Donald Trump is many things. A former president. A twice-impeached president. An instigator of an insurrection. A reality television star. As much as he tried, he will most likely never be president again, because if the midterms proved anything, he is not popular enough even within his own party to run for president again. And, according to Apple, he is not interesting enough to be the subject of a television series anymore.
A report from The Ankler this week says that Apple has canceled its plans to develop a television series about the life of the former president. Apple quietly optioned the rights to adapt journalist Maggie Haberman’s book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America into a series a few months ago. Haberman’s book was released in October by Penguin Press. Here’s a description of the New York Times bestseller from the publisher:
“Interviews with hundreds of sources and numerous interviews over the years with Trump himself portray a complicated and often contradictory historical figure. Capable of kindness but relying on casual cruelty as it suits his purposes. Pugnacious. Insecure. Lonely. Vindictive. Menacing. Smarter than his critics contend and colder and more calculating than his allies believe. A man who embedded himself in popular culture, galvanizing support for a run for high office that he began preliminary spadework for 30 years ago, to ultimately become a president who pushed American democracy to the brink.”
Apple was smart to abandon this project: a Trump series does not fit in really well with the likes of Foundation, Severance, Mythic Quest, Ted Lasso, or Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me. And also, absolutely no one wants to see this anyway. The Trump Era is a part of American history that is best never, ever fictionalized.
Vanna White has long been a mainstay on the Wheel Of Fortune stage, working on the show long enough to see several different big boards come and go in the process. The job has changed a bit, too: she’s no longer spinning physical letters around but activating them electronically. And, honestly, it seems like a pretty good gig! But not everyone seems on board with the occupation, and we now know that one of her contemporaries overseas apparently despised their role of “turning bloody letters around.”
According to The Daily Mail, Jenny Powell wasn’t a big fan of her Vanna White-esque job on the UK version of Wheel of Fortune in the 90s. Powell first appeared on the UK version of Wheel in 1995, and it helped launch her career. But it turns out she was never a big fan of the work itself, saying “you’re just turning letters round and not saying anything” when discussing the gig on a new podcast.
She shared: ‘I ended up doing The Wheel of Fortune, which I hated it. It was the biggest thing, but I hated it. Because I was just a girl turning bl***y letters around.’
…
She said: ‘If someone said to you, right Jenny you are going to wear a really short skirt and we are all going to discuss the length of it for like four meetings, wear high heel shoes and turn some letters around and just look pretty and don’t say anything.’
‘Would you, do it? I know what I would tell my daughter today. I wasn’t actually allowed to speak.’
Simplifying the job to just turning letters seems a bit unfair, but Powell’s real criticism here is that she wasn’t allowed to inject any personality into the role. Couple that with what sounds like demeaning meetings about wardrobe and it’s easy to understand why she wasn’t thrilled with the work. And a quick look at some episodes on YouTube showcases that dissonance between what Powell likely wanted from the role and what she was forced to do.
There’s significantly more back and forth between Powell and host John Leslie than you normally see between White and US host Pat Sajak, who save their brief banter for the end of the show. Either way, Powell made it clear that she wouldn’t recommend anyone else take on the “glamorous assistant” role anytime soon.
The Fast franchise is known for its exponential nature. The series that started about driving post-production modified cars with your pals at night and maybe doing light crimes has turned into a full-fledged heists and international espionage movie phenomenon. Good guys (and girls) become bad guys become good guys again, and then everyone sits down for a beer they grip precariously by the bottle neck.
This is a series that’s flown cars across skyscrapers and mountain landscapes and even sent people into space. The only thing that’s certain about what the next movie will contain is that it will be increasingly ridiculous and, probably, very watchable. And now we know it will also cost a huge amount of money to make it happen. Like, on an increasingly large scale of production costs compared to previous films.
According to The Wrap, a number of factors have caused the budget for the penultimate Fast movie in the franchise to skyrocket, to the tune of 70 percent more than Fast 9 cost to make.
The budget for “Fast X,” the 10th film in Universal’s lucrative “Fast & Furious” action franchise, has ballooned to $340 million, according to individuals with knowledge of the production. That’s 70% more than the reported $200 million budget for 2021’s “F9: The Fast Saga,” and easily the most expensive entry in an action series that has generated $6.6 billion worldwide in ticket sales.
The surging price tag, which factors in tax-incentive offsets, can be blamed on numerous budget-busting elements: increased salaries for series star Vin Diesel and the rest of the franchise’s ensemble cast, general increases in production costs caused by global inflation and charges for pandemic testing requirements mandated by COVID-19 safety protocols.
As the report indicates, the series has made billions in ticket sales through its nine-movie run thus far. So it’s likely that everyone involved will get their money’s worth regardless of the film’s quality. But it certainly sets a high bar for profitability in an era where getting people to the movies has become more difficult. Perhaps part of Diesel’s salary includes some trailers imploring people to experience the majesty of the silver screen because they’ll certainly need butts in seats to afford a final Fast movie to finish the saga.
This year’s been a long one for Ukrainians (and Russians) after Vladimir Putin decided to wage an imperialistic war. This move quickly backfired with Ukrainians (including grandmas) refusing to accept defeat and Russian army numbers dwindling to such a point that Putin called up hundreds of thousands of replacements, who are abandoning tanks after being told that there’s no medical care, sorry, and please bring tampons to treat your own bullet wounds. It’s no wonder that, along the way, we’ve heard mutterings about how Putin’s underlings were secretly maneuvering to install a successor, should he be found incapable of continuing to lead. And it sure sounds like they got closer to doing so this week while the world awaited fallout from the stray (mystery) missile that killed two people in Poland.
Previously, independent Russia news outlet Meduza had revealed that Putin’s henchmen were (via The Daily Beast) tiptoeing around with “an understanding, or a desire, that in the fairly foreseeable future he will not run the country.” Amid missile gate, Putin’s inner circle reportedly prepped themselves for imminent action to oust and replace the president at a moment’s notice. Also from The Daily Beast, it sounds like a relevant Telegram channel (apparently run by an ex-Russia security services member) detailed how high-ranking Russian security dudes consulted each other and plotted:
“Knowing Putin’s penchant for raising the stakes through escalation, … this group of security officials quickly became convinced that in response to a Russian strike on a country included in NATO there could be both a retaliatory strike and an ultimatum.”
So, according to the channel, they decided that “if the U.S. leadership and the adjoining countries show readiness for a harsh response, then the best way out would be to remove the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, from power and create a collegial council of security officials to ‘temporarily’ take control of the country into their own hands … blaming all the problems on either a seriously ill or law-breaking president.”
As it turns out, there’s been no immediate action from Poland, the U.S., or NATO at large, so this could all be moot, at least until the next stray missile rolls out. Or when Putin officially runs out of Botox, which seems like only a matter of time, given that he’s tanked the Russian economy and earned pariah status for his country. But yeah, we have to have Botox jokes to cope with the enormity of this entire conflict. What a disaster.
In a move that will surprise absolutely no one given her MAGA credentials, Arizona gubernatorial candidate (and Todd from Breaking Bad fanatic) Kari Lake has refused to concede in her race against Democratic challenger Katie Hobbs. In a message to her supporters on Thursday, Lake promised/threatened that her legal team is carefully scrutinizing the results.
“Rest assured, I have assembled the best and brightest legal team and we are exploring every avenue to correct the many wrongs that have been done this past week,” Lake said in the video. “I’m doing everything in my power to right these wrongs.”
Throughout her campaign, Lake has notably side-stepped questions about accepting election results. To make matters worse, she’s reportedly flown to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump who knows a thing or two about making a giant stink after losing an election. Via The Washington Post:
Kari Lake, who was projected Monday to lose her race for governor of Arizona, traveled Thursday to former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, according to two people familiar with the activity. One of the people said she received a standing ovation when she entered a luncheon hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a think tank founded last year by Trump allies and former members of his administration. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private events.
Considering almost every Trump-backed candidate lost during the midterm elections, which has turned a significant swath of the Republican Party against him, the former president has a vested interest in seeing Lake win her election. However, the last time he tried to overturn election results, a throng of MAGA rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, so we should probably keep an eye on these two. Just to be safe.
For the last few days, much of the talk around the NFL has been about the weather expected in Buffalo as the Bills were set to host the Browns. A massive snowstorm is expected to sweep through the area off of Lake Erie starting on Thursday night, with some models projecting 2-4 feet of snow accumulation, along with strong winds in the area.
As such, there was concern from some about whether the game could be played in Orchard Park or if it would need to be moved (as has actually happened in the past in a Browns-Bills game), as playing a football game outside in a snowstorm can be difficult, to say the least. On Thursday, the league decided to proactively move the game to Detroit, with the Lions on the road at the Giants, where the Bills will play back-to-back games — as the home team against Cleveland and then again on Thanksgiving against the Lions.
Due to public safety concerns and out of an abundance of caution in light of the ongoing weather emergency in western New York, Sunday’s game against the Browns will be moved to Ford Field in Detroit.
The game will still be a 1 p.m. ET kickoff on CBS, but obviously is moving indoors at Ford Field in Detroit. While both teams play in the elements in their home stadiums, the Bills have a bit more experience with the specific unique weather of Buffalo, playing fairly regularly in snow and wind with a quarterback who feels those effects less than others in Josh Allen given his ability to run and also his preposterous arm strength. That won’t be a factor now in Detroit, where the Bills will spend a full week in a rare situation for NFL teams.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Thor is back once again and he brought some new friends with him. Natalie Portman, to be specific. Which is fun. This follow-up to the also-fun Ragnarok has made the move from theaters to streaming and into your living rooms. That’s another fun thing. It is almost unreasonable how good Chris Hemsworth is in these movies. You should not be allowed to look like that and be that funny. Someone should make a rule about it. Until then… watch it on Disney Plus.
If you’re missing Key & Peele, we have some good news for you. Multiple seasons of the Comedy Central series will arrive on Netflix in November, so you can get your Hingle McCringleberry on, right from the comfort of your living room. In the meantime, you can enjoy Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s voices (along with that of Angela Bassett) as they play plotting demons who tangle with a teen who digs punk rock. Watch it on Netflix.
Sorry to Mariah Carey but Lindsay Lohan is taking her place as the rightful queen of the holiday season this year. Her throne sits atop the bones of all the Hallmark movies she had to slaughter to get here and every Netflix Christmas flick that follows in her wake will shudder when those first few bars of “Jingle Bell Rock” begin to play. This is the future every millennial raised on The Parent Trap — and the Disney Channel Original movie Life-Size starring Tyra Banks — has manifested. In all seriousness though, this thing looks cute. Lohan plays a hotel heiress who, after a skiing accident, loses her memory and must live amongst the peasants of a snowy mountain town. While there she bonds with a sheriff/single-dad played by Glee’s Chord Overstreet and, presumably, realizes her former life wasn’t as picture perfect as she thought. Watch it on Netflix.
Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne star in a mostly fictionalized account of Charlie Cullen, a New Jersey nurse who was found responsible for dozens of murders of patients over a 16-year period. The star power is here and everyone seems to love semi-true stories about serial killers lately so there’s at least even money odds that this sucker takes off. Just don’t watch it before you have a doctor appointment. That would not be fun. Watch it on Netflix.
Jennifer Lawrence ended her mini-acting hiatus with last year’s Don’t Look Up, but she was part of an ensemble cast with other A-listers. The Oscar winner is front and center (along with Atlanta great Brian Tyree Henry) in A24’s Causeway as a soldier who struggles to adjust to her life after returning home to New Orleans. It’s the kind of movie that she hasn’t made since her breakout performance in Winter’s Bone — and it looks just as good. Watch it on Apple TV+.
Cringe-inducing festival appearances and celebrity break-ups heralded by salad dressing recipe sharing aside, Olivia Wilde’s second directorial effort is a very pretty, very fun watch. Most of that is because of Florence Pugh, who plays a young housewife slowly descending into madness once the cracks of her perfect suburban existence begin to show. The rest is thanks to an intriguing plot that keeps you guessing until the very end, a capable supporting cast (and yes, we count Harry Styles amongst them), and Chris Pine, who seems to be having the time of his life playing a suave pseudo-cult leader who favors unbuttoned shirts and misogynistic family hierarchies. Watch it on HBO Max.
Thank goodness Henry Cavill didn’t sign on to play Superman again before filming this sequel, or there’d be another The Witcher-esque switcheroo in the works. Cavill is back, but more importantly, Millie Bobbie Brown returns as the sassy younger sister of Sherlock Holmes. One of the bigger plot finds roots in the real-life Bryant & May match factory atrocities, but somehow, the overall mood stays light. Enola sets up her own detective shingle and goes undercover, so you can only imagine what hijinks will ensue. Watch it on Netflix.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic, obviously. The fake biopic depicts the world’s premier polka-loving pop song parodist as a hard-drinking sex maniac, obviously. It also stars Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey, and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, obviously. Should you watch Weird: The Al Yankovic Story this weekend on the Roku Channel? Obviously.
Amy Adams returns in her breakout role, but she’s a princess who actually isn’t having as much fun as she imagined would be the case. Giselle is still married to Robert (Patrick Dempsey), and they’re still searching for their fairy tale. Maya Rudolph climbs onboard for a semi-evil role as a villain of suburbia, and this is all very G-rated material again because c’mon, Disney. The story will be as charming as always, but the real attraction is James Marsden’s returning Idiot Prince. Basically, I just want the Idiot Prince to get plowed down at every opportunity again. Watch it on Disney Plus.
Ralphie is back, over 30 years later, and he’s returning to the hometown where everything went down the first time around. Is this pretty much just nostalgia bait? Sure. Did anyone really need to know what Ralphie is up to in 2022? Probably not. Are you going to watch it anyway and end up charmed by the whole thing, up to and including the part where they actually got Peter Billingsly to reprise his role from the original? Hmm. We bet you are. Watch it on HBO Max.
Apple TV+ is getting into the Christmas movie game with this musically inclined re-telling of that classic Dickens tales. Ryan Reynolds plays the modern-day Scrooge here, a guy named Clint Briggs who doesn’t take his holiday haunting lying down. Will Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present who’s determined to inject a bit of cheer into the proceedings no matter how many musical numbers and tap-dancing solos it takes. As far as Charles Dickens adaptations go, you could do a lot worse. Watch it on Apple TV Plus.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Imagine if Lost took place on a transatlantic steamboat and you’ve got the gist of this mystery-drama. Made by the same twisted geniuses that gave us Netflix’s Dark series, this show follows a group of passengers hailing from all over Europe who find themselves stuck on a cursed ship bound for America. After the recent disappearance of another company ship months earlier, everyone on board is a bit on-edge and the tension only escalates when passengers start dying, weird time loops start popping up, and a boy who should be dead arrives with an ominous-looking pyramid that makes everything go haywire. Watch it on Netflix.
You’ve surely seen the 1990s movie starring Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, and Kirsten Dunst, and now, Anne Rice’s most popular gothic novel gets the small-screen adaptation. Great news: this version is better than the film for several reasons. Jacob Anderson of Game of Thrones gives us a very different Louis while Sam Reid swaggers about as Lestat de Lioncourt, and Claudia’s story gets expanded with Bailey Bass giving us a brazen and tragic performance and a secondary narrative framing device. The leading duo takes their sexual tension out of the closet, too, which adds a lot of layers (and fun) to this update. Watch it on AMC Plus.
Sylvester Stallone portrays a mafia capo who’s not swimming with the fishes. However, he might as well be on Mars in this Taylor Sheridan-created series that takes him to Route 66 and the land of the Golden Driller. Tulsa’s experiencing a hotspot-like effect these days in the midst of Reservation Dogs and following Watchmen, but it’s going to be quite pleasurable to see him as the O.G. who’s dropping a “nice little place you got here” in a weed dispensary. This show looks to be full of 1980s-style one-liners that could put the Sly and Arnold movies of yesteryear to shame. Watch it on Paramount Plus.
Emily Blunt can kick some butt even while wearing a ridiculous array of aristocratic-type dresses. That’s not the main highlight of this series, believe it or not. Rather, we’ve got a worthy Western story that pairs two well-matched contenders as they battle the nefarious forces that be. Cartoonish villains rear up in this parable, which tells a tale of power and destiny and what America does when it digs inside of one’s soul. Also, the show is stunning to look at and incredibly well-lit, unlike plenty of other movies and shows that will give you a squint-induced headache. Watch it on Amazon Prime.
How do you end a show the “right” way? Do you try to say something profound, pay off longtime viewers with fan service, or end with a shocking twist? For Dead To Me‘s just-released final season, the answer is an emphatic yes to all of the above as creator Liz Feldman delivers a triumphant close, leaning on the otherworldly onscreen chemistry of stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as they lead us through the twisty chaos of the show’s central story while dealing with heavy matters of life, family. love, and death before ending on high with a tear and a tease. Watch it on Netflix.
It’s easy to think of Mythic Quest, now in its fourth season, as Rob McElhenney’s “other” show, but that would be a mistake. Yes, sure, he’s best known for the incredibly long-running Always Sunny, which is fair because that show rules. But this one is great, too. It’s sweet and mean and funny and everything a workplace comedy — this time in a video game studio — should be. No television show did a better job of grasping the pandemic while it was still new and really scary, too. Do not miss this because you relegate it to second-tier Mac status. This is the good stuff, too. Watch it on Apple TV Plus.
Revenge dresses. Extramarital affairs. Royal yacht refurbishments. The Crown’s fifth season ramps up the melodrama to deliciously enjoyable levels as Elizabeth Debicki channels Princes Diana and Dominic West steps into Prince Charles’ (less desirable) shoes. Though the conflict between the couple spurs much of the action this season, there’s still room for Imelda Staunton (who plays Queen Elizabeth II this time around) and Lesley Manville (as Princess Margaret) to give some spectacular performances that ground the soap opera vibes a bit. If anything, this season draws a clear line between the supposed pros and very apparent cons of the British monarchy, showing how the fallout of their familial squabbles had very real consequences for their subjects. Watch it on Netflix.
George Lucas has frequently insisted that, like Wu-Tang Clan, Star Wars is for the children. But Andor sure looks like it’s geared more towards adults. The Rogue One prequel starring Diego Luna, reprising his role as Cassian Andor, is gritty, mature, and other words you use to describe movies and TV shows that aren’t messing around. And with this being the first Disney-era Star Wars show to be filmed in real-life locations, Andor isn’t messing around. Watch it on Disney Plus.
I hear what you’re thinking here. The title of this show doesn’t sound particularly fascinating. Maybe it even sounds a little bit pretentious. Yet this show’s actually a satiric little jaunt that turns marriage-divorce drama on its head. Jesse Eisenberg plays the dude whose wife, played by Claire Danes, leaves him and then quite literally leaves the building. He’s suddenly in the midst of parenting and awful dating experiences, and all of this wouldn’t be as fascinating if Eisenberg wasn’t so good at being awkward. He’s flanked by Lizzy Caplan and Adam Brody (there are worse companions out there) while trying to find his way. Watch it on Hulu.
The first season of Abbott Elementary was a feel-good network sitcom that caught a massive wave of popularity and won a bunch of Emmys in a time when feel-good network sitcoms are kind of not supposed to do that. Credit for this goes to creator and star Quinta Brunson, who realized that an underfunded inner-city public school was exactly the right place to show us people with good hearts working inside a system that can be cold. Kind of like Parks and Recreation but in Philadelphia. The second season is underway and does not appear to be missing a beat. This is basically a miracle, all around. Watch it on Hulu.
The first season of The White Lotus took the world and the internet by storm with its combination of misery and drama and beautiful Hawaiian scenery. Season two takes the action to a new resort in the White Lotus chain, this one in Italy, and replaces almost the entire cast. “Almost” being the key word here because Jennifer Coolidge is back as Tanya. Which is good. More shows should be about Jennifer Coolidge going to fancy hotels around the world. This is a nice start. Watch it on HBO Max.
So you know how Sony has been making movies about Spider-Man characters like Venom and Morbius, but they don’t actually have Spider-Man in them due to a convoluted rights-sharing agreement with Marvel? Well, surprise! Sony is bringing that whole mess to streaming.
Starting with the new live-action series, Silk: Spider Society, Amazon will become the new home for the confusingly expanding Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which again, does not actually have Spider-Man in it. (For now.) The series will feature Marvel Comics character Cindy Moon, a classmate of Peter Parker who also got bitten by the same radioactive spider and became the similarly spider-powered hero, Silk. Angela Kang (The Walking Dead) will act as showrunner with Chris Miller and Phil Lord (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) executive producing. Still with us? Okay. Great.
“We can’t wait to bring the adventures of Cindy Moon to life, thanks to the creative dream team of Chris and Phil, Angela and Amy, along with our partners at Marvel and Amazon,” said Katherine Pope, president of Sony Pictures Television Studios. “We know this exciting series with new and never-before-seen characters and storylines will wow audiences watching first on linear MGM+ and then around the world on Prime Video.”
Oh yeah, that’s right. Before the live-action Silk series hits Amazon, it will first premiere on MGM+, which is apparently a thing that exists. Although, in fairness, that additional step does add an extra layer of confusion to the whole process, which is entirely on brand for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe that does not have Spider-Man in it.
As Taylor Swift fans curse out Ticketmaster, let’s take a moment to appreciate a service (mostly) working like it’s supposed to. House of the Dragon was a hit, with viewership in the tens of millions, but HBO’s streaming service HBO Max held up pretty dang well with the traffic surges on Sunday nights. It took months of tests to get there.
“Preparation for something as big as House of the Dragon starts like six months before,” Avi Saxena, Warner Bros. Discovery’s Chief Technology Officer, told The Streamable. “We do a lot of events on our platforms, like the Olympics in Europe, and every time we have a very big tentpole event, we start like six months before to make sure the teams and the platform are ready for it.”
To make sure HBO Max wouldn’t crash with every new episode of House of the Dragon, a team was assembled (I’m picturing dragons in glasses and lab coats). The “special operation” was called the “Project House of the Dragon Reliability,” or “Project HODR,” which Saxena called “appropriate for the project. I think these project code names are very important to get the teams excited to rally behind the project.” It’s a fitting name, even if it brings back a flood of emotions, but, I would have gone with Operation HotD.
From there, they turn their attention to making sure that their systems are able to handle the volume of viewers that will be tuning in on a weekly basis. “Load testing basically creates the simulated load on our services,” Saxena said. “Every time you run load [testing], you identify a bottleneck, [or something that] did not work. We go back, fix that, rerun it… And this exercise continues until we successfully run the test end-to-end for all the services.”
If that’s too much techno-babble for you, maybe this will help:
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