Latest news with #Camping
CNA
6 days ago
- CNA
Colugo Camp: New glamping spot at Mandai opens on Aug 8
Scroll up for the next video X Colugo Camp: New glamping spot at Mandai opens on Aug 8
CBC
16-07-2025
- CBC
Expect a new landscape at Jasper campgrounds one year after wildfire
Camping in Jasper National Park may be a surreal experience for returning visitors and a shocking one for first-time tourists, nearly one year after wildfire ripped through the landscape. Natasha Riebe brings us a closer look at one of Jasper's biggest and most popular campgrounds.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Too Much review – Lena Dunham's cliche-ridden new romcom is a total disappointment
It takes a lot of talent to make something as singular as Girls. Then 26-year-old Lena Dunham created, starred in and executive-produced the show. She frequently directed, and she wrote or co-wrote 41 of the extraordinarily raw, realistic (Girls' sex scenes reduced most screen and polite conventions to rubble), brutally funny and occasionally simply brutal 62 episodes that comprised its six seasons between 2012 and 2017. Girls' impeccably witty script and sublime characterisations meant it pulled off a near-impossible feat. It made the story of four solipsistic, privileged twentysomethings navigating their lives one sexual/professional/ youthful/contraceptive mistake at a time in New York City compelling, funny and meaningful. As Dunham's character and semi-alter ego Hannah Horvath said of herself – she may not have been the voice of a generation, but she was definitely a voice of her generation. Since then, the output of a woman for whom the word 'wunderkind' seemed woefully underpowered has itself been underwhelming. Dunham's much-hyped first book did not deliver a fraction of the humour or insight Girls proved she was capable of – although certain passages did garner much publicity and controversy, a tradition she then continued with various ill-advised (or wilfully misinterpreted) comments on the #MeToo movement, writing out of imagination rather than lived experience and other hot button issues of the past decade or so. Her US remake of Julia Davis's Camping was widely considered to have lost its originator's bleak genius in translation, and Dunham's adaptation of the beloved and brilliant children's book Catherine Called Birdy, was an inoffensive bagatelle that did not detain critics or commerce long. But now, at last, we have a new, original project from Dunham (with contribution from her now husband, indie musician Luis Felber). A television series, no less. Too Much follows the adventures of early-thirtysomething Jessica (Hacks' formidable Megan Stalter) who flees to London from Brooklyn after a bad break-up. She remains obsessed with her ex, Zev (Michael Zegen), and with the woman he left her for, Instagram star and influencer Wendy (Emily Ratajkowski). She records emotional addresses to Wendy on her phone, privately, as self-therapy but of course this is the modern equivalent of Chekhov's gun on the mantelpiece, and duly goes off in act three. Before then, however, she has embarked on a relationship with – oh, the eternal mysteries of creation – indie musician Felix (White Lotus's Will Sharpe, in another good-guy part that gives him nothing to get his teeth into and leaves him looking very flat indeed beside Stalter's full-blooded role and performance). He is the antithesis of Zev – patient, laid-back, appreciative of her and never finding her 'too much' as her ex, from very early in their relationship which somehow staggered on for eight years, contemptuously and contemptibly did. There is a laboured joke in the first episode, about the difference between the English estate of Jessica's period drama-informed imagination and the council flat she ends up in. This should serve as a warning to us all to lower our expectations drastically and save ourselves from as much of the quickly deepening disappointment as possible. After Jessica's inaugural encounter with a British pub loo (you can, in fact, feel a very lived experience of Dunham here), the narrative landscape becomes an increasingly desolate place. Jessica sets fire to her nightdress and goes to hospital. Felix shows up with flowers and takes her home. Flashbacks to her life with Zev and an abortive date with a lying footballer show us how much better a bet the new guy is. They have a lot of sex and Dunham aims for her trademark realism – but without Girls' inherent bleakness it just makes things tonally jarring for the viewer. It abandons any thoughts of innovation and hits cliche after cliche (how 'the ick' can suddenly arrive and put you off your beloved for ever, for example – a well worn trope of the kind that would never have passed muster in Dunham's earlier work). At one point, Felix even tells Jessica admiringly, 'You're so alive!' Not too much, you see! Alive! This guy is great. There are a few good lines ('I want to make the world a better place for the children I don't want and may never be ready for') and insightful moments (Jessica using television programmes about people with lives even messier than hers to soothe herself to sleep) but the irreducible fact remains that Too Much would not be enough from anyone. From Dunham, it is way, way too little. Too Much is on Netflix now
Time Magazine
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
How Lena Dunham's Netflix Series 'Too Much' Mirrors Her Own Life
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Too Much. In the near-decade since Lena Dunham's groundbreaking HBO dramedy Girls aired its final episode, its creator and star has taken a big step back from the spotlight. Though she has written, directed, and produced a handful of projects in the intervening years—including the 2018 HBO comedy series Camping and 2022 medieval comedy film Catherine Called Birdy—Dunham herself has said she took an "intentional break" from the public eye in response to the intense scrutiny that surrounded her during Girls' six-season run (especially in relation to a number of controversies for which she was facing backlash). 'I didn't really understand how to distinguish between what was and wasn't necessary for the public. I felt confused about how I was supposed to respond,' she told The Times in an interview published in June. 'I thought if I explain properly who I am, or give a glimpse of who I am, people are going to have a different perception of me, that we would be friends. But no one cares—and that's fine.' Now, Dunham is returning to the small screen with Too Much, a new 10-episode romantic comedy series available to stream on Netflix. This time around, while Dunham does appear in the show in a supporting role, Megan Stalter takes the lead as Dunham's semi-autobiographical stand-in Jessica Salmon, a 30-something workaholic New Yorker who moves to London in the wake of a devastating breakup with her longtime boyfriend Zev (Michael Zegen). Across the pond, she meets a troubled musician named Felix Remen (Will Sharpe) and the two strike up a whirlwind romance that forces them both to confront their individual issues. Those who have kept track of news about Dunham's personal life in the years since Girls ended will likely recognize several apparent similarities between the plot of Too Much and Dunham's own story, particularly with regard to her 2018 breakup with music producer Jack Antonoff, subsequent move to London, and later marriage to Peruvian-British musician Luis Felber, who co-created Too Much. As for just how much her life influenced Too Much, Dunham told Variety, 'It's certainly not quote-unquote based on a true story, but like everything I do, there is an element of my own life that I can't help but inject.' Here's everything to know about how Too Much mirrors Dunham's life. The breakup After meeting on a blind date in 2012, Dunham and Antonoff dated for five years (throughout the entire run of Girls) before news of their breakup emerged in January 2018. Later that month, Us Weekly reported Antonoff had moved on with model Carlotta Kohl in a story that included a quote from an anonymous source who claimed Dunham and Antonoff "had been slowly breaking up for the last six months." Antonoff and Kohl eventually ended things and, in August 2021, he began dating actor Margaret Qualley, whom he married in August 2023. In Too Much, Jessica and Zev break up after seven years together and Zev pretty much immediately starts dating Wendy Jones (Emily Ratajkowski), a knitting influencer he meets at a party while he and Jess are still together. When Wendy asks to meet up with Jess in the finale and reveals she's done with Zev, she explains he had originally told her that he and Jess had been separated for six months before they officially broke up—which Jess says is untrue. Too Much also makes a point of emphasizing Jess' obsession with checking Wendy's social media after she gets together with Zev, a storyline that—judging by a November 2018 profile of Dunham in which she admitted it pained her to look at Antonoff's new girlfriend's Instagram stories—seems to be pulled from Dunham's own experiences. "[B]eing the hysterical ex-girlfriend is kinda like the weirdest, funniest, public performance," she told The Cut. 'I thought I was kind of proving weird girls can have love too. And now he's dating somebody who looks regular and normal and like girls are supposed to look." (In addition to being an actor, Ratajkowski is also a model.) Other details from Dunham and Antonoff's relationship that Dunham has spoken about in the press also seem to be alluded to in the show, such as in a flashback scene from Episode 5 in which Zev tells Jess she needs to cut back on her pink home decor when they're moving in together. In an essay penned for Domino magazine's Fall 2019 cover story, Dunham wrote about how Antonoff disliked her decorating taste. "[H]e hated it. He didn't want to hate it. He tried not to hate it. But he didn't like living among the insides of my mind," she said. "I felt sick every time I made a design concession or covered up pink with dove gray. Love can only survive so much." Read More: Megan Stalter Is Reinventing the Rom-Com Heroine The dogs As part of the flashbacks to Jess and Zev's relationship that play out in Episode 5, we see that at one point they adopted a dog named Cutesie at Jess' behest. But after Cutesie has an aggressive encounter with another dog at the park, Jess is forced to give him away. This plot point seems to draw from what happened in real life with Dunham and her rescue dog Lamby, who she gave up to a Los Angeles canine rehabilitation facility in 2017 after originally adopting him from the BARC shelter in Brooklyn. Dunham said in an Instagram post that the decision had been made due to "four years of challenging behavior and aggression" that was caused by abuse he suffered as a puppy. However, Lamby's rehoming ended up turning into quite the internet controversy after an employee from BARC wrote an email to a Yahoo reporter claiming Lamby had been totally fine until he met Dunham. 'You can say a lot of sh-t about me, but I am a very committed pet owner. Ask anybody who works with me on a pet level,' Dunham told The Cut in response in 2018. 'Also, what animal-shelter guy is like, 'I'm an electronic DJ, and I'm also looking to talk to Yahoo! Celebrity'? But dragging him through the court of public opinion like that doesn't get me anywhere. It's better just to kick back and be like, 'Okay, sir, you can extend your career by telling people what a bad dog owner I was.'" Of course, it didn't help matters with her critics that, the year after Lamby was rehomed, Gia Marie, a Sphynx cat Dunham had adopted who had lung damage after surviving a house fire, and Bowie, her 13-year-old Yorkie, both died within months of each other. The series of unfortunate events led to an online conspiracy theory that Dunham was killing her pets, which she quickly shut down, pointing to the fact that many of the animals she'd adopted were of advanced age. In Too Much, following her breakup with Zev, Jess adopts a hairless chihuahua named Astrid who becomes her closest companion. Sadly, in the finale, Felix hears Astrid struggling to breathe and rushes her to the vet but her heart gives out before Jess arrives to say goodbye. The marriage After moving from New York to London in January 2021, Dunham met Felber on a blind date set up by mutual friends. "The first time we hung out, we didn't stop talking for, like, eight hours," Felber told the New York Times later that year. "I think it was sort of incredible, you know, I walked into that. I'd been on quite a few dates in the past year. As someone who's quite open, I find you hold a lot back on your first three dates. Or first 10 dates. I was just a bit fed up with that, so I just walked into the situation very myself, shall I say. And Lena liked that. And she's the same." By that September, Dunham and Felber had married in an impromptu wedding at Soho's Union Club with just about 60 guests present. This is obviously similar to what happens between Jess and Felix in Too Much after they meet at a bar on the night Jess moves to London. However, Stalter says the show isn't intended to directly echo Dunham and Felber's relationship. "[Lena and Luis] always made it really clear that it wasn't just based on them. There was no pressure to do an impression of them," Stalter told TIME. "Me and Will were able to take it and add things in of ourselves and what we thought the characters should be...[It wasn't] like we were playing them, but bringing to life a story that has elements of them in it, and ourselves." Despite its happy ending, Dunham has said she still wanted Too Much to reflect the challenges that two people who have their own lifetimes' worth of baggage can face both individually and as a couple while trying to make a relationship work. "Everything I've ever made is romantically pessimistic. Even the most romantic episodes of Girls—when Marnie and Charlie reunite, a heroin needle falls out of his pants," she told the New Yorker of Too Much's optimistic tilt. "This is such a mortifying answer, but I think that it had to do with meeting Lu, and being, like, 'Oh, there actually is a feeling that you can have that it might be OK, that the thing might last, that you're not always running as fast as you can and then realizing you're on a treadmill.' It was wanting to make something that was about that feeling, but also acknowledging that, when we met each other, we had both experienced an enormous amount of life, trauma, complexity, and addiction, separately. So what does it look like when you meet and you're both just trying to be the best versions of yourself, the version that you can live with, and then you welcome someone else into that?"
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Too Much' Review: Lena Dunham Returns with a Brash, Big-Hearted, and Oddly Conventional Rom-Com
'Too Much' opens on a slew of red flags. The very first shot is of London's Tower Bridge, accompanied by Fergie's 2006 song, 'London Bridge.' Walking over said bridge is our lead, Jess (Meg Stalter), whose stylish star turn (zebra-stripe winter coat, star-laden vintage bookbag) is marred by her extraneous voiceover. That's two big warning signs in the opening seconds of Lena Dunham's first TV series since 'Camping,' and they're promptly followed up by a third: when Jess imagines herself as the different kinds of women known to thrive in the United Kingdom: Jane Austen-era heroines who are hopelessly in love; hardened police detectives 'who use [their] trauma to solve grisly crimes'; and turn-of-the-century sex workers who will go down in the history books as one of Jack the Ripper's victims. Thankfully, the majority of these storytelling crutches dwindle as 'Too Much' settles in. The soundtrack shifts toward lighter indie rock and away from brain-numbing redundancies, while the story treats those imaginary genre sketches like an accidental off-ramp left in the rearview. But the voiceover continues. Not only does it continue, it intensifies, along with the surrounding events. As they slowly swirl into a tornado of personal excess, Jess learns an important fact of perception: One person's red flags may just be flags to someone else — unheeded warnings that, in time, prove to be utterly unnecessary. You can see them and run for shelter, sure, or you can simply see where the breeze takes you. More from IndieWire Jason Momoa Unites a People in Apple's 'Chief of War' Trailer 'It's Always Sunny's' Version of the 'Abbott Elementary' Crossover Delivers an Exceptional Payoff 'Too Much' will certainly inspire a few Netflix subscribers to retreat to the stock solace of 'Emily in Paris' or 'Nobody Wants This,' but like the algorithmically calculated intro it soon subverts, Dunham's latest pulls off a tricky balancing act: giving audiences what we expect from a TV rom-com, as well as what we don't always get. The familiar aspects are surprising, if only because Dunham's semi-autobiographical series is from, you know, the creator of 'Girls' — a landmark HBO comedy hailed for bucking conventions, expectations, and whatever else you wanted to throw at it. Co-created with her husband, Luis Felber, 'Too Much' fits snugly within those confines, following a young Brooklyn producer, Jess, who moves to London and falls in love with an aspiring musician named Felix (Will Sharpe). The premiere episode sets up its love story rather quickly, from Jess' grievous break-up with Zev (Michael Zegen, well-versed with the despised ex as the former Mr. Maisel), who she dated for seven years, to her job opportunity in London, where she'll oversee a commercial directed by an acclaimed yet pretentious filmmaker (a beautifully sleazy Andrew Scott). Despite her eagerness to embrace life across the pond, Jess can't leave her baggage behind. Shortly before she flees overseas, she breaks into Zev's house in the middle of the night to demand he apologize for their grievous break-up 'in blood.' Luckily, she's all talk — Jess has never met an awkward silence she can't fill with an inappropriate comment, even when (as is often the case) she's the one who brought about the initial awkwardness — but that loquacity becomes its own problem. Jess cannot stop talking to Wendy, Zev's model-hot new girlfriend (played by the actual model, Emily Ratajkowski). She hate-watches Wendy's influencer videos about fashion or hears her voice in her head and then slinks off to a bathroom or quiet corner to yell at Wendy in the style of Gen-Z: via video. Jess' videos (which she posts to a private Instagram feed) form the basis for her aforementioned voiceover. She 'talks to Wendy' all the time — at home, at work, when she's out with her friends or in the middle of a date — and she's only getting angrier, despite a pretty good start to her time in London town, from her job to her friends to her love life. Her co-workers conveniently share her tendency to over-share, whether it's Boss (Leo Reich), an absurdly cocky assistant who brags about his 'acclaimed PDF novel'; Kim (Janicza Bravo), a narcissist and fellow New Yorker who's so in love with England she claims not to remember her time in the U.S.; and Jonno (Richard E. Grant), Jess' actual boss who throws cocaine-fueled dance parties in Notting Hill — for his employees. To say they're a like-minded group is an understatement (and their overlapping romantic issues only double down on Dunham's struggle to imagine characters outside her own bubble), but the lively group supports Jess' journey just fine (and Grant is a particular treat, along with Naomi Watts as his desperate housewife). Jess' family, whom she leaves behind in Long Island but who pop in via FaceTime and flashbacks, is also an invaluable treat. Rita Wilson (as Jess' mom, Lois), Rhea Pearlman (Grandma Dottie), and Dunham, as the recently dumped Nora, all make it clear where Jess comes from — and why she should be proud of what she now calls 'an intergenerational 'Grey Gardens' hell of single women.' Better still, on her first night abroad, Jess meets Felix. (Yes, on the first night! My god!) He's performing in a local pub, she likes his music, and idle chat leads to serious feelings. His unflappable composure pairs well with her constant flapping — when she gets extra worked up, Jess tends to wave her arms around — and they bond over their mutual attraction (Dunham addresses any doubts over their shared desirability in a single, pointedly dismissive conversation), senses of humor (they both make each other laugh in moments where only someone who really 'gets you' can), and pop culture passions. (Although her indifference toward 'Paddington' would be a dealbreaker if not for Felix's personification of Paddington-esque nicecore.) Sure, Jess has been rightly accused of 'giving crazy' and 'giving psychotic,' and yes, Felix is technically an unemployed, recovering addict with a troubling amount of ex-girlfriends (who are now 'friends'). But like any traditional tale of courtship, their love transcends reason, and Dunham's deft dialogue makes it easy to believe their connection. (She wrote or co-wrote every episode and directed all but one.) The 10-episode limited series is loudly and proudly a piece of genre, conforming to expectations to the extent I knew what would happen before the next half-hour began. But how and why, as always, are vastly more important than what, and once you settle in, it becomes clear the sound structure and familiar story are there to support a character — and creator — whose uninhibited inclinations could upend a less disciplined narrative. Jess, after all, is barely hanging on. When praised by Kim for keeping her composure amid such tumultuous life changes, Jess says, 'I'm just trying to do what I can to survive.' Her standard bubbly tone is flattened. Her oft-animated body language comes to a halt. It's a rare moment of blunt, unembellished vulnerability — the only side Jess is reluctant to show others — and it illustrates so much of what makes 'Too Much' work: Without Jess' persistent vigor, the 'com' in this rom-com would disappear. Without her unusual openness, the 'rom' might not foster much feeling. And without Stalter's talent for masking Jess' fears through recklessness — while still lining that recklessness with genuine excitement for the unknown — the series and its central character would be little more than two parts of the same mess. Instead, Jess yearns to live as she is, sans reproach, whether that bucks the status quo or embraces its comforts, and the same can be said for 'Too Much,' an immensely endearing saga that isn't afraid to lead with its big heart. Committing to the conventional and unconventional at once may irk viewers who see the former as a concession made by the latter, just as Jess' titular too-much-ness may put off judgey viewers. The pacing isn't always smooth, and a few character arcs lose their tether to the Earth, but Dunham delivers enough salient insights about self-acceptance and sharp jokes about, well, everything to elevate her third TV series above many of the medium's typical love stories. It's not the 'voice of a generation' work some may have been hoping for, but that's not who Dunham set out to be; that was Hannah Horvath, and while the 'Girls' star may have plenty of harsh words for the traditional side of her creator's new streaming rom-com, I also think she'd end up savoring more of it than she'd ever admit. 'Too Much' premieres Thursday, July 10 on Netflix. All 10 episodes will be released at once. Best of IndieWire The 25 Best Alfred Hitchcock Movies, Ranked Every IndieWire TV Review from 2020, Ranked by Grade from Best to Worst
