Latest news with #TeriHart
CBC
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Fantastic Four focuses on fun
Social Sharing The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes out in theatres today. The reboot of Marvel's superhero group takes place in a futuristic 1960s America, giving it a nostalgic aesthetic that roots itself in the original vision of the comic books. Today on Commotion, guest host Eli Glasner speaks with NPR's TV critic Eric Deggans, entertainment reporter Teri Hart and Mashable entertainment editor Kristy Puchko about their thoughts on The Fantastic Four and if it can reverse Marvel's recent slump at the box office. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion on remembering both The Cosby Show's Malcolm-Jamal Warner and wrestling icon Hulk Hogan, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Eli: Teri, what's the vision behind this new take on the Fantastic Four? Teri: What people are seeing in this very, very significant media buy that Disney has put behind this movie is a restart for the MCU [Marvel Cinematic Universe]. It's like, we are done with the Avengers, we are done with those old characters and we are in a new universe for the MCU — and that universe is the Fantastic Four. It's a really fun movie to watch. I quite liked the movie…. What's nice about this movie is it doesn't wind around itself 16 times, the way so many MCU movies do. It's like, they [the Fantastic Four] went to space, something happened, they have superpowers, let's move on — and then we get going. All the exposition that we were getting into and all of the explainers and all of the different lore in the MCU was tiresome, let's be clear. And this does not have that. So it's fun and it's a summer blockbuster and it's squarely in that territory, and I think it delivers. Eli: This is just the latest of The Fantastic Four movies. There was the 2005 version with Chris Evans and Jessica Alba, the 2015 version with Michael B. Jordan and Miles Teller. Eric, talk to us about The Fantastic Four as just a story and a Marvel entity and what makes it — up until now, perhaps — so hard to adapt. Eric: The Fantastic Four were the building blocks for Marvel. They were the first set of heroes to come along to present Marvel's vision of: these are heroes that operate in a reality. They're not in a metropolis or some made-up city, they're in Manhattan. They operate out of a skyscraper in the middle of New York City. They deal with real landmarks and real people. And they were a family with real tensions. And I think one of the things that was hard about adapting this though, is that so much of it was very cosmic, and so many of their villains were really exaggerated. Galactus is a perfect example: a world-eating giant from outside our solar system. I think a lot of The Fantastic Four movies, where they fell down, were figuring out who the villain could be. It wasn't Galactus in many of them. And if that villain is not Galactus, you've already lost fans of the Fantastic Four because they want to see that classic match-up that defined the Fantastic Four. So it was great that they tackled portraying Galactus the way he is in the comic books [as the villain]. Eli: Let's talk about aesthetic, Kristy. I would describe The Fantastic Four as Norman Rockwell meets The Jetsons: this wonderful vision of the future, by way of the 1960s. So it has a look. It has very interesting aesthetic choices. Do you think that was crucial to the story? Kristy: I do. Here's the thing: I think that we got into kind of a rut where superhero movies became such a formula because it was working for DC [DC Comics] and MCU for a while that they're like, "These are how these movies look." And the genre might change up a little bit, but they had the consistent look. I think by being like, "We're doing a different look," it says, "We're doing something new, let's reset." I've seen all the other Fantastic Four movies and I will be honest, I don't remember a lot about them. And I think that's in part because it's hard in this superhero genre that we have developed as an industry, as a society, to make sense of four people that are like, "We wear matching spandex, we're called the Fantastic Four." We haven't allowed for that in any kind of real way. So they have to embrace the kitschiness of it. And putting it in the '60s, it gives it that Incredibles vibe, where we are allowed to have an idealistic nostalgia of an aesthetic instead of dealing with the reality of the '60s — and notably their 1960s looks very different than our 1960s in a political structure. But aesthetically? Gorgeous, love it. It really does allow us an escapism that I think Marvel got stuck in with all these gritty, "And now here's Yelena [Black Widow], but she's sad." It allows us to be like, "Hey guys, remember when things were just fun and super?"
CBC
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Why original kids movies bomb at the box office
Social Sharing The new Pixar movie Elio received good reviews when it opened a few weeks ago, but continues to bomb at the box office. This isn't just an Elio problem; it's that kids don't want original movies on the big screen. Today on Commotion, guest host Rad Simonpillai speaks with entertainment reporter Teri Hart to break down kids' viewing habits and why they would rather watch a movie at home than at the cinema. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube:
CBC
18-06-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Did Donald Trump take his media strategy from Rob Ford?
Netflix recently released a new documentary about Rob Ford's 2010 to 2014 reign as mayor of Toronto. Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem includes footage of Ford's infamous admission to smoking crack cocaine and highlights how he delegitimized the media, using tactics that are strikingly similar to those now used by U.S. President Donald Trump. Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud discusses the documentary with entertainment reporter Teri Hart and Toronto Star reporter David Rider, who covered Ford's mayoral tenure and is featured in Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: One of the key throughlines of this documentary, David, is — and I think I forgot about this again, because it's been enough time — but how adversarial Rob Ford was about the media. He would go on every day and say, "The Toronto Star is saying these things about me, they're just not true" — and by the way, he's talking about you! And in this particular case, he is casting you, or casting the media, I should say, as some sort of political opposition. And this is years before you see Donald Trump say the term "fake news." What was it like trying to tell the Rob Ford story, while also having Rob Ford use the microphone of the mayor's office to try to say, "The media, they're not telling the truth about me" — and having people maybe believe him at the time? David: Yeah, it was really difficult. I did very early stories on Rob Ford when there were rumours he was going to run and we got along really well. I spent a whole day with him as he did his constituency work and admired him getting people's potholes fixed and stuff like that. So when it became obvious that he had a real shot at being mayor, suddenly it turned…. I think the Fords have an incredible gut political instinct on how to turn situations to their own advantage, even situations that look like they could be a disaster. And very early on, in a foreshadow of Donald Trump, they said, "We're going to discredit and delegitimize the media. And the Toronto Star are the ones who are the most likely to do us damage." So they started up this drumbeat and they portrayed it as a war. And they said, "Well, they're out to get us." And I always said to people when they'd ask me about it, "It's not a war. We're not trying to get Rob Ford out of office. We're covering him in exactly the same way we would have his two predecessors." And that was our yardstick for whether something was a story or not. But when you portray it as a war, suddenly he's able to just portray everything we do as being unfair and possibly false, when, in fact, he was lying all the time. Elamin: Teri, the thing that trained us, I think, the most for the Donald-Trump-as-president years was living through this whole period of time of the Rob Ford news cycle. Because every day there was not one new thing, there were three new things — granted, a much more truncated timeline. Teri: This documentary is certainly drawing that line — certainly a dotted one, sometimes a very, very bold line — between the Rob Ford mayoral temperature and tone in Toronto and the President of the United States in his second term, Donald Trump. And I think that that is really, really fascinating. Will we ever get the answer? Did Donald Trump watch Rob Ford? Did Donald Trump take a playbook from the Ford family, as David quite rightly points out, and their gut political instincts? We'll never know. But it's certainly there and you don't have to dig too deep to find it. Elamin: David, what do you think Rob Ford's legacy is? David: I think he was a first sign that a populist politician who had all kinds of baggage, who normally in normal-world politics of past decades wouldn't even be considered for office, can get elected. And part of it is that if they can lie with impunity, if they have no political shame and if the public is willing to let them get away with it — and in some cases even cheer it on — then that's an incredibly powerful political weapon. But it's dangerous for society because they think Rob Ford was the start of the fact-free universe, as far as current affairs and how we view each other, and to public policy, where the vibes about a politician are considered just as valid, or maybe more so, than what they've actually done. So I think he was an early warning signal. Although there are people who are flooding social media now saying, "He was the best mayor ever, and this documentary proves it." So it all depends on how you look at it, but he was definitely the start of that.
