- BBC Unveils Mega 12-Show Drama Slate Featuring ‘Dear England’ Adaptation Starring Joseph Fiennes, Aimee Lou Wood’s Debut Writing Project & Rebecca Hall-Led Series From Element Deadline
- Director of BBC Drama Lindsay Salt sets out her vision and announces 12 new dramas totalling 66 hours BBC
- Joseph Fiennes to Star in TV Adaptation of Football Play ‘Dear England’ as BBC Unveil Slew of New Dramas Variety
- James Graham’s Dear England to Become Limited Series for BBC; Joseph Fiennes to Again Star Playbill
- BBC Orders ‘The Ministry of Time’ From A24, Dramas With Aimee Lou Wood, Rebecca Hall, Joseph Fiennes Hollywood Reporter
Tag Archives: Writing
Paramount Expands ‘Star Trek’ Universe With New Film, ‘Andor’s Toby Haynes Tapped To Direct With Seth Grahame-Smith Writing – Deadline
- Paramount Expands ‘Star Trek’ Universe With New Film, ‘Andor’s Toby Haynes Tapped To Direct With Seth Grahame-Smith Writing Deadline
- New ‘Star Trek’ Movie in the Works at Paramount from ‘Andor’ Director Hollywood Reporter
- A New Star Trek Movie Will Explore the Origins of Starfleet Gizmodo
- ‘Star Trek’ Origin Story Movie Set From ‘Andor’ Director, ‘Star Trek 4’ Still in the Works as ‘Final Chapter’ of Main Series Variety
- New ‘Star Trek’ Movie Set Decades Before the Era of Kirk and Spock Set at Paramount IndieWire
Kylie Jenner Fully Explained All The Confusion Around Her Son’s Name And Admitted She “Cried In The Shower” After Writing “Wolf” On His Birth Certificate – BuzzFeed News
- Kylie Jenner Fully Explained All The Confusion Around Her Son’s Name And Admitted She “Cried In The Shower” After Writing “Wolf” On His Birth Certificate BuzzFeed News
- Kylie Jenner reveals sweet meaning behind son Aire’s name: ‘He’s so special to me’ Yahoo Life
- Kylie Jenner Says Postpartum Contributed to Her Naming Son Wolf Us Weekly
- Kylie Jenner Reveals Meaning Behind Son Aire Webster’s Name E! NEWS
- Kylie Jenner reveals she ‘cried in the shower’ after announcing she’d called her son Wolf while her hormones w Daily Mail
Kelly Clarkson On Being Led To Believe She Was Writing ‘Since U Been Gone’: “I Looked Like A Fool” – Deadline
- Kelly Clarkson On Being Led To Believe She Was Writing ‘Since U Been Gone’: “I Looked Like A Fool” Deadline
- Kelly Clarkson says she has a ‘bad vibe’ with ‘Since U Been Gone’ because her record label asked her to come up with lyrics only to learn the song had already been written Yahoo Entertainment
- Kelly Clarkson Reacts to Being Pitted Against Carrie Underwood | WWHL Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen
- Kelly Clarkson says she was ‘lied to’ about ‘Since U Been Gone’ songwriting Entertainment Weekly News
- Kelly Clarkson HINTS at Stars That Were RUDE After She Won American Idol Entertainment Tonight
- View Full Coverage on Google News
‘About My Father’ Star Sebastian Maniscalco on Moving His Dad to Tears, Writing a Feature and Bartending for Jerry Seinfeld – Variety
- ‘About My Father’ Star Sebastian Maniscalco on Moving His Dad to Tears, Writing a Feature and Bartending for Jerry Seinfeld Variety
- About My Father Review: Maniscalco & De Niro Make A Good Pair In Hollow Comedy Screen Rant
- About My Father movie review & film summary (2023) Roger Ebert
- ‘About My Father’ movie review: Robert De Niro and the audience deserve more The Hindu
- About My Father Movie Review: Robert De Niro Continues To Fascinate As Sebastian Maniscalco Creates A Hilarious But Real World For Himself Koimoi
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Salman Rushdie says he is writing book about near-fatal knife attack – Financial Times
- Salman Rushdie says he is writing book about near-fatal knife attack Financial Times
- Sir Salman Rushdie thanks ‘heroes’ who saved his life during knife attack Sky News
- Salman Rushdie Makes First In-Person Appearance Since Stabbing: “Violence Must Not Deter Us” Hollywood Reporter
- At PEN America gala in NYC, Salman Rushdie makes first in-person appearance since stabbing New York Daily News
- Salman Rushdie Backs Iran’s Women In Their Struggle ایران اینترنشنال
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Mariah Carey’s Story About Writing ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ Is Humbug, Co-Writer Claims – Deadline
The cowriter and coproducer of one of the all-time great Christmas songs – Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” — can only go “ho, ho, ho” when he hears her tell the tale of how the song came to be created.
Carey collaborator Walter Afanasieff, speaking to the Hot Takes & Deep Dives podcast, claims that Carey has invented an “alternate story” on the song’s origin.
Afanasieff claims that Carey is saying she created the song as a young child, and it’s been bothering him.
“When she started to hint at the fact that, “Oh, I wrote that song when I was a little girl!” But why weren’t you saying that for 12 or 13 or 15 years prior to that? So it just sort of developed in her mind,” Afanasieff said. “She doesn’t play anything. She doesn’t play keyboard or piano. She doesn’t understand music, she doesn’t know chord changes and music theory or anything like that. She doesn’t know a diminished chord from a minor seventh chord to a major seventh chord.
“So to claim that she wrote a very complicated chord-structured song with her finger on a Casio keyboard when she was a little girl, it’s kind of a tall tale.”
The truth, Afanasieff said, was that the two devised the song while working on material for her Christmas album. They had a long collaboration relationship, dating back to her albums Emotions and Music Box.
“We were holed up in this beautiful home that they were renting, and it was the summertime and there was a piano,” he said. “So the writing of “All I Want For Christmas” is, I started playing a boogie-woogie, kind of a rock. Mariah chimed in and started singing “I don’t want a lot for Christmas.”
“So on and on, and it was like a game of ping-pong,” Afanasieff said. “I’d hit the ball to her, she hits it back to me.”
The two are credited as the sole writers and producers on the song, with Afanasieff crediting Carey with the lyrics and music, while he takes credit for the music and chords.
“I’ve studied music, I have degrees in music. I’m an accomplished orchestrator and arranger. I teach music. I’m not a schlump. I don’t play by ear,” he added.
Paul McCartney Recalls Writing ‘Here Today’ After John Lennon’s Death – Rolling Stone
When John Lennon was killed in December 1980, tributes poured in from all around the world in remembrance of the beloved Beatle. “It was difficult for everyone in the world cause he was such a loved character and such a crazy guy, you know, that he was so special,” Paul McCartney recalled during a recent interview with SiriusXM’s The Beatles Channel. “And so it had hit me so much so that I couldn’t really talk about it.”
More than four decades later, he remembers feeling as though he couldn’t participate in the type of forward-facing grieving other people expressed because it simply didn’t feel right to him.
“I remember getting home from the studio on the day that we’d heard the news he died and turning the TV on and seeing people say, ‘Well, John Lennon was this,’ and ‘What he was, was this,’ and ‘I remember meeting him,’” the musician shared. “And it was like, I don’t know, I can’t be one of those people. I can’t just go on TV and say what John meant to me. It was just too deep. It’s just too much. I couldn’t put it into words.”
Instead, McCartney let his emotions settle before sitting down to process Lennon’s death through songwriting. “I was in a building that would become my recording studio, and there were just a couple of little empty rooms upstairs,” he explained. “So I found a room and just sat on the wooden floor in a corner with my guitar and just started to play the opening chords to ‘Here Today.’”
The song, which appeared on his third solo studio album, Tug of War, in 1982, found McCartney posing questions to Lennon and imagining what his response would be. “And if I said I really knew you well/What would your answer be/If you were here today?” he asks in the opening verse, continuing: “Well, knowing you/You’d probably laugh and say that we were worlds apart.”
Later in the song, he asks about the time he and Lennon met and another time that they cried together. “The night we cried, that was to do with a time when we were in Key West down in Florida,” McCartney explained. “And for some reason, I think it was like a hurricane, something had been delayed, and we couldn’t play for a couple of days. So we held up in a little motel. So what would we do? Well, we’d have a drink, and we would get drunk. We didn’t have to play. So we did that night.”
He continued: “We got drunk and started to get kind of emotional, you know, ‘Oh, you were great when you, I love that.’ You know, we started, it all came out, you know, but on the way to that, there was a lot of soul searching. You know, we told each other a few truths, you know, ‘Well, I love you. I love you, man. I love that you said that. I love you. And we opened up. So, that was kind of special to me. I think that was really one of the only times that ever happened.”
Henry Cavill out as Superman, James Gunn writing new reboot
Just three weeks after announcing he was “back as Superman,” Henry Cavill has been forced to reveal that he won’t be playing the character in the future after all.
Instead, the Man of Steel will be rebooted in a new movie being written by DC Studios co-chief James Gunn, featuring the iconic superhero as a younger man.
Gunn announced on Twitter that he and his producing partner Peter Safran will be announcing the first projects in their new slate of DC productions at the beginning of 2023. “Among those on the slate is Superman. In the initial stages, our story will be focusing on an earlier part of Superman’s life, so the character will not be played by Henry Cavill,” Gunn said.
Among those on the slate is Superman. In the initial stages, our story will be focusing on an earlier part of Superman’s life, so the character will not be played by Henry Cavill.
— James Gunn (@JamesGunn) December 15, 2022
Replying to queries from fans, Gunn revealed that he is writing the film (and has been “for a while”), that it won’t be an origin story, and that it doesn’t have a director attached yet.
Cavill posted about this abrupt turn in his fortunes on Instagram. “It’s sad news, everyone. I will, after all, not be returning as Superman,” he said, before making a mild dig at the chaotic decision-making at Warner Bros. in recent months as it works through its merger with Discovery and relaunches DC movies and TV under Gunn and Safran. “After being told by the studio to announce my return back in October, prior to [Gunn and Safran’s] hire, this news isn’t the easiest, but that’s life,” Cavill wrote.
“The changing of the guard is something that happens. I respect that. James and Peter have a universe to build. I wish them and all involved with the new universe the best of luck, and the happiest of fortunes.”
Cavill had posted about his return to the role after Black Adam star Dwayne Johnson had successfully persuaded Warner Bros. executives to let Cavill appear in a post-credits scene for his movie. Cavill has reportedly also shot a cameo for next year’s The Flash, but it’s not certain this will be used in the film now.
It was also recently announced that Cavill will no longer be starring in Netflix’s hit TV adaptation of The Witcher; he will be replaced by Liam Hemsworth. In this case, the decision appeared to be Cavill’s. Some have speculated that he set Geralt of Rivia aside in order to return to the role of Clark Kent, while others have guessed at a difference of opinion with showrunner Lauren Hissrich.
Gunn indicated that there may yet be room for Cavill in future DC Studios projects, although he did not specify whether this would be as a different character, or as an alternative version of Superman (similar to Michael Keaton and Ben Affleck’s joint return as Batman in The Flash). “We just had a great meeting with Henry and we’re big fans and we talked about a number of exciting possibilities to work together in the future,” Gunn said.
Gunn also said that he and Safran had met with Affleck with a view to the former Bruce Wayne taking the directing reins on a DC project. “Met with Ben yesterday precisely because he wants to direct & we want him to direct; we just have to find the right project,” Gunn tweeted.
But he gave no indication of the status of the other Superman project that has been in development at Warner Bros.: a film about a Black Superman written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and produced by J. J. Abrams. According to The Hollywood Reporter, this project is not impacted by Gunn’s new film and Coates is still working on the script.
Before announcing the Superman news, Gunn took to Twitter Wednesday to rubbish a report that director Matt Reeves and star Robert Pattinson’s version of Batman would be integrated into the wider DC Universe. “This is entirely untrue,” he said.
It has been a turbulent few months for DC productions as the new Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has culled projects and installed Gunn and Safran with a mandate to consolidate and reboot DC movies and TV. A reportedly complete Batgirl film was shelved, and more recently a third Wonder Woman film from director Patty Jenkins and star Gal Gadot was canceled.
Amazon Kindle Scribe review: Better for reading than writing
But Amazon is a little late to the party. In the years since it last developed a big-screen Kindle, companies like reMarkable and Onyx have dabbled in digital notebooks — and some of them have gotten so good that Amazon’s work can sometimes feel a little lacking by comparison.
I’ve spent the last few weeks testing the Kindle Scribe and trying it out against some of its most interesting competition. Here’s what you should know.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, but at the Help Desk, we reviews all products and services with the same critical eye.)
At $339 (or more, if you opt for a nicer pen and add a case), the Scribe is Amazon’s biggest, most expensive Kindle in years. In testing it alongside rival devices like the $299 reMarkable 2 and the $599 Onyx Boox Tab Ultra, it didn’t take long to discover that the Scribe isn’t equally good for reading and writing.
The Scribe has perhaps the most polished software of the three, and thanks to barely there weight and great screen lighting, it’s the one that I’d most like to power through a novel on. But if you’re interested in doing some serious writing on a device like this, you may want to consider something like the reMarkable instead.
I’m not saying taking notes or crossing items off a to-do list was at all unpleasant. Writing on the Scribe with the included stylus screen felt smooth and satisfying, and it comes with a handful of notebook templates for people who need to jump between wide-ruled, grid and even sheet music “paper.”
What really gets me is that the Scribe’s writing features feel a little basic compared with some of its rivals.
There’s no way to, for example, select a bunch of text you’ve written and move it around. If you realized you’ve put some notes in the wrong spot, oh, well — you’ll just have to erase and rewrite it. (iPads, the reMarkable and Onyx’s digital notebooks can handle this just fine.) Also missing is any kind of handwriting recognition, which means there’s no way to search for specific things you’ve written or convert your writing into text to make it more legible.
Occasional writers might not notice these features are absent. Ditto for folks who mainly want a Scribe for books — this is definitely still a reading-first device. In an email, an Amazon spokesperson said the Scribe was “inspired” by the people who have been highlighting and leaving notes in their Kindle books for years. Fine, but when you consider the last time Amazon debuted a new big-screen Kindle reader was more than a decade ago, I’m a little surprised it didn’t flesh out its writing tools a little more.
People who want to see more. The Scribe has a 10.2-inch display, the largest Amazon has ever squeezed into a Kindle. That means you can now view more of a book at a glance, or — if your eyes aren’t what they used to be — really crank up the font size.
People who hate charging gadgets. Gadgets with e-paper displays have a reputation for long battery life, and so far, the Scribe is no exception. Unless you’re reading 24/7, expect it to last a few weeks on a single charge.
People who write notes in book margins. As a digital notebook, the Scribe is basic at best. But scribbling observations in books you’re reading — plus exporting and reviewing them later — works well enough.
People who work with complex documents. You can import and write on top of Word documents and PDFs, but Amazon says you can’t mark up files that include large tables. And if you work with lots of long PDF papers, you may see the Scribe hesitate when you try to swipe into a new page. (It doesn’t always happen, but it can really slow you down if you’re looking for something specific.)
Folks who keep files in the cloud. The Scribe can’t connect to services like Dropbox or Google Drive, which means getting to work on the documents you have stored there takes some work. And if you want to get things you’ve written off the Scribe, you have two options: email them to yourself, or view (but not save) them in the Kindle app on your phone or tablet.
Those who like to read in the tub. Many of Amazon’s other recent Kindles can survive the occasional spill or splash. Not so for the company’s most expensive Kindle — you may want to think twice before packing it for a beach day.
What the marketing doesn’t mention
Other devices can make reading a little easier. iPads and Android tablets can run Amazon’s Kindle app, which includes one helpful feature that the Scribe lacks: a two-column view when you hold your gadget horizontally. It feels ever-so-slightly more like reading an actual book, and its absence here will be a real bummer for some.
You can just drag and drop files onto the Scribe. Using Amazon’s Send to Kindle website to send files to the Scribe is easy enough, and it hasn’t taken more than a couple of minutes to arrive. But if you’re somewhere you can’t get online — or if you don’t want Amazon as a middle man — you can transfer files with the included USB cable.
You can fill it with books you didn’t buy from Amazon. Okay, fine, the Scribe’s product page does technically mention this. But it’s worth repeating that you can move digital books in the EPUB format you didn’t buy from Amazon onto the Scribe. So far, the books I’ve tested this with look the way they’re supposed to, but your mileage may vary.
What are the alternatives?
If the Scribe is an e-book reader first, digital notebook second, the reMarkable 2 is the exact opposite. You can’t buy books on one, though loading it up with files to read is trivial. And the lack of any built-in lighting means reading in bed may require turning on a lamp.
What really shines, though, is how it approaches writing and organization. The features I mentioned the Scribe lacking — like moving around snippets of writing and handwriting-to-text conversion — work wonderfully here. The reMarkable also includes more options to customize your pen strokes, plus support for cloud services like Google Drive and Dropbox for easier access to your files.
The catch: The reMarkable doesn’t come with a free stylus — that’ll cost you at least an extra $79. The full package costs more than the Scribe, but people eager to be productive may get more out of reMarkable’s features.
Meanwhile, the $599 Onyx Boox Tab Ultra is the most ambitious digital notebook I’ve ever seen. It has a processor fast enough to play HD video, a camera for scanning documents, and runs on a custom version of Android. That means you can install Amazon’s Kindle app — or the Kobo Store, or Libby — and read books from almost anywhere.
The catch: The software is, quite frankly, a mess. You don’t need to poke around for long before running into confusing menu options, and app crashes aren’t uncommon.