News

After “Shrinking” star Jason Segel wrapped nine seasons of the multi-cam sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” in 2014, he decided he wanted to break out of his comedy mold. But Segel said he was met with resistance from the industry.

“[It] was like a decade of being on one show and doing a bunch of romantic comedies and stuff, I decided I wanted to see if I was good at dramas, and so I, like, dove in hard,” Segel said during THR’s Comedy Actor Roundtable. And I thought, ‘Look out world. Here comes me doing drama.’ And it turns out nobody gives a shit.”

Then he did the 2015 film “The End of the Tour,” where he played the late novelist David Foster Wallace, which earned Segel excellent reviews. Richard Lawson wrote in Vanity Fair, “Segel handles Wallace’s intricate, discursive speech with remarkable dexterity, putting Wallace’s brilliant, troubled mind...

Harrison Ford has had a career unlike anyone else. If you look at just the impact of his roles in the "Star Wars" and "Indiana Jones" film series alone, that would be enough to make anyone a legend. Ford, however, was also able to build up an impressive filmography outside of that, although he went decades without working in television after appearing in the disastrous "Star Wars Holiday Special" in 1978. It seems that experience was so traumatizing for Ford that, outside of playing a minor role in "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," he didn't really act on TV until the premiere of Taylor Sheridan's "Yellowstone" prequel show "1923" in 2022.

So, when the crew behind the celebrated Apple TV+ series "Shrinking" put Ford at the top of their list to play the role of a mentor figure to co-creator and star Jason Segel's grieving therapist, Segel and co-creators Bill Lawrence...

Jason Segel, the guest on the latest episode of The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast — which was recorded in front of an audience at the inaugural Napa Valley StreamFest, where he was celebrated with the fest’s TV Performance of the Year Award — is only 45, but he has already been a major figure in the American comedy scene for a quarter-century.

Segel made his name on the short-lived but seminal TV series Freaks and Geeks (1999); in hit films like Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008), I Love You, Man (2009) and The Muppets (2011); and over the course of nine seasons on the popular hit sitcom How I Met Your Mother, spanning 2005 through 2014. But a little over a decade ago, in the midst of what he now describes as an “existential crisis,” he rebooted his career.

A different side of Segel first began to emerge in the 2011 dark dramedy Jeff, Who Lives at Home,...

All roads in the Brazilian film industry seem to lead to lead to Marcelo Rubens Paiva, and he considers many of the people he has worked with in the last 40-odd years of his life to be family. By coincidence, family is also the subject of the film that has changed his life dramatically over the last six months. Based on Paiva’s 2015 autobiography Ainda estou aqui, Walter Salles’ film I’m Still Here tells the story of his mother, Eunice Paiva, whose politically active husband Rubens was taken by military police in January 1971 and never returned home.

Paiva is no stranger to drama, having overcome tetraplegia after diving into a shallow lake at the age of 20, an incident that informed his first bestseller, Feliz Ano Velho (Aka Happy Old Year) in 1983. But he admits to being overwhelmed by the international goodwill that has followed I’m Still Here since its world...

Titan Comics Unleashes Kraken From Creators Shannon Eric Denton And David Hartman!: "Writer & Monster Forge founder Shannon Eric Denton, and artist David Hartman team up for an electrifying new adventure in Kraken, a brand-new original graphic novel which publishes in September 2025, from Titan Comics.

Set in alternate 1930s filled with dark magic, ancient horrors, and occult powers, Kraken will captivate fans of historical and supernatural thrillers. The graphic novel has been praised by high-profile talents including Rob Zombie who calls Kraken “an insane ripping yarn”, and acclaimed creator Phil Hester (Green Arrow) who says Kraken “packs action, romance, high adventure, horror, and just straight up weirdness into every moment.”.

After disappearing for three years, esteemed adventurer Kraken returns to reality in search of allies to stop an evil sorceress from unleashing a horde of eldritch monsters on the world. Armed with a pistol and supernatural tentacles, the Kraken is loose!

Movies to Watch if You Liked A Real Pain: “A Real Pain” marks Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore directorial feature. As an actor, he has worked on several projects, many of which show him as a majorly anxious individual. His latest project puts him in a similar lane, where he appears just as physically reserved. However, the narrative unpeels so many layers of his personality that it is hard to put him in a single box. The same is true with his co-star, Kieran Culkin, who appears lively and impulsive but has a darker emotional core.

As Eisenberg’s character describes, Culkin plays someone who ‘lights up a room and then shits on everything inside of it’. The film is a buddy tragicomedy about their oddball pair. Eisenberg plays a buttoned-up family man who is facing life’s challenges, presumably, in stride. Culkin plays a free-spirited 30-something man who is stuck in a limbo state.

The great American filmmaker David Lynch passed away on January 15, 2025, sending the world abuzz with remembrance of his many contributions. From decade-defining movies like Eraserhead (1977), Blue Velvet (1986), Mulholland Drive (2001) to beloved television like Twin Peaks, Lynch created works of art so singular that a term was created to describe them and any like them that may follow: "Lynchian." What does it mean for something to be Lynchian? In honor of a remarkable auteur, here's a breakdown of the term.

So, What Does "Lynchian" Really Mean?

David Lynch established an entire artistic aura that goes beyond any specific technical style, but rather evokes a feeling. Lynch established a philosophy. According to Urban Dictionary, the official definition of Lynchian is "having the same balance between the macabre and mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch." Juxtaposition is key to understanding what makes something Lynchian. Something might be Lynchian by creating...

The late, great David Lynch obviously gave us so many wonderful films over the course of his career. I mean, the guy literally turned a failed ABC TV pilot with no surviving costumes or sets into a movie that some have hailed as the greatest film of the 21st century.

Probably one of his more underrated works was 1997’s Lost Highway, the film that dared to ask: what if O.J. Simpson was a saxophone-playing Bill Pullman, and he briefly had the ability to shape-shift? At the very least, it’s the only movie in history to use “Two Thumbs Down” from Siskel and Ebert as a selling point in its marketing campaign.

Lost Highway is especially notable for comedy fans, because it featured Richard Pryor’s final screen performance. Pryor plays Arnie, who owns the auto shop that employs Pete – the young man who may or may not be some...

I learned about David Lynch’s passing in the most David Lynch possible way: doing jury duty. A fellow potential juror told me the news as we waited in the stark, Kafka-esque halls of L.A.’s Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice building. Instantly, the stone-faced bailiffs and unblinking prosecutors took on a subtle air of menace, as if I’d been sucked right into a cut scene from Twin Peaks or Lost Highway. When the Judge asked how I’d weigh eyewitness testimony, I couldn’t refrain from citing the power of framing in presenting evidence, or the inescapably unreliable nature of memory. The judge lectured me: “You do realize this is real-life, and not a television show?” I was quickly dismissed from jury duty.

Reading the odes to Lynch, his art, and the supremely unique notion of the “Lynchian” he left the world, many have lovingly called him a surrealist master.

John Krasinski and Matthew Rhys are set to executive produce and star in “Silent River,” a new psychological thriller ordered by Amazon MGM Studios for Prime Video.

According to the official logline, the project, which is seen through the lens of two men whose lives are far more more connected than they realize, explores the cracks of small-town America in the wake of discovering a serial killer among them.

“Silent River” is created by Aaron Rabin, who serves as an executive producer. In addition to Krasinski, Rhys and Rabin, Allyson Seeger and Alexa Ginsburg will executive produce for Sunday Night. Krasinski is set to direct the show’s pilot and some additional episodes. Andrew Bernstein is also set to direct and executive produce.

In addition to the series order, Sunday Night has renewed its first-look television deal with Amazon MGM Studios.

“We are thrilled to continue our work with John Krasinski,...

Amazon Prime Video has given a series order to the drama series “Silent River” with John Krasinski and Matthew Rhys attached to star, Variety has learned.

Both Krasinski and Rhys will also executive produce the series, with Krasinski also set to direct the pilot and additional episodes. Krasinski is executive producing under his and Allyson Seeger’s Sunday Night production banner, which has renewed its first-look television deal with Amazon MGM Studios.

The official logline for “Silent River” states, “Through the lens of two men, whose lives are far more connected than they realize, ‘Silent River’ explores the cracks of small-town America in the wake of discovering a serial killer among them.”

Aaron Rabin is the creator of the series and will also executive produce, with Andrew Bernstein onboard to direct and executive produce. Seeger and Alexa Ginsburg will executive produce for Sunday Night alongside Krasinski. Amazon MGM Studios will produce.

Is it only incidental that James Cameron’s greatest film clocks in at under two hours? His subsequent films have proven consistently entertaining and frequently excellent, but the lightning of his sophomore feature—a content-to-be-small B movie that nevertheless feels epic in scope and emotion—has yet to strike twice. The Terminator remains as intelligent and emotionally complex as any film of its kind, and the reductive lens of pop culture—to say nothing of intellectual film snobs ignorant to genre pleasures—can’t extinguish its mythic humanist power.

Cameron’s influences include all manner of science fiction, from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Ray Bradbury to Star Wars, but the film’s true creative counterpart might be Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Religious if not outright spiritual, The Terminator is, at its core, a meditation on mankind’s thirst for progress and the likely fallout that results from a lack of self-regulation,...

When How I Met Your Mother debuted in 2005, it became popular right away. Under the direction of Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, the show featured Josh Radnor’s character Ted Mosby as he narrated his children the story of how he met their mother, captivating viewers with its unique narrative technique. In addition to Radnor, Neil Patrick Harris’s portrayal of the well-known womanizer Barney Stinson gave the show the necessary comic edge.

Neil Patrick Harris in How I Met Your Mother (2005) || CBS

Although Harris enjoyed his time on the show, initially he didn’t think the title was really fitting. So much so that he predicted that the sitcom may suffer from the title, ultimately leading to its failure.

The Title Himym Did Not Sit Well With Neil Patrick Harris Neil Patrick Harris and Josh Radnor in How I Met Your Mother (2005) || CBS

How I Met Your Mother quickly...

In his classic 1994 essay “How Tracy Austin Broke My Heart,” David Foster Wallace pondered why so many athlete memoirs — and tennis player memoirs in particular — fail to provide sports fans with what they really want to know. What does it feel like to fail in front of millions of people? How does a human being handle such intense pressure? What actually goes through one’s mind in those do-or-die moments where the difference between eternal glory and lifelong disappointment is one tiny miscalculation or half-second’s hesitation? Maybe, Wallace eventually concludes, the answer to that last question is “nothing much at all,” and “the real secret behind top athletes’ genius may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself.”

In his two previous sports documentaries, “Senna” and “Diego Maradona,” filmmaker Asif Kapadia has gone a great distance toward disproving Wallace’s thesis, using ingeniously edited archival...

HBO Documentary’s new three-part series does not look, feel, or sound like any docuseries you’ve seen. Set against the backdrop of one of the world’s largest Renaissance fairs in Todd Mission, Texas, “Ren Faire” director Lance Oppenheim blends verite filmmaking with fantasy in capturing a cast of characters who are playing out a real-life succession drama.

At the center is King George Coulum, the 86-year-old visionary who built the festival and ruled his fiefdom with an iron fist as it exploded into a multi-million dollar business and (a la Disneyland) became its own town, for which Coulum is both the mayor and primary employer. In Episode 1, the King indicates he is finally ready to step aside, as he hits various online dating sites (including sugardaddy.com) looking for a pretty young woman to be his companion in his final years, which he envisions being filled with sex,...

"Broadcast News" premiered at a pivotal time for the news industry: James L. Brooks' 1987 newsroom-set classic was born into a world in which pay cable, the internet, and the 24-hour news cycle were about to change the way the world received information for good. As such, the movie would already feel like a throwback to a simpler time just a few years after its release. Great as it is, it would soon join the ranks of movies and shows about legacy media that portray a writing world that looks nothing like the current freelance-heavy digital landscape.

Brooks was apparently acutely aware of the changing media world even as he made the film. In a retrospective interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2018, the filmmaker recalls being inspired to create one of the movie's most famous scenes when a visit to a real-life newsroom confirmed that it reflected reality. "I was in the...

Will Forte in Brief Interviews With Hideous Men Screenshot: The A.V. Club It’s a common misconception that A Quiet Place was John Krasinski’s directorial debut. The critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic thriller was actually his third film as a director (besides a handful of episodes of The Office), following two...

John Krasinski in Brief Interviews With Hideous MenScreenshot: The A.V. Club

It’s a common misconception that A Quiet Place was John Krasinski’s directorial debut. The critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic thriller was actually his third film as a director (besides a handful of episodes of The Office), following two previous...

For years now, Future has been skilled at playing rap’s favorite romantic anti-hero: the man, or character, baptizing himself in purple drinks to forget about bliss that has slipped away. Some of his best songs, like “Throw Away” or “My Collection,” can be both spiteful and vulnerable, like a dog dying of a virus that it can’t understand. It’s why certain men pore over his albums like they’re David Foster Wallace novels. At any given moment, a lyric or a snark will seem to effortlessly crystalize...

Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone deliver excellent performances. Under the Bridge borrows from fiction to create a lived-in feel and subverts true-crime expectations. The series portrays the stark dynamics of Victoria's community with jarring voice-overs.

While Hulu has found success with scripted murder mysteries that center on young adults, like the two-season Cruel Summer, Under the Bridge takes a somewhat different approach to true crime-inspired storytelling. Namely, Under the Bridge isn’t just influenced by a real-life case — it painstakingly depicts one that unfolded in November 1997 on a quiet island in British Columbia, Canada. In the wake of her Emmy-nominated starring turn in Daisy Jones & the Six, Riley Keough plays one of the miniseries’ main characters, writer Rebecca Godfrey.

8/10

Based on the book by Rebecca Godfrey, Under the Bridge is a 2024 true crime series that explores the murder of a teenaged girl named Reena Virk through the testimonies of her accused killers.

Since appearing in the successful nine-season run of The Office, John Krasinski has worked hard to diversify his portfolio with strong lead roles in projects like Michael Bay's gritty war film 13 Hours and his titular role in Prime Video's hit Jack Ryan series, but his most impressive feat has been his pivot into a directing career. Krasinki had previously directed the comedy-drama film The Hollars and adapted David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews With Hideous Men for the big screen, but it was 2018's breakout hit A Quiet Place that shot him straight into the upper echelon of directors working in Hollywood today. The unprecedented success of the sci-fi horror film, has already spawned a sequel, with multiple spin-offs in development, and led to a first-look deal for Krasinki with Paramount. If, or Imaginary Friends as it was first titled, will see John Krasinski team up with Ryan Reynolds...

It’s easy for children to be feel apprehensive and overwhelmed by the world. (To be fair, it’s also easy for a lot of adults to feel apprehensive and overwhelmed by the world, which, you know — thank god for therapists!) You could do a lot worse than to show a fretful youngster Orion and the Dark, a Dreamworks/Netflix animated movie that mounts a full-frontal attack on the notion of fear as a default state of mind. Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) is an 11-year-old who’s afraid of a lot of things: cancer,...

Taking a page out of the Pixar playbook and animating entities turned into characters, DreamWorks Animation’s latest feature Orion and the Dark recalls ‘toons like Inside Out and Elemental as it tells the story of a young kid and his encounters with his greatest fear, the Dark.

Fortunately for adults who will likely have to sit through this with their kids, Dwa was smart enough to hire Oscar winner Charlie Kaufman to take on the task of bringing Emma Yarlett’s book to the screen. Basically the premise is intact, but Kaufman has expanded this world into Pixar territory where instead of Inside Out’s gang of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Anxiety and Disgust we get entities like Dark, Light, Insomnia, Quiet, Sleep, Unexplained Noises, and Dreams to help tell the tale of Orion, a kid full of neuroses and unchecked fears...

The idea of Charlie Kaufman writing a DreamWorks animated movie for kids may sound absurd, but Orion and the Dark proves that Kaufman's signature brand of existential dread and off-kilter humor works perfectly for a story about a kid learning to face his fears. The protagonist of Orion and the Dark could be the younger version of a Kaufman character like Jim Carrey's Joel from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Nicolas Cage's Kaufman stand-in from Adaptation. Kaufman tones down a bit of his weirdness to make Orion and the Dark accessible to kids, but he retains the complexity and self-reflexiveness his work is known for.

Based loosely on the children's picture book by Emma Yarlett, Orion and the Dark tells the story of the 11-year-old title character (Jacob Tremblay), whose very Kaufman-esque collection of fears includes dogs, bees, clogged toilets, his school bully, and of course the dark.

Orion And The Dark Image: DreamWorks Animation The notion of an animated feature for children written by Charlie Kaufman, the anxiety-riddled scribe of metaphysical nesting-doll movies like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, sounds about as unlikely as a G-rated Disney movie directed by David Lynch, or Nine Inch Nails...

Orion And The DarkImage: DreamWorks Animation

The notion of an animated feature for children written by Charlie Kaufman, the anxiety-riddled scribe of metaphysical nesting-doll movies like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, sounds about as unlikely as a G-rated Disney movie directed by David Lynch, or Nine Inch Nails frontman...

The best animated movies are entertaining enough for kids while providing rewarding diversions for older viewers. This Netflix premiere from DreamWorks Animation hits just that sweet spot. Hilariously and movingly tapping into typical childhood anxieties, it’s infused with ample wit of both the visual and verbal variety for adults, the latter courtesy of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) in his return to feature-length animation, nine years after Anomalisa. Much like the streamer’s recent Nimona, Orion and the Dark proves the sort of sophisticated animated project that outshines many recent big-screen toons.

Based on the illustrated children’s book by Emma Yarlett, the story revolves around Orion (Jacob Tremblay, Room), a fifth-grader with an inordinate number of fears that he dutifully chronicles in a vividly illustrated sketchbook.

Many of them are typical for an early adolescent, from being afraid to talk to a classmate...

Exclusive: Jason Segel has signed with UTA.

The star, co-writer and executive producer of the Apple TV+ series Shrinking had been with WME. Starring alongside Harrison Ford, Segel earned Segel Best Actor nominations at the 2023 Primetime Emmys and 2024 Golden Globes.

The versatile actor, writer, director and producer also starred in Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers on HBO, a series nominated for a 2024 Critics Choice Award for Best Drama, and before that Segel created, wrote, directed, produced and starred in the anthology series Dispatches from Elsewhere. That one was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.

UTA will rep Segel in all areas. On the big screen, Segel starred as David Foster Wallace in The End of the Tour and before that wrote and starred in the Nicholas Stoller-directed Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He and Stoller teamed to write The Muppets, which grossed more than $150 million worldwide. The film won...

“Her Smell” director Alex Ross Perry is developing two nonfiction projects, including the as-yet-untitled doc about video stores.

“I can’t speak for everybody but yeah, I miss them,” he tells Variety at Poland’s American Film Festival, where he also picked the Indie Star Award and treated the audience to work-in-progress footage.

“I’m trying to tell this story while it’s still within our grasp. You only have so much time when something is both a present tense memory for one half of your audience and a completely new experience for another. In another decade, everything I’m talking about will be ancient history.”

Perry, who has been working on the project for 10 years, is also putting finishing touches on “Pavements,” about an indie rock band.

“I think both this video store movie and the Pavement movie are examinations of the unexamined era,” he says.

“It was something...

“A new ignorance is on the horizon, an ignorance borne not of a lack of knowledge but of too much knowledge, too much data, too many theories, too little time," writes Eugene Thacker in the third and final volume of his Horror of Philosophy series, Tentacles Longer Than Night. One certainly gets that feeling while reading John D'Agata's book About a Mountain, and watching L. Frances Henderson's new documentary adaptation of it, This Much We Know. We know a lot — scores of graphs, charts, statistics, experts, theories, and scenarios — but in the face of this excess, we confront the inevitable impasse of knowledge. We can't know the future, and we can't know why people do the things they do. We can't ever really know why he or she died by suicide.

The investigation into a suicide is a major component of This Much We Know. At the time,...

Spoiler warning: This article openly discusses the full plot of “The Others.”

It’s been said many times that every love story is a ghost story, and the pop art of the 21st century would seem to suggest that the opposite is also true.

The rise of “elevated horror,” the traumafication of genre narratives, and the ever-increasing role that supernatural forces appear to be playing in arthouse fare have combined to recenter the heartsick longing — romantic or otherwise — that has always haunted tales of grief and loss, even if only from the shadows or in the subtext. These days, a movie or TV show about ghosts is less likely to scare you than it is to make you cry, and the ones that manage to do both tend to rely on the former as a means of accomplishing the latter; look no further than the work of Mike Flanagan, whose...

When 24-year-old Zoe Jackson scrolls her for-you-page, there are books all the way down. As a BookTok creator, Jackson spends much of her time on TikTok watching videos and recommendations surrounding the best books out there, from newly published novels to classic tomes. But while the average reader might stop scrolling when they recognize a book cover from high school English or a college course — like Catcher In The Rye, The Brothers Karamazov, or Infinite Jest, Jackson usually keeps it moving in an effort to avoid one of BookTok’s biggest icks: bro-lit.

Making a movie based on a book is the riskiest thing any filmmaker could do. Readers either celebrate or are worried when they learn that their favorite book is being adapted for a movie and, out of all the manifold reasons, why the greatest problem is that the director cannot express the same things on screen the same way as the author does on paper. Books are open to interpretation and limited only by the writer's imagination, while movies are set to the producer's view and limited by technology, budgets, and a two-hour runtime. Such different mediums make some books impossible to be made into movies.

Yet, with the much-anticipated Dune: Part 2 coming later this year, we know that some previously considered "unfilmable" books can be made into movies. There are plenty of impossible books that could be turned into movies, so here are the unfilmable books that we want to see become movies next.

The How I Met Your Mother cast launched their careers into stardom, with some members transitioning from TV to blockbuster films. Cobie Smulders found success in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while Jason Segel garnered praise for his roles in movies and TV series. Neil Patrick Harris remained a recognizable figure with roles in various films and TV shows, including reprising his iconic Barney Stinson character on How I Met Your Father. Where to Watch Powered by

The How I Met Your Mother cast has all been involved in numerous projects since the show officially ended after season 9 in 2014. How I Met Your Mother detailed the lives of Ted Mosby and his friends in New York City, with Ted’s mission to find his soulmate acting as the narrative thread that tied the show together. Though How I Met Your Mother suffered from an incredibly divisive series finale, overall, the show...

Jason Segel is opening up about his time spent on “How I Met Your Mother”, revealing that he was “really unhappy” with his life and career during the final years of the show. The 43-year-old actor, and current star of the Apple TV+ series “Shrinking”, reflected on the hit CBS sitcom during a roundtable interview for The Hollywood Reporter.

“There was a period in my life and career around the last couple of years of ‘How I Met Your Mother’ where things were firing in both movies and TV, and everyone was telling me how well it was going and I was really unhappy,” he revealed.

About a father named Ted recounting his adventures of living with his friends in New York City, “How I Met Your Mother” ran for nine seasons from 2005 to 2014. During that time, Segel played Marshall Eriksen alongside Josh Radnor as Ted Mosby, Alyson Hannigan as Lily Aldrin,...

Now that the first season of “Shrinking” is fully available to all binge-watchers, it feels particularly urgent to highlight this Apple TV+ series’ lead actor, co-creator, writer and executive producer, Jason Segel. Despite the impressive list of iconic comedic characters like Marshall Eriksen (“How I Met Your Mother”) and Peter Bretter (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), he has never been nominated for a major TV or film award. With the rising recognition of “Shrinking” and Segel’s undeniable likability factor, the upcoming 2023 Emmy nominations could easily correct that mistake. Here are five reasons why Segel deserves a spot in the Best Comedy Actor category this year.

1. Segel has had an impressive acting career.

At the turn of the century, Judd Appatow’s “Freaks and Geeks” (1999-2000) put Segel on the map as a promising comedy actor. “How I Met Your Mother” (2005-2014) brought him worldwide fame as the adorable, silly goof Marshall Eriksen.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has revealed she had a miscarriage in her 20s, an experience that was made more difficult after she developed an infection.

The Seinfeld and Veep star opens up about her pregnancy loss in the latest episode of her Lemonada podcast Wiser Than Me. The podcast, which focuses on conversations with older female creatives, has featured discussions with Jane Fonda, Isabel Allende and Fran Lebowitz.

The latest episode is a larger conversation with the 75-year-old food writer, magazine editor and author Ruth Reichl, behind the infamous New York Times review of Le Cirque and a controversial David Foster Wallace article in Gourmet. During their hour-long conversation, Reichl opens up about living with a mother who had bipolar disorder and how she processed grief through food.

Louis-Dreyfus opens the episode detailing her miscarriage and how her mother’s cooking ultimately helped heal her.

“When I was about 28, I got pregnant...

The Despicable Me cast is full of A-list stars playing its lovable animated characters. The movie revolves around a supervillain named Gru, who adopts three girls in a bid to steal the Moon and ends up feeling more fulfilled by fatherhood than evildoing. Despicable Me was a big enough hit to launch a blockbuster franchise. Gru became an endearing character that fans would follow in multiple sequels, and the Minions, introduced in the first of the Despicable Me movies, have become a cultural sensation, headlining their own spinoff movies. Those now-classic characters were brought to life by a fantastic cast of voice actors.

Despicable Me was the first feature-length production mounted by Illumination Entertainment, the animation studio that went on to spearhead the Sing and Secret Life of Pets franchises. It was an immediate hit with both critics and audiences, putting Illumination on the map alongside Pixar and DreamWorks Animation.

Apple+ will release its newest comedic TV series, ‘Shrinking,’ on January 27th, 2023. This series follows a widowed therapist attempting to cope with some of his own feelings by helping his patients tackle their challenges. ‘Shrinking’ has a cast full of actors and actresses who own the screen and bring the story to another level of authenticity and reliability. The cast includes Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, and Jessica Williams, who have all been in many films and other productions seen on Hollywood’s big screens. Jason Segel not only portrays the main character and therapist Jimmy, but he also is one of the writers behind the beautiful story. From ‘The Muppets’ to ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall,’ Jason has made a name for himself in the entertainment industry through both his acting and writing skills. Take a look into Jason Segel’s career and how his experience will prove itself to be a great addition to ‘Shrinking.

For 10 years, Jason Segel was in one of the biggest sitcoms on American television. For the last three of them, he knew he had to get out of it. “They were a hard three years,” he remembers, of his time as the big-hearted Marshall in How I Met Your Mother. “I was really, really in need of doing an artistic check-in, and it was no one’s responsibility but my own.”

That show, along with self-scripted movies like Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Muppets, catapulted Segel to late-Noughties comedy superstardom in the US. This was the era of Judd Apatow neuroses and the Seth Rogen-verse; Segel was the classically handsome, 6ft 4in giant of the group. He seemed to have it made: total creative control, immense sums of money, wooing everyone from Emily Blunt to Cameron Diaz to Mila Kunis on film. Something nagged at him, though. “The show was fantastic.

When you think of unadaptable novels, what's the one that comes to your mind? "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace? "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf? For a select few of you out there, you might think about Saul Bellow's 1959 novel "Henderson the Rain King," a humorous yet deeply philosophical story about a middle-aged man's quest to figure out the meaning of life. Well, that's the most abstract way I could probably describe it, as he navigates this question after accidentally becoming the messiah of an African village. Yeah.

If you're not familiar with the novel, that may already cause a bevy of red flags to be raised, and we don't blame you for that. While the novel ends in a way that skeptical readers may not have anticipated, it's understandable why studios have been hesitant to greenlight an adaptation of Bellow's work.

That doesn't mean there haven't been attempts in the past.

The violent caper exploded on the scene back in 1992, causing admiration and annoyance, kicking off a new wave of imitators

What’s left to say about Reservoir Dogs, a movie that’s all talk?

A young Quentin Tarantino’s greatest trick was to turn his audience into the same sort of discussion group that picked over the finer points of Madonna over coffee at LA diner Pat and Lorraine’s, scouring pop culture for hidden profundities. A shark in the fishpond of the fledgling American indie circuit, his auspicious feature debut piqued the interest of innumerable junior cinephiles and David Foster Wallace alike. The image of dorm room walls plastered with his posters has become a cliche, backed up by the maybe-apocryphal claims that film school professors had to ban essays on the auteur’s work just to get dazzled kids to write about anyone else. Every aspect of the...

While The Road Warrior wouldn’t have worked without the Feral Kid, the Max Max franchise star didn’t remain an actor for long after the movie’s release. While some child stars stick with acting well into adulthood, a lot of young performers end up leaving the industry after their early fame subsides. In the case of Emil Minty, a pivotal role in the Mad Max franchise as the Feral Kid was one of the actor’s only parts before he moved on from show business.

The Feral Kid was a mute scavenger who befriended Max and proved to be a brave companion to the title character, with Max saving him from death in the climactic melee. The dénouement of The Road Warrior reveals that his grown-up self was the movie’s narrator, making Fury Road the only Mad Max movie that the character himself narrates. However, despite playing...

Roger Federer, one of the greatest tennis players of all time with 20 Grand Slam titles to his name, and still the holder of a record 237-straight weeks ranked Number One, has announced his professional retirement.

Federer revealed his decision Thursday in a note on social media. Noting the challenges he’s had with injuries and surgeries in recent years, the 41-year-old acknowledged he’s tired his best to “return to full competitive form,” but acknowledged, “I also know my body’s capacities and limits, and its message to me lately has been clear…...

Mikhail Gorbachev walks into a Pizza Hut. The year is 1997, six years after the end of the Soviet Union, and the leader who oversaw its dissolution is in Moscow’s Red Square to star in one of the strangest television adverts ever produced. After taking a seat alongside his granddaughter Anastasia Virganskaya, Gorbachev is spotted by two men at a nearby table and a debate over his legacy ensues. “Because of him we have economic confusion!” claims a dour, middle-aged man. “Because of him we have opportunity!” fires back the younger of the pair, perhaps his son. Certainly the two are intended to represent a generational gap. While the elder complains about political instability and chaos, the younger talks of freedom and hope. It’s left to an older woman to settle the debate. “Because of him, we have many things…” she says, “…like Pizza Hut!” On that, they can all agree.

In the year 2000, the late literary critic James Wood put forth the concept of “hysterical realism,” a then-emergent micro-genre in which the delirious overstimulation of modern life is expressed through a hoarder-caliber accumulation of detail. At the time, he was talking about the likes of Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, and Zadie Smith, and their doorstopper works’ endless minutiae on land surveying or tennis strategy or the ethics of lab rat usage.

Continue reading ‘Heat 2’ Review: Michael Mann Delivers More UltraCops, Gutter Poetry & Fetishistic Nitty-Grittiness at The Playlist.

James Ponsoldt is expecting this question. Why did the guy who made films like “Smashed,” “The Spectacular Now,” and “The End of the Tour” — dark, knowing dramas about messed-up adults, typically with substance abuse problems and a host of neuroses — turn his attention to “Summering,” a film about four tween girls in the waning days of their favorite season?

He’s got the answer in hand: He’s a parent of three kids, his wife Megan works in the public-school system, and this is the stuff he wants to share with his family.

But the real answer? It’s still a James Ponsoldt film. It’s not as dark as its predecessors, but the filmmaker is still using his craft to ask some very deep questions. “Summering” is, after all, about a group of girls who discover a very dead body and must grapple with what to do next.

“Those...

While there is so much to be said about The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind 20 years after its release, there are few aspects of that all-time great game I love to think about more than The 36 Lessons of Vivec.

There are over 300 books in Morrowind, but few (with the obvious exception of The Lusty Argonian Maid) have had the staying power of The 36 Lessons of Vivec. For years, Elder Scrolls fans have poured over the pages of those lessons in an attempt to discover what they actually mean and why they exist. Their collective efforts have unearthed many interpretations that typically lead to one conclusion: The 36 Lessons of Vivec is one of the greatest pieces of lore in video game history.

What makes a relatively small collection of in-game books worthy of that lofty title? I’m glad you asked…

Who is Vivec?

While it’s always important to “consider the source,...

Director Sidney J. Furie discusses his favorite films he’s watched and re-watched during quarantine with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Dr. Blood’s Coffin (1961)

The Ipcress File (1965) – Howard Rodman’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

The Appaloosa (1966)

The Naked Runner (1967)

Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

The Entity (1982) – Luca Gaudagnino’s trailer commentary

The Boys in Company C (1978)

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

The Apartment (1960) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

The Best Years Of Our Lives (1946)

Twelve O’Clock High (1949)

A Place In The Sun (1951) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Out Of Africa (1985)

The Last Picture Show (1971) – Mark Pellington’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing

Annie Hall (1977)

The Bad And The Beautiful (1952)

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)

The Tender Bar...

The spirit of “Ghost” literally haunts “The In Between,” a romance about two high school students whose love affair is tragically cut short, including a cameo by the poster for the 1990 blockbuster which starred Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. This time, the star-crossed lovers are teenagers — Tessa (Joey King) and Skylar (Kyle Allen) — who are involved in a car accident in the movie’s first scene. Skyler is killed and Tessa is hospitalized with a critical injury to her heart, an example of the film’s less-than-subtle use of metaphors.

Using a split timeline, “The In Between” alternates between the past, recounting how Tessa and Skylar fell in love, and the present, in which the grieving Tessa starts to believe her late boyfriend is trying to communicate with her from beyond the grave.

The teens meet at a revival screening of Jean-Jacques Beneix’s 1986 tale of amour fou, “Betty Blue,...