Latest news with #Mission:Impossible-
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
Shari Redstone's thumbs-down finale at National Amusements
➕ A guide to enjoying the Fourth of July. 🆕 The Latest US employers An investigation into Massachusetts is trying once again to 💵 A sell-out The show is almost over for National Amusements, the entertainment conglomerate with humble beginnings as a Dedham drive-in movie theater chain. Unlike most Hollywood endings, this one is a downer. Shame on Shari Redstone. Recap: Redstone is the daughter of Advertisement On Tuesday, Paramount Global, controlled by Shari Redstone, said it agreed to pay $16 million to settle Why it matters: It's impossible not to see this as an unabashed payoff intended to win the Federal Communications Commission's approval of Redstone's multibillion-dollar deal to sell Paramount to Skydance Media, the studio behind movies including 'Top Gun: Maverick' and 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One.' Everyone involved denied the settlement was a quid pro quo. If you believe that, I have some Trump meme coins to sell you. Advertisement In a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS last year, Trump alleged that '60 Minutes,' part of CBS News, deceptively edited the Harris interview in order to interfere with the election. Legal experts said Trump's chances of winning the case were slim to none given CBS's First Amendment protections for what was considered routine editing. But his election victory in November gave him enormous leverage over Redstone. Reaction: 'With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration's approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,' Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren 'CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,' a spokesperson for Trump's lawyers said. The president was holding 'the fake news accountable,' the spokesperson said. Of course, the lawsuit was all about putting the news media under the president's thumb. 'The enemy of the people' — Trump's words — is a power base Trump wants desperately to neutralize, along with other perceived foes such as elite universities and big law firms. Columbia University and law firms including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison have already caved. Harvard University had no choice but to come to the negotiating table, though it also is battling the White House in court. 'The President is using government to intimidate news outlets that publish stories he doesn't like,' the conservative editorial board of For what it's worth: The two points I'd like to make here may seem obvious but are worth repeating. Advertisement First: The ownership of news outlets by big corporations is a double-edged sword. Yes, they can provide financial shelter from devastation wrought by Google and Meta — and the brewing storm coming from artificial intelligence. But they also own bigger — and more profitable — businesses that need to maintain at least a civil relationship with the federal government. That's why Disney ended Trump's dubious defamation case against ABC News by agreeing to 'donate' $15 million to the presidential library, and why Meta, the parent of Facebook, coughed up $25 million to settle a Trump lawsuit over the company's suspension of his accounts after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Second: Private sector extortion — multiple law firms promised $100 million in pro-bono work for causes favored by Trump — dovetails with the president's use of the power of the office to make money for himself and his family. Trump's crypto ventures, including the shameless $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, have added at least $620 million to his fortune in a few months, Shari Redstone's $16 million payment is chump change by comparison. And it makes perfect business sense. It smooths the way for National Amusements to salvage at least $1.75 billion from the sale of its stake in Paramount. Sumner Redstone, a consummate dealmaker, would have done the same thing. Skydance, by the way, was launched by another child of a billionaire, David Ellison. Advertisement His father, Larry Ellison, founded software giant Oracle and is worth nearly $250 billion. Oracle is negotiating to take a role in the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner, a transaction being orchestrated by Trump. Small world, eh? Final thought: After nearly 90 years in business, National Amusements, now based in Norwood, is going out with a whimper, not a bang. The company has struggled with heavy debt, declining cable network profits, and huge costs for building out its streaming business. Paramount's market value has dropped to $9 billion from $26 billion when Viacom recombined with CBS to form the new company in 2019. To get the Skydance rescue deal done, Redstone, 71, sold out the journalists at CBS News — the onetime home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, and still one of the most respected names in the business. That's one bummer of an ending. Michael Redstone (left), founder of National Amusements, with his son Sumner standing next to him, in 1965. They were showing off a rendering the company's future Cleveland Circle theater. fay foto/PDFPAGES 🎙️ On the Record ' 'I think news and information in any city is as vital as water, electricity, and gas.' Michael Moritz, a former journalist and successful venture capitalist, on his decision to combine The San Francisco Standard, a local news organization he cofounded, with Charter, a digital publication focused on the future of work. 🏥 Hospitals 🧪 Life Sciences 🎓 Higher Education 🗝️ Housing Advertisement 👨⚖️ Legal Matters 🔢 By the Numbers -13 percent — The decline in Last year's Boston Pops Fireworks Spectacular. Andrew Burke-Stevenson for The B 🎆 The Closer Friday is July 4th. Which means fireworks. Which means deciding where you might want to see fireworks. You can find And from our friends at the Starting Point newsletter, Please have a fun and safe holiday. Thanks for reading. Trendlines will be back on Monday. 🎂 Happy birthday . 📬 Delivered Mondays and Thursdays. Larry Edelman can be reached at
Otago Daily Times
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Cruise goes impossibly deep to decode AI
Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning. Photo: Paramount Pictures and Skydance/TNS Director: Christopher McQuarrie Cast: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett Rating: (M) ★★★ REVIEWED BY AMASIO JUTEL As the stunts get bigger and better, the framing gets duller and more convoluted. Despite its outstanding stunt spectacles, Mission: Impossible's post-Fallout two-parter continues to disappoint its characters and viewers. Producer/star/stuntman/king of movies, Tom Cruise, helms the final franchise entry, The Final Reckoning. Ethan Hunt must diffuse a global cold war by dismantling "The Entity", a rogue all-powerful AI that has seized control of half the world's nukes. It's a premise dripping in sweat, but the decision to reframe the cyber villain from slapstick trickster to cyberspace anti-God, driving humanity towards self-annihilation, completely detracts from the immediacy of Cruise's action. Against the pre-eminent might of cyberspace and the entity's spiteful disinformation war, Ethan Hunt is the planet's last hope and, with a (literal) presidential seal of approval, he's bestowed a strategic military submarine to deep-sea dive to retrieve the entity's source code. Hunt and his team slingshot across the world, chasing clues and racing against time in a diverse array of settings and set pieces — here, the classic Mission: Impossible viewer ecstasy ascends. The screenwriting hole they dug themselves in part one, the unreasonable lack of Ving Rhames as Luther and discourteous removal of Rebecca Ferguson's Isla in the previous instalment, slightly dirty the supposed franchise apex. However, the mind-blowing half-hour silent underwater sequence in the middle of the film corrects the overhyped CG train stunt of Dead Reckoning. Not to spoil the singular reason to see a post-Fallout Mission film, but one is left mouth agape in the theatre, questioning how Tom Cruise did not die during filming.
CNN
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Tom Cruise saw people popping off about how he eats movie popcorn
Tom Cruise appears to give things his all, which includes eating popcorn. A video shared on social media of the star enthusiastically throwing movie popcorn into his mouth at a screening of his latest film, 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning,' has sparked some reaction. Cruise laughed when he was asked about it by Darius Butler during an appearance on 'The Pat McAfee Show' on Wednesday. 'I've never seen anyone eat popcorn this like,' Butler, said. 'Are you actually eating popcorn or are you full of s**t right here, TC? I've got to know.' It cracked Cruise up. 'Man, I'm eating popcorn,' Cruise said as he laughed. 'They know when I'm going to these movies that I'm watching, I'm eating popcorn.' Cruise's love of popcorn has been well documented over the years. A 2023 promotional video for 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1' also featured Cruise with a bucket of the movie snack. Four cities. Four screenings. We had so much fun at the first fan screenings for Mission: Impossible! Thank you to everyone who came out. 'I love my popcorn,' he says in the video. 'Movies. Popcorn.' Writer and podcaster Rachel Leishman wrote about an exchange she had with Cruise at a recent screening. 'I'll use this time to talk about the absolutely insane information Tom Cruise gave in his pre-screening speech,' Leishman wrote. 'First, he asked us all not once but twice if we had popcorn (I showed him my bucket to confirm) and then he goes 'I normally eat two big buckets myself during a movie' She did not, however, reveal whether he orders his with extra butter. 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' is in theaters Friday.
The Advertiser
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Advertiser
Mission Impossible: Can one of the biggest film franchises finish with a bang?
Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (M, 170 minutes) 3 stars Tom Cruise has been entertaining audiences with daring stunts as Ethan Hunt for almost 30 years now. From scaling rock faces to climbing the world's tallest building, hanging onto a plane on take-off or riding a motorcycle off a cliff, if there's one thing you can rely on when it comes to a Mission: Impossible film, it's death-defying stunts. So with three decades of unbelievable action work before it, can Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (widely touted as the last entry in the franchise) really raise the bar? Well, yes and no. This film, eighth in the franchise and a direct extension of 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (not all of us have forgotten this one was supposed to be a part two), ties together some loose ends from the past. The last film saw Hunt and co secure a very plot-important key from chief antagonist Gabriel (Esai Morales, less menacing this time around), in an attempt to retrieve a piece of technology hidden in a sunken Russian submarine somewhere in the Arctic. This tech would allow the team to combat The Entity, an AI that is attempting to take over the world (apparently the Mission: Impossible universe learned nothing from Skynet). But if you've remembered none of that going into Final Reckoning, have no fear - there is an exhaustive amount of exposition in the first hour. In an odd decision for a film series that normally starts with a bang, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie opted to open the film with The Entity (illustrated by a pulsing blue light grid) monologuing, giving The Final Reckoning a distinctly science-fiction feel. We're not only subjected to a recap of the previous film - there's also a bunch of flashbacks to moments from all films in the series. The whole first hour feels like a clip show of old, and it's jarring for fans used to the fast pace of Mission: Impossible's other entries. After laying enough groundwork to build a major city, things finally start to kick into gear with a few action set-pieces. There's the obligatory running scene, Hunt and Grace (Hayley Atwell returning) being captured, bombs needing to be defused before the timer runs out, mask work (it truly never gets old) and more. But for the most part, these action sequences feel tamer than we're used to. The peril doesn't feel as high. After such a long introductory period, the action needs to really have you on the edge of your seat, and that doesn't happen until right at the end of the film. That's where we see the real show-stopper. It just might be the most ambitious stunt yet - and that includes Cruise breaking his ankle jumping between buildings and HALO jumping out of a helicopter. As shown in trailers and TV spots and promo images (like the one with this review), Cruise's big stunt this time involves the old art of wing walking, but dialled up to 11. With top-notch digital removal of the pilot and any safety gear, we see Cruise thrown about within the wings of his bi-plane, holding onto whatever piece of metal prevents him from plummeting to the earth. It's a stunning sequence that, in a better paced film, would have been up there will the all-time greats. But, unfortunately, the audience is already so tired of having been in the cinema over two hours by this point that some of the enthusiasm for Hunt's survival has waned. You see, there's just no escaping the fact that, unlike Cruise's body which he is clearly very keen to show off here, The Final Reckoning is damagingly bloated. The script also treats minor incidents and plot points from previous entries in the series with a reverence usually saved for massive sci-fi franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek or Lord of the Rings. It's hard to imagine even the most dedicated of M:I fans care all that much about reliving small moments from the other films at the expense of this film getting on with the story. While still significantly better than the dud that is Mission: Impossible II and featuring some solid action and character moments, The Final Reckoning is not the memorable send-off you'd hope for. Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (M, 170 minutes) 3 stars Tom Cruise has been entertaining audiences with daring stunts as Ethan Hunt for almost 30 years now. From scaling rock faces to climbing the world's tallest building, hanging onto a plane on take-off or riding a motorcycle off a cliff, if there's one thing you can rely on when it comes to a Mission: Impossible film, it's death-defying stunts. So with three decades of unbelievable action work before it, can Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (widely touted as the last entry in the franchise) really raise the bar? Well, yes and no. This film, eighth in the franchise and a direct extension of 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (not all of us have forgotten this one was supposed to be a part two), ties together some loose ends from the past. The last film saw Hunt and co secure a very plot-important key from chief antagonist Gabriel (Esai Morales, less menacing this time around), in an attempt to retrieve a piece of technology hidden in a sunken Russian submarine somewhere in the Arctic. This tech would allow the team to combat The Entity, an AI that is attempting to take over the world (apparently the Mission: Impossible universe learned nothing from Skynet). But if you've remembered none of that going into Final Reckoning, have no fear - there is an exhaustive amount of exposition in the first hour. In an odd decision for a film series that normally starts with a bang, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie opted to open the film with The Entity (illustrated by a pulsing blue light grid) monologuing, giving The Final Reckoning a distinctly science-fiction feel. We're not only subjected to a recap of the previous film - there's also a bunch of flashbacks to moments from all films in the series. The whole first hour feels like a clip show of old, and it's jarring for fans used to the fast pace of Mission: Impossible's other entries. After laying enough groundwork to build a major city, things finally start to kick into gear with a few action set-pieces. There's the obligatory running scene, Hunt and Grace (Hayley Atwell returning) being captured, bombs needing to be defused before the timer runs out, mask work (it truly never gets old) and more. But for the most part, these action sequences feel tamer than we're used to. The peril doesn't feel as high. After such a long introductory period, the action needs to really have you on the edge of your seat, and that doesn't happen until right at the end of the film. That's where we see the real show-stopper. It just might be the most ambitious stunt yet - and that includes Cruise breaking his ankle jumping between buildings and HALO jumping out of a helicopter. As shown in trailers and TV spots and promo images (like the one with this review), Cruise's big stunt this time involves the old art of wing walking, but dialled up to 11. With top-notch digital removal of the pilot and any safety gear, we see Cruise thrown about within the wings of his bi-plane, holding onto whatever piece of metal prevents him from plummeting to the earth. It's a stunning sequence that, in a better paced film, would have been up there will the all-time greats. But, unfortunately, the audience is already so tired of having been in the cinema over two hours by this point that some of the enthusiasm for Hunt's survival has waned. You see, there's just no escaping the fact that, unlike Cruise's body which he is clearly very keen to show off here, The Final Reckoning is damagingly bloated. The script also treats minor incidents and plot points from previous entries in the series with a reverence usually saved for massive sci-fi franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek or Lord of the Rings. It's hard to imagine even the most dedicated of M:I fans care all that much about reliving small moments from the other films at the expense of this film getting on with the story. While still significantly better than the dud that is Mission: Impossible II and featuring some solid action and character moments, The Final Reckoning is not the memorable send-off you'd hope for. Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (M, 170 minutes) 3 stars Tom Cruise has been entertaining audiences with daring stunts as Ethan Hunt for almost 30 years now. From scaling rock faces to climbing the world's tallest building, hanging onto a plane on take-off or riding a motorcycle off a cliff, if there's one thing you can rely on when it comes to a Mission: Impossible film, it's death-defying stunts. So with three decades of unbelievable action work before it, can Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (widely touted as the last entry in the franchise) really raise the bar? Well, yes and no. This film, eighth in the franchise and a direct extension of 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (not all of us have forgotten this one was supposed to be a part two), ties together some loose ends from the past. The last film saw Hunt and co secure a very plot-important key from chief antagonist Gabriel (Esai Morales, less menacing this time around), in an attempt to retrieve a piece of technology hidden in a sunken Russian submarine somewhere in the Arctic. This tech would allow the team to combat The Entity, an AI that is attempting to take over the world (apparently the Mission: Impossible universe learned nothing from Skynet). But if you've remembered none of that going into Final Reckoning, have no fear - there is an exhaustive amount of exposition in the first hour. In an odd decision for a film series that normally starts with a bang, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie opted to open the film with The Entity (illustrated by a pulsing blue light grid) monologuing, giving The Final Reckoning a distinctly science-fiction feel. We're not only subjected to a recap of the previous film - there's also a bunch of flashbacks to moments from all films in the series. The whole first hour feels like a clip show of old, and it's jarring for fans used to the fast pace of Mission: Impossible's other entries. After laying enough groundwork to build a major city, things finally start to kick into gear with a few action set-pieces. There's the obligatory running scene, Hunt and Grace (Hayley Atwell returning) being captured, bombs needing to be defused before the timer runs out, mask work (it truly never gets old) and more. But for the most part, these action sequences feel tamer than we're used to. The peril doesn't feel as high. After such a long introductory period, the action needs to really have you on the edge of your seat, and that doesn't happen until right at the end of the film. That's where we see the real show-stopper. It just might be the most ambitious stunt yet - and that includes Cruise breaking his ankle jumping between buildings and HALO jumping out of a helicopter. As shown in trailers and TV spots and promo images (like the one with this review), Cruise's big stunt this time involves the old art of wing walking, but dialled up to 11. With top-notch digital removal of the pilot and any safety gear, we see Cruise thrown about within the wings of his bi-plane, holding onto whatever piece of metal prevents him from plummeting to the earth. It's a stunning sequence that, in a better paced film, would have been up there will the all-time greats. But, unfortunately, the audience is already so tired of having been in the cinema over two hours by this point that some of the enthusiasm for Hunt's survival has waned. You see, there's just no escaping the fact that, unlike Cruise's body which he is clearly very keen to show off here, The Final Reckoning is damagingly bloated. The script also treats minor incidents and plot points from previous entries in the series with a reverence usually saved for massive sci-fi franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek or Lord of the Rings. It's hard to imagine even the most dedicated of M:I fans care all that much about reliving small moments from the other films at the expense of this film getting on with the story. While still significantly better than the dud that is Mission: Impossible II and featuring some solid action and character moments, The Final Reckoning is not the memorable send-off you'd hope for. Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning (M, 170 minutes) 3 stars Tom Cruise has been entertaining audiences with daring stunts as Ethan Hunt for almost 30 years now. From scaling rock faces to climbing the world's tallest building, hanging onto a plane on take-off or riding a motorcycle off a cliff, if there's one thing you can rely on when it comes to a Mission: Impossible film, it's death-defying stunts. So with three decades of unbelievable action work before it, can Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (widely touted as the last entry in the franchise) really raise the bar? Well, yes and no. This film, eighth in the franchise and a direct extension of 2023's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (not all of us have forgotten this one was supposed to be a part two), ties together some loose ends from the past. The last film saw Hunt and co secure a very plot-important key from chief antagonist Gabriel (Esai Morales, less menacing this time around), in an attempt to retrieve a piece of technology hidden in a sunken Russian submarine somewhere in the Arctic. This tech would allow the team to combat The Entity, an AI that is attempting to take over the world (apparently the Mission: Impossible universe learned nothing from Skynet). But if you've remembered none of that going into Final Reckoning, have no fear - there is an exhaustive amount of exposition in the first hour. In an odd decision for a film series that normally starts with a bang, writer-director Christopher McQuarrie opted to open the film with The Entity (illustrated by a pulsing blue light grid) monologuing, giving The Final Reckoning a distinctly science-fiction feel. We're not only subjected to a recap of the previous film - there's also a bunch of flashbacks to moments from all films in the series. The whole first hour feels like a clip show of old, and it's jarring for fans used to the fast pace of Mission: Impossible's other entries. After laying enough groundwork to build a major city, things finally start to kick into gear with a few action set-pieces. There's the obligatory running scene, Hunt and Grace (Hayley Atwell returning) being captured, bombs needing to be defused before the timer runs out, mask work (it truly never gets old) and more. But for the most part, these action sequences feel tamer than we're used to. The peril doesn't feel as high. After such a long introductory period, the action needs to really have you on the edge of your seat, and that doesn't happen until right at the end of the film. That's where we see the real show-stopper. It just might be the most ambitious stunt yet - and that includes Cruise breaking his ankle jumping between buildings and HALO jumping out of a helicopter. As shown in trailers and TV spots and promo images (like the one with this review), Cruise's big stunt this time involves the old art of wing walking, but dialled up to 11. With top-notch digital removal of the pilot and any safety gear, we see Cruise thrown about within the wings of his bi-plane, holding onto whatever piece of metal prevents him from plummeting to the earth. It's a stunning sequence that, in a better paced film, would have been up there will the all-time greats. But, unfortunately, the audience is already so tired of having been in the cinema over two hours by this point that some of the enthusiasm for Hunt's survival has waned. You see, there's just no escaping the fact that, unlike Cruise's body which he is clearly very keen to show off here, The Final Reckoning is damagingly bloated. The script also treats minor incidents and plot points from previous entries in the series with a reverence usually saved for massive sci-fi franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek or Lord of the Rings. It's hard to imagine even the most dedicated of M:I fans care all that much about reliving small moments from the other films at the expense of this film getting on with the story. While still significantly better than the dud that is Mission: Impossible II and featuring some solid action and character moments, The Final Reckoning is not the memorable send-off you'd hope for.
The Hindu
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
‘Mission: Impossible - Final Reckoning' Day 3 box office collection: Tom Cruise movie outshines ‘Dead Reckoning Part One'
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning continues its steady run at the India box office. The final film of the long-running franchise, starring Tom Cruise, hit the screens on May 17, 2025 (Saturday). By the third day, the film has raked in ₹38.81 crore in India, according to Sacnilk. The action thriller has outperformed the previous instalment in the franchise, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1. On the opening day, the highly-anticipated movie collected ₹16.5 crore and it went on to mint ₹17 crore on Sunday. On its third day, The Final Reckoning made ₹5.31 crore. Dead Reckoning Part 1, which hit the screens on July 12, 2023, had made ₹30.2 crore at the India box office. The movie opened with a ₹12.3 crore collection. In the Christopher McQuarrie-directed movie, Ethan Hunt and team race against time to defeat the Entity and his human side kick, Gabriel. The Hindu review of the movie says, 'Unlike James Bond, with different actors playing the suave super spy, Cruise has come to personify Ethan Hunt and 30 years on, continues to do so with punch and panache. And at 62, his jaw-dropping close-body fight in swimming trunks offers ample proof of the same.' ALSO READ:Tom Cruise wants to make a Bollywood-style film in India: 'I love the dancing, the singing' Recently, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the veteran actor said he has no plans to quit films. 'I actually said I'm going to make movies into my 80s; actually, I'm going to make them into my 100s. I will never stop. I will never stop doing action, I will never stop doing drama, comedy films -- I'm excited.'
