This isn’t the show any more.” The same goes for the cast, by the way; they have to feel their characters are moving on but in an organic way, that you’re acknowledging what went before and building on it. Luckily, that’s Mick’s approach with the books too. And it really helps having the same crew and returning director Saul Metzstein (from Season 3) — Saul and the camera team know what’s gone before and are continually finding new ways to shoot in our existing locations. A really obvious example of how we try to move things on but keep it all connected is Slough House itself. I know it’s a cliche, but it really is a character in the series; to me, it’s an embodiment of Lamb, it reflects so much about him, but it’s never the same. We establish it in Season 1, in Season 2 it’s a discomforting sweatbox, in Season 3 it’s full of boxes of files, which completely changes how people move around it. In Season 4 it’s shot to pieces, and in Season 5 we see the cheap repairs have been started and left. So I hope we’ve hit that same sweet spot with this series, that it gives you exactly what you want and then some things you didn’t know you wanted but feel totally in keeping with the show.
The episode opens with both a mass shooting and a fatal sniper shot in London. While it’s a sequence in the books and was written months ago, it could feel all too timely and provoking depending on the news cycle in which it’s being viewed. How do you decide what to show, how much is enough, what will engage and what will overwhelm?
This weighed quite heavily on us as we sadly knew that some horrific event could happen around the launch of the show that could affect how it was viewed. We actually had a version that cut out after he first opened fire, but felt that that didn’t go far enough. So we went and filmed a pickup where we stayed with the shooter and see his victims fall in the distance. We didn’t want the horror to be overwhelming, although being with him and his blank detachment in this version is disturbingly chilling. And then we took it as far as the assassin himself being killed out of nowhere. Which is a shock and a twist — what the hell is going on? The audience are confused in a good way. I hope by now they trust that all will be explained.
How involved is Gary in terms of script and character development? Can you give an example of a detail or moment over the run of the series that he advocated for or against that proved valuable to the story?
Gary is an incredibly generous and deferential collaborator. As I’ve said before, he’s not just one of the greatest actors of his generation, he’s also a hugely talented writer and director, and he’s completely respectful of myself and Saul Metzstein and the other directors. I think it helps that we’re very in tune creatively. Gary and I both have a love and respect for the source material, so he knows I’m not going to junk the book — we’re going to work on it and bring a version of it to life. The other brilliant thing about Gary is that he’s not intimidated by the fact that Lamb’s arc is all in the backstory. He absorbs and plays that, even if he doesn’t know the specifics. You just get the sense that Lamb has been through some bad stuff. Lamb is a cautionary tale, a smoking ruin; he’s not going to change now. The changes come to our perspective when we learn a little bit more about him and what he’s been through. The moment he was most involved in I can’t talk about in detail because it’s a spoiler. But it came from an idea his wife, Gisele, had. Gary and I then discussed the best version of it in story terms, and then we shot it twice as Saul had an even better idea as to how to make it land. We put an awful lot of thought into it, and actually it’s the one area where we do depart from the book (with Mick’s blessing). I’m very excited about it and what it can lead to in future series that I’m looking forward to watching as a fan.
If you were running the spies, who would you say is the most competent agent? And what have you learned about how to walk the line between keeping the “misfits and losers” bit believable but also allowing the Slow Horses to actually triumph in the end?
After Lamb, Catherine is the smartest agent in the building, although River is the most effective field agent. Catherine is not trained as a spy but has been around them most of her adult life. She’s incredibly bright and perceptive but lacks confidence. She’s often the person putting the pieces together but never gets the credit. I think Lamb wants her around for that reason, as well as the twisted mix of protecting her and goading her and having her as a living reminder of his own fallibility — they were both betrayed by Charles Partner (Catherine’s boss, Lamb’s friend and mentor) and Lamb had to execute him. I’m not saying Lamb was sunshine and light before that, I think he’s always been a hard-living cynic, but that really did break something in him. And yes, it’s a delicate balance maintaining the premise of the show — these people are useless yet every season they save the day but are still not allowed out of exile. I think the compromise and unfairness is what makes it believable. Although at some point I feel they either have to redeem themselves or accept that it’s fruitless and move on. But again, usually Mick will kill them off before they reach that crossroads.
In “Clown Town,” Herron’s latest installment in the book series, he references the language of the show. There’s a line — “It’s like explaining Denmark to a cat”— that feels like a direct reference to the Season 1 line, “It’s like explaining Norway to a dog.” As a writer, what’s it like to see the way he has acknowledged and tipped his hat to the show?
One of the things I’m proudest of is how much Mick and his readers love the show. Sometimes I think a line is Mick’s and it turns out to be mine or vice versa, and Mick has the same confusion. He’s also read out the opening scene of Season 4 at events and said he didn’t write it, but he would have done [it] if he’d thought of it. Knowing I’m in tune with him and his characters and stories has been absolutely wonderful because I started this and finish it as a huge fan of his work.
What have you watched recently that you are recommending to everyone you know?
“Lost Boys and Fairies” by Daf James on the BBC [available to stream on Britbox] is the best show I’ve seen in years. It’s about a gay couple going through the adoption process and is charming, tragic, playful, sad and uplifting. It’s so deftly written by Daf and wonderfully directed by James Kent and stars one of my favorite actors, Sion Daniel Young, whom “Slow Horses fans” will know as Douglas from Season 3.
What’s your go-to “comfort watch,” the movie or TV show you go back to again and again?
I will always watch Michael Mann’s “Heat” [Prime Video] whenever I chance upon it, and watch it by choice at least one a year. It’s perfect. But for true comfort, I return again and again to the Hal Roach-era comedies of Laurel and Hardy, which have brought me unlimited joy throughout my life.
Downton Abbey debuted in 2010, establishing itself as a cherished series that spanned six seasons plus two earlier movies.
The conclusion served as a tribute to Dame Maggie Smith, who passed away aged 89 last September.
Her character, The Dowager Countess, was written off by her death in the 2022 picture, Downton Abbey: A New Era, though her memory was celebrated in Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Michelle Dockery has addressed the ending of the final Downton Abbey(Image: Nick Briggs/Carnival Films)
As the finale wrapped up with an emotional ending, following Lady Mary as a divorcee and single mother overcoming scandal, viewers saw visions of the family and servants dancing together with Violet Crawley, with the camera resting on a portrait of Dame Maggie.
However, Michelle has now revealed there were alternate endings in mind.
She told The Hollywood Reporter: “There were a couple of versions of the ending. There was another version where you saw Mary go back to work, she goes into the library and she sits at her desk.
“They decided to end it on the tribute to Maggie, which I think is the best ending. I always felt that it was the right way to finish.
Dame Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham in Downton Abbey(Image: ITV)
“[Mary, Cora and Robert] are saying their goodbyes and I think that’s for the audience – this feeling of moving on and saying farewell to each other.”
She added: “It feels quite hopeful. I also like that at the end of this story, Mary ends up as a single woman. There’s a new chapter ahead of her, she’s happier, and she’s excited to take the reins and become the lady of the house. It’s the end, but it feels like it’s ongoing.”
Creator Julian Fellowes previously spoke about dedicating the film to Dame Maggie: “I think we all felt that if there was a third film, we wanted it to be haunted by Maggie.
Downton Abbey came to an end with a third and final film(Image: AP)
“There is a theme of Maggie going through the film, and then at the end, you see her when Mary is having all her flashbacks. I like that. She was an iconic figure … And that’s another reason to finish.”
He added: “I think the actors had had enough – in the nicest way, there were a lot of good friendships and we’ll always meet as members of the Downton club … But I also feel that, in life, you must know when to let go of things, whether it’s professional or romantic or anything else.
“There is a moment when you think, ‘It’s time to bring this to an end.’ And I felt that about the show.”
The third episode of Coldwater had viewers reaching for their remote controls as they blasted the ‘disturbing’ scenes aired in the ITV prime-time drama
Viewers of Coldwater were left scrambling for their remote controls as they slammed the ‘disturbing’ scenes broadcast during the third episode of the ITV prime-time drama.
Andrew Lincoln plays John in the crime thriller, which airs on ITV1 on Sundays and Mondays and is available to stream in full on ITVX.
The six-part series charts the journey of John and his family as they relocate to the rural Scottish haven of Coldwater following John’s witnessing and response to a violent incident in a London park.
However, John grows increasingly exasperated with his restrictive and tedious life as a middle-aged house husband, his concealed rage threatening everything he cherishes.
Andrew Lincoln plays John in Coldwater(Image: ITV)
Despite longing for a more peaceful future for his family, he faces new challenges when he develops a friendship with neighbouring resident Tommy (Ewen Bremner), a seemingly charming man and devoted husband to local minister Rebecca (Eve Myles), with John becoming caught up in a series of disturbing events whilst falling into Tommy’s snare, reports the Daily Record.
During the third episode which broadcast on Sunday, September 21, audiences watched sinister Tommy (Ewen Bremner) kill pet cat Harlequin.
However, the unsettling scene sparked a wave of criticism on social media.
One viewer commented: “now the cat was a step too far! Absolutely no need to show that.”
A second posted: “I thought we moved past killing animals in shows, viewers hate it and it’s unnecessary. Yes it’s not real but it’s too disturbing, I immediately give up on shows for that so ITV you lost a viewer, only weak writers use animal deaths for a desperate attempt at tension. “
John has got himself caught up in Tommy’s web(Image: ITV)
A third added: “It’s gone too far #Coldwater There’s no humour, or ‘art’ in plain cruelty. I’ve kept with it, but no more.”
And: “Wish they wouldn’t have cruelty to defenceless animals in these dramas.”
Andrew Lincoln has revealed that he turned down the role in Coldwater twice before finally agreeing to take it on.
The Walking Dead actor explained: “I got sent the script and loved it, it made me laugh in all the wrong places, made me squirm with recognition, and constantly surprised me with the unpredictability of the characters, but it made me scared as well.
“I was quite scared about playing a character that was so unpleasant and weak and emasculated, and I wasn’t quite sure tonally where it sat.
“So I said no twice to it and then I had a lovely chat [with writer David Ireland] and couldn’t walk away from it.”
Coldwater continues on ITV1 tomorrow and it’s available to stream on ITVX
Out in theaters Friday, ‘Brownsville Bred’ is an intimate portrait of the actor, writer and director as a young girl in 1980s New York.
When Elaine Del Valle was in the sixth grade, she starred in the lead role of Sandy in her school’s production of “Grease.”
Decades later, she would return to that same school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, to shoot scenes for her autobiographical film “Brownsville Bred” — which will debut in select theaters nationwide on Friday.
Tethered to the people and places that shaped her into the person she’s become, Del Valle, 54, has been working on this intensely personal project for over 16 years. Now a filmmaker, she began her entertainment career as an actor and later as a casting director.
Before reaching its final cinematic form, “Brownsville Bred” first had other iterations: a one-woman stage show, a novel, and a TV pilot doubling as a short film.
“I knew all along that I wanted to make ‘Brownsville Bred’ into something that people could see visually on screen, and that it could be shared more widely. But I never really had the resources,” she says from her home in New York during a recent video call.
The feature film fictionalizes Del Valle’s childhood and adolescence during the 1980s in the titular underprivileged Brooklyn neighborhood, where crime and drug use were just as quotidian as the sounds of salsa music and memorable family moments.
Central to this heartfelt coming-of-age story is Del Valle’s complicated relationship with her vivacious but troubled Puerto Rican father, a musician struggling with addiction who, after a stint in prison, returned to the island while she was still young.
For the scenes depicting Elaine (played as a teen by Nathalia Lares) visiting her father Manny (Javier Muñoz) in Puerto Rico, the writer-director chose to shoot on location in the town of Cataño where her father, the real-life Manny, was from. Bringing the film there reinforced Del Valle’s sense of belonging in her Boricua identity.
“People say to me, ‘Elaine, you’re so happy all the time. You’re so energetic, you’re so willing, what is that?’ And I would say, ‘I don’t know, that’s just me. And after filming in Puerto Rico, I feel strongly that it is part of the culture there, because I felt that in every single person that was on set with me.”
Still from Elaine Del Valle’s Brownsville Bred, opening Sept. 19, 2025.
(Benjamin Medina)
Growing up in a low-income community, Del Valle couldn’t fathom a path into the performing arts. She married at 18 years old and had a daughter not long after. Around that time, she attended an event put on by the Hispanic Organization of Latino Actors. There, she learned she needed headshots to start reaching out to agents and going out for roles.
“I knew that I wanted more out of life, and I would take my daughter with me in her baby carriage to auditions,” she recalls. A determined Del Valle quickly found success as a bilingual actor for commercials. Eventually, Del Valle also landed the voice role of Val the Octopus, a motherly figure in the now-beloved animated series “Dora the Explorer.”
In the late 2000s, as she studied acting at Carnegie Hall, she started writing down her most significant childhood memories encouraged by her instructor Wynn Handman. She wrote about 10,000 words before deciding to adapt the text into prose that she could speak out loud in front of an audience. Recounting her foundational experiences became a cathartic, healing process. That’s when “Brownsville Bred” took the form of a one-woman stage play.
In 2009, Del Valle started performing the inspirational account numerous times at schools and corporate events; by 2011, it was off-Broadway.
“The audience reception made me understand how important this story was, not just to me and my artistry and my ability to heal as a human, but also to other people who needed those things as well, and to see themselves reflected on screen,” she recalls.
It was thanks to one of those performances that Del Valle got offered a job as a casting director. Her credentials: “I had been to every casting office in New York as an actor.”
To support her intention of one day turning this personal narrative into a film, Del Valle decided to turn it into a book so that she could own it as an intellectual property. These days, that’s become common practice in Hollywood: turn the story into a book, so that the screenplay is no longer an original creation, but an adaptation of an intellectual property.
The audiobook version of the tome, published in 2020, was narrated by Del Valle herself.
Del Valle first stepped behind the camera when she couldn’t find a director to helm her 2013 web series “Reasons Y I’m Single.” She had written the project, cast the actors, scouted locations and was ready to serve as producer — but in the end, “by default,” as she says, she had to direct it.
“That is where I really found my passion to work with actors and to get them to where I thought that they could get to,” she explains. “I do like directing more than acting, because I still get to act,” she says. “I am a scene partner as a director.”
Director Elaine Del Valle poses with her brother, Benjamin Medina, who also worked on set.
The road to finally bring “Brownsville Bred” to the screen was in motion when Del Valle received funding from WarnerMedia OneFifty, an artist development initiative, to produce a pilot that could serve as proof of concept for an episodic series. With that grant, the filmmaker would shoot the first 15 minutes of narrative, which played at multiple festivals as a short piece.
Del Valle’s experience as a casting director proved an advantage when she needed to cast the young woman who would play her in most of the film. Her search came down to two finalists, and ultimately Lares reminded her more closely of who she was at that age.
“The other girl is who I wanted to be when I was growing up, because she was so cool and tough,” Del Valle says. “And Nathalia was actually who I was growing up, which was very vulnerable.”
Muñoz, in turn, convinced Del Valle he could play Manny because of his musicality and talent for singing, qualities her father had. It was an Instagram video of Muñoz singing inside an empty New York subway car that solidified her belief in the actor. That Muñoz is an HIV activist also made him an ideal candidate, since Del Valle’s father lost his life to AIDS.
For the most part, reliving some of the most painful experiences of her early years while shooting didn’t affect Del Valle. Yet, she still needed to tap into her lived experience to guide the actors as they navigated this fiction constructed from her former reality.
“Leaning into the emotion a lot of the times was for them, always healing, but definitely for them, so that they can feel secure in the choices they were making to honor my story,” she says. “Sometimes they needed that more than I did. But every time I shared with them I was able to grow from that experience as well, to give them what they needed, but also feel it.”
Film still from the movie ‘Brownsville Bred,’ directed by Elaine Del Valle.
To produce the rest of the film, Del Valle invested her own savings, and utilized any cost-effective opportunity. At a party, she met the owner of a disheveled building in Queens, and asked if she could film there before they renovated it. On the corner near that building she found a Latino-owned pizzeria, and after explaining the significance of the story, the owner let her shoot there. She was cleverly frugal to bring it to fruition.
Through all the transformations from one medium to the next, the unchangeable essence of “Brownsville Bred” is “showing the contradictions in who we are, because so many times Latinos are seen as one dimensional,” Del Valle thinks. “This very much shows the layers of who made me who I am. I am urban, I am American, I am Latina, I’m Puerto Rican, I’m a daughter and a mother,” she adds.
“Brownsville Bred” ends with a quote by Del Valle for her father: “I made it mean something, Papa.” For the multihyphenate, the film is the culmination of a lifelong dream to honor him in all his complexity, both the joy and pain that they share in their time together.
“This film made his life mean something,” she says, barely holding back tears. “It made his experience mean something. It made his death mean something. I got to give him a legacy.”
Simultaneously, “Brownsville Bred” bears witness to what she overcame to accomplish this feat. “We all have our struggles and I’ve always believed that it is up to us to turn those struggles into triumph,” she explains. “We don’t have to wallow in the misery that people expect us to be wallowing in. We can use those obstacles and stand on them. And I did.”
‘Edible means it won’t kill you – it doesn’t mean it tastes good. This, however, does taste good,” says chef Carla Lamont as she snips off a piece of orpine, a native sedum, in her herb garden. It’s crisp and juicy like a granny smith but tastes more like cucumber. “It’s said to ward off strange people and lightning strikes; but I like strange people.”
We’re on a three-hectare (seven-acre) coastal croft on the Hebridean island of Mull. Armed with scissors, Carla is giving me a kitchen garden tour and culinary masterclass – she was a quarter-finalist in Masterchef: The Professionals a few years back. Sweet cicely can be swapped for star anise, she tells me. Lemon verbena she uses in scallop ceviche.
She points out a barberry bush whose small, sour berries, a Middle Eastern staple, she adds to jewelled rice, and a myrtle bush which, I learn, is different from the bog myrtle growing wild on the croft that, when the leaves are crushed, smells gloriously aromatic with hints of eucalyptus. Bog myrtle also protects your woollens from moths, wards off midges – and is a key ingredient in one of her cocktails.
“I had never grown anything before I came here. I was in a kitchen in the city and herbs came dried in a tub. Now, if I haven’t heard of something, I give it a go or thrust it at Jonny and say ‘Greenhouse.’”
Carla and Jonny, her husband, are part of a new wave of crofter chefs or field-to-fork farmers spreading across Scotland. Crofting is, essentially, small-scale subsistence farming, the crofter traditionally rearing a few animals and growing vegetables on the smallholding, and maintaining a job or two on the side.
Now, just as the architect-designed, off-grid bothy is a world away from the bare-bones huts that once gave shepherds shelter, the croft has been reinvented. Our back-to-the-land yearnings, fuelled by programmes such as This Farming Life and Ben Fogle: New Lives in the Wild, have turned crofting into a modern rural fantasy.
Fishers haul creels off the Mull coast. Photograph: David Gowans/Alamy
The new generation of crofters still juggle jobs, but today, that usually involves tourism rather than working for the local laird. For Jonny and Carla, it’s a restaurant called Ninth Wave and a cute cabin, the Sea Shanty (sleeps two from £800 a week).
They met 30 years ago when Carla, from Canada, answered an ad for a chef on the neighbouring island of Iona. Jonny’s nickname, Carla smiles, is “the lobster man”. Every day, he hikes two miles cross-country to his small boat, the Sonsie, returning with the catch that Carla cooks in the restaurant. They also cure, smoke and brine seafood and meat on Bruach Mhor croft. When Jonny’s not fishing, he’s working the land.
They grow about 80% of the fruit and vegetables for the restaurant in their kitchen garden, everything from cardoons to wasabi, and forage for wild herbs on the croft. They’ve counted more than 150 seasonal greens, herbs and edible flowers growing wild here. Bumping up the dirt track for lunch, the hedgerow is billowing with fluffy meadowsweet. “I’ll be harvesting it later for panna cotta,” Carla tells me.
“People don’t realise you can eat so many flowers.” The pots of blowsy blooms by the door, it turns out, are also on the menu. “Marigolds are edible and so are dahlias. You can eat the flowers and the tubers. The Mexicans used them as their main starch crop hundreds of years ago. They’re wonderful roasted; like a cross between a potato and a jerusalem artichoke.”
A dish at Ninth Wave, Mull
The restaurant was once the barn or bothy, with a dirt floor and tin roof, attached to their one-bedroom cottage. And while the produce for the menu might mainly be locally grown, reared or caught, the inspiration for Carla’s dishes comes from her travels. At the end of each season, the couple head off on food adventures, grazing their way through Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.
For lunch I’m tucking into a Mexican-inspired dish: Jonny’s lobster teetering on garden-grown roasted corn salsa, a creamy Yucatan avocado and hoja santo soup, laced with lemon verbena and Vietnamese coriander. “It’s not fine dining,” she shrugs, “it’s street food presented nicely.”
At the other end of the island, another restaurant on a croft is also making waves as much for its architectural wow factor as its pasture-to-plate menus. Jeanette Cutlack moved to Mull from Brighton in 2008 and ran a pop-up restaurant for 10 years in her home. Her dream, however, was to restore the abandoned croft and ruined barn down the lane.
The architect-designed Croft 3 is now a destination restaurant on Mull
With the help of an old university friend, Edward Farleigh-Dastmalchi, who founded London-based architects Fardaa, she began work. Croft 3 is now a destination restaurant, the old steading converted into a pared-back, cathedral-style dining space, open to the rafters with bare plaster walls and vast windows framing sea views; the project won a prestigious Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland award. Diners eat the simple, field-to-fork menus at long communal tables cut from a single Douglas fir. Starters such as crab arancini and lemon mayonnaise are served alongside spicy haggis, cornbread and salsa verde. Haggis is Jeanette’s speciality and she also runs haggis-making workshops.
Now that the land has been cleared, the 20-hectare croft is starting to bear fruit. Jeanette has planted a nectarine tree and kiwi vine. In a polytunnel, she and her family grow salad and herbs while a small flock of Hebridean sheep grazes the hill that is part of the land. Last September, hogget was on the menu for the first time. What they don’t grow or rear themselves, they source from neighbouring crofts and fishers.
Mull once lagged behind the Hebrides’ culinary powerhouse, Skye, but it’s starting to emerge from its shadow. A food and drink trail around the island highlights a growing number of artisan producers as well as gourmet pit stops such as pop-up turned permanent fixture Ar Bòrd (our table). Iain and Joyce Hetherington have converted their front room into a restaurant showcasing the local produce – from creel-caught shellfish landed at Croig on the island’s north coast, to organic vegetables grown by Carol Guidicelli on her croft at Langamull, near Croig, along with their in-house smoked venison. On the tiny community-owned island of Ulva, meanwhile, a short boat ride away, the Boathouse, recently revamped by Banjo Beale, winner of a TV interior design show, has become one of the hottest lunch spots, with diners crammed around picnic tables devouring plates of briny langoustine and crab claws on the water’s edge.
Sgriob ruadh farm, where they produce Isle of Mull cheese
And then there is the well established but ever-evolving award-winning Sgriob-ruadh farm, where they produce Isle of Mull cheese, just a few minutes’ drive from Tobermory’s pastel-painted waterfront. The Reade family arrived on the island with five cows in the 1980s and rebuilt a rundown dairy operation, starting cheese production a few years later. The farm’s Glass Barn cafe is a fabulous, foliage-festooned space where you can sample signature cheese and charcuterie platters or a bowl of homemade soup and a cheese scone before taking the far from run-of-the-mill tour.
Our small tour group meets the US cheese-maker Troy by the pig pen. After hearing a potted family history, we move on to the milking parlour where he weaves in science and Willy Wonka-style invention. The milk, he explains, is pumped to the cheese-making shed next door via an underground tank. The warm milk, fresh from the cows’ udders, heats the water used by the cafe. Walking us through the cheese-making process, we head underground to the vast cheese cellar, meet newborn calves and piglets and learn about innovative sustainable farming initiatives.
The leftover whey from the cheesemaking was once used to feed the pigs – until they found a better use for it. In the farmyard a smart new micro-distillery uses the whey to make gin and “whey-ski” – possibly a pun too far, a barrel-aged spirit. The tour ends with a tasting. The gin has a surprisingly distinctive creaminess, the whey-ski is pure fire water.
“It’s not sweet like a bourbon,” Troy says as he pours another dram. “It’s more like an Irish whiskey.” I knock it back, thinking that’s the thing about Mull: for outside-the-box thinking and wild culinary innovation, it’s leading the way.
Al Jazeera’s Ibrahim al-Khalili saw the aftermath of an Israeli attack on one of the tallest residential towers in Gaza City. The Israeli military has levelled at least 50 multi-storey buildings in recent weeks.
DNA evidence links the suspect in the assassination of the conservative American activist Charlie Kirk last week to the scene of the crime, the director of the FBI has said.
DNA from a towel and a screwdriver recovered from the crime scene both match Tyler Robinson, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Monday.
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Robinson, 22, was arrested by police on Thursday after a 33-hour manhunt for the killer.
“I can report today that the DNA hits from the towel that was wrapped around the firearm and the DNA on the screwdriver are positively processed for the suspect in custody,” Patel said in an interview on Fox News’s Fox & Friends.
Patel said Robinson had also expressed his desire to “take out” Kirk in a text exchange with another person, and had written a note detailing his plans to commit the crime.
Patel said the note had been destroyed, but investigators recovered forensic evidence of its existence at the home of Robinson and his romantic partner, who prosecutors have said has been cooperating in the investigation.
“We have evidence to show what was in that note, which is… basically saying… ‘I have the opportunity to take out Charlie Kirk, and I’m going to take it’,” he said.
Kirk, the CEO and cofounder of conservative youth activist organisation Turning Point USA and a close ally of US President Donald Trump, was shot dead last Wednesday during a speaking event at a university in Utah.
The killing of Kirk, a polarising figure who was lionised by conservatives and reviled by liberals, has provoked condemnation across the political spectrum, while drawing attention to deep political divisions in the United States and raising fears of further political violence.
The murder has also prompted calls for retribution among the political right, including from Trump, who has promised to use the power of the federal government to crack down on left-wing networks that he claims are driving violence.
On Monday, Trump said his administration was looking into bringing racketeering charges against left-wing groups believed to be funding agitators, and favoured designating the loose-knit antifascist group Antifa as domestic terrorists.
Trump’s pledge to crack down on what he says is left-wing extremism has raised fears that his administration may seek to use Kirk’s murder as a pretext to stifle legitimate dissent.
In an appearance as guest host of Kirk’s podcast, Vice President JD Vance backed a grassroots online campaign to get people who celebrated Kirk’s death fired, urging listeners to “call them out” and “call their employer.”
Numerous employees across the US have been fired or put on leave over their social media commentary about Kirk’s death, not all of whom celebrated or justified the assassination.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said on Monday that she had been fired over her social media posts about Kirk.
In a column on Substack, Attiah said she had been terminated for “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”
Attiah included a number of past posts about political violence in her column, only one of which mentioned Kirk specifically.
That posted misquoted Kirk as saying that black women “do not not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously.”
Kirk’s actual comments specifically referred to the intelligence of four black women, including former first lady Michelle Obama and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Responding to a claim by Vance that “most of the lunatics” in US politics reside on the far-left, Democratic lawmaker Greg Casar accused the Trump administration of weaponising concerns about political violence against its opponents.
“He cannot be allowed to use the horrible murder of Charlie Kirk as a pretext to go after peaceful political opposition,” Casar, who represents a Texas district in the US House of Representatives, said in a statement.
High-profile acts of political violence have targeted figures on both the left and right of US politics in recent years.
They include the killing of a Democratic state lawmaker and her husband in Minnesota in June, two assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, and a 2022 hammer attack on the husband of Democratic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Experts say that politically motivated attacks and threats are on the rise in the US.
More than 250 incidents of threats and harassment against local officials were reported in the first half of 2025, a 9 percent increase from the previous year, according to the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University.
While little information has been released about Robinson’s suspected motive so far, Patel on Monday affirmed an earlier assertion by Utah Governor Spencer Cox that the suspect espoused left-wing views.
“His family has collectively told investigators that he subscribed to left-wing ideology, and even more so in these last couple of years,” Patel said.
Jesse Plemons is never one to chew scenery. Even when handed a role that edges on madness, he doesn’t go big. Instead, he goes deep, building tension quietly from the inside out. And in Yorgos Lanthimos’ uncategorizable, darkly comic sci-fi thriller, Plemons — reuniting with the director after playing three characters in last year’s “Kinds of Kindness” — delivers one of his most riveting performances yet. As Teddy, a rumpled, reclusive beekeeper convinced that a pharma CEO (Emma Stone) is an alien from the planet Andromeda, Plemons channels paranoia, grief and righteousness into something both absurd and unnervingly sincere. The “I do my own research” archetype could easily veer into “SNL” sketch territory but he plays it heartbreakingly straight, creating a chillingly familiar portrait of a man lost in an algorithmic maze of internet rabbit holes and desperate for clarity in a world that no longer makes sense. Teddy enlists his younger cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, an autistic first-time actor in a mesmerizing turn) to help him abduct Stone’s steely executive, drawing him into the mission in a misguided effort to protect him. Even as things spiral into chaos, Plemons (a 2022 supporting actor Oscar nominee for Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”) roots the performance in a warped but recognizably human emotional logic. The result captures the anxious, conspiratorial spirit of 2025 with eerie precision, proving once again that Plemons doesn’t need to raise his voice to deliver a performance that speaks volumes. — Josh Rottenberg
On the corner of East 4th Street and South Evergreen Avenue on a recent Friday night in Boyle Heights, a large crowd gathered in front of Picaresca Barra de Café swaying to the syncopated beats of Los Chicos del Mambo. Near the band, Natalia Lara of Tortas Ahogadas El Águila filled birote salado rolls from Gusto Bread with carnitas. But the main event was underway inside the cafe: a latte art throwdown.
Throwdowns, special menus, omakases, pop-ups, speakeasies and out-of-the-box events are part of L.A.’s growing underground coffee scene. And they might be the best way to tap into what’s happening in the world of coffee. Cuppings, signature drink service and guest barista takeovers add to the diversity and creativity of these coffee experiences, which keep evolving.
“Each one is offering something special and has varying approaches with some very limited coffees or methods,” says Mikey Muench of Senses Café Projects, a pop-up that has made its way around Los Angeles from the Lasita window in Far East Plaza in Chinatown to restaurants, breweries and cafes such as Homage Brewing, Canary Test, Ondo, HIGTE and Woon.
Senses Café Projects allows Meunch to explore the coffees he enjoys drinking and to experiment with new tools and brew methods, he says. He focuses on pour-overs. “It’s my personal favorite way to enjoy coffee,” says Muench. “I am also experimenting with the nostalgic flavors of my childhood. I’m half Thai and half German. The majority of the beverage ideas and components are inspired by my Asian heritage.”
Yasuo Ishii, founder of leading-edge Tokyo roaster Leaves Coffee, was a guest brewer at Kumquat Coffee downtown last March. Other barista guest appearances at Kumquat have included brewers from Fritz Coffee in Seoul and Ditta Arigianale in Florence.
A few hard-to-get reservation-only coffee omakases also have popped up in L.A., such as Nobu Coffee at Courage Piano Lounge in Gardena, serving coffee hand-poured into a fabric Nel filter in a traditional Japanese kissaten style. Tangible Gratitude serves by reservation only a five-course sensory tasting experience in its Hermosa Beach design studio for $125 per person.
Strategic planning unlocks access. Follow coffee experts, specialty roasters and professional baristas from the high-profile competition circuit on social media; they often drop breadcrumbs to the next opportunity.
Keep up with the 2025 U.S. Coffee in Good Spirits Champion Jerry Truong, for example. He recently guest-bartended special shifts at Hollywood cocktail bar Night on Earth and Johnny’s Bar in Highland Park to serve his competition-winning coffee cocktails. Other key players include Frank La of Be Bright; Kay Cheon of Dune Coffee Roasters in Santa Barbara; World Barista Champion Michael Phillips of Blue Bottle; and consultant Jaymie Lao.
In addition to cafes, restaurants and farmers markets, coffee events are spilling into culinary festivals, art galleries and retail stores around the city. Automaker Rivian recently invited Cheon to make coffee with his Slayer espresso machine on the back of an R1T truck in its Venice showroom garden. The cafe kiosk at fashion brand Goodfight’s Historic Filipinotown shop has become a favorite destination for the coffee community.
“Coffee pop-ups are happening all the time in Los Angeles where your favorite baristas can express their ideas, and coffee folks, professionals and enthusiasts can celebrate coffee in ways you just don’t see in cafes every day,” says Lao.
Here are nine places where you can check out previews of yet-to-open cafes, guest baristas serving rare coffees, special pop-up menus or multicourse tastings.
It’s no surprise that this stunning village has been given quite a few accolades
It’s been described as England’s loveliest village(Image: Getty)
Holidaying on British soil has become increasingly popular in recent years, and it’s easy to see why.
Our coastline is dotted with charming fishing villages that are among the most beautiful in the world, and one in particular stands out as a must-see destination that’s well worth the journey.
Cornwall has unsurprisingly become a hotspot for staycations, with its sparkling turquoise waters, pristine golden beaches and scenic harbours making visitors feel as if they’ve been whisked away to a far more exotic location.
Nestled in the western corners of Cornwall, just 12 miles from the bustling hub of St Ives, lies the enchanting village of Mousehole, which is no stranger to praise.
The community first gained fame after being hailed as “the loveliest village in England” by Welsh poet and author Dylan Thomas following his honeymoon visit there, according to the Express, reports Cornwall Live.
Boats moored in the clear water of Mousehole(Image: Getty)
More recently, it featured in Conde Nast Traveller’s list of the best seaside spots in England for 2025, where it was described as “one of the county’s most picturesque fishing villages” and an ideal place to “escape the hustle and bustle of city life”.
The community boasts a picturesque harbour, breathtaking coastal panoramas and stands as a paradise for culinary enthusiasts – housing not one but two venues that have captured Michelin’s attention. The delightful village is decorated with enchanting whitewashed homes that border its slender, twisting cobbled lanes.
An abundance of craft boutiques and intimate tea rooms greet tourists, whilst the pristine waters invite those yearning for a peaceful kayaking excursion. And what superior method exists to restore vitality than indulging in a classic Cornish cream tea?
Visit Cornwall explained: “Mousehole is considered one of Cornwall’s prettiest fishing villages, with two small sandy beaches inside its harbour quays, only accessible at low tide, and a long pebble beach running east toward Penlee Point.
Mousehole at night(Image: Getty)
“For keen swimmers, there’s the Mousehole Rock Pool; a natural tidal pool and the perfect spot for a wild sea swim and a chance to spot seals out in the bay.
“There’s an assortment of car parks in and around the harbour, free parking on the road coming into the village, and a good bus service from Penzance.”
On TripAdvisor, the village has received glowing testimonials, with one five-star review saying declaring: ” A beautiful place to enjoy the local food, scenery and history. We visited several villages/cities in Cornwall prior to visiting this location so the expectations were high, spending the day here didn’t disappoint.”
Another visitor, in search of peace and quiet, said: “We really enjoyed our visit to Mousehole harbour, watching the boats go and out. Very relaxing, with plenty of place to sit down.”
