Latest news with #satire
ABC News
7 hours ago
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Utopia: Trailer
Skip to main content Go back to home page Home Live TV Shows Movies ABC News ABC Kids Categories Utopia. A satire about the difficult process of taking grand, uncosted, inadequately planned, fundamentally flawed schemes - and passing them off as "Nation Building". Rob Sitch, Celia Pacquola, Kitty Flanagan, Luke McGregor, Anthony Lehmann, Dave Lawson, Emma-Louise Wilson, Toby Truslove, Michelle Lim Davidson
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Ari Aster's Eddington Trailer: When Reality Is a Horror Movie
The small American town of Ari Aster's new Eddington doesn't look so different from the real world presented by CNN or the Drudge Report: People can spin anything into a conspiracy, government is turned against itself, and gunfire erupts with seemingly little provocation. The small, fictional New Mexico town in the brand-new trailer for Eddington — set in 2020 — isn't so different from downtown Los Angeles right now, where local government clashes with the National Guard sent in by the president, suspicions run high, and everything feels on the edge of violence. Though a complete film can of course go places only hinted at in a preview, the Eddington trailer falls into the same tricky predicament as many recent satire or horror films: How do you keep up with a real world more dramatic than the movies? It feels quaint, for example, to see Joaquin Phoenix's Sheriff Joe Cross and Pedro Pascal's Mayor Ted Garcia face off over the direction of a small town, when in real life the president of the United States is threatening to arrest the governor of California. And while we don't recall anyone in 2020 connecting anti-Covid masks with child trafficking — as Austin Butler's cult-figure preacher, Vernon Jefferson, does in the Eddington trailer — it sounds like exactly the kind of weird connection people would make at any moment in the conspiracy-mad 2020s. Eddington, which premiered at Cannes to strong reviews and comes to theaters July 18, carries the tagline 'hindsight is 2020' — that's the long-ago year when the pandemic began — and an image of buffalo running off a cliff. (Indigenous people on the plains used to hunt and kill buffalo by chasing them into a panicked cliff jump.) Recent projects like Jesse Armstrong's terrific Mountainhead and the new season of Black Mirror feel like they're racing to stay a few steps ahead of the real-life technical innovations that can make reality seem ever more dystopian. Once we turned to entertainment for something more exciting than our humdrum real lives. Now we turn to entertainment for something not necessarily more boring, but easier to contain: It resolves, more or less, at the end of the movie, or episode, or season. Also Read: In Ari Aster's Eddington: Small-Town Covid Tensions With Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone and Austin Butler Turning off the news can feel like hiding. Part of our instinct is to confront the problems of the world, in hopes of fixing them. But they can also add to a sense of learned helplessness that might make us worse at fighting for a better world. How do we strike the right balance between being informed and doomscrolling? Eddington presents interesting questions, but not escape: The scenario in the trailer parallels our real lives too precisely. As tension of masks and fear of the virus sweep through Eddington in 2020, Butler's social media tirades add fuel to the brushfire. Pascal's mayor pleads for calm. Phoenix's sheriff traffics in grievance. Emma Stone, as the sheriff's wife, seems disgusted, and wondering how she's gotten dragged into this insanity. When she types "Horrible" in the comments section of a Vernon Jefferson video entitled "How Masks Make It Easier to SMUGGLE CHILDREN," is she referring to the practice of smuggling children? Or the fear-stoking tactics of the video? It's been a cliche for years to say real events parallel a horror movie. But it's saying something when the director of Hereditary and Midsommar turns to the news for inspiration. And reality is not, to be clear, a horror movie. You can turn off a horror movie. Main image: A scene in the trailer for Eddington, from Ari Aster, in theaters July 18 from A24. Related Headlines 30 Baby Boomers We Love How Nobody Wants This Uses Cross Shooting and Creative Editing to Make Strong Connections Giving Voice to the Adolescents of Adolescence
Times
18 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Corny, clichéd, lazy — James Frey's eat-the-rich novel is cynical tosh
James Frey boasts that it took him a mere 57 days to write Next to Heaven, a trashy murder-mystery set among the bored ultra-rich in Connecticut. This I can believe. There are books that gain a kinetic force from being composed in a feverish sprint and then there are books where you wonder if some hapless editor has sent the wrong draft to the printer. Next to Heaven feels less like a novel than notes for a novel, prompts even, almost as if Frey tossed together a few reference points — Bret Easton Ellis, Jackie Collins,Couples by John Updike — and asked a a certain large-language model to come up with the goods, although he swears blind he didn't use AI to write it. OK, he conceded to Vanity Fair magazine that he used ChatGPT to help with brand names; and it's impossible to avoid Google's AI these days. But on the creativity point he defended his integrity emphatically: 'I don't use generative AI to write ever, just so we're clear,' he said. I suppose we'll just have to take the author of A Million Little Pieces (2003) at his word. It's just that it reads almost uncannily like a cynical remix of any number of super-rich satires or thrillers we've been treated to in recent years. Like Liane Moriarty's novel Big Little Lies, the story is set in a 'picture perfect' small town. It features a gossipy Greek chorus narration and a heavily foreshadowed murder. There are frustrated cops, themes of domestic abuse and rape and an unlikely sisterhood, which given the tone of Frey's previous book, Katerina ('Cum inside me. Cum inside me. Cum inside me'), seems unlikely to have been born from any native feminist instinct. Then, like the recent TV drama Your Friends and Neighbors starring Jon Hamm, it features a Connecticut fund manager who gets fired, can't bring himself to tell his family and maintains his lavish lifestyle by pinching Patek Philippe watches from his neighbours. But, whatever. Aren't all these eat-the-rich stories about sex, divorce and murder merging into one anyway? And isn't shamelessness the quality Frey, 55, is best known for? He claims he dreamt of becoming 'the most controversial writer on the planet' — not the best, the most controversial. He shot to fame after his drugs memoir A Million Little Pieces was championed by Oprah Winfrey. It then emerged that he had invented large chunks of it. It brought controversy, a South Park parody, millions of sales and precisely zero contrition (as one of the characters in Next to Heaven thinks after she has duped everyone: 'Hahaha. It worked. Hahaha. Hahaha.') 'I grew up with a f*** you attitude,' this maverick has said in interviews, a phrase he puts in the mouth of many of his risk-taking, self-destructive characters. Katerina (2018) won a bad sex award and was described by one critic as 'an impressive attempt at career suicide'. And yet Frey seems to have failed even in this attempt because here he still is. Next to Heaven centres on a drug-fuelled sex party dreamt up by Devon and Belle, the richest two wives in chichi New Bethlehem (a name taken from The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood). Devon, an art dealer who comes from old money, is looking to escape her marriage of convenience to Billy, a sadistic bitcoin billionaire with a portrait of Eric Trump on the wall. Belle, who hails from a family of rich criminals in Texas, lives in a property that's 'staffed the f*** up' with nannies, housekeepers and stable hands. Her gentle husband, Teddy, is impotent — unable to achieve 'a coconut-cream explosion'. • What we're reading this week — by the Times books team Devon craves sex with Alex, a former NFL quarterback who has lost his banking job but hasn't told his wholesome wife, Grace. Meanwhile, Belle wants to bed Charlie, a hockey coach, who is dating Katy, a maths teacher with a tragic backstory. All the women are beautiful with olive skin. Devon's beloved housekeeper, Ana, has particularly beautiful olive skin and must sleep with her boss to send money back to her husband and child in Costa Rica. So all the ingredients are here for another titillating tale of rape and retribution among the 1-per-centers complete with Chanel dresses, Boca do Lobo sofas, limited-edition Yeezys, Ode à la Rose orchids, Roche Bobois chairs etc. Next to Heaven confirms that Frey is a very, very lazy writer. His sentences read like schoolboy attempts at hardboiled style — 'He had it all. And he had always had it all' — and contain some of the corniest lines I've read in fiction ('promises are like glass and they break just as easily'). Then there are the parts where he takes flight: 'Oh the night! Oh the dark! Where promises are made and kisses exchanged, where secrets are born and shared, where hearts entwine and passions ignite.' Frey doesn't let editors touch a word of his — this I can also believe. What's particularly strange, given that he's such a 'bad boy', is that he completely fluffs the wife-swapping soirée. After one paragraph in which the men all size each other up, the characters slope off to have very tame (or depressing) heterosexual intercourse. James, goddammit, it's an orgy! He takes more care describing the party invitations. • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List For a book about bad behaviour, the characters behave in remarkably boring and predictable ways. They have no foibles or contradictions. No one in the novel feels remotely real. The characters are dead, the language is dead and it says terrible things about publishing that this ever saw the light of day. It's also coming to a TV near you because Frey sold the screen rights before the manuscript — 'Hahaha. It worked. Hahaha. Hahaha.'Next to Heaven by James Frey (Swift £18.99 pp336). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
Reuters
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Reuters
Fact Check: British RAF plane is not being painted pink for Pride Month
A satirical social media post saying a plane from Britain's Royal Air Force will be painted all colours of the rainbow flag during the LGBT community's Pride Month in June is being taken seriously online. 'Photo of the Day: This F22 from 7175Sqn has been painted pink to celebrate that start of Pride Month,' read a June 1 post on X, opens new tab sharing a picture of a pink plane, which received more than 1.1 million views. 'It will be repainted every 4 days to a different colour of the rainbow at a cost of just £80,085 per paint.' Comments on this post and a caption on an identical one on Facebook suggest some took it seriously. 'Starmer prepares for war, meanwhile what's the real preparation going on in real time here in the U.K,' read a post, opens new tab on Facebook sharing the claim and photograph. 'Putin will be quaking in his boots, pathetic,' read, opens new tab one comment under the X post. A spokesperson for the Royal Air Force said there were no plans to paint a plane for Pride Month, and that 7175 squadron did not exist. In September 2024, the Royal Air Force hosted a ceremony, opens new tab to recognise and apologise to LGBT personnel who served before the lifting of ban on them, opens new tab being in the military in January 2000. RAF_Luton, the X account that posted the claim and photograph, says on its page, opens new tab that it produces satirical content. Its biography reads: 'The assumed Official Twitter account of the world's most mysterious & secret (and fictitious) military base.' The account did not respond to a request to comment. The Royal Air Force also said there was no real base called RAF Luton. The photograph of the pink plane has a watermark of opens new tab, a website that allows flight simulator enthusiasts to create add-ons or contribute their own creations. The website did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters could not independently verify if the photo was created on the simulator site. Satire. The RAF said it has no plans to paint a plane for Pride Month. The account that made the claim regularly posts satirical content. This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.
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. ★★★★☆
