One of Scotland’s highest paid college principals has been awarded a lucrative new pay deal while cost cutting and refusing to pay striking staff.
12.06.2024 - 16:27 / variety.com
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Ultraman has one job: to defend the world from kaiju. Across countless manga, video games and movies, Ultraman’s core duty has been to fend off ferocious land and sea monsters — which, of course, have always been allegories for other threats facing mankind. In “Ultraman: Rising,” our hero adopts one, which makes no sense in the greater scheme of Ultraman lore.
(It would be like Batman going soft and raising a supervillain’s abandoned lovechild or Superman deciding to open a gift shop specializing in kryptonite.) But as with all metaphors, this one isn’t really about kaiju, but parent-child dynamics. And who doesn’t love a baby kaiju? Not to rain on writer-director Shannon Tindle’s parade, but the baby kaiju thing feels like a cheat. DreamWorks and other CG animation studios have been exploiting this tactic for years, introducing adorable infant versions of otherwise not-especially-cute characters.
The character designers give them big eyes and bobble heads, and audiences invariably go “awww” and buy up all the toys. If I understood “Ultraman: Rising” correctly (and the plot isn’t all that easy to follow for those unfamiliar with the nearly 60-year-old franchise), the dino hatchling known here as Emi is the spawn of Gigantron, a fire-breathing, gumball-pink dragon with a tiny bird-like head and massive Godzilla-like body. By contrast, Emi is all cranium atop a petite torso and stumpy legs.
Before Ultraman finds her, he has a whole new backstory crammed into the film’s first half-hour. Remember Ultraman’s one job? According to an opening voiceover delivered by Ken Sato (Christopher Sean), fighting kaiju is nothing compared to being a good dad. One day when Ken was just a kid, his own father
.One of Scotland’s highest paid college principals has been awarded a lucrative new pay deal while cost cutting and refusing to pay striking staff.
Amanda Holden, Heart FM Breakfast show presenter, has boldly stated the British public "don't care" about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's antics.
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic More than a million and a half people live on the island of Manhattan. “A Quiet Place: Day One” focuses on two: Samira (Lupita Nyong’o), a Stage 4 cancer patient, and Eric (“Stranger Things” actor Joseph Quinn), a far-from-home stranger she stumbles upon after the noise-sensitive aliens crash-land in New York. Neither one seems to have much in the way of survival instinct, which makes them an odd couple on whom to concentrate the Big Apple-set prequel to 2018’s hit creature feature — which is probably why writer-director Michael Sarnoski (“Pig”) decided to give Samira a cat named Frodo.
There are shocks aplenty in Coronation Street next week and there's also a new arrival. Starting with Toyah Habeeb and she's horrified when she finds her sister Leanne Battersby showing Amy Barlow an Institute video to help relieve her stress and realises she is considering investing.
Blink-182 have kicked off their 2024 North American tour last night (June 20) and debuted a new song along with their classic deep cuts.The band – comprised of the original line-up Tom Delonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker – took over the Kia Center in Orlando Flordia last night to kick off their 2024 ‘One More Time’ tour.Comprised of 26 tracks, the night’s setlist included deep cuts such as ‘Obvious’ and ‘M+M’s’ which were played with Delonge for the first time since 2013. They also performed ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’ and ‘There Is’ which are tracks from their side-projects +44 and Box Car Racer respectively.
Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender met while working together on the set of The Light Between Oceans and they’ve been a couple for the past 10 years!
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic An adorable black cat with luminous amber eyes fends for itself in “Flow,” snatching a fish from a pack of distracted mutts and dashing off with its loot while the dogs chase just a few seconds behind. Visionary animator Gints Zilbalodis’ virtual camera swoops after the cat, revealing a crisp, computer-generated world where humans are oddly absent, but their influence can be acutely felt.
Luke Combs — having ridden his historic cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” all the way to No. 2 on the pop charts — is one of the hottest country artists in the game right now.And as such, the 34-year-old North Carolina native is in that cushy zone where he can pretty much do whatever the hell he wants.His new album “Fathers & Sons” is what we call a “passion project.”It’s all about the love he has for his two sons: Tex Lawrence, who turns 2 next week, and Beau Lee, who was born just last August.The album — which continues the titular theme from 2022’s “Growin’ Up” and 2023’s “Gettin’ Old” — is also a shrewd marketing move, arriving just in time for Father’s Day weekend.
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Seven years have passed since the last “Despicable Me” movie, and the only thing that’s changed in Gru’s world is the addition of another child, Gru Jr., who’s the spitting image of his dad: hook nose, shifty eyes, squatty head — just with slightly more hair. The addition of a biological son to a family of three adopted daughters (not to mention a platoon of unmanageable Minions) would be plot enough for “Despicable Me 4,” but whatever drama the new kid might cause goes underexamined in Illumination’s overstuffed sequel.
Marta Balaga Animation wizard Henry Selick has seen the remastered “Coraline.” And he loves it. “It’s gorgeous. I saw it about a week and a half ago and it very much represents the original dream of how to use the 3D really well,” Selick said during a surprise appearance at Variety‘s “Laika Celebrates Coraline’s 15th Anniversary” panel at Annecy Animation Festival.
Coronation Street fans thought Summer Spellman had gone through another 'head change' as she returned to Weatherfield. It's been weeks since she was last seen in the ITV soap after leaving for a brief stint in America.
Despite June being quite a bit colder in Scotland than we would expect in summer, all we can do is hope that some warmer weather is on the way so that we can spend more time outdoors.
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Calling all amateur malacologists: With “Memoir of a Snail,” stop-motion director Adam Elliot (an Oscar winner for “Harvie Krumpet”) invites us to study snails of every shape and size, starting with a gastropod-hoarding outcast named Gracie Pudel (pronounced “puddle”), who withdrew from the world after an unhappy childhood in which she was bullied and orphaned and shipped off to Canberra to be raised by a pair of negligent swingers. Fitting squarely on the shelf of grownup films about misfit kids, Elliot’s latest — which comes 15 years after Sundance opener “Mary and Max” — finds the Australian auteur deeply committed to his dark and surprisingly moving brand of storytelling.
Animated movies about robots are always good. You’re talking about major films like “Wall-E” and “The Iron Giant.” Those are classics.
Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic Nearly a lifetime ago, in 1975, Terry Gilliam submitted his five-minute short film “Miracle of Flight” to the Annecy Animation Festival in France. An absurdist gem about homo sapiens’ disastrous desire to take to the skies — using the same cut-out technique made famous by the irreverent interstitials and opening credits Gilliam designed for the British sketch comedy series “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” — the film screened, but won no prizes.
Cloaked celebrities return to the legendary Scottish castle for a game of detection, backstabbing as The Traitors returns for a brand-new series.The second American season of the show will air on BBC Three next week - beginning on Wednesday 12 June. Alan Cumming will take Claudia Winkleman’s place as host and will welcome 22 contestants to compete in games and gruelling roundtables all in the hope of winning a cash prize. As it’s the US series, most of the celebrities won’t be well-known to a UK audience.
Charlie Hunnam has appeared in some very big projects over the years, and it turns out that he was in the running to play a few more iconic characters.
The Netflix docu-series Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult has been topping the streaming service’s charts this week and now the subjects are speaking out.
, the Skims founder is once again dressing herself in another star's clothing. At least she has their blessing this time!Kardashian recently attended Janet Jackson's concert in Thousand Palms, California, and for the occasion, she wore the singer's actual outfit from the 1993 “If” music video.
The BBC's beloved series Death in Paradise has inspired a new spin-off that's got everyone talking. A real-life look at Caribbean law enforcement, Policing Paradise is already in production, with an insider spilling to The Mirror: "It'll look at what the real life police get up to as opposed to the fictional ones in Death in Paradise - and there's quite a difference.