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The Guardian
01-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Austin Powers? The Godfather? Wild Things? Our writers on the franchises they would like to revive
The Thin Man series should not be rebooted so much as remixed, shaken a little and strained into crystal coupes. These glamorous 1930s capers starred the debonair duo of William Powell and Myrna Loy as frisky husband-and-wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, who solve crimes while cracking wise and necking cocktails, accompanied by their precocious wire fox terrier Asta. There were six films in the original run, starting with 1934's The Thin Man, an adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name, and ending in 1947. The perfect recipe for a new Thin Man film would comprise two charismatic movie stars with sizzling chemistry, the kind who look stunning in evening dress, but who can also ad lib their own gags, a cavalcade of plot twists and saucy co-stars, a happy ending, and of course a scene-stealing pooch. It's good, old-fashioned fun, but that's why it's so timeless, and a formula that can run and run – until the ice bucket is empty. Pamela Hutchinson Wild Things is a movie Film Twitter might say they just couldn't make anymore, which is pretty much the best reason to give it a try. The gloriously trashy original, which spawned a series of straight-to-DVD sequels, starred Neve Campbell, Denise Richards, Matt Dillon and Kevin Bacon (shocking audiences by showing off all his meat) as exceptionally hot grifters using their sexual currency to break open trust funds. Wild Things was the neo-noir driftwood arriving after a wave of 90s erotic thrillers, when Girls Gone Wild was a thing and wet T-shirt competitions were peaking. That vibe is built into the movie's lurid South Florida aesthetic, which was an ogle fest certainly, but also deceptively clever and sensational with its knowing high camp performances and over-the-top accumulation of double and triple crosses. Wild Things is exactly the franchise to revisit now that we're in a moment when the erotic thriller is making a comeback (think Halina Reijn's smart and subversive embrace in Babygirl). It's got the room to improve and challenge what the original had to offer, but also embrace what it did well, showing a lot of skin but only revealing the true nature of its plot and appeal just when we thought the movie – and its moment – was over. Radheyan Simonpillai Look, I frankly can't conceive of a hunger for reviving any long-running franchise of the past half-century. Pretty much all of them have had their turn at this point. So let's take it back a bit further and yield the floor to Torchy Blane. This lady reporter and de facto gumshoe was played mostly but not exclusively by Glenda Farrell and featured in nine feature films released between 1937 and 1939, starting with the aptly titled Smart Blonde. Feature films meant something a little different back then; these B-movie mysteries and light adventure thrillers hovered around the 60-minute mark. They're also the kind of personality-driven plots that are more typically run into the ground by network TV. But wouldn't it be fun to see a true big-screen star like Amy Adams, Emma Stone or Zoe Saldaña cracking cases every year or two without the TV commitment or the obligations of brainless spectacle? Hire Torchy at an imperiled publication and bring back the crisp, short, well-made mystery picture! If the execs need a craven superhero connection, consider this: Torchy supposedly helped inspire the comics character Lois Lane. Whaddaya need, a road map? Jesse Hassenger There's nothing official yet on the books for a return to Elm Street but given the unending churn of horror resurrections (Scream continues, Halloween is getting another do-over, Friday the 13th is heading to TV, Texas Chainsaw has inspired a frenzied auction), something must be edging closer. The delay might be down to how nightmarish the last attempt was – 2010's drab and unscary retread, loathed by critics and disowned by lead Rooney Mara – but also how difficult it is to reinvent Freddy Krueger for a modern audience. A violent, sleepover-ruining villain had turned into a quippy, exhaustingly over-merchandised joke and those wishing to bring him back have surely been having sleepless nights trying to figure out the right balance. But there remains something terrifying, and endlessly inventive, about the engine at its core, allowing for a smart, visually ambitious film-maker to go wild on a new canvas. There's also mileage in exploring, and potentially tweaking, Krueger's cursed backstory for an even more divided small-town America (what if an outsider was framed for the wrongdoings of a corrupt community and returned with a vengeance?), finding nasty new ways to keep us up all night. Benjamin Lee 'One million dollars!' In the '90s, the Austin Powers franchise rightly achieved heavy cultural weight and widespread memeification for the way it hilariously dismantled spy thriller tropes while lambasting the uptight and power-hungry 1% – far before it was trendy to do so. But that was 20 years ago. As oligarchs today melt the ice caps to force-feed us self-driving cars and AI slop, and while Donald Trump amasses a Dr Evil–worthy group of sycophants in the executive branch, what could be more timely than a reboot of the Austin Powers series? In times of political upheaval and social unrest, comedy has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to speak necessary truths in a way that resonates broadly; even more importantly, mockery and laughter are proven deterrents against authoritarian regimes. Veronica Esposito I can personally live without movie franchises: I lost interest in Star Wars halfway through Return of the Jedi, gave up on Alien after Resurrection, and actually fell asleep during Matrix Reloaded, it was such a letdown. Recapturing lightning in a bottle is a task seemingly beyond everyone except James Cameron (I'll grant that Aliens and T2 are top-notch exceptions to the rule). The Godfather – not really a franchise as such, but in effect the inventor of the modern film series – is the biggest conundrum of them all. Godfathers 1 and 2 are both brilliant, which makes the awfulness of part III one of the most baffling disasters in cinema history. (Even more baffling, where did Sofia Coppola find the confidence to be such a great director herself after being so badly exposed as an actor, by her own dad.) Well, history records that Coppola – still then a fillm-maker to be reckoned with – only did part III to get out of a financial hole; and it also records he did discuss a fourth film with Mario Puzo, but it hit the buffers when the author died in 1999. So my vote is: if we can guarantee Godfather 4 is as good as 1 or 2, then please can we have it? If not, forget about it. Andrew Pulver The most incisive movie franchises reflect the time they arrived. By that measure, this would be the ideal moment to resurrect The Brady Bunch series. The original TV version of the show, which aired between 1969 and 1974, couldn't have been more popular, or more insipid, inspiring no fewer than five spin-off specials for the small screen, each dimmer than the next. In stark contrast, the movie series, which spawned three projects between 1995 and 2002, took a far more sophisticated and satirical approach, positioning the naivete and self-absorption of its '70s characters as hilarious foils to the larger world they now found themselves in. Fast forward several decades to the reactionary age of Trump. In key ways, today's climate echoes the Nixonian era of the original TV series, which had been conceived, in part, to re-asserted 'traditional values' in the wake of the '60s revolution. But there's a built-in twist with this franchise: The Bradys were always kind people at heart, so placing them in the context of today's cruel cultural backlash could open up a whole new layer of nuance, allowing the family to find a sweet and funny balance between their simplistic notion of 'normalcy' and the complex world we actually live in. Jim Farber It has been over 30 years since Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar partied on from the basement set of their public access show in Aurora, Illinois, and the Saturday Night Live stars who originated them, Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, are not exactly at the peak of their fame. But that's exactly why a new Wayne's World is a promising idea: Just as Wayne and Garth are on the wrong side of middle age, nostalgic for their brief time in the national spotlight, rock music itself has been on the decline, relegated mostly to legacy tours aimed at gen-Xers with deep pockets and bad backs. That may sound like a melancholy premise for a franchise built on silly banter and pop-culture references, but a YouTube-channel revival of Wayne's World seems plausible, as does the hilarious disconnect between old guys looking to 'party on' and a younger generation unaccustomed to guitars getting plugged into amplifiers. Scott Tobias If the three intervening decades since the release of Species – a period of time that's yielded Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin, Sally Hawkins's fishy fornication in The Shape of Water, and not one but two azure-skinned, kinda-nude Mystiques – have taught us anything, it's that the viewing public's desire to make it with not-quite-human organisms is only growing in ardor. That's the sturdy foundation upon which Roger Donaldson's admirably smutty sci-fi staple of adolescent sleepovers was built, its servicing of peculiar fetishes less out of joint with the present than the conditions of its making. That MGM would throw $35m (in '90s dollars!) at a softcore B-movie scans as utterly alien to today's studio protocols, and as such, a similar investment would be the ideal tonic for an anemic summer movie landscape. Right now, every tentpole is grasping for an air of can't-miss ceremony, which leads to leaden seriousness and self-importance; the people crave base pleasures, the dumb horny fun of getting ravished by a sextraterrestrial. (And just think of how well the novelization will sell with fan-fiction types.) Charles Bramesco How well do Shanghai Noon and Knights – the Owen Wilson/Jackie Chan martial arts/western buddy movies from the earlier noughties – stand up, 20 odd years on? A brief gander at the trailers feels … unencouraging but at the time I remember really liking these for their loose limbs and nimble feet, charming performances and some surprisingly good jokes. The first was set in the old west and had a lot of broad stroke nudge-nudge genre nods, the second in Victorianish London, with ribald support from Gemma Jones, Aidan Gillen and a very young Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Charlie Chaplin. A third was reportedly planned a few years later, set in Mexico, but it never happened because Jackie Chan 'lost interest'. Maybe the healthy box office for the Karate Kid reboot might reignite that? Perhaps Owen Wilson is finding his mojo again, post Stick? Either way, it's one breezy bit of entertainment I'd happily lap up again. Catherine Shoard
28-06-2025
- Politics
イランに「孤独ではない」 旧ソ連経済同盟が首脳会議
After the Supreme Court issued a ruling that limits the ability of federal judges to issue universal injunctions — but didn't rule on the legality of President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship — immigrant rights groups are trying a new tactic by filing a national class action lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two immigrant rights organizations whose members include people without legal status in the U.S. who "have had or will have children born in the United States after February 19, 2025," according to court documents. One of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, William Powell, senior counsel at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law, says his colleagues at CASA, Inc. and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project think that, with the class action approach "we will be able to get complete relief for everyone who would be covered by the executive order." The strategic shift required three court filings: one to add class allegations to the initial complaint; a second to move for class certification; and a third asking a district court in Maryland to issue "a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction asking for relief for that putative class," Powell said. In the amended complaint, filed two hours after the Supreme Court's ruling, the immigrant rights attorneys said that Trump's effort to ban birthright citizenship, if allowed to stand, "would throw into doubt the citizenship status of thousands of children across the country." "The Executive Order threatens these newborns' identity as United States citizens and interferes with their enjoyment of the full privileges, rights, and benefits that come with U.S. citizenship, including calling into question their ability to remain in their country of birth," reads the complaint. Rights groups and 22 states had asked federal judges to block President Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship. Issued on his first day in office, the executive order states, "the Fourteenth Amendment has never been interpreted to extend citizenship universally to everyone born within the United States." But after three federal district court judges separately blocked Trump's order, issuing universal injunctions preventing its enforcement nationwide, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to block universal injunctions altogether. The Supreme Court did not rule on the birthright issue itself. But after the ruling, Trump called it a "monumental victory for the Constitution, the separation of powers and the rule of law," in a briefing at the White House. The president said the ruling means his administration can now move forward with his efforts to fundamentally reshape longstanding U.S. policy on immigration and citizenship. Friday's ruling quickly sparked questions about how the dispute over birthright citizenship will play out now — and how the ruling on universal injunctions might affect other efforts to push back on executive policies, under President Trump and future presidents. "Nationwide injunctions have been an important tool to prevent blatantly illegal and unconstitutional conduct," the National Immigrant Justice Center's director of litigation, Keren Zwick, said in a statement sent to NPR. The decision to limit such injunctions, she said, "opens a pathway for the president to break the law at will." Both Zwick and Powell emphasized that the Supreme Court did not rule on a key question: whether Trump's executive order is legal. At the White House, Attorney General Pam Bondi would not answer questions about how the order might be implemented and enforced. "This is all pending litigation," she said, adding that she expects the Supreme Court to take up the issue this fall. "We're obviously disappointed with the result on nationwide injunctions," Powell said. But, he added, he believes the Supreme Court will ultimately quash Trump's attack on birthright citizenship. "The executive order flagrantly violates the 14th Amendment citizenship clause and Section 1401a of the Immigration and Nationality Act," Powell said, "both of which guarantee birthright citizenship to nearly all children born in the United States, with only narrow exceptions for ambassadors [and] invading armies." The court's ruling set a 30-day timeframe for the policy laid out in Trump's executive order to take effect. "The Government here is likely to suffer irreparable harm from the District Courts' entry of injunctions that likely exceed the authority conferred by the Judiciary Act," a syllabus, or headnote, of the Supreme Court's ruling states. The majority opinion, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, also discusses the differences between "complete relief " and "universal relief." "Here, prohibiting enforcement of the Executive Order against the child of an individual pregnant plaintiff will give that plaintiff complete relief: Her child will not be denied citizenship," Barrett wrote. "Extending the injunction to cover all other similarly situated individuals would not render her relief any more complete." In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the ruling suggests that constitutional guarantees might not apply to anyone who isn't a party to a lawsuit. The concept of birthright citizenship has deep roots, dating to the English common law notion of jus soli ("right of the soil"). The doctrine was upended for a time in the U.S. by the Supreme Court's notorious Dred Scott ruling. Current legal standing for birthright citizenship in the U.S. extends back to the 1860s, when the 14th Amendment of the Constitution was ratified, stating, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States." "Any executive order purporting to limit birthright citizenship is just as unconstitutional today as it was yesterday," Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, told NPR. "There is nothing substantively in the decision that undercuts those lower court opinions. The opinion just undercuts the tools available to the courts to enforce that constitutional mandate." Copyright 2025 NPR
Powys County Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Powys County Times
Powys Reform councillors in pledge over salary increase
Reform's leader in Powys says his group will use a rise in councillors' salaries to 'benefit residents in their wards'. The group voted symbolically against a rise in salaries in a show of hands in the council chamber last week, but it was passed by a majority. The salary rate is set by an external body and councillors are not able to reject it. After last Thursday's council annual general meeting (AGM) on Thursday, May 15, Reform UK's group leader at the council, Cllr Iain McIntosh took to social media to highlight his group's opposition to the rise. Councils are not allowed to reject the recommendations by law; however individual councillors may give up all or part of the payment. Cllr McIntosh said: 'Those of us at Reform UK don't think it's appropriate for members of the public to be paying more money at the moment particularly with the sub-standard state of public services in Powys. 'So, the four of us voted against this, unfortunately this isn't going to be recorded as they took a vote by a show of hands.' The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) asked Cllr McIntosh to further explain his decision to take to Facebook to highlight the issue. He said: 'As far as I can remember, since being elected as a county councillor on June 22, 2017, this particular vote which comes around at each year's AGM has been carried out electronically with a recorded vote. 'This year, only a show of hands was asked for within the chamber, with many members attending the meeting online. 'If, as I expect, a news article is produced to say that the majority of members voted to approve the recommendation that we receive a higher rate of pay, the public would be unable to see who voted against. 'For matters like this, it's important to maintain transparency.' Cllr McIntosh was also asked whether he or the group would give up part of their salary. Cllr McIntosh replied: 'I have forgone salary increases in the past. 'On this occasion I will be taking the pay increase, but together with my colleagues, we'll be using if for the benefit of residents in our wards.' He said that details on this would be released in 'due course'. At the meeting, the report was presented by the council's director of corporate services and s151 officer Jane Thomas who told councillors that their basic pay will go up by £1,105, taking the basic salary to £19,771, 'effective from April 1.' She recommended councillors approve the new rates of pay. Newly installed council chairman, Cllr William Powell (Liberal Democrat) took a vote by show of hands, and declared it carried by a 'substantial majority'. A council spokesman said: 'The chair of council (Cllr William Powell) and the monitoring officer (and head of legal services – Clive Pinney) were satisfied that there was a clear majority in favour and, as such, the decision has been properly made.' 'If Cllr McIntosh had wanted his group's objections to the recommendation to be recorded, he could have and should have, asked either for an electronic vote or called for the votes of dissenters to be recorded.' The spokesman added: 'Cllr McIntosh elected to forego part of his basic salary for 2019/20 and 2020/21.'
Cambrian News
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Cambrian News
Former AM named Powys County Council Chair
Cllr William Powell (Liberal Democrat) was unanimously approved as the new chairman of the council at Powys County Council's annual general meeting on 15 May and takes over the chains of office from the incumbent, Cllr Jonathan Wilkinson.
