A rocky road to success. Kelly Ripa is one of the leading daytime television hosts — but getting to that point wasn’t always easy.
10.03.2023 - 21:01 / variety.com
Jessica Kiang With her deeply invested observational documentaries, London-born French filmmaker Claire Simon has amassed a body of work somewhat comparable to that of American master Frederick Wiseman, in its focus on institutions and the transitory communities they foster. She has previously explored the teenage experience in a French high school (“Young Solitude”); the foot traffic in Gare du Nord train station (“Human Geography”); the comings and goings in Paris’ Bois de Vincennes park (“The Woods Dreams Are Made Of”); and one of the annual intake sessions at Le Fémis, the country’s leading film school (“The Competition”). Her latest outing, “Our Body” luxuriant in length but never less than compelling, immerses us in the day-to-day drama in a French hospital, specifically the departments dedicated to women’s health, with typically compassionate and insightful results. Typical, that is, until Simon herself unexpectedly becomes one of her own subjects.
Simon’s diagnosis happens more than halfway through the 169-minute film, and it is a hallmark of the general humility of her approach, and Luc Forveille’s lucid editing, that she neither coyly avoids the subject afterwards, nor lets her story overwhelm the wider project. Instead, her personal journey is sketched in roughly the same number of scenes she dedicates to anyone else’s, so she becomes one more strand in the film’s breathing, sometimes bleeding, tapestry: just one of ”Our Body’s” many vital organs. As the movie loosely progresses through all stages of adult female life, a large portion is naturally dedicated to reproductive health. There are anxious young women seeking abortions and pregnancy advice, heartbreaking discussions of medically necessary
A rocky road to success. Kelly Ripa is one of the leading daytime television hosts — but getting to that point wasn’t always easy.
Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior Correspondent When Ryan Seacrest announced he’d be leaving “Live! With Kelly and Ryan,” at least three people were very concerned: Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ children. Ripa and Consuelos’ two adult sons and daughter have grown up in front of America. They’ve also grown up with Seacrest, who Ripa jokes is known as “Uncle Cool” in their household. Seacrest and Ripa have shared six years together as co-hosts on their top-rated show, but they’re relationship started long before that. The duo are such close friends that Seacrest has attended graduation ceremonies for the Ripa-Consuelos kids, and he regularly texts Consuelos for advice on everything from fashion to investing. In fact, Seacrest says he would have never considered moving across the country for “Live!” had it not been for Ripa.
Michael Consuelos is the spitting image of his father, Mark, in a throwback photo the 25-year-old shared to his Instagram Stories on Saturday. The young actor, whose mom is talk show host Kelly Ripa, looked effortlessly cool in the photo while leaning against a brick wall, sporting a colorful short-sleeved shirt and white jeans. "Found this oldie-but-goodie. Also realizing I'm running out of pictures," he captioned the snap, adding a laughing face emoji. Michael is his father's double in this throwback snapMichael's throwback post comes just a week after he teased some major career news.
Guy Lodge Film Critic Doug and Kris Tompkins’ dream sounded like a fanciful one. Seduced by a region of ravishing South American wilderness in which they found particular sanctuary, and wishing to protect it from any insensitive or unseemly development, they landed on a solution both simple and absurd-sounding: Why not simply buy as much of it as possible? Backed by the fortune they’d collectively amassed from the clothing industry — Doug as the founder of Esprit and The North Face, Kris as the former CEO of Patagonia — the couple successfully parlayed business tycoon status into an unprecedented scale of eco-activism: As one talking head notes in “Wild Life,” Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s soaring documentary tribute to the Tompkins’ romance and shared conservationist mission, they “could do anything, and chose to do anything.”
Jessica Kiang The busy public hospital in the Parisian suburb of Clichy has one psychiatrist on staff. Every day, as doggedly tracked by the nervy handheld camera of Nicolas Peduzzi’s “On the Edge,” he deals with some of the most intractable afflictions the hospital ever sees. His patients, often referred to him after being treated for other ailments, can be mentally ill, traumatized, addicted, depressed, suicidal or any combination thereof. After Claire Simon’s wonderful “Our Body” and Nicolas Philibert’s Golden Bear winner “On the Adamant,” this CPH:DOX award winner is the third major doc in about as many weeks to be set deep in the belly of the French healthcare system, and while it is its own, remarkable achievement, it also merits the comparison.
Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Swiss sales agency Lightdox has acquired the international rights to feature documentary “On the Edge” by Nicolas Peduzzi, which just had its world premiere at Copenhagen documentary festival CPH:DOX in the DOX:AWARD competition, and received a Special Mention from the jury, who said the film “gripped us, and took us on a journey through the labyrinth of a human mind.” The film centers on Jamal Abdel Kader, who is the only psychiatrist in a 400-bed state hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Dedicated to his patients, he does his utmost to soothe their pain, listen to their words, and protect them from their own demons. However, the public health service is doing badly. There isn’t enough time, the caregivers are under severe strain as the institution is understaffed and underfunded. Yet Jamal and his colleagues keep striving to fulfil their mission: to heal bodies and souls.
Lise Pedersen The top Dox:Award at CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen documentary festival, has gone to “Motherland” by Ukrainian-Belarussian director Alexander Mihalkovich (“My Granny From Mars”) and Ukrainian director Hanna Badziaka. Described by Variety as “an ominous portrait of the oppressive culture of cruelty in post-Soviet Belarus,” the film follows Svetlana, whose son died during his military service as the result of violent abuse, in her quest to expose and prosecute those responsible for his death. Dedicating the award to “all the Ukrainians fighting Russian aggression and to Belarussian political prisoners,” the directing duo thanked all those who helped them make the film, in particular the protagonists, “who were brave to stand in front of the camera and patient with us as it was a long journey of four years.”
Jessica Kiang In recent years, self-proclaimed Trump svengali Roger Stone has often been compared to DC Comics character the Penguin. Christoffer Guldbrandsen’s “A Storm Foretold,” a wild-ride doc that grants all-areas access to Stone over a three-year period starting with his 2019 indictment and subsequent pardon, suggests this is not strictly fair. For one thing, as the film begins, Stone is smoking the chunkiest cigar you have ever seen, rather than the more canonically acceptable cigarette holder wielded by the cartoon villain. For another, while Stone has more enemies that you can shake a fat stogie at, no single superherohas yet emerged to save Gotham/the United States of America from his brand of preening, gloating arrogance. If he is the Penguin, where the hell is Batman?
While he started out as a member of the alt-country group Drive-By Truckers for six years, American singer-songwriter Jason Isbell has now won four Grammy Awards and become a beloved star in his own right. Isbell is famous for a lot of things, but maybe in the movie world, you may know him for writing the soulful, melancholy ballad “Maybe It’s Time” from the “A Star Is Born,” movie and soundtrack where it was performed by actor Bradley Cooper‘s character, Jackson Maine.
Ben Croll Disney+ will move forward on two new French series, tackling questions of euthanasia with “Lambert v. Lambert,” and intimacy in the social media age with the literary thriller “Les enfants sont rois.” Adapted from a recent page-turner by “Based on a True Story” author Delphine de Vigan, “Les enfants sont rois” (“The Children Are Kings”) follows a reality-TV has-been turned mommy vlogger who fills her social media feeds with daily updates about her two precocious children. When her older daughter disappears and is thought kidnapped, the bereft momfluencer faces a police investigation that calls into question the very existence of child.
Imagine not only believing the world is coming to an end, but wanting it to happen. Eagerly. Then, take it a step further and imagine people with such a mentality engineering American politics and foreign policy to bring about the very thing they seek — the apocalypse.
EXCLUSIVE: Veteran producer Stratton Leopold (Mission: Impossible III) and filmmaker Dax Phelan (The Other Side of the Wind) have teamed up to produce a new currently untitled limited series based on an infamous 19th-century prison escape known affectionately as The Catalpa Expedition.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
Ant And Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway will air at a new time tonight (18 March) as the programme moves to make way for a sports broadcast.The Geordie duo’s hit ITV series recently returned for its nineteenth series and has been delighting viewers with its usual mix of hilarious sketches, pranks and competitions with huge prizes.The programme usually airs at 7pm but will be on later as ITV airs coverage of the Six Nations rugby tournament throughout the afternoon and early evening. ITV will broadcast the France vs Wales game, which starts at 1.55pm, followed by Ireland vs England at 4.30pm.
Frank Rubio, NASA’s first Salvadoran American to go to space, is currently stuck on the International Space System after their spacecraft got a coolant leak. He might be stuck there for a full year, but the astronaut is staying positive. In a recent interview he assured that there will be new opportunities for Latinos.Rubio and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin launched a mission on the ISS aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-22 on September 21, 2022, and were supposed to return to Earth in March 2023.
Showtime has unveiled an April 14th premiere date for their documentary Personality Crisis: One Night Only, on New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, also debuting a trailer for the pic directed by Academy Award winner Martin Scorsese (The Last Waltz) and Emmy nom David Tedeschi (The 50 Year Argument), which you can view above.
EXCLUSIVE: Fauda outfit Yes Studios is pushing into the premium docs space with a feature about a man who spent 44 hours suffering from locked-in syndrome. Scroll down for the trailer.
Wanna feel old? Contrary to popular depictions of millennial youth as being disenfranchised, politically feckless and bone idle, this eye-opening documentary might be the bazooka that’s needed to shatter all those cozy assumptions. So of-the-moment is Ondi Timoner’s latest work that it premiered almost exactly when the collapse of SVB made international news, and though that particular eventuality isn’t foreseen here, it won’t take much post-festival fine-tuning to bring her film bang up to date.
Kelly Ripa's last day having Ryan Seacrest as her co-host on Live! With Kelly and Ryan is coming even sooner than expected.The co-hosts and good friends are just a month away from their bittersweet farewell, after six years of hosting the popular morning show together.The American Idol host's very last day as Kelly's hosting partner is April 14, after which the star's husband of over twenty years, Mark Consuelos, will begin his official hosting duties next to his wife. You can watch the soon to be former co-hosts tough conversation about Ryan's depature below.WATCH: Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest's emotionally charged moment on the showMORE: Kelly Ripa dazzles in backless Oscars dress as she hosts final show with Ryan SeacrestABC, the show's network, confirmed that Ryan would have his final day on that Friday, and Mark's first day will be the following Monday, April 17th, kicking off the week with a brand new era for the long-running show, which will officially be Live! With Kelly and Mark.Ryan initially announced the news of his departure back in February, revealing that he would be moving back to California and focusing on his American Idol hosting duties, which is currently on its 21st season.MORE: Kelly Ripa shocks herself with Hollywood transformation in bold new selfie"Working alongside Kelly over the past six years has been a dream job and one of the highlights of my career," he said at the time.
Heartbroken dog owners have told how their pet died within hours of eating something it picked up from a footpath.