Latest news with #TheFlash
Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Kieran Hodgson review — a Yorkshireman gets lost in the USA
You may know Kieran Hodgson for his four Edinburgh Comedy Award-nominated shows, his YouTube TV parodies, his role on the sitcom Two Doors Down or just for his bit part in the superhero film flop The Flash. It's that troublesome role — 'Sandwich Guy' — that provides the pivot for Voice of America, his latest gag-rich yet erudite mix of satire, confessional and funny voices. If you've never seen the smoothly self-doubting Yorkshireman perform, you might be deceived by the beaming figure in double denim who strides to the stage at the Soho Theatre to the strains of Born in the USA. He contrasts the big-game glamour of American elections with the dowdiness of Keir Starmer. Yet is Hodgson wowed by America or duped by it? Is his idea of America lost in the greater optimism of his Nineties childhood? Or does his Europhile English teacher father have a point when he derides a country whose sheen has above all always concealed a passion for power? Any heavy stuff, though, is safely lodged in a far larger dose of fun stuff. Hodgson first lets us into the thrill of being offered The Flash after the viral success of his TV parodies briefly gave him showbiz currency during lockdown. Then he opens up about the challenge it posed him. He is 'a voices guy' yet, after a day of filming, his perkily ruthless new US agent informs him that his voice needs work. He gets the mechanics of accents but does he get the modern American mentality? Is he as off the pace as the Anglophile who is amazed that Hodgson is visiting his English pub in Portland, Oregon, rather than staying home in Britain to celebrate the Queen's birthday? You couldn't say the stakes are sky-high: it's a bit part and we know he keeps it. But The Flash gives a spine to strong stories and sharp observations as he talks about, and impersonates, several American presidents. He makes merry with his nerdishness, his upbringing, the disparity between the 'stupid America' of modern myth and the cultural elite he sits among at the opera in New York. Can he keep Donald J Trump out of it like he wants to? Good luck keeping Trump out of anything, buddy. It's another richly entertaining hour from a consistently captivating comedian. ★★★★☆
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
What happened when a middle-class Brit went in search of the ‘Voice of America'
In this show, the comedian and impressionist Kieran Hodgson – most famous for his masterful online parodies, which range from The Crown to the 2024 general election – blends homely autobiographical stories with global events, trying to unpick the enigma of America. Having previously built shows around the UK's entry to the EU, learning Gaelic and composing his own symphony, he's certainly got the comedy tools at his disposal to be confident, amusing and self-laceratingly funny, despite the size of his task. Voice of America revolves around an account of trying to create the right American accent for a Hollywood producer – but develops into an attempt to sell the joy and exuberance of America to a wary audience shell-shocked by Trump. When he asks who's tuning out of the news, there's a strong swell of acknowledgement from the crowd. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Kieran Hodgson (@kieranchodgson) Hodgson has always had a strong line in British middle-class self-deprecation. His awkward erudition, he explains, is based on growing up the son of English teachers – when he asks if he can have an ice cream, his father replies that he can, but he may not – and his confidence crumbles when said producer asks him to play 'Sandwich Guy' in the opening scene of superhero box-office flop The Flash. Hodgson has made his career out of his uncanny skill as an impressionist. He even uses silly voices at moments of intense personal interaction, such as his husband's proposal. It's a reflex, and he's imitated Americans since he was on his primary school playground, intoning 'I did not have sex with that woman.' So his failure to deliver a convincing accent for Sandwich Guy prompts soul searching – and a host of other impressions as he recounts his attempts to find that elusive accent and, by extension, the voice of America itself. As a kid in the Nineties he loved Independence Day and Home Alone. He came of age in the 2000s confounded by Bushisms – 'Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we' – and found evangelicals banning Harry Potter as irritating as emo bands. But neither decade gave him the voice he was looking for, he tells us. For a while, he blames America and Trump's voice, which threatens to overwhelm the show. Hodgson keeps trying not to lurch into an impression of the US president, identifying the White House occupant as essentially a stand-up comedian who delivers a rambling stream of consciousness like a Nazi Ross Noble. Then a visit to a British-themed pub in Portland, Oregon that's so nearly right but so very wrong teaches him how easy it is to think you've heard a country but have actually failed to listen properly. The show concludes in an unexpectedly dark place for the typically upbeat performer. As he demonstrates his Sandwich Guy scene, he morphs uncannily into Trump, berating both crowd and performer like the MC at the end of Cabaret. But whilst Trump may be the voice of today's America, Hodgson insists that the country's brash charm ensures change is always possible. Kieran Hodgson: Voice of America, Soho Theatre then Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh until Aug 24; tickets:
See - Sada Elbalad
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
Tom Rhys Harries Lands "Clayface" Role in DC Studios Movie
Yara Sameh Tom Rhys Harries, a relative newcomer, has scored the high-profile lead role in the upcoming DC Studios adventure 'Clayface". DC Studios co-chief James Gunn delivered the news on social media, tweeting, 'After a long and incredibly exhaustive search, we finally have our DCU Clayface in Tom Rhys Harries. Both ['The Batman' director] Matt Reeves and I were just blown away by this guy, and can't wait for you to see this film.' Reeves is producing 'Clayface,' which is written by Mike Flanagan ('The Fall of the House of Usher') and directed by James Watkins ('Eden Lake'). The film is less superhero adventure than body horror flick, focusing on a B-movie actor who drinks a substance that's supposed to help his career but instead it leaves him made entirely of clay. And for the bulk of readers thinking Tom Rhys Harries, who? Well he's an up-and-coming Welsh actor who attended the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. He has impressed in the likes of the Apple TV series 'Suspicion' opposite Uma Thurman, as well as 'Kandahar,' an action film with Gerard Butler; Guy Ritchie's 'The Gentleman'; and 'The Return,' where he shared the screen with thespians like Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche. He also starred in Netflix's Álex Pina-created series "White Lines". In theatre, he made his West End stage debut in 2013 in Jez Butterworth's Mojo opposite Colin Morgan, Rupert Grint and Ben Whishaw. Production on 'Clayface' will begin the fall and the film will open on September 11, 2026. DC Studios is trying to reestablish itself under Gunn after many creative setbacks and flops such as 'The Flash' and 'Black Adam.' Reeves' version of the Dark Knight was a rare success and a follow-up is eagerly anticipated. The company will have a relaunch with this summer's 'Superman,' which Gunn directed as well as wrote, and will also release 'Supergirl' next year. read more New Tourism Route To Launch in Old Cairo Ahmed El Sakka-Led Play 'Sayidati Al Jamila' to Be Staged in KSA on Dec. 6 Mandy Moore Joins Season 2 of "Dr. Death" Anthology Series Don't Miss These Movies at 44th Cairo Int'l Film Festival Today Amr Diab to Headline KSA's MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 Festival Arts & Culture Mai Omar Stuns in Latest Instagram Photos Arts & Culture "The Flash" to End with Season 9 Arts & Culture Ministry of Culture Organizes four day Children's Film Festival Arts & Culture Canadian PM wishes Muslims Eid-al-Adha News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks Videos & Features Video: Trending Lifestyle TikToker Valeria Márquez Shot Dead during Live Stream News Shell Unveils Cost-Cutting, LNG Growth Plan Technology 50-Year Soviet Spacecraft 'Kosmos 482' Crashes into Indian Ocean News 3 Killed in Shooting Attack in Thailand
Time Out
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Michael Shannon: ‘I think television is garbage – I certainly don't watch it'
Striding biblically into the green room at a London Bridge rehearsal studio, Michael Shannon is a daunting figure. Six foot three, craggier than Mount Rushmore and pathologically unsmiling, the double Academy Award nominated, Kentucky-born actor has the most 'just walked out of a Cormac McCarthy novel' energy to him of anyone I've ever met. 'Are you familiar with the play?' he asks immediately, in what is possibly an innocuous opening gambit, but also possibly an attempt to determine if I'm some sort of lightweight flim-flam entertainment journalist. Because we're not here to talk showbiz. We're here to talk about his role in the Almeida Theatre's revival of Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten. And also we're here to talk about my favourite band of all time, REM. You will recognise Michael Shannon. It would be truly remarkable if you hadn't seen one of his films, because according to his official bio there are over 90 of them. Whether you know him from offbeat indie flicks (of which he has made dozens), huge blockbusters (he famously played General Zod in Man of Steel and The Flash) or somewhere in between (those Oscar nominations came for Sam Mendes's Revolutionary Road and Tom Ford's Nocturnal Animals), it is a statistical inevitability that you have seen a Michael Shannon film. You'll recognise that rough-hewn face. You'll be aware he has range, but always presence and weight – he's not much of a romcom guy. What British audiences haven't seen for a long time is Michael Shannon on the stage. At home, he's an enormously prolific theatre actor: he does roughly a play a year. He's also a musician: he and musical partner Jason Narducy having spent what one can only assume to be the absolute last remaining seconds of Shannon's recent free time touring America with sets based around the first three albums of legendary indie rockers REM. Now Michael Shannon the theatre actor and Michael Shannon the musician are both heading our way. At the end of the summer he and Narducy will do two nights at the Islington Garage, playing REM's 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction (which was recorded in London, at Wood Green's Livingstone Studios). But first A Moon for the Misbegotten, the great American playwright O'Neill's bleak but redemptive final play. It's not been seen in London since 2006, when Kevin Spacey starred as its cynical alcoholic lead James Tyrone Jr, a character based upon O'Neill's own brother. That performance made Spacey the first ever actor to have played James in both Moon and Long Day's Journey Into Night, O'Neill's most famous play, in which James Jr first appears. Now Shannon makes that a club of two. You played James Tyrone Jr on Broadway in a 2016 production of Long Day's Journey – presumably that was a good experience? 'Oh, that's one of my favourite productions I've ever been involved with. I adored the cast. Jessica Lange as my mum, and Gabriel Byrne as my dad, and John Gallagher Jr as my brother. Just a very, very tight knit group. I love building families on stage. It's one of the primary things that theatre is useful for, I think: we all have families, so we love to see others and how they function.' You must have been aware James Jr was in another O'Neill play: did you have long-held aspirations to do A Moon for the Misbegotten? 'Well, people would come to see Long Day's Journey and they mentioned A Moon for the Misbegotten. They'd say that I should do it. But I had no idea how that would ever come to pass. So it just kind of went in one ear and out the other. And then lo and behold my agent said that Rebecca [Frecknall, director] wanted to speak with me and it was like a gift.' UK audiences probably don't realise what an enormous amount of theatre you do despite your screen success – presumably it's very important to you? 'Film is a director's medium and TV is run by writers and producers and corporate overlords. I mean, I do television, because from time to time there are interesting projects that come across my desk, but by and large, I think television is garbage. I certainly don't watch it. Films are more interesting, but they're the director's medium, they're not theatre where an actor can really do their thing. I like acting, so that's why I do theatre. Do the lines between film and TV feel blurred in the streamer era? Like you have a new Netflix show (Death by Lightning) coming up… 'The thing I've learned about TV is you enjoy shooting it, but my expectations for it are zero. You walk away and you expect them to destroy it. That's what you expect. If and when you ever actually watch the damn thing, you expect it to be hugely disappointing, because a bunch of morons are gonna go in and screw it up.' But the buck stops with you on stage? 'There's no morons that come in who know nothing about art and have no training in the arts whatsoever manipulating the hard work that you've done as an artist and turning it into crap. In the theatre what the audience sees is what I want them to see.' What's a hard sell from you on Eugene O'Neill and this play? 'I think O'Neill is one of the finest playwrights who's ever lived. You know, Long Day's Journey, when he wrote it, he didn't want it to be produced because it was so personal to him, he didn't really think it was anybody's business. He was trying to ease his own suffering and I think it's similar with this play. The depth of the trauma he's trying to exorcise out of his own consciousness writing these plays, I have a tremendous amount of respect for it. We're really lucky to to have O'Neill because he changed drama forever.' James Tyrone Jr is based on O'Neill's older brother – do you find information like that useful or do you prefer to just build your own character? 'I mean I do both, you're a fool not to do as much research as you can. Now, 90 percent of it you may dispense with and say: I don't need to remember that or think about that ever again, but it's not going to hurt you, you know?' Let's talk about REM. You have an REM covers band, which is an unusual thing for a very busy actor to have… 'It was not my choice necessarily. We originated as a one-off show, a one-off performance of Murmur. That's what Jason Narducy and I do. We pick a record, we play the record, that's it. We do it one time. But we did Murmur in Chicago at a venue called Metro, and it was very popular and other venues started reaching out to Jason and saying please come do this here. And so, that was when Jason turned and said, well, what do you think? Should we do it more than once?' And then you toured the next two REM records… 'People were like, OK, are you gonna do the next one, which is very flattering. But I was not writing in my diary one night saying, you know, dear diary: I would like to go on tour with a band that plays REM. It was just kind of manifest destiny or something. We love playing it, people love hearing it, the band has been supportive and they're just the kindest, sweetest human beings you could ever want to meet.' The band recorded Fables in London – I think they famously had a fairly miserable time… 'One of the things I find most impressive was just what hard workers they were, all four of them, just the way they toured, the amount of music they created in such a short period of time. Those first five, six records – it's just unbelievable what they managed before they were even 30 years old.' Michael Stipe's early lyrics are famously indecipherable – as an actor do you feel you need to understand a song like 'Harborcoat' or 'Radio Free Europe' in the same way you understand James Jr? 'It's a different kind of understanding. I think words are not as effective at communicating as we like to think they are, which is why music is oftentimes so compelling. Which is why, frankly, probably a lot more people are moved by 'Harborcoat' than by going to see a play, because something's happening in that compressed period of time that is really at a very high frequency. It's a way people communicate a lot more effectively, than just language. Language is overrated I think. ' What have you been listening to lately? 'As I'm working on the play, I've been listening to a lot of ragtime; ragtime may actually predate this period, but for some reason it's been resonating with me as I work on that.' Oh interesting – I'd sort of assumed you were an indie rock guy… 'My musical taste is not even something you could write about really. It's too far reaching. I love music more than I could possibly express. I am not an indie rock guy. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy indie rock. I love indie rock. But I also love 50 other kinds of music.' You've been in over 90 films, plus TV, plus a play most years, plus a band: you, I mean, do you not ever require a break? That has to be relentless… 'Over 90? Really?' That's what it says in the bio your publicist sent over! 'Oh, well, there's no mandate for working or not working or anything.' You can't be taking much time off! 'I guess mathematically you might have a point, but I don't think much about it. There's a lot of stuff I don't do, where I'm like no, no thank you. But it's all a blur. They asked me to write my bio for the programme and at this point, I just find it kind of scary. I don't wanna even think about it, like it's a mess. Yes, I've done a lot of stuff. Just put: I've done a lot of stuff, the end. And then you write the damn thing and then they're like, oh, it's too long. What difference does it make what anybody's done? Yesterday, doesn't really even freaking matter. All that matters is right now.' A Moon for the Misbegotten is at the Almeida Theatre, now until Aug 16. Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy play The Garage, Aug 22 and 23.
See - Sada Elbalad
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
Doctor charged with Supplying ketamine to Matthew Perry Agrees to Plead Guilty
Yara Sameh Matthew Perry's doctor, Salvador Plasencia, has agreed to plead guilty to four counts of distributing ketamine to the 'Friends' star, who died of an overdose in October 2023. Plasencia admitted in the plea agreement that he repeatedly provided ketamine without a legitimate medical purpose in the weeks leading up to Perry's death. The agreement anticipates a prison sentence in the range of 15-21 months, though the sentence will be up to the judge. Perry was found dead in his hot tub at his home in the Pacific Palisades. He was 54. Last summer, federal authorities charged Plasencia and four others with responsibility for his death. In a text message to another doctor, Plasencia allegedly wrote, 'I wonder how much this moron will pay… Let's find out.' Prosecutors have also charged Jasveen Sangha, nicknamed the 'Ketamine Queen,' with possessing and distributing methamphetamine and ketamine out of a stash house in North Hollywood. Sangha is due to go on trial in August. Three other defendants — Erik Fleming, Kenneth Iwamasa and Mark Chavez — had also agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to supply ketamine. Authorities alleged that Plasencia attempted to cover his tracks during the investigation, concocting a bogus 'treatment plan' for Perry in a show that the ketamine was legitimately prescribed. read more New Tourism Route To Launch in Old Cairo Ahmed El Sakka-Led Play 'Sayidati Al Jamila' to Be Staged in KSA on Dec. 6 Mandy Moore Joins Season 2 of "Dr. Death" Anthology Series Don't Miss These Movies at 44th Cairo Int'l Film Festival Today Amr Diab to Headline KSA's MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 Festival Arts & Culture Mai Omar Stuns in Latest Instagram Photos Arts & Culture "The Flash" to End with Season 9 Arts & Culture Ministry of Culture Organizes four day Children's Film Festival Arts & Culture Canadian PM wishes Muslims Eid-al-Adha News China Launches Largest Ever Aircraft Carrier Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Lifestyle Get to Know 2025 Eid Al Adha Prayer Times in Egypt Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War Arts & Culture Zahi Hawass: Claims of Columns Beneath the Pyramid of Khafre Are Lies News Flights suspended at Port Sudan Airport after Drone Attacks Videos & Features Video: Trending Lifestyle TikToker Valeria Márquez Shot Dead during Live Stream News Shell Unveils Cost-Cutting, LNG Growth Plan Technology 50-Year Soviet Spacecraft 'Kosmos 482' Crashes into Indian Ocean News 3 Killed in Shooting Attack in Thailand
