Latest news with #retirementhome
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'The Home': Pete Davidson goes dark in retirement home horror movie from 'Purge' filmmaker James DeMonaco
DeMonaco talks Davidson's horror skills, teases 'Purge 6' and recalls the impact of watching Francis Ford Coppola 'handcuffed' by the studio for 'Jack' The man behind the Purge franchise, writer/director James DeMonaco, put fellow Staten Island talent Pete Davidson into the horror genre for his new film The Home (now in theatres), a genre-bending thriller set in a retirement home. Davidson plays Max, who's fulfilling his court-ordered community service at the retirement home, when he start suspecting there's something sinister happening in this, frankly, creepy residence. "I saw certain people in my life getting older and some of the facilities that they were put into, I found the facilities quite creepy in and of themselves, ... especially to a little boy who saw these things growing up," DeMonaco told Yahoo about where the idea for The Home started. "I saw a very scary one when I was a young man, and that stayed with me." "And then there were various things that played into that, I think, over the years, [but] that was probably the seed. And my writing partner, [Adam Cantor], ... something happened with his grandparents that mirrored my experience when I was a very young man. ... And then for me, there was a movie that had a great influence on me, it was Robert Altman's 3 Women, which is set at an elderly spa in the desert. ... I think it's one of the great films ever made, and it has incredible creep factor." While The Home leans into its "creep factor," the majority of people still associate Davidson with comedy, but DeMonaco knew that he had the ability to take on a different genre of storytelling. "He literally lived down the street from me here in Staten Island, ... his mom still lives down the street," DeMonaco said. "People know him as a comic, but I knew him as something else. ... He surprised me at how good an actor he was outside of the comedy." "I wrote it during COVID and my buddy Adam, a local guy too, ... we were writing and thinking, well who's of this age, 26, 27, there's not many names out there. ... We're not going to get Chalamet. I was writing with Pete before that. We were, ... oddly, writing a comedy right before COVID hit, and we were keeping in touch during COVID. ... There was something natural in ... the character of Max in The Home that I felt that Pete could tap into. ... Pete had some trauma in his life, a lot of trauma in his childhood, so I felt he could relate to what Max was going through. Pete's an artist, Max is an artist. And he, I think, purges some of that trauma through his art, and I felt Max was doing what Pete does also. So I felt there was something there." 'I need to be invested in the character's plight' The most lofty task for DeMonaco in The Home is achieving this slow burn of the story, but also building tension effectively to give the audience a powerful final act. "The Purge, I always say, is like a punch in the face. I thought here ... we were building something with various layers and twists and turns that The Purge really doesn't have," DeMonaco said. "I wanted to get to this point where the audience would need a cathartic release, ... as Max did. ... I also wanted them to be so angry at certain characters in the film, without giving anything away, that I felt that they would be looking forward to this last 20 minutes." "Sometimes I think filmmakers were forced, when we work in certain parameters, we have to pull punches. We can't show everything we want to show. And I was like, no, no, if I'm going to do this, we're going to go, we're going to turn it up to 11. ... It's a matter of always giving [the audience] enough, but not too much, especially when you're dealing with somewhat of a mystery." DeMonaco added that having the audience engaged in Max's journey was critical to the build up of tension in the film "I think, hopefully, Pete's engaged in the mystery of what's happening in The Home, and the audience will stay with him and want to follow him," DeMonaco said. "I know that there are some horror films that kind of work just as visceral rides, but I think for me, I need to be invested in the character's plight. So we took a lot of time, I think, trying to build what Max went through, the trauma of his past." "And I think when you get to the editing room, that's where everything changes. And you could throw out all your ideas and say, alright this is going too slow, we need to move this faster. Let's move this scene up here, because we need a little jolt for the audience to give them a little more. ... My producer says it's almost like a a Swiss clock. It's got a lot of moving parts and you've got to make sure they're all fitting, and we're just giving enough to the audience, and not letting them sit there in the dark for too long." Big budget vs. more control But when it comes to filmmakers having to "pull punches," DeMonaco highlighted that there's a trade off between working on a big budget film, with more "parameters," or having more freedom, but working with a smaller budget. Taking advice from famed producer Jason Blum, DeMonaco was told, "the smaller your movie, the more control you have." An example of that for DeMonaco was working on the 1996 film Jack, which DeMonaco wrote with Gary Nadeau, and the film was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring the late Robin Williams. "I was always writing to direct, that was my path to directing. And I wrote a couple of big movies, big budgets compared to what I'm working with now, ... big directors, and I noticed how they were handcuffed by the studio system, because, somewhat understandably, you're dealing with tens of millions of dollars, and that doesn't include marketing budget," DeMonaco explained. "When I worked with Francis Ford Coppola on my first film, I don't think any of us were truly excited by the film. ... He was really handcuffed by the studio. There was a cut of that film that was much darker, much more interesting to Francis and I and my co-writer at the time. Yet, because of the budget level, they even reeled in Francis Ford Coppola." "And so when I saw this [I thought], what are they going to do to me? ... So when I started getting closer to directing, when I met Sébastien Lemercier, my producer, ... we always had somewhat kept the control. ... When we made Purge one we shot it in 18 days, and it was not easy at all. Even This Is The Night we shot in 25 days. ... At the end of the day, I think that not having people tell you what to do, there's a great benefit to that. Having said that, I do wonder what it's like to make a $100 million film and have all those toys." James DeMonaco teases 'Purge 6': 'We meet some really cool women' As DeMonaco shared that he's finished the script for Purge 6, he also addressed navigating the pressure of continuing the franchise, but also doing it from a place of passion. "I did one job, literally, for money, ... and it was terrible. What I wrote was terrible. ... And this probably really limits me, but I have to work from something that comes from another part of me, that is not just motivated by money or just product," DeMonaco said. "So I knew Jason was calling, studio's calling saying, 'Yeah, we want another one.' ... I'll be honest, I wrote one before this one. I had written another one, but the budget was too big. ... We were going to try something different and go big, and that didn't really work out." "So I told Jason and he gets it, Jason's great, he's a wonderful producer. So he's like, 'You've got to feel it.' But I think there's always part of Jason that's like, if you don't feel it, we may have to hand off the reins to someone else. [Sébastien and I], we always said we do have a fear that if we hand it off to someone else, it could be turned into something that we don't like. We always see it as a morality tale, and not that everybody has to see it like that, but ... we want to continue what we see. So it was a little pressure of, I'm afraid what someone else will do with it, but I did stick to my kind of internal guns, like make sure you feel something in your soul, because you know you're not going to do good work otherwise. And I think it worked out, meaning everything kind of came together timing-wise where I had an idea, there was some time to do it, and I just finished The Home, so it all kind of came together nicely." As fans are anxiously waiting to see what DeMonaco has in store for Purge 6, the filmmaker stressed that he always said he wouldn't go back to the franchise if he "didn't have something," but particularly in today's political climate, he had a story to tell. "There's always a sociopolitical commentary within the Purge movies, and I try not to be preachy, although I think I got preachy in four and five, but I try not to be that preachy," DeMonaco said. "We're in such a weird political time now that something hit me about, I guess five months ago when I pitched the studio my new idea, and they seemed to be really jazzed." "I would say that we get to see some of our old favourite characters. ... We meet some really cool women in this one. That's the tease. We meet some really, really cool women, and I think that's all I probably should say, but that's a big part for you, 90 per cent of it. So I'm pretty excited."
New York Times
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Forget Bingo. These 90-Year-Olds Just Want to Dance.
Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. As a breaking news reporter at The New York Times, I cover all manner of disasters: mass shootings, floods, wildfires and any number of other devastating things happening around us. There is no shortage of material. But I also look for good news. In particular, I like stories that make me laugh or smile or surprise me. My favorites also signify something broader about societal shifts, the moment we're in or the culture of a place. So when I heard about an initiative in Brussels in which retirement-home residents were invited to party at nightclubs every so often, I was immediately intrigued. Ninety-year-olds in a nightclub? Whose crazy idea was this? The first step in my reporting was to contact the organizer, Youssef Kaddar, 37, the head of a Belgian nonprofit that aims to address loneliness among older people. He told me about how he started out organizing more conventional events, like seaside trips, before he decided to push the boundaries. Mr. Kaddar organized a video game day for retirement-home residents, many of whom had never played video games before. He also organized hot air balloon rides and a day rave. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Independent
09-07-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Worker trying to repair roof at retirement community dies after attack by a swarm of killer bees
One man is dead and two more are injured after they were attacked by a swarm of bees while working at a retirement home in Arizona. The incident occurred Monday around 9:30 a.m. at a senior living facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, as two of the men were up on a lift attempting to 'remove stucco from a side column near the roof area,' said police. As they scrambled down and away from the insects, the other workers saw that their colleague Nicolas Lopez Soto, 65, was unconscious, ABC15 reported. Soto was taken to safety and CPR was performed at the scene. He was rushed to a local hospital by a responding fire crew. Soto was pronounced dead by medical staff just after 10:15 a.m., said Scottsdale Police Officer Aaron Bolin in a statement. His cause of death remains under investigation, authorities said. Police shared that Soto was fully clothed, wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and boots when he was stung across his body. Both the exposed and unexposed areas of his skin had 'numerous' stings, police said. The two other workers were stung dozens of times between them but are expected to make full recoveries. A beekeeper was scheduled to attend the premises the following day to remove the hive, Officer Bolin said. The average person can safely tolerate 10 stings per pound of body weight, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This means that although 500 stings can kill a child, the average adult should be able to withstand more than 1100 stings. Arizona Bee Kings founder Aaron Lorti said that bee attacks of this nature are common in heat waves. 'These bees are very active and very aggressive... They are very aggressive, very territorial, and if something sets them off, they will attack. When one stings you, they will leave a scent on your skin that tells everyone else to attack,' he told Fox Phoenix. Experts advise wearing light-colored clothing, not panicking, turning on lights, and covering your face, as well as never attempting to remove hives yourself, as the most practical steps to aid in avoiding being stung. An investigation by the Scottsdale PD and the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner is now underway.
CTV News
07-07-2025
- General
- CTV News
Huntsville retirement home residents evacuate due to smoke scare
Huntsville/Lake of Bays Fire Department responded to a reported structure fire at a retirement residence on Legacy Lane in Huntsville, Ont. on Mon. July 7, 2025. Residents at a Huntsville retirement home had to evacuate early Monday afternoon after alarms sounded, prompting a full emergency response. More than a dozen firefighters and five trucks responded to the call for a possible structure fire at the facility on Legacy Lane. "Upon arrival, firefighters encountered a light haze on the second floor but no visible fire conditions," stated a news release. After a thorough investigation, crews confirmed there was no active fire. The unit where the smoke originated was vented, and the building's alarm system was reset. "The property has arranged for a certified alarm technician to inspect the system," the department noted. The cause of the smoke remains under investigation. Fire officials commended the staff for the quick response to the situation, noting the facility has a strong fire safety program in place. "Pre-planning and proactive fire prevention save lives. Facilities that invest in regular fire drills, annual inspections, and coordination with local fire services are better prepared for emergencies," Huntsville/Lake of Bays Fire Department added.
CTV News
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Retirement home residents make Twain tribute video ahead of Calgary Stampede
This year's Calgary Stampede parade marshal has some dedicated—and active—fans at the Whitehorn Village Retirement Home. This year's Stampede parade marshal has some big fans at a Calgary retirement home. The ladies from Whitehorn Village Retirement Home created a reel of themselves dancing to Shania Twain's music while wearing their best western wear. They also showed off their moves for CTV News on Thursday. This year's Calgary Stampede parade marshal has some dedicated—and active—fans at the Whitehorn Village Retirement Home. This year's Calgary Stampede parade marshal has some dedicated—and active—fans at the Whitehorn Village Retirement Home. The women want the video to go viral—and maybe get Twain's attention. The idea came from the facility's recreation director to stay active and have fun. 'She just asked if we'd come and do this. We're doing it for Shania Twain, to her music, and she teaches us what to do, and we just have fun doing it,' said Sharon-Ann Miner. 'None of us are always the same direction or anything, and we know that, but we're just having fun and being active and being together.' This year's Calgary Stampede parade marshal has some dedicated—and active—fans at the Whitehorn Village Retirement Home. This year's Calgary Stampede parade marshal has some dedicated—and active—fans at the Whitehorn Village Retirement Home. You can find their video on Whitehorn Village by Origin's Facebook and Instagram pages.
