Latest news with #Fielder
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
With ‘The Rehearsal,' Nathan Fielder needs his own Emmy category
Yes, Tom Cruise will soon own an Oscar. But has he ever flown a Boeing 737 with 150 passengers on board? I'm Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter, here to explain why Nathan Fielder should be the Top Gun of this Emmy season. The second season of Nathan Fielder's brilliantly bonkers 'The Rehearsal' opens inside a commercial jet cockpit where the plane's captain and first officer are having a tense exchange as they prepare to land at a fogged-in runway. The first officer suggests they're off course. The captain disagrees but is soon proved wrong as the plane crashes. We see the pilots slumped in the cockpit, dead. Then the camera pans to Fielder, surveying the fiery aftermath, a disaster he just re-created in a simulator on a soundstage. With that prelude, it may seem strange to tell you that I laughed out loud as many times watching 'The Rehearsal' as I did any other TV series this season. Not during the simulated disasters, of course, which Fielder used to illustrate what he believes to be biggest issue in airline travel today — pilots failing to communicate during a crisis. So, yes, 'The Rehearsal' is about airline safety. Mostly. But Fielder is a master of misdirection. There is no way you can predict where he'll direct his premise, and I found myself delighting in utter surprise at the tangents he took in 'The Rehearsal' this season. An alternate biopic of pilot Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger, with Fielder playing Sully from diapered baby to the Evanescence-loving hero landing in the Hudson River? Yes! Re-creating the German subsidiary of Paramount+ as a Nazi headquarters? OK! Vacuuming up air from San Jose to help train a cloned dog in Los Angeles while he attempts to understand how the nature-vs.-nurture dynamic might play out in human behavior? Ummmmm ... sure. We'll go with it! With Fielder's incisive mind, the detours are everything. Even the destination this season came as a jolt. Yes, it involves that Boeing 737 I mentioned in the intro, and, no, I'm not going to elaborate because I still feel like not enough people have watched 'The Rehearsal.' The series' first two seasons are available on HBO, as are all four seasons of Fielder's Comedy Central docuseries 'Nathan for You,' which had Fielder 'helping' small-business owners improve their sales. (Example: Pitching a Santa Clarita liquor store owner that he should sell booze to minors but just not let them take it home until they turned 21.) The humor in 'The Rehearsal' can be just as outrageous as 'Nathan for You,' but the overall tone is more thoughtful, as it also explores loneliness and the masks we all wear at times to hide our alienation. For the Emmys, HBO has submitted 'The Rehearsal' in the comedy categories. Where else would they put it? But the show is so singular that I wonder if even its fans in the Television Academy will remember to vote for it. They should. It's funny, insightful, occasionally terrifying, utterly unforgettable. And I hope Isabella Henao, the winner of the series' reality show competition, goes places. She sure can sing! Meanwhile, that other pilot, Tom Cruise, will finally receive an Oscar, an honorary one, in November at the Governors Awards, alongside production designer Wynn Thomas and choreographer and actor Debbie Allen. Dolly Parton, singer, actor and beloved icon, will be given the annual Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her charitable work. Cruise has been nominated for three acting Oscars over the years — for playing Marine Corps Sgt. Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone's 1989 antiwar movie 'Born on the Fourth of July,' the sports agent who had Renée Zellweger at hello in Cameron Crowe's 1996 classic 'Jerry Maguire' and the chauvinistic motivational speaker in Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 opus 'Magnolia.' Cruise was also nominated as a producer for 2022's dad cinema favorite 'Top Gun: Maverick.' Cruise should have won the supporting actor Oscar for 'Magnolia,' a ferocious turn in which he harnessed his strutting brashness to play an odious character hiding a deep well of pain. It came the same year as his star turn opposite then-wife Nicole Kidman in 'Eyes Wide Shut.' Not a bad double feature! Instead, Michael Caine won for 'Cider House Rules' during an Oscar era in which there was seemingly no prize Harvey Weinstein couldn't land. It wasn't even Caine's first Oscar; he had already won for 'Hannah and Her Sisters.' Cruise has devoted himself to commercial action movies, mostly of the 'Mission: Impossible' variety, for the past two decades. He did recently complete filming a comedy with director Alejandro González Iñárritu, scheduled for release next year. It'd be funny if Cruise wins a competitive Oscar after picking up an honorary one. It happened with Paul Newman, Cruise's co-star in 'The Color of Money.'
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Yahoo
Fined for feeding the ducks and picking up litter. How ‘Stasi-like' councils are ripping off Britain
While serious criminal behaviour all too often goes unpunished, councils across the country are increasingly issuing fines for misdemeanours as innocuous as putting the bins out early or feeding the ducks. After one west London man was penalised with a fixed penalty notice (FPN) for putting his bins out early last month – more on which below – the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick, warned that local authorities were veering into 'Stasi-like control of people's lives'. 'Instead of cracking down on genuine antisocial behaviour, the state tries to reassert itself by punishing well-meaning people for tiny infringements,' he told The Telegraph. 'It's the easy thing to do but it's counter-productive and unfair.' Indeed, on-the-spot penalties – condemned by critics as 'busybody fines' – have been rising for years. Data show such fines soared by 42 per cent in the year to 2023, resulting in nearly 20,000 FPNs being dished out, according to research conducted by civil liberties group the Manifesto Club. Although nominally aimed at cracking down on offences such as loitering and littering (offering local authorities a way to deal with relatively minor transgressions outside of court), the seemingly heavy-handed use of these penalties in a justice system where people convicted of grave crimes are often handed short or suspended sentences seems ever more unjustifiable. Here are some of the most egregious examples… Martin Fielder had given up his job to care for his young children after the death of his wife when he was hit with a £500 fine and the threat of a criminal record in February this year. His misdemeanour? An errant envelope that he suspects flew out of his recycling bin. After the envelope had been found by a council warden 250ft from his house, Fielder was accused of fly-tipping in a letter sent by District Enforcement, a private contractor of Welwyn Hatfield borough council that issues FPNs on commission. The ensuing back-and-forth with the council, he said, has left him in a state of 'constant anxiety'. 'The letter stated that if the fine was not paid within 28 days, the matter would be referred to the magistrates' court, where I could go to prison for up to 12 months or receive a bigger fine, or both,' Fielder told The Guardian newspaper. Fielder explained that strong winds the night before could have caused the packaging to fly out of his recycling bin, and the company downgraded the charge to a £100 littering fine. He is now deciding whether to challenge the penalty in court. As in Fielder's case, the administration of FPNs is often outsourced from cash-strapped councils to third-party contractors, prompting critics to suggest the system is used to replenish local authorities' coffers and wide open to exploitation. Indeed, the Manifesto Club's research indicated that the 39 local authorities which employed private enforcement companies were behind 14,633 of the penalties served in 2023, while 261 councils that did not issued just 4,529 by comparison. 'While councils fire off fixed penalty notices for fly-away envelopes, real criminals are being let off the hook,' says William Yarwood of the TaxPayers' Alliance. 'Taxpayers will be rightly jaded that trivial mishaps are being met with extortionate fines. Councils need to make sure that the private companies they hire don't have skewed incentives that encourage the handing out of fines merely to make a profit.' In November last year, Harrow council issued a five-year-old girl with a £1,000 FPN that claimed she had been 'witnessed by a uniformed officer… committing the offence of fly-tipping'. What had actually happened, according to the girl's father, was that parcel packaging with her name on it had been found on a neighbouring street due to overfilled communal bins. The child was then sent a 'final reminder' letter from the local authority's enforcement team the month after, which advised that it was 'about to instruct the council's legal team to start court proceedings'. Her father branded the fine 'absurd' and, after failing to resolve the issue himself, went to a ward surgery held by his local councillor. The issue was then raised at a council cabinet meeting, after which APCOA, the private contractor used by Harrow council to issue FPNs, apologised and the fine was dropped. Faye Borg, 82, was in Morden Hall Park, a National Trust property, in August last year when she was fined £150 for feeding the ducks. She was approached by two council wardens, who issued an FPN that said a 'female was seen throwing biscuits' into the River Wandle. Borg alleges that the two wardens, who worked for Kingdom, a company contracted to provide environmental enforcement services to local authorities, followed her to her doorstep, demanding she 'pay the fine on the spot'. Merton council subsequently apologised, sent a senior member to Borg's home with flowers, and said it was 'taking this matter up with our contractor to ensure that it does not happen again'. 'These kinds of absurd fines exist only because the companies are being paid per fine,' says Josie Appleton, the founder of the Manifesto Club. 'The Government is reviewing fining for profit, but it's taking far too long to do something about it. So long as wardens are being paid per fine, this is going to happen, no matter how many regulations are in place.' Hammersmith and Fulham council fined Clyde Strachan £1,000 for 'fly-tipping' in May when he put his bins out a few hours early. The 37-year-old was going away from his home for a few days, so he put his rubbish and recycling out at midday the day before the refuse was due to be collected. 'I deliberately put them out of the way on the pavement, tucked to one side against the wall so they weren't in anyone's way,' he said. 'It meant I had put them out about six or seven hours before… I would normally take them there.' When he returned home, however, he was issued with a £1,000 FPN, reduced to £500 if it were paid early. It stated: 'There was one large box, six bags of waste, and one food bin deposited on the pavement and left. It isn't collection day so it shouldn't be there.' The penalty was cancelled after Strachan appealed. He argued it was 'excessive' given he had made an 'honest mistake'. Last month, Richard Cameron, 45, was found guilty of four cycling offences for pedalling down Victoria Street in Grimsby town centre, which is subject to a public spaces protection order intended to deal with recurrent antisocial behaviour. In a press release, North East Lincolnshire council said that Cameron had received four FPNs for 'recurrent cycling offences' but 'had not paid the fines and was therefore summoned to Grimsby magistrates' court'. It continued: 'Also being prosecuted that day was Viktorija Kosareva, 28, of Smith Square, Doncaster, who was summoned for not paying an FPN she received for walking her dog on Cleethorpes beach when not permitted to do so… Neither individual attended court and both were proven guilty in their absence.' Cameron was ordered to pay £1,224, consisting of a £660 fine, £264 victim surcharge and costs of £300. Rubbish dumped on Veronika Mike and Zoltan Pinter's street in Stoke-on-Trent had started to attract rats, so they took matters into their own hands. The couple said the area had been blighted with 'disgusting' litter for years and 'just wanted it clean', so collected the refuse into an old cardboard box – addressed to Pinter – that he placed by his bins in the hope that it would be taken away by Stoke-on-Trent city council. 'I couldn't put it in the bins because they were full, so I left it beside them,' he said. A week later, Pinter was issued an FPN for 'an offence of failing to transfer waste to an authorised person', and fined £600. Mike was fined the same, despite her name not appearing on the cardboard box. The couple are paying the penalty in monthly instalments. When Violet Cooper, 38, arrived to collect Juliet, her lost chow-chow dog, in August last year, she was issued with a notice requiring her to update the microchip details within 21 days (microchipping has been compulsory for pet cats and dogs since April 2016). Cooper failed to do so, and last month was found guilty at Salisbury magistrates' court of failing to comply with the notice. She was fined £847.59 – a fine of £220, plus £539.59 in costs and an £88 victim surcharge. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Nathan Fielder blasts ‘dumb' FAA response to The Rehearsal plane crash claims
Nathan Fielder has blasted the Federal Aviation Administration in a new interview with CNN. Fielder is behind the HBO show The Rehearsal, which used outlandish methods during its recently concluded second season to examine very real issues surrounding the ability of co-pilots to communicate clearly with one another. The comedian, 42, joined CNN's The Situation Room Thursday morning to discuss the show's second season and the aviation issues it thrust into the spotlight. In addition to anchors Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown, Fielder was joined by former National Transportation Safety Board member John Goglia, who also appeared on The Rehearsal. Brown shared the FAA's statement to CNN responding to Fielder's claims that communication issues between pilots are causing crashes, saying the FAA "requires all airline crewmembers (pilots and flight attendants) and dispatchers to complete Crew Resource Management training.' The FAA also said it isn't seeing data to support Fielder's claims. But Fielder instantly slammed the statement as 'dumb.' 'Here's the issue: I trained to be a pilot. I'm a 737 pilot. I went through the training,' Fielder started. 'The training is someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying, 'If you are a co-pilot and the captain does something wrong, you need to speak up about it.' That's all. That's the training, and they talk about some crashes that happen, but they don't do anything that makes it stick emotionally.' Fielder was pleading the case for additional communication training for pilots, and Goglia agreed the need exists. 'In aviation, we've long known that communications has been an issue,' Goglia said on CNN. 'And we've — we have dealt with it effectively through crew resource management. But what Nathan has uncovered was a little sliver that has fallen through the cracks and with these communications disconnect between pilots.' The new comments come after Fielder's appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, in which he confirmed that he had genuinely spent two and a half years obtaining his license to fly a Boeing 747 for the show's shocking season two finale. 'So I trained for almost two-and-a-half years and worked my way up through private pilot, instrument, commercial, and I got a 737 type rating, so I am a licensed 737 pilot,' he shared. The comedian again shared his belief that poor communication between pilots has been a leading contributing factor in many plane crashes. 'That's why I went as far as becoming a 737 pilot, because I wanted to demonstrate that on a regular flight where two pilots are just trying their best, that communication between the co-pilots, captain and first officer, can be a struggle,' he explained. Giving further details about how the final episode came together, he added: 'I found someone who would lease me a 737. It's very hard to convince someone to lease a comedian a 737, but I found someone to do it and we chartered a real flight over the Mojave desert. We went from San Bernardino round to Las Vegas and then looped back, with cameras filming the whole time. 'You can see that we're both trying our best to communicate, and it's a struggle. I do think, and this is in the show, and you can see it, that when people look back at this 'Miracle over the Mojave', that they can see a turning point in aviation.'
Indianapolis Star
30-05-2025
- General
- Indianapolis Star
'They're dumb': Nathan Fielder defends 'The Rehearsal' claim after FAA denial
Nathan Fielder called the Federal Airline Administration "dumb" during a May 29 appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown" to promote the second season of "The Rehearsal." Fielder hypothesizes throughout the season that communication breakdowns between airplane pilots and co-pilots contribute to plane crashes, going so far as to become a certified non-commercial 737 pilot to test his theory. The FAA dismissed the link in a statement obtained by USA TODAY and read to Fielder on-air. "The FAA analyzes data from a variety of sources," the statement reads in-part. "If these programs identify elevated risks, the FAA and airline both take appropriate action to mitigate the risk and ensure safety. The FAA does not have data that supports these claims." "That's dumb. They're dumb," Fielder responded to the statement. "The training is: someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying, if you are a co-pilot and the captain does something wrong, you need to speak up about it ... they talk about some crashes that happened, but they don't do anything that makes it stick emotionally." USA TODAY reached out to Fielder's representatives for comment and did not receive a response. The segment took an awkward turn when Fielder attempted to use the titular hosts as an example of communication breaking down. "I'm sure Pamela, you don't say some things to Wolf or – because you're – between you two, who would be like the boss or the more – like you're Wolf Blitzer, right?' Fielder said. "Your name is first on the thing. So, I'm sure Pamela, at times you, you might not want to say, you know, oh, Wolf wants to do something you don't think it's a good idea – you might not want to express that always." Blitzer and Brown pushed back on the insinuation with Blitzer saying, "she's very blunt." Fielder dismissed the rebuttal saying, "you have to say that now." "You don't want to say to Wolf you can't — you know, as a journalist, you don't want to say, oh, I don't want to," Fielder said. Blitzer defended his co-host, telling the comedian that Brown does raise objections to him.
USA Today
30-05-2025
- General
- USA Today
'They're dumb': Nathan Fielder defends 'The Rehearsal' claim after FAA denial
Hear this story Nathan Fielder called the Federal Airline Administration "dumb" during a May 29 appearance on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and Pamela Brown" to promote the second season of "The Rehearsal." Fielder hypothesizes throughout the season that communication breakdowns between airplane pilots and co-pilots contribute to plane crashes, going so far as to become a certified non-commercial 737 pilot to test his theory. The FAA dismissed the link in a statement obtained by USA TODAY and read to Fielder on-air. "The FAA analyzes data from a variety of sources," the statement reads in-part. "If these programs identify elevated risks, the FAA and airline both take appropriate action to mitigate the risk and ensure safety. The FAA does not have data that supports these claims." "That's dumb. They're dumb," Fielder responded to the statement. "The training is: someone shows you a PowerPoint slide saying, if you are a co-pilot and the captain does something wrong, you need to speak up about it ... they talk about some crashes that happened, but they don't do anything that makes it stick emotionally." Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. USA TODAY reached out to Fielder's representatives for comment and did not receive a response. Nathan Fielder CNN exchange turns awkward The segment took an awkward turn when Fielder attempted to use the titular hosts as an example of communication breaking down. "I'm sure Pamela, you don't say some things to Wolf or – because you're – between you two, who would be like the boss or the more – like you're Wolf Blitzer, right?' Fielder said. "Your name is first on the thing. So, I'm sure Pamela, at times you, you might not want to say, you know, oh, Wolf wants to do something you don't think it's a good idea – you might not want to express that always." Blitzer and Brown pushed back on the insinuation with Blitzer saying, "she's very blunt." Fielder dismissed the rebuttal saying, "you have to say that now." "You don't want to say to Wolf you can't — you know, as a journalist, you don't want to say, oh, I don't want to," Fielder said. Blitzer defended his co-host, telling the comedian that Brown does raise objections to him. "The great thing about Wolf is he doesn't have an ego," Brown said.
