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How ‘Swagger’ creator keeps it real for audience & actors

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

Reggie Rock Bythewood, the creator-writer, showrunner, frequent director and executive producer of the hit AppleTV+ basketball series “Swagger,” knows all too well his real-life responsibilities in this universe.They began with the awareness that casting teenagers in key roles will inevitably change their lives.His casting for “Swagger” began with an unusual distinction: Reality.“Number One, I’m very committed to getting this right,” Bythewood, 57, began in a Zoom interview earlier this week. “A lot of times in a sports movie you’re hiding the fact that this person is not a real ballplayer, you’re camouflaging their lack of ability. I didn’t want to do that.“First and foremost, I had people who are really evolved players. Because the storytelling has to be authentic and if the ball playing is not authentic, we lose the audience. So we cast people that could play at a high level and gave them training to act.“The actors who are to play ball, we gave them several mon...

Editorial: Sub tragedy brings out worst in ‘eat the rich’ crowd

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

After five days of intensive searching and anxious waiting, rescuers found remains Thursday of the submarine Titan which disappeared while exploring the wreck of the Titanic. All five people aboard the sub have died.While that’s not the result any of those who held out hope – no matter how slim – that this would end in a rescue, there are those who are are downplaying the tragedy of lives lost.OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet were wealthy, and their fortunes brought out the worst in many.The sniping and vitriol was in full play on Twitter:“In many ways, the swift rescue efforts for the billionaires trapped in the Titanic submarine, while poor & desperate refugees are neglected & left to die, mirrors a sad, familiar story of the world that has replayed across history. Little has changed. #OceanGate #submarinemissing” wrote one.“Ok looks like the Titanic...

Graham: RFK Jr. inspired by JFK as he campaigns for White House win

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

Just hours before delivering a speech on foreign policy that he says he was inspired by the words of his famous uncle, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made his first-ever visit to the statue of JFK at Nashua City Hall Tuesday.The bust of President John F. Kennedy marks the spot where, on Jan. 25, 1960, he made the first stop of his successful presidential campaign. Kennedy carried New Hampshire with 85% of the primary vote later that year.RFK Jr. hopes some of that success will come his way as he challenges incumbent President Joe Biden.“I was at the convention in 1960 in Los Angeles,” Kennedy told NHJournal during his visit to city hall. “It was the first time that I had stayed up all night, and then I flew back with him the following day. I sat next to him on the airplane the whole way.He also recounted how he and the other nieces and nephews of the then-Massachusetts senator hit the campaign trail.“We were handing out buttons, knocking on doors, and shaking hands with people,” Kennedy said...

Celtics draft Arkansas wing Jordan Walsh with No. 38 pick, stockpile future second-rounders

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

After a slew of trades and maneuvering around the draft board to stockpile future picks, Brad Stevens and the Celtics ultimately moved back into the second round and selected Arkansas wing Jordan Walsh with the No. 38 overall pick in Thursday night’s NBA draft.The 19-year-old Walsh spent one season with the Razorbacks and helped a talented team that had three selections in Thursday’s draft reach the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. At 6-foot-7, 205 pounds, Walsh is a physically gifted and explosive athlete. He possesses a 7-foot-2 wing span and projects as a versatile defender at the next level. However, he is a major work in progress offensively after shooting just 27.8 percent from 3-point range in his lone college season.Walsh averaged 7.1 points and 3.9 rebounds per game for Arkansas last season. The Celtics originally held the No. 35 selection in this draft before they made their stunning trade that sent Marcus Smart to the Grizzlies, which netted them two first-round pic...

Wes Anderson works his quirky magic once more with ‘Asteroid City’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

From the endlessly fertile and curious mind that has given us “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” comes “Asteroid City,” and while this latest curio may not scale the heights of this artist’s greatest hits, it’s more fun than almost anything out there.Set in 1955 for reasons known only to writer-director Wes Anderson, and shot in the squarish academy ratio more common to those times, ”Asteroid City” begins with a host-narrator (Bryan Cranston) who reminds us that what we are about to see is entirely “imaginary” and “apocryphal.” He also introduces us to the hardworking writer Conrad Earp (Edward Norton), the creator of the world we about to inhabit. Soon, we behold a sign reading “Asteroid City.” It sits in the middle of a space suggesting the Arizona-Utah-straddling Monument Valley location director John Ford used for many of his Westerns. Its most important feature is a giant crater left by an incorrectly labeled and proudly displ...

‘Maximum Truth’ gives politics the mockumentary treatment

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

Frequent character actor Ike Barinholtz (“Suicide Squad,” “The Lego Movie 2”)) is both the lead actor and co-writer of “Maximum Truth,” a “mockumentary” (yes, I know, been there, done that) in which a couple of unseen filmmakers follow a self-deluded Los Angeles hustler named Rick Klingman (Barinholtz) around after he establishes a company called, yes, “Maximum Truth.” Rick is hired to dig up dirt on a Los Angeles candidate for Congress named Antonio Kelly-Zhang (Max Minghella) on behalf of a possibly (all right, probably) demented and cackling Beverly Hills dowager named Mary Jo Nackerson (the fine character actor Beth Grant). Ms. Nackerson acquired her vast fortune from her late husband Wilbur, a fracking magnate, who liked to hunt big game.Yes, “Maximum Truth” has a definite “Chinatown” vibe with Rick Klingman as an even more high-strung and aggressive truth-seeker and dirt-digger than Jack Nicholson’s J.J. Gittes. Rick’s right-hand-man is Simon Tarnum (Dylan O’...

Dear Abby: Toxic in-laws take it up a notch after hubby dies

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

Dear Abby: I was never close to my late husband’s family. He had two half-siblings from his mother and seven from his father. (He was the only mutual child between them.)  At his funeral, his sister on his mother’s side wore what appeared to be a white wedding dress and had her three daughters dressed like flower girls. She had threatened me often with violence and stalked me at my job. I got a protective order, but it took three filings to get it because her father has friends in the court system. The order is for one year, but we’ll see what happens when it expires.Everyone in his family has demanded a portion of his ashes. I refuse to divide them because he wanted to be buried with me, and I want to abide by his wishes. The other side of his family contacts me only if it benefits them.For almost a year, I took care of my father-in-law, who has dementia, without any of the seven remaining children helping. I have since cut ties with all of them. They are toxic, a...

Twitter faces ‘stress test’ of Europe’s tough new Big Tech rules

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

A top European Union official is in Silicon Valley to check whether Twitter is ready to comply with the bloc’s tough new digital rulebook, a set of sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey in just two months.European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees digital policy, is the EU’s point person working to get tech companies in line for the Digital Services Act, which will force companies to crack down on hate speech, disinformation and other harmful material on their sites. It takes effect Aug. 25 for the biggest platforms. The law, along with new regulations in the pipeline for data and artificial intelligence, has made Brussels a trailblazer in the growing global movement to clamp down on Big Tech.Breton tweeted about his meeting Thursday at Twitter headquarters to carry out a voluntary “stress test” to prepare for the new rules. “The company is taking this exercise very seriously,” he said, adding he had “constructive di...

Chinese human rights lawyer chased out of 13 homes in 2 months as pressure rises on legal advocates

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — A disbarred Chinese human rights lawyer has been forced to move 13 times in two months as part of a pattern of harassment against him and three other prominent rights advocates in Beijing that is further squeezing the country’s battered civil rights community.Wang Quanzhang said he is now living in a borrowed apartment in the suburbs where the power is frequently cut off, while another lawyer left Beijing entirely in hopes of ending the harassment. His colleague Bao Longjun said he is still in the apartment he owns, but has been barred from leaving it multiple times by unidentified groups of men who loiter outside his door. Bao said a fourth lawyer was detained along with his wife.All four are prominent members of a group known as the 709 lawyers, after the date — July 9, 2015 — when a crackdown on independent legal advocacy began in which hundreds were arrested. Such advocates are a rare source of help for people facing political charges, or trying to ac...

Evangelical leader hopes conference is ‘testosterone booster shot’ for anti-abortion 2024 candidates

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 13:11:26 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — A year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, some of the Republican Party’s most powerful evangelical Christian voices are gathering to celebrate a ruling that sent shockwaves through American politics and stripped away a constitutional protection that stood for almost a half century.At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference in Washington, GOP presidential candidates will be urged to keep pushing for stronger abortion restrictions, even as Democrats insist the issue will buoy them ahead of the 2024 election.Former President Donald Trump, whose three nominees to the high court allowed for the reversal of nationwide abortion rights, will give the keynote address Saturday night, the anniversary of the court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. Many of his Republican rivals are set to speak Friday, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, and f...