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Los Angeles Times
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
10 books to read in July
Critic Bethanne Patrick recommends 10 promising titles, fiction and nonfiction, to consider for your July reading list. It's officially beach-reads season: Whether you do your reading outdoors or inside in air-conditioned comfort, July's hot new releases will help you stay cool. Topics range from analog memories of Golden Age Hollywood to a maverick female athlete. Happy reading! In Pursuit of Beauty: A Novel By Gary BaumBlackstone: 256 pages, $29(July 1) Baum, a journalist for the Hollywood Reporter, draws on knowledge he has gleaned about cosmetic surgery, the profession of his protagonist, Dr. Roya Delshad. Dr. Delshad, who is multiracial and once supposedly plain, remakes herself into a glorious bombshell — but then lands in prison. She's agreed to consider interviews with a ghostwriter named Wes Easton, who will soon discover why she's called 'the Robin Hood of Roxbury Drive.' Typewriter Beach: A Novel By Meg Waite ClaytonHarper: 320 pages, $30(July 1) Like the carriage of a well-oiled Olivetti, this novel moves between Carmel and Hollywood, in two different centuries, with ease. In 1957, actress Isabella Giori hopes to land a career-making role in a Hitchcock film; when her circumstances change and she winds up secluded in a tiny cottage in Carmel-on-the-Sea, a blacklisted emigre screenwriter named Léon Chazan saves her. In 2018, his screenwriter granddaughter finally learns how and why. Vera, or Faith: A Novel By Gary ShteyngartRandom House: 256 pages, $28(July 8) Vera, the child narrator of this wry and relevant new novel from Shteyngart ('Our Country Friends'), brings a half-Korean heritage to the Russian-Jewish-WASP Bradford-Shmulkin family. Between Daddy, Anne Mom, and her longing for her unknown bio Mom Mom, Vera has a lot to handle, while all she really wants is to help her dad and stepmom stay married — and to make a friend at school. It's a must-read. Mendell Station: A Novel By J. B. HwangBloomsbury: 208 pages, $27(July 22) In the wake of her best friend Esther's 2020 death from COVID-19, Miriam loses faith in almost everything, including the God that made her job teaching Christian scripture at a San Francisco private school bearable. She quits and takes a job as a mail carrier (as the author also did), not only finding moments of grace from neighborhood to neighborhood but also writing letters to Esther in an effort to understand the childhood difficulties that bonded them. Necessary Fiction: A Novel By Eloghosa OsundeRiverhead: 320 pages, $28(July 22) The title tells so much about how queer people must live in Nigeria, and so does the structure: Osunde ('Vagabonds!') calls it a novel, although its chapters read more like short stories. If it doesn't hang together like a traditional novel, that may be part of the point. Characters like May, struggling with gender identity, or Ziz, a gay man in Lagos, know that their identities don't always hang together in traditional ways — and that's definitely the point. The CIA Book Club: The Secret Mission to Win the Cold War With Forbidden Literature By Charlie EnglishRandom House: 384 pages, $35(July 1) Decades of Cold War espionage between the United States and the Soviet Union included programs that leveraged cultural media. The Central Intelligence Agency's Manhattan-based 'book club' office was run by an emigre from Romania named George Midden, who managed to send 10 million books behind the Iron Curtain. Some of them were serious tomes, yes, but there were Agatha Christie novels, Orwell's '1984' and art books too. The Hiroshima Men: The Quest to Build the Atomic Bomb, and the Fateful Decision to Use It By Iain MacGregorScribner: 384 pages, $32(July 8) Crucially, MacGregor's painstakingly researched history of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II includes Japanese perspectives. The historian ('Checkpoint Charlie') treats the atomic bomb more as a weapon of mass murder and less as a scientific breakthrough, while managing to convey the urgency behind its development for the Allied forces. On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports By Christine BrennanScribner: 272 pages, $30(July 8) Let this sink in (basketball pun very much intended): Caitlin Clark has scored more points than any player in major college basketball history. Not just the female players — the male players too. Now that she's in the WNBA as a rookie for the Indiana Fever, Clark is attracting the kind of fan base once reserved for male basketball stars like Michael Jordan and LeBron James. Brennan's longtime coverage of Clark's career makes this book a slam dunk. Strata: Stories From Deep Time By Laura PoppickW. W. Norton & Co.: 288 pages, $30(July 15) Each stratum, or layer, of our planet tells a story. Science writer Poppick explains what those millions of strata can tell us about four instances that changed life dramatically, from oxygen entering the atmosphere all the way to the dinosaur era. Ultimately, she argues that these strata show us that when stressed, the earth reacts by changing and moving toward stability. It's a fascinating peek into the globe's core that might offer clues about sustainability. The Feather Detective: Mystery, Mayhem, and the Magnificent Life of Roxie Laybourne By Chris SweeneyAvid Reader Press: 320 pages, $30(July 22) The once-unassuming Roxie Laybourne became the world's first forensic ornithologist in 1960, when the FAA asked the Smithsonian — where Laybourne was an avian taxidermist — to help them identify shredded feathers from a fatal airplane crash in Boston. She analyzed specimens that contributed to arrests in racial attacks, as well as in catching game poachers and preventing deaths of fighter pilots. In her way, Laybourne was a badass.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Materialists' review: Are Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, and Pedro Pascal perfectly miscast?
All products featured here are independently selected by our editors and writers. If you buy something through links on our site, Mashable may earn an affiliate commission. Materialists, Celine Song's highly anticipated follow-up to her critically heralded debut feature Past Lives, may be too clever for its own good. On paper, Materialists is perfection. It's a love triangle romantic comedy, headlined by three movie stars with which the Internet is absolutely obsessed: Chris Evans, Dakota Johnson, and Pedro Pascal. SEE ALSO: Please stop killing Pedro Pascal! The plot feels like something out of a Golden Age Hollywood movie. A cynical career girl (Johnson) in New York City plays matchmaker to the rich and shallow. But when she meets a suave, handsome, and outlandishly wealthy man of her own (Pascal), will she choose him? Or will her heart lead her to the struggling artist (Evans) with no savings, no prospects, and only annoying roommates and a cater-waiter gig to his name? Such a humorous heroine role used to go to the likes of Jane Russell (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes), Lauren Bacall (How to Marry a Millionaire), or Katharine Hepburn (The Philadelphia Story). In the '90s revitalization of rom-coms, you might have seen Meg Ryan or Julia Roberts in such a part. Though she has done romantic dramas (Fifty Shades of Grey) and comedies (How to Be Single), casting Dakota Johnson now in such a role is a spiky choice. It's not that Johnson doesn't have the range to play the hard-nosed career girl who might, at her core, be a hopeless romantic. However, her public persona is one of a snarky cynic, who refuses to take anything Hollywood too seriously. And this attitude has been embraced by Materialists' beguiling promotional campaign, which flaunts her and co-stars Evans and Pascal's chaotic chemistry. Yet her attempt at earnest romanticism in the movie itself hits shallow at best because of this persona — and similar problems afflict her co-stars as well. While the actors in these lead roles might be performing them well, their personas are so big beyond the movie that they overshadow what Song is attempting to do with Materialists. Let's break it down. Credit: A24 As Lucy M., Johnson is the kind of sleek sophisticated Manhattanite that Sex and the City fans aspire to be. Like Carrie Bradshaw, Lucy can wax poetically with a broad smile to sell the concept of perfect love and great sex to her hungry clientele. But she's not a true believer like Carrie. When she speaks with her coworkers, it's all about numbers: height, salary, and BMI. When she lectures coolly on matters of matchmaking, it's as if she's talking about interlocking puzzle pieces that just need to fit. Talk of actual love is shunted to the side as inconvenient, which is reflective of Lucy's background. Nine years before, she was an aspiring actress with no rich parents to supplement her ambitions. Like many a romantic heroine (reaching back to Jane Austen), Lucy doesn't want to end up poor. To her, being poor guarantees being unhappy, because she's been both. So a future with John (Evans), who is still pursuing his dream of acting all these years after they broke up, seems a foolish move. In a telling flashback, Johnson throws herself into a public argument over money, but her desperation feels like a performance. The sight of her wide eyes drinking in the lavish gifts of her millionaire boyfriend is funny, but likewise it also feels false because of what we know of Johnson herself. Her persona is one of no-bullshit, fueled by the glimmering privilege of being born into a wealthy and very famous Hollywood family. Her sophisticated, surly attitude toward movie press for years has bolstered this persona, along with her pushback on daytime TV's former queen of nice, Ellen DeGeneres. Here, this persona works against her. In this movie, though she wears less chic clothing than a movie star might on a nighttime talk show, she is very recognizable as sleek and meticulously groomed Dakota Johnson, queen of fuck-you money and its accompanying attitude. So even if she dons an off-the-rack sundress, it just doesn't feel real with a haircut that costs more than John's rent. Credit: A24 It might have helped if Johnson had the kind of chemistry in the film that she and her co-stars share on their promotional tour, which has been full of cheeky videos of reciting lines from famous romances and challenging each other to trivia or light-hearted questions. However, Lucy has such a devoted distance to the idea of love that even when she's falling, it's hard to feel it from her. This is further frustrating, because both of her options are dazzling. John, played by Evans, is a pretty familiar figure in New York City. A struggling actor who's taking survival jobs in waitering gigs, he has a mischievous smile and a worldweary stare. Evans uses this to express the willpower and sheer exhaustion of daring to be a dreamer in a city that has no patience for the poor. Choosing John is meant to seem like a risk, because he can't promise Lucy financial security. It's a cliché that most couples fight about money, but it's a cliché for a reason. And yet it's hard to think of choosing John as a leap of faith when Song cast one of the world's biggest movie stars to play the struggling actor. It's impossible to look at Chris Evans' face, even bulked down from his MCU days and covered by an inviting sheen of scruffy facial hair, and not think that John's gonna make it. Even if Evans convincingly plays the role of working-class actor, such glossy optimism fights the realistic tone of what Song is doing with this movie. Credit: A24 Pascal plays Harry, a hedge fund manager who takes Lucy to astonishingly expensive restaurants, and then his jaw-droppingly luxurious apartment. (With a $12 million price tag!) He's a gentleman. He's tall, dark, handsome, and generous, or as Lucy puts it 'a unicorn.' The catch is that while he is a rational choice for what Lucy says she wants, she fears that neither of them are really in love with each other as much as they think they could be good partners. To choose Harry would be a business decision. What's fascinating about Materialists is that the casting of Pascal might seem intended to cover up some sort of horrible secret that Harry is hiding. (For evidence of this, just see how fans of The Last of Us will excuse all of Joel's crimes because of just how much they fawn over Pascal). That to choose him would be, White Lotus-style, a kind of complicity. Thankfully, Song doesn't take such an easy out in structuring her conflict. Harry is not a bad guy. He just might not be the right guy. But to be perfectly frank, when the whole world is deeply, deeply obsessed with Pedro Pascal, it is a wild choice to cast him as the guy we're supposed to root against when it comes to getting the girl. Don't mistake me, I deeply admire what Song is doing with this movie. She sets up a traditional rom-com in scenario and characters, but then rejects the buzzy optimism and whimsy of standard Hollywood romantic comedies to create something cuttingly modern. The tone of this comedy is not broad. The banter is not bouncy. Instead, Song commits to an earnest indie understanding of love and relationships. Her characters are not necessarily looking for love as much as they are fleeing from loneliness. Desperation mixes with hope, cynicism with rationale. New York City is not a heaven of designer shoes and an endless supply of eligible bachelors. As John shows, it is a place of bustling bodegas, grimy street corners, hole-in-the-wall theaters, and embarrassing squabbles that interrupt Times Square traffic. Through all the film's conversations about money, the undercurrent is about worth. What do we think we are worth, and what will we risk to be with someone who really sees that? In that, Materialists is a deeply romantic film. Rather than opening with a typically glossy Manhattan rom-com montage, Materialists opens with a strange scene, where a caveman and cavewoman exchange gifts and bind themselves together with a ring made of a small flower. This suggests that marriage has always been about what we can offer each other in a relationship. Song bolsters the sincerity over Hollywood romanticism by choosing a color palette that's less vivid than those of the '90s rom-com heyday. Likewise, a subplot about one of Lucy's clients going on a truly heinous date risks derailing the film's potential feel-good energy. There's a sense that Song is making a romance comedy for cynics. And in an online dating scene that seems increasingly bleak, with people lying on their profiles or gaming the system by choosing sexual inclinations that don't actually appeal to them or even dating AI in lieu of other humans, perhaps we've all become cynics. SEE ALSO: Is dating an AI chatbot considered cheating? Others may be able to watch Materialists and divorce themselves from the immense and immensely charming personas of the cast. For me, I struggled to feel the movie as it truly is, as opposed to the movie the marketing campaign with its flashy stars had me expecting it to be. I suspect years from now, I'll rewatch this movie and think more kindly of it. For now, I admire that it's a big swing, with big stars, who might be, despite their incredible charm and sincere performances, its biggest flaw. For as grounded and real as Materialists aims to be, it's hard to overlook its big, shining stars to see that gritty authenticity. In the end, Materialists feels like it's trying to check all the boxes of a rom-com, much like Lucy's clients aim to check the boxes of what they think they want. But Song wants to give us what we need. And as much as I wish she pulled that off, I was left cold. Materialists is now in theaters.
Time Out
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
The 50 best fantasy movies of all time
A groundbreaker in several ways, Robert Zemeckis's truly looney half-'toon, half-live action comedy sendup presents an alternate-dimension vision of Golden Age Hollywood, one where 2D stars like Bugs Bunny walk off the screen and commingle with their flesh-and-blood peers. Of its many innovations, the most impressive might be its deployment of a primordial multiverse concept, with characters from the Disney universe sharing space with those from Warner Bros. and Universal. Trust us: in the days before mass corporate consolidation, the idea of seeing Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck in the same movie was mind-blowing. Magic moment: Private investigator Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) drives into Toontown, where he's serenaded by a cheery chorus of anthropomorphic trees, animals and a goofily grinning sun.
New York Post
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Dennis Morgan's former LA home can be yours for $8.5M
This Mediterranean revival estate near Los Angeles has a lot to brag about. The home in La Cañada Flintridge was designed in 1927 by trailblazing architect Paul R. Williams, the designer of iconic commercial buildings and residences across California and the first African-American member of the American Institute of Architects. The residence later served as a retreat for Golden Age Hollywood actor Dennis Morgan. On top of its Californian bona fides, the sprawling property boasts an super-sized swimming pool. Now, this 1.2-acre estate can be yours for $8.5 million — marking its first sale in decades. Advertisement 'It's a truly magnificent, almost fossilized home,' Compass agent George Penner told The Post. 'It captures the spirit of Hollywood and Los Angeles in the 1930s.' 19 The grounds include unique structures like an observatory and a tea house. Sterling Reed Photography 19 The living room. Sterling Reed Photography Advertisement 19 Former resident Dennis Morgan appeared in Hollywood musicals and movies throughout the 1940s. Kobal / Shutterstock The primary estate residence, designed by Williams, includes four bedrooms across 8,156 square feet. Painstakingly crafted details are sprinkled throughout the home, including hand-painted stenciled ceilings, black and white marble floors, tile mosaics and stained glass. Specialty rooms include a paneled library, a music room and a basement wine cellar. 19 The home's reception hall with 20-foot ceilings. Sterling Reed Photography Advertisement 19 The formal dining room features a stained glass window. Sterling Reed Photography 19 The library. Sterling Reed Photography 19 The faux bois tea house, built in 1929. Sterling Reed Photography 19 The wonderful interior of the tea house. Sterling Reed Photography Advertisement 19 A one-bedroom casita. Sterling Reed Photography 19 The guest house includes an observatory and a two-car garage. Sterling Reed Photography 19 The guest house interior. Sterling Reed Photography The estate's grounds, nestled in the foothills of the Verdugo Mountains, includes a garden, two greenhouses, a one-bedroom casita and a faux bois tea house built by a Japanese artisan in 1929. A two-bedroom guest house features a look-out 'observatory' and a two-car garage. Then, there's the swimming pool. 19 Penner said the Olympic-size pool draws a great deal of attention. Sterling Reed Photography 19 An aerial of the swimming pool. Cameron Carothers Photos 19 A garden fountain. Sterling Reed Photography Advertisement 19 Scattered sunlight hits a mosaic wall. Sterling Reed Photography 'Everyone seems to comment about the Olympic-size pool, because it's so unusual to have such an enormous, opulent pool for a single family home,' Penner said. Architect Paul R. Williams built the residence early in his career for attorney James Degnan. Williams went on to design homes for the likes of Frank Sinatra and Lucille Ball. '[Williams] was a real trailblazer, and certainly the most prolific African-American architect of the 20th century, certainly in California,' Penner said. 'To do work of this incredible level in 1927 is, I think, extraordinary.' Advertisement Gina Guerra has lived in the home with her family since they purchased it for $2.07 million in 1999. The Guerras inherited the home's well-preserved — but 'quite run down' — architectural details, like original tiling and light fixtures, alongside stories of Errol Flynn partying on the property. Guerra told The Post that the family focused on restoration, rather than renovation, through their years of ownership, although upgrades to the kitchen and bathrooms were necessary. 19 Descendants of James Degnan gifted Guerra vintage photos of the property. 19 The dining room. Advertisement 19 The tiled fountain. 19 A vintage view of the observatory. Guerra added the property's expansive green space and multiple greenhouses turned her into an avid gardener. 'I'm now in the Garden Club of America judging program for horticulture, so it really took me down this whole path that I never expected in my life,' Guerra said. 'I hope another family moves in, raises their kids here and loves it the way we do.'
Yahoo
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Prue Skene, CEO of Ballet Rambert and potent behind-the-scenes force in British arts
Prue Skene, who has died aged 81, was a gifted cultural administrator and a discreetly potent force in the British performing arts. She began in the 1970s; her principal domain was dance. Compared to most attracted to that art form, she was inspired relatively late in life – at the age of 30, after seeing the work of New York choreographer Twyla Tharp at London's Roundhouse, where Prue was employed as a secretary. It was there that she also caught a performance by Ballet Rambert, which had been Britain's first independent classical dance company when it was founded in 1926, but had latterly become 'contemporary' – still a novel tag in 1970s London. She was instantly taken by Rambert's The Parades Gone By, a funky, high-camp piece by the late Lindsay Kemp that parodied Golden Age Hollywood, and never looked back. Prue Skene campaigned tirelessly on behalf of Rambert's daring output, finessing international tours, supporting its choreographers and dancers, and becoming its much-loved and reliable executive director (1975 to 1986), then later board chair (2000 to 2009). She also brought her lightness of touch and unswerving advisory hand to other pioneering companies, including the English Shakespeare Company in the late 1980s and, in 2016, Cardboard Citizens, a project bringing in the homeless to create theatre, where she was also chair. As one Rambert colleague put it: 'If Prue said something, it would happen.' Prudence Patricia Skene was born in Amersham in 1944, the second of four children to Phyllis and Robert Skene, and educated at the Francis Holland School when the family moved from Buckinghamshire to London after the war. Her parents had met at Oxford University but Prue showed no signs of following them there. Nor did she recall culture being high on the agenda in a comfortable home, though did think she was taken to the Opera House, where she felt sure she had seen the ballerina Margot Fonteyn but was unable to confirm it. She moved into secretarial work, which brought her to the Roundhouse, considered edgy and rough, almost 'fringe', in the 1960s and 1970s. Huge bands of the era – The Who, Pink Floyd – played there at weekends but they weren't for Prue Skene, not least because she was a weekday worker and went home on Fridays. She came into her own when invited to help administer the dance company that had so electrified her. One of Rambert's great hits was Cruel Garden, designed by Kemp and Ralph Koltai, and choreographed by Christopher Bruce, an important associate director at Rambert. Based on the works, and murder, of the Andalusian poet Federico García Lorca, the piece was made precisely for the Roundhouse space, premiering in 1977. For Skene it remained perhaps the company's signature show. In 1985, she married Brian Wray, marketing director at Imperial Tobacco (cigarette companies then being acceptable arts sponsors) and they made a life together in Bath. This marked a career pause. But within six years she was at Arts Council England, becoming a significant and astute force in the distribution of National Lottery funds to arts organisations. The list of posts she occupied was prodigiously long, and included executive producer of the English Shakespeare Company; director of the Arts Foundation; and trustee of the Nureyev Foundation. As chair at Cardboard Citizens, she showed her trademark steadiness. Founder and former CEO Adrian Jackson recalls: 'Prue was very determined and committed. As CEO life is sometimes easier with a pliant chair: Prue was not that. She tended to get what she wanted.' And few knew about her weaving skills. To a niece in the British Library once, looking together in the entrance hall at a huge tapestry If Not, Not (after RB Kitaj's mid-1970s painting), Prue said: 'I cut the last thread on that: same as launching a boat – smashing a bottle on the prow!' Skene was as modest as she was multi-talented. In 2000 she was appointed CBE for her services to the arts. Brian Wray died in 2002. Skene then shared her life with actor Michael Pennington, who survives her. Prue Skene, born January 9 1944, died March 5 2025 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.
