Tag Archives: directed

Greta Gerwig makes history as Barbie has biggest opening weekend for film directed by a woman – The Guardian

  1. Greta Gerwig makes history as Barbie has biggest opening weekend for film directed by a woman The Guardian
  2. Opinion: ‘Barbie’ breaks box-office records while crushing right-wing outrage CNN
  3. Box Office: ‘Barbie’ Opens to Record-Setting $155 Million, ‘Oppenheimer’ Shatters Expectations With $80 Million Debut Variety
  4. ‘Barbie’ Made HOW Much at the Box Office?! AOL
  5. ‘Barbie’ Makes $155 Million, Sets Box-Office Record Despite ‘Woke’ Backlash BroBible
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Angel Reese defends gesture directed towards Caitlin Clark after LSU national title win; calls out double standard after being ‘unapologetically’ her – CNN

  1. Angel Reese defends gesture directed towards Caitlin Clark after LSU national title win; calls out double standard after being ‘unapologetically’ her CNN
  2. Technical foul on Iowa’s Caitlin Clark leaves college basketball fans in disbelief during national title game Fox News
  3. LSU’s Angel Reese talks taunt of Caitlin Clark, social media criticism: ‘What are you gonna say now?’ Yahoo Sports
  4. Look: Troy Aikman Has 1-Word Description Of Caitlin Clark The Spun
  5. Angel Reese Beat Caitlyin Clark At Her Own Game, And White Folks Are Crying The Root
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Avengers: The Kang Dynasty to be directed by Shang-Chi’s director

The latest movies in the Avengers saga were only announced last weekend during Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con panel, but the first has already found a director. Avengers: The Kang Dynasty will be directed by Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings director, Destin Daniel Cretton, according to the Hollywood Reporter. The Kang Dynasty, which is set for release on May 2, 2025, will be the first of two planned Avengers movies with the second being Avengers: Secret Wars, which will come out six months later on Nov. 7, 2025.

We don’t know much about The Kang Dynasty other than its fairly revealing name and it’s approximate release date, but we do know that this pair of team-up movies will end Phase 6 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and what Disney is calling the Multiverse Saga.

It seems pretty safe to say that Kang will be the primary villain in the movie, or at least play an important role, and it’s worth knowing that the comic version of the Secret Wars storyline brought multiple universes together and provided a multiverse-less soft reset to the Marvel canon — something the movies will probably be in need of by 2025.

There are no signs yet of who will direct Avengers: Secret Wars, but since Cretton was only announced for The Kang Dynasty it seems unlikely he’ll direct both. This would be a departure from the last several Avengers movies, which has directors take on a pair with Joss Whedon doing the first two and The Russo Brothers on Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. But considering how early Cretton’s announcement came, it’s likely we’ll know who will direct Avengers: Secret Wars sooner rather than later.

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The Kang Dynasty’ to be Directed by ‘Shang-Chi’s’ Destin Daniel Cretton (Exclusive) – The Hollywood Reporter

Since the climactic wrap up of 2019’s Avengers: Endgame, which closed a chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe known as The Infinity Saga and grossed almost $2.8 billion worldwide, Marvel Studios has focused on introducing new heroes and pushing ahead with sequels of some of its top characters.

But as revealed by Kevin Feige at Marvel’s Saturday presentation at San Diego Comic-Con, the Avengers are assembling once again, with two back-to-back movies set for 2025.

And while there are many other movies that will hit before that, the studio is already moving ahead creatively with at least one of the superteam tentpoles.

Destin Daniel Cretton, who helmed last year’s Marvel hit, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, has come aboard to direct Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, The Hollywood Reporter can exclusively reveal.

Cretton is already well ensconced in the Marvel family. In addition to directing Shang-Chi, which grossed $432 million worldwide, he has an overall deal with Marvel that he signed in the wake of Shang-Chi’s success. As part of that, he is developing, with Andrew Guest, a writer-producer on comedies such as Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Community, a live-action series featuring Wonder Man that he will exec produce and possibly direct an episode or more. He also has a Shang-Chi sequel in the works.

It is unclear who is writing the Kang Dynasty Avengers movie or what heroes would even make up the team’s roster for a story that helps close out Phase 6. Feige laid out a timeline that sees The Kang Dynasty arrive May 2, 2025, with another Avengers movie, Avengers: Secret Wars, hitting Nov. 7, 2025.

Kang is being played by Jonathan Majors and was introduced in one capacity in Marvel series Loki. Kang, or a version of him, will be re-introduced in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which is due out Feb. 17, 2023. Quantumania is the movie that will launch Phase 5. In Loki, Majors played Kang with the moniker He Who Remains but the actor said at Comic-Con that there are multiple Kangs and the one from Ant-Man is different from the one in Loki.

Marvel, which will wrap up Phase 4 with this November’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, has been slowly hiring directors for its next batch of movies that will act as Phase 5 and Phase 6.

Marvel has confirmed to THR that Bassam Tariq (Mogul Mowgli) is directing Blade, scheduled for a Nov. 3, 2023 release; Julius Onah (Luce) is directing Captain America: New World Order, which will star Anthony Mackie as Captain America and open May 3, 2024; and Jake Schreier (Paper Towns) is directing Thunderbolts, which will close out Phase 5 with a release date of July 26, 2024.

Directing an Avengers movie is one of the most high-profile jobs. Joss Whedon helmed the first two Avengers movies — 2012’s The Avengers and 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. And Joe and Anthony Russo filmed the epic two-parter Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame.

The Russos have long stated they would like to helm a Secret Wars film, with most presuming they meant adapting the key comic mini-series that ran in in the mid-1980s. Marvel rarely outright adapts its stories, usually weaving several influences into a movie, even sometimes breaking from the literary sources entirely. To complicate matters, there is also a second Secret Wars, a 2015 storyline from writer Jonathan Hickman that involved the multiverse. In any case, after the panel, Feige noted to Deadline that the Russos were not involved in Secret Wars.

Cretton, who rose through the dramatic ranks with movies such as Short Term 12 and Just Mercy, is repped by WME, Pangea Media and Goodman Genow.



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Trump reportedly directed Giuliani to press officials to seize voting machines | Donald Trump

Donald Trump directed Rudy Giuliani to ask the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) if it could seize voting machines in three key states, the New York Times reported.

Citing three anonymous sources, the paper said Giuliani made the call six weeks after Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden but before the January 6 Capitol riot, by supporters trying to stop the certification of electoral college results.

A DHS official told Giuliani it did not have the authority to seize the machines, the Times said.

The paper also said Trump turned to his personal lawyer after considering a plan to have the Department of Defense seize the machines, and after being told by his attorney general, William Barr, that the Department of Justice would not do so.

Executive orders to compel the Pentagon and DHS to act are known to have been drafted.

But the newly revealed DHS call, the Times said, “show[s] that Mr Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines”.

Trump claims the election was subject to massive voter fraud. It was not.

His efforts to overturn the election – an outcome he admitted seeking in a statement on Sunday – are being investigated by the House committee on January 6 and by a district attorney in Georgia.

The DA, Fani Willis, has requested FBI protection after Trump told supporters they should protest her investigation and others into his business practices in New York.

At his Texas rally last Saturday, Trump also promised pardons for January 6 rioters should he be president again. More than 700 rioters have been charged, 11 with seditious conspiracy.

The Times said a retired US army colonel, Phil Waldron, was at the heart of attempts to acquire the authority to seize voting machines in key states, altering the plan to include the DHS when Giuliani said using the military would be too extreme.

Waldron, from Texas, is linked to Michael Flynn, a retired general who was among conspiracy theorists pressing Trump to seize voting machines.

Trump also pressured officials in key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania to seize voting machines. They resisted.

Schemes to send “alternate electors” to Congress from battleground states are the subject of a Department of Justice investigation as well as subpoenas from the January 6 committee.

Giulaini is a former mayor of New York and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination but his star has fallen as a result of his work for Trump.

Suspended from practicing law in New York and Washington DC, he is the subject of a subpoena from the January 6 committee.

In a letter to Giuliani last month, the committee chair, Bennie Thompson, said: “Between mid-November 2020 and January 6, 2021 (and thereafter) you actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of former president Trump and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results.

“According to witness testimony and public reporting, in December 2020 you urged President Trump to direct the seizure of voting machines around the country after being told that the Department of Homeland Security had no lawful authority to do so.”

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Rooney Mara to Play Audrey Hepburn in Film Directed by Luca Guadagnino

A biopic of iconic actress Audrey Hepburn starring Rooney Mara is in the works at Apple, Variety has confirmed.

Oscar-nominated “Call Me by Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino will helm the project, with Mara producing and “The Giver” co-writer Michael Mitnick penning the script.

Though plot details are being kept under wraps, Hepburn is an acting legend celebrated for her performances in classics like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “My Fair Lady,” “Wait Until Dark,” “Charade” and “Sabrina.” During her four-decade career, Hepburn achieved EGOT status, winning Emmy, Oscar, Tony and Grammy awards, the last of which she received posthumously. She was also a dedicated humanitarian, working with UNICEF to help children in Africa, South America and Asia and receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992.

Mara has been nominated for an Academy Award twice, for her work in 2011’s “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and 2015’s “Carol.” She most recently starred in Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” alongside Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette and Willem Dafoe. Mara’s upcoming projects include Sarah Polley’s “Women Talking,” a drama centering on eight Mennonite women, which also stars Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley.

Guadagnino recently wrapped production on his upcoming romantic horror film “Bones and All,” starring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet. The Italian filmmaker also co-created, co-wrote and directed the 2021 HBO miniseries “We Are Who We Are.” In addition to “The Giver,” Mitnick is known for his writing work on “The Current War,” “The Staggering Girl” and the HBO series “Vinyl.”

Puck was the first to report the news of the film.



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Jussie Smollett trial: Prosecution rests after brothers testify the actor directed them to carry out a fake racist and anti-gay attack

Abimbola “Bola” Osundairo and his brother Olabinjo “Ola” Osundairo provided critical testimony on Wednesday and Thursday in Smollett’s criminal trial on charges that he staged the attack and falsely reported it to police.

The prosecution rested Thursday evening after three days of testimony in which it called seven witnesses, including the brothers.

Ola Osundairo told jurors that Smollett “had this crazy idea of having two MAGA supporters attack him,” and that he wanted “to put that on social media.”

“Mr. Smollett asked you to fake attack him?” Deputy Special Prosecutor Sam Mendenhall asked.

“Yes,” Ola Osundairo responded.

“Pretending to be Trump supporters?” Mendenhall continued.

“Yes,” Ola Osundairo said.

“So he could then post it on social media?” the prosecutor continued.

“Yes,” Ola Osundairo answered.

He said that Bola was tasked with hitting Smollett, while Smollett wanted Ola to put a noose around his neck and pour gasoline on him. They ultimately changed gasoline to bleach because, Ola Osundairo said, “I wasn’t comfortable pouring gasoline on somebody.”

Smollett, who is Black and gay, has said two men struck him, yelled anti-gay and racist remarks, put a noose around his neck and poured bleach on him on a frigid night in Chicago in January 2019. Police initially investigated the incident as a possible hate crime and poured significant resources into solving the case and locating the two men.
But after interviewing them and finding other evidence, authorities instead determined that Smollett paid the men $3,500 to stage the hate crime against him so he could get publicity and a career boost.

Smollett has pleaded not guilty to six counts of disorderly conduct for allegedly making false reports to police that he was a victim of a hate crime. His defense attorney said in opening statements he is a real victim and the men saw the actor as a “mark” or “target.”

Thursday’s session got heated and defense attorneys called for a mistrial. One of the lawyers alleged Judge James Linn lunged at her, and another said the judge was making facial expressions.

It began when the judge interjected as attorney Tamara Walker repeatedly pressed Ola Osundairo on his use of homophobic words, such as when he referred to a musician friend as a “fruity ass.” Linn angrily instructed Walker to move on from her line of “collateral” questioning.

The defense has suggested during the trial that homophobia may have been a motive in a real hate crime attack that night.

In a heated exchange, Walker asked the judge for a sidebar, which he denied at first. After the defense for a second time requested a meeting outside of earshot of the jury, Linn sent the panel out of the room.

Walker and her defense team requested a mistrial.

As the exchange between the judge and the defense quickly escalated, Walker became emotional, at one point sobbing as she paced around a table, claiming Linn was not allowing her to continue a line of questioning that was critical to the defense’s case.

Walker also claimed Linn lunged at her while at the sidebar, something Linn vehemently denied.

“When you said the word mistrial, and I know you have some pressures here, I’m stunned that you would consider a mistrial,” Linn said. “Ms. Walker, there were objections that had to be sustained and I was trying to get back on point.”

“Just because you think you were allowed to go one way, we’re all just doing our jobs,” Linn told Walker.

“There will be no mistrial,” he told the stunned courtroom.

Defense attorney Heather Widell also addressed the judge, stating, “I would also like to go on the record that there are facial objections coming from the bench when there are objections.”

“You’re great at facial expressions,” Linn shot back.

Court ended Thursday night after the defense calling its own witnesses.

Defense sharply questions Bola Osundairo

The brothers delivered the core testimony of the case, stating plainly that the attack was always intended to be fake.

Bola Osundairo was the first of the two brothers to testify, speaking in court on Wednesday and Thursday. He told the court that Smollett “wanted me to fake beat him up,” and he agreed to do so because he felt indebted to the actor.

“I believed he could help further my acting career,” Osundairo testified. “He told me that we would need another person to fake beat him up. He mentioned could my brother do it. I said yes.”

The actor directed them to say “Empire, f****t, n***er, MAGA,” fake punch him, pour bleach on him and then run away, he testified.

“Who was in charge of this thing?” Webb asked.

“Jussie was,” Bola Osundairo told the jury.

The man also said Smollett first explained the plan to him in a car where Smollett was smoking marijuana.

“Even though he’s smoking you still think he’s serious?” asked defense attorney Shay Allen.

“He sounded serious,” Bola Osundairo responded.

Osundairo said Smollett “wanted to use the fake attack or camera footage for media.” He testified that while he didn’t expect payment for helping Smollett stage the attack, the actor still gave him a check for $3,500.

In cross-examination, Allen accused Bola Osundairo of having a desire to work security for Smollett and that it became a growing point of tension. Osundairo testified he didn’t remember.

“You attacked Jussie because you wanted to scare him into hiring you,” accused Allen, to which Osundairo responded, “No.”

However, special prosecutor Dan Webb asked whether Smollett ever talked about security at all while this “fake attack” was being hatched and Osundairo responded, “No.”

Testimony grew tense at times as Allen asked whether Bola Osundairo had a sexual relationship with Smollett, which he denied, and how he could not have expected the police to get involved if the media attention on the story grew, as Smollett allegedly planned.

“I wasn’t thinking,” Bola Osundairo said.

“We finally agree on something,” Allen responded.

During re-direct examination, Webb honed in on the timing of the alleged hoax on one of the coldest nights in Chicago. “If you had not had advanced discussions with Jussie Smollett how would you know where he would be at 2 a.m. in a polar vortex?”

“I wouldn’t,” Osundairo responded.

Later, Ola Osundairo testified the brothers had at one point contemplated leaving if the actor didn’t show up.

“It was super cold that night. I was freezing the whole time we were out there,” he said. “My brother saw him and that’s when we continued to approach him.”

Osundairo said that’s when he put the rope over Smollett’s head and poured bleach on him, while trying not to get bleach on Smollett’s face to avoid injuring the actor.

Defense witness says Smollett sounded panicked

The first witness called by the defense described what he heard as he talked to Smollett during the encounter.

Brandon Moore, Smollett’s former music manager, said he heard “something something MAGA country,” then what sounded like scuffling.

“Jussie said, ‘Yo, I just got jumped,’ ” Moore told the court.

Smollett sounded panicked and out of breath, Moore testified.

During cross-examination, deputy special prosecutor Sean Wieber pointed out, “You couldn’t see how hard the punches landed,” and “you did not witness what happened to Mr. Smollett,” to which Moore responded, “Correct.”

The defense also called an emergency medicine physician who examined Smollett after the alleged attack and Smollett’s publicist at the time, Pamela Sharp.

The prosecution said in its opening statement that Smollett orchestrated the attack for publicity and a career boost. Sharp testified that Smollett earned between $100,000 and $125,000 per episode — about $2 million for a season.

The judge ended the day by telling jurors not to come back until Monday, when they might hear closing arguments and begin deliberating.

CNN’s Omar Jimenez and Bill Kirkos reported from Chicago and CNN’s Eric Levenson reported and wrote from New York. CNN’s Steve Almasy contributed to this report.

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Chicago-area high school apologizes for “Fire Nagy” chants directed at Bears coach’s son

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Bears coach Matt Nagy has been under an intense spotlight in Chicago, but students at one Chicago-area high school crossed the line by targeting Nagy’s son.

Cary-Grove High School has issued an apology for the conduct of some of its students toward Nagy’s son, who played for Lake Forest High School in a playoff game on Saturday.

“At the recent Cary-Grove vs. Lake Forest 6A high school football game played on Saturday, November 20, members of the Cary-Grove student body began a chant targeting the parent of one of the Lake Forest team members and his family,” the statement from Cary-Grove’s principal said. “On behalf of Cary-Grove High School, I want to assure our community that the chant was not acceptable nor appropriate and was immediately addressed by administration at the game. We also felt it was important to meet with our student superfans that lead our chants and cheers to talk about what happened and give them an opportunity to reflect and correct their actions.”

Cary-Grove beat Lake Forest to advance to the state championship game against East St. Louis on Saturday.

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Abramovich was not ‘directed’ to buy Chelsea FC by Putin, court hears | Roman Abramovich

Roman Abramovich’s lawyer said it was defamatory to describe the businessman as having “a corrupt relationship” with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that he had acted “covertly at his direction” in key business deals such as the purchase of Chelsea football club.

Speaking on the first morning of a preliminary hearing of a high court libel claim against a bestselling book about the modern Kremlin, Hugh Tomlinson QC said the 54-year-old billionaire did not “bring this claim lightly” and understood it could be characterised as “an attack on public interest journalism”.

The lawyer also accused the author Catherine Belton in her book Putin’s People of repeating “lazy inaccuracies” about his position in Russian politics and society.

The barrister said Abramovich was complaining about 26 extracts in the book at the beginning of a two-day hearing in the high court aimed at determining the meaning of key passages ahead of a full trial, in a case that is being seen as a test of England’s libel laws and their impact on investigative journalism.

Belton, a special correspondent with Reuters, is also being sued for libel by the Russian state-owned energy giant Rosneft.

At the heart of Abramovich’s complaint is that the billionaire’s £150m purchase of Chelsea FC in 2003 was “directed” by the Russian president. Tomlinson said the words in Belton’s book meant that Putin had ordered Abramovich to purchase the club as “part of a scheme to corrupt the west by corrupting local elites” and to “build a bulkhead of Russian influence”.

“The ordinary and reasonable reader would inevitably come out with the view that Roman Abramovich was instructed to buy Chelsea … so he was being used as the acceptable face of a corrupt and dangerous regime,” Tomlinson said.

He added: “At no stage is the reader told that actually Abramovich is someone who is distant from Putin and doesn’t participate in the many and various corrupt schemes that are described,” Tomlinson said. “On the contrary, he’s described as making corrupt payments.”

Andrew Caldecott QC, acting for Belton and HarperCollins, argued that Belton’s argument about the purchase of Chelsea FC was more nuanced. The book cited three sources for the proposition that Abramovich bought the club at the direction of Putin, Sergei Pugchaev, a former member of the president’s inner circle, and two others.

But he added that Belton herself did not draw a firm conclusion. “Now this is a case where we say the authorial position plainly leaves it open,” Caldecott said, indicating that Belton wrote “But whatever the truth of the matter, Abramovich’s choice of Chelsea became a symbol of Russian cash that was flooding into the UK.”

Caldecott said Belton had also incorporated a denial of the claim – from a friend of Abramovich’s in the text – to make clear the position was contested. But Tomlinson argued the phrasing was cursory, that it was “a bare denial”.

In the afternoon, the court also heard that a settlement had been reached in two other related cases: one involving the Russian businessman Mikhail Fridman, 57, who had brought a similar libel claim against HarperCollins, and a data protection claim brought against the publisher by Petr Aven, 66, the head of the Russian lender Alfa-Bank.

Tomlinson told the court the publisher had “agreed to remove” the material in dispute and had agreed to apologise.

Lawyers for HarperCollins said the changes the publisher made to settle Fridman and Aven’s claims were minor, covering three paragraphs. HarperCollins added it had “amended some statements” and expressed regret that the disputed points had not been put to the two men prior to publication.

Earlier, Tomlinson, who is representing Abramovich, as well as Fridman and Aven, had said there was “no relationship” between the claims. He told Mrs Justice Tipples he was instructed to act for the three men “coincidentally and entirely independently” and that there was “not any kind of coordination between these claimants”.

In the week prior to the hearing, the anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder said the case “threatens to be the biggest legal pile-on I’ve ever seen and it risks deterring future journalists from writing about Putin’s wealth”.

The hearing is expected to continue on Thursday examining Rosneft’s claim. A judgment relating to the hearing is expected in a few weeks, while a full trial in the libel case is not likely until 2022.

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