Category: 5. Entertainment

Saturday Night Live, Hawkeye and Comrade Detective director Rhys Thomas shared insights into his work and career in the Czech Republic on Wednesday, giving a masterclass as part of the Industry Days program of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF). Forget about an Englishman in New York! Thomas is a Welshman.

The Emmy Award-winning producer and director shared that when he joined Saturday Night Live, it took him a while to fully understand the brand of humor it represented. “As a Brit, I didn’t get it at first,” he shared about SNL, explaining that he couldn’t watch the show growing up in the U.K. “I wasn’t really that familiar with Saturday Night Live. [But] I knew that it was an institution.”

Thomas, one of the headliners of the inaugural Small-Screen Forum, organized by KVIFF with its partner CME, actually began his career on Saturday Night Live, where he directed more than 100 short films and headed up the film unit. After Cold War-era propaganda satire Comrade Detective for Amazon and A24, he directed and executive produced Hawkeye, the Marvel series for Disney+.

He is also known for his collaborations with John Mulaney and co-created and directed the doc satire series Documentary Now! Episodes of the latter are introduced by host Helen Mirren. So, how did he get such a big star for the project? “By asking Helen Mirren to do it,” Thomas told the masterclass. “Weirdly, she said yes.”

Thomas was asked on Wednesday if the show would return for a fifth season. “Very possibly,” he replied, without sharing more details.

Questioned about the Hawkeye series, he joked: “Hey look, we are all whores!” Thomas then shared that he had enjoyed Marvel content before getting a call about the series. “You get an opportunity for a bigger budget, and it’s Marvel, I mean, honestly, I’m not a stupid person,” he said. “I want to be entertained, and I like entertaining things.”

What drew him to the series? “Honestly, what interested me in that show was the Hawkeye character, which, amusingly, if you Googled him, … people were not interested in. Because he does not have any superpowers. He’s a real guy. He’s essentially just a guy who has an incredible work ethic. That’s what I found interesting.” The comic book run that the creators highlighted to him as “a tonal reference” was the popular and beloved Matt Fraction run, he added.

Thomas lauded the “genius” of Jeremy Renner and the “insane” scale of the series. Asked if he would work with Marvel again, he simply replied: “Good question.”

The creative also shared his tips on how to think about a show’s audience appeal: “I do think that sometimes that layer of jumping ahead to ‘what are people going to think about this’ can stifle and make you trip up. You kind of have to fly by your instinct. You do have to sort of just ground yourself in what you think works, and then build a team [around] that.”

KVIFF, which runs through Saturday, has already honored Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard, and Vicky Krieps, with Stellan Skarsgård set to receive an award later this week.

Every so often, a pivotal moment occurs that radically transforms the Marvel Universe, diverting its destiny towards strange timelines and dark futures. This October, in honor of the 30th anniversary of one of the greatest of those aforementioned sagas, “Age of Apocalypse,” behold the AGE OF REVELATION, a startling new X-Men event that sees the world reborn in the image of the heir to Apocalypse: Doug Ramsey, A.K.A. Revelation.

AGE OF REVELATION takes current X-Men storytelling 10 years into the future. After being welcomed onto Cyclops’ X-Men with open arms, Revelation set out on the impossible task that Apocalypse entrusted him with: creating a world where only the fittest survived. With his linguistic mutant power amplified to an astonishing new level, Doug commands Earth itself with his voice, reshaping it as a utopian haven for mutantkind. It’s a mutant homeland built on an insidious lie, spreading across the planet and wiping out humanity until it becomes a mutant homeworld!

THE HEIR RISES – THE RESISTANCE IGNITES!

X YEARS FROM TODAY the Revelation Territories stretch from the Atlantic to the Mississippi – a mutant utopia ruled by the heir of Apocalypse. But beneath the surface, rebellion brews. As a ragtag X-Men team strikes from the shadows, Revelation faces threats from within. It all begins here – the dawn of the AGE OF REVELATION!

When The Morning Show returns, the Apple series that takes place at a news network is entering the current post-truth climate.

“We have to question everything that we see and we hear now more than ever,” says Jennifer Aniston‘s newly appointed top exec at the network, Alex Levy, in the new teaser trailer that dropped on Wednesday (below). Her former news-anchor-in-crime Bradley Jackson, played by Reese Witherspoon, agrees: “The truth always comes out, you know that.”

The teaser doesn’t have any new footage from the forthcoming season, but lines spoken by the characters are overlaid as Aniston and Witherspoon are seen walking towards each other and next to a mirrored building modeled after their Manhattan news network. The other characters in the Apple TV+ show’s ensemble appear instead of their reflections, teasing some of the show’s new characters via audio.

The returning allies to the women played by Mark Duplass and Billy Crudup are heard talking about “dirt to exchange” and offering to do “someone’s dirty work,” while Alex’s ex-lover and professional enemy, played by Jon Hamm, offers her some advice: “You wanna run this place? You have to really, really want it.”

The female managers played by Greta Lee and Karen Pittman struggle with their roles in the new hierarchy, while new characters played by Boyd Holbrook, a provocative podcaster and talk show host named Brodie, and the Oscar-winning Marion Cotillard try to get their bearings. “I like to know who’s an ally and who’s a liability,” says Cotillard’s character, Celine Dumont, who is described as a savvy operator from a storied European family.

The 10-episode season returns Sept. 17 on Apple TV+ with one episode, followed by a weekly Friday release through Nov. 19.

Alongside stars and executive producers Aniston and Witherspoon, new season four castmembers also include Jeremy Irons, Aaron Pierre and William Jackson Harper. Additional returning stars are Nestor Carbonell and Nicole Beharie.

The third season ended with the third consecutive cliffhanger for the series by setting the starring women on diverging paths. Alex (Aniston) had outsmarted the Elon Musk-ish tech billionaire played by Hamm who was attempting to acquire TMS parent network UBA, finally giving Alex a seat at the table to steer the morning show into a merger with their rival news brand. Bradley (Witherspoon), meanwhile, was facing a possible felony charge for tampering with evidence and obstructing justice related to the investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol (her brother, played by Joe Tippett, assaulted a police officer during the insurrection; Bradley caught the moment on camera and covered it up in her reporting, forcing her resignation).

“Everybody has to face what they have to face,” showrunner Charlotte Stoudt told The Hollywood Reporter after season three’s finale. “There is accountability, but it’s not bleak. Even when you have to be accountable for something, life can go on.”

The fourth season will again time jump to open nearly two years after the events of season three. In the Morning Show‘s world it’s now spring 2024 and the UBA-NBN merger is complete. Per the season logline, the newsroom “must grapple with newfound responsibility, hidden motives and the elusive nature of truth in a polarized America. In a world rife with deepfakes, conspiracy theories, and corporate cover-ups — who can you trust? And how can you know what’s actually real?”

The Media Res-produced drama is executive produced by showrunner Stoudt, director Mimi Leder, Michael Ellenberg and Lindsey Springer through Media Res, Witherspoon and Lauren Neustadter for Hello Sunshine, Aniston and Kristin Hahn for Echo Films, along with Zander Lehmann and Micah Schraft.

For ‘The Trompe l’oeil Cleavage’, Monster Chetwynd transformed the rooms of Kunsthaus Zürich into a dramatically lit sequence of spaces inspired by accounts of the ancient Via Appia, the Roman thoroughfare that doubled as a burial ground. Set against the backdrop of sprawling wallpaper collages and dotted with sculptural structures of wood, cardboard, papier mâché and latex, the exhibition brings together a constellation of objects, paintings and films celebrating over two decades of the artist’s idiosyncratic practice. The result is evocative of a walk through the set of Federico Fellini’s Satyricon (1969) combined with remnants of a DIY session involving psychedelic substances.

Passing through Hell Mouth (2025) – an enormous portal in the shape of an open jaw with gaping nostrils – visitors find themselves looking at an equally monumental blue head, tipped upon its side, its fabric formed to appear as if chiselled from stone (Benjamin’s Head, 2025). Nearby, another face plays its nose like an instrument (Flute Nose, 2025). Referencing liminal spaces as the gateways to hell in medieval pageants, plays and paintings, these sculptures double as shelters, operating as both protagonists of and a backdrop to Chetwynd’s earlier works.

Recordings of her early collective performances play throughout the space, frequently employing both classical and popular tropes to mount her signature critique of modern-day capitalism. ‘I think of my performances as exploded paintings’, observes the artist in the catalogue accompanying the show. The Walk to Dover (2005/7), a slideshow of a journey retracing the escape of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield from the hardships of child labour, interacts with Debt – A Medieval Play (2005) and A Tax Haven Run by Women (2011), the latter featuring Chetwynd’s memorable Catbus, fashioned after a character in Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro (1988).

Scattered across the space are several small-scale models made with cut-outs and improvised materials that allow a glimpse into the artist’s process of working with scale for commissioned works, as well as for whole exhibition designs. Chetwynd’s sensitivity to scale is also evident in her ‘Bat Opera’ series (2003–ongoing). Small in format, and painstakingly executed in oil, the presentation includes around 50 paintings that cast bats as the protagonists – from individual close-ups (Bat Opera XXIII, 2020) to group scenes where they are barely discernible from falling leaves in the clouds (Bat Opera (478), 2017). Bats make an ideal subjects for Chetwynd: unique as the only flying mammals, they carry a powerful symbolic charge across cultures, from harbingers of events good and bad to serving an important role in ecosystems as both regulators and transmitters of disease. In the ‘Bat Opera’ series, they encapsulate it all. Similarly ambiguous is the lanternfly – ‘a bizarre mistake by science’ as the artist says – featured in works such as Lantern Fly (Pastoral) and Lantern Fly (Mars&Venus) (both 2021), in which Chetwynd constructs huge versions of the insects in papier mâché and sets them atop inkjet-printed paintings by François Boucher, where they seem as much to obscure the sensual scenes as to join in the acts, bringing them to another level of bizarre.

Humour threads throughout Chetwynd’s practice. In the final room, the series of films ‘Hermitos Children’ (2008–25), are presented together for the first time, to follow the tribulations of trans detective Joan Shipman who uses telepathy to solve sex crimes. Working across media, scales and registers, invariably implicating herself – changing her name from Alalia to Spartacus to Marvin Gaye and now to Monster – Chetwynd remains consistent in that her scenarios and characters are as preposterous as they are reasonable. ‘I have always wanted to make a large head and live inside it’, said the artist in the exhibition catalogue. This show sees that wish, finally, realised.

Monster Chetwynd’s ‘The Trompe l’oeil Cleavage’ is on view at  Kunsthaus Zürich until 31 August

_{Main image: Monster Chetwynd, Bat Opera (478), 2017, oil on canvas, 16 × 21 cm. Courtesy: the artist and Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich/Milan}

Saturday Night Live, Hawkeye, and Comrade Detective director Rhys Thomas shared insights into his work and career in the Czech Republic on Wednesday, giving a masterclass as part of the Industry Days program of the 59th edition of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF). Forget about an Englishman in New York! Thomas is a Welshman.

The Emmy Award-winning producer and director shared that when he joined Saturday Night Live, it took him a while to fully understand the brand of humor it represented. “As a Brit, I didn’t get it at first,” he shared about SNL, explaining that he couldn’t watch the show growing up in the U.K. “I wasn’t really that familiar with Saturday Night Live. [But] I knew that it was an institution.”

Thomas, one of the headliners of the inaugural Small-Screen Forum, organized by KVIFF with its partner CME, actually began his career on Saturday Night Live, where he directed more than 100 short films and headed up the film unit. After Cold War-era propaganda satire Comrade Detective for Amazon and A24, he directed and executive produced Hawkeye, the Marvel series for Disney+.

He is also known for his collaborations with John Mulaney and co-created and directed the doc satire series Documentary Now! Episodes of the latter are introduced by host Helen Mirren. So, how did he get such a big star for the project? “By asking Helen Mirren to do it,” Thomas told the masterclass. “Weirdly, she said yes.”

Thomas was asked on Wednesday if the show would return for a fifth season. “Very possibly,” he replied, without sharing more details.

Questioned about the Hawkeye series, he joked: “Hey look, we are all whores!” Thomas then shared that he had enjoyed Marvel content before getting a call about the series. “You get an opportunity for a bigger budget, and it’s Marvel, I mean, honestly, I’m not a stupid person,” he said. “I want to be entertained, and I like entertaining things.”

What drew him to the series? “Honestly, what interested me in that show was the Hawkeye character, which, amusingly, if you Googled him, … people were not interested in. Because he does not have any superpowers. He’s a real guy. He’s essentially just a guy who has an incredible work ethic. That’s what I found interesting.” The comic book run that the creators highlighted to him as “a tonal reference” was the popular and beloved Matt Fraction run, he added.

The creative also shared his tips on how to think about a show’s audience appeal: “I do think that sometimes that layer of jumping ahead to ‘what are people going to think about this’ can stifle and make you trip up. You kind of have to fly by your instinct. You do have to sort of just ground yourself in what you think works, and then build a team [around] that.”

KVIFF, which runs through Saturday, has already honored Dakota Johnson, Peter Sarsgaard, and Vicky Krieps, with Stellan Skarsgård set to receive an award later this week.

Kesha prioritised safety for herself and her fans during Texas’ deadly flash flooding by cancelling her Dallas concert at the Dos Equis Pavilion.

Following delays that evening, Kesha announced the cancellation across X and Instagram on Tuesday, July 8. 

“I wanted to say thank you for coming out to support an independent artist. I have been so excited for tonight and to celebrate my freedom and go tits out with all of you, but due to the weather and what yall here in Texas have been facing, I have to put your safety first,” she wrote. 

Kesha noted she hoped to reschedule for the following evening, confirming all tickets would remain valid. “I’m going to stay here in your beautiful city and come back here tomorrow and would love to play for all of you tomorrow night,” she added. “All of your tickets will be honoured and I’m so sorry. Get home safe, let’s party tomorrow.”

As of early Wednesday, July 9, over 107 people had died due to catastrophic flash flooding across Texas, with more than 160 people still missing. 
 

Social media star-turned-actor Andrew Bachelor has joined Shamier Anderson in the upcoming Paramount+ and GameTV satirical mini-series Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story.

Bachelor, also known as King Bach, will play U.S. sprinter Carl Lewis, a fierce rival to Canadian Ben Johnson (Anderson) who in 1988 cheated his way to a gold medal in the 100 meter final at the Seoul Olympics. 

Bachelor starred in Netflix comedy Coffee and Kareem, alongside Taraji P. Henson, Ed Helms and Betty Gilpin, the Netflix horror The Babysitter: Killer Queen with Jenna Ortega, and the romantic comedy Holidate with Emma Roberts and Kristin Chenoweth.

Bachelor will bring his real-life sprinting background while attending Florida State University, and that of his athlete father in Jamaica, to the role. “Carl Lewis was a hero of mine — not just because of his dominance, but because he excelled in multiple events, just like I did. The rivalry between Ben Johnson and Carl Lewis is one of the most iconic in sports history. To be a part of bringing that story to life is an incredible honor and a full-circle moment for me,” he said in a statement.

The six-parter, set to air on Paramount+ and GameTV in Canada in 2026, has also added Kids in the Hall alum Mark McKinney, Karen Robinson, Ennis Esmer, Kristian Bruun, Malaika Hennie Hamadi, Ryan Belleville, Darryl Hinds, Lisa Horner, Emma Hunter, Suresh John, Jonathan Langdon, Gita Miller, Andrew Phung and Dewshane Williams to the ensemble cast.  

The Canadian miniseries is produced by New Metric Media and Bay Mills Studios. A synopsis from the producers reads: “Hate the Player: The Ben Johnson Story is Canadian sprinter Johnson’s definitely-not-biased account of the doping controversy that rocked the 1988 Olympics when he tested positive for banned steroid use, going from hero to zero in 9.79 seconds in what some called “The Dirtiest Race in History”. The series takes a revealing and satirical look at the events surrounding the legendary race and the scandal behind the scandal.”

The series, which has the participation of Ben Johnson, is created by Anthony Q. Farrell (The Office, Shelved, Run the Burbs), who serves as showrunner. He also shares executive producer credits with Mark Montefiore, R.T. Thorne, Anderson and Stephan James.

Lana Maclin will produce and Max Wolfond is a supervising producer. Cory Bowles and Thorne will direct.

Jenna Ortega‘s Wednesday Addams may hate being celebrated as the hero after saving Nevermore Academy in season one, but that doesn’t mean she won’t “die trying” to save her best friend in season two.

While it may be the first time Wednesday has “ever willingly returned to a school,” as Morticia Addams (Catherine Zeta-Jones) points out in the newly released trailer for season two of Netflix‘s Wednesday, Ortega’s character has her reasons. Wednesday actually likens her return to Nevermore to “returning to the scene of the crime,” because “I already know where the bodies are buried.”

However, there’s one body she doesn’t want to bury this season: her best friend Enid (Emma Myers). “Enid dies and it’s all my fault,” Wednesday teases in the season two, part one, trailer (below) after her mother asks what she saw after seeing the black tears running down Wednesday’s face.

Though “secrets are the bedrock of the Addams family,” Ortega’s Wednesday acknowledges in the footage, she also knows, “The sooner I get answers, the sooner I can save Enid. Or die trying.”

“Wednesday Addams, returns to prowl the Gothic halls of Nevermore Academy, where fresh foes and woes await. This season, Wednesday must navigate family, friends and old adversaries, propelling her into another year of delightfully dark and kooky mayhem. Armed with her signature razor-sharp wit and deadpan charm, Wednesday is also plunged into a new bone-chilling supernatural mystery,” the season two logline reads.

Steve Buscemi, Joy Sunday, Luis Guzmán, Hunter Doohan, Billie Piper, Isaac Ordonez, Victor Dorobantu, Georgie Farmer, Moosa Mostafa, Evie Templeton, Owen Painter, Noah Taylor and Luyanda Unati Lewis-Nyawo round out the cast. Creator/showrunners Alfred Gough and Miles Millar also returned for season two of Wednesday, alongside executive producer and director Tim Burton.

Part one premieres Aug. 6 with part two dropping Sept. 3. Watch the trailer below, and check out new photos from the upcoming season.

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The Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) has announced the death of its former violinist, Fox Fehling, who died following a long illness on 7 July 2025 at the age of 76.

Fehlin was born on 23 June 1949 in Iowa City, IA. She studied violin in New York at the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School, where her teachers included Dorothy DeLay, Charles Treger, Raphael Bronstein, Allen Ohmes, Shmuel Ashkenasi and Donald Weilerstein.

Fehling was the inaugural winner of the Mischa Elman Award and made a recital tour of Italy with Elman’s longtime accompanies, Joseph Seiger.

During her career, Fehling performed with the Springfield Symphony, the National Orchestra of New York, the Piedmonth Chamber Orchestra and the Florida Symphony, as well as orchestras at the Spoleto and Aspen music festivals. She played with the Grant Park Orchestra and held the role of assistant principal second violin with the Lyric Opera Orchestra. 

Fehling joined the CSO in 1979 at the invitation of Georg Solti. She was a member of the orchestra’s violin section for 43 years until she retired in 2022. In 1994, she took a year out to perform as assistant concertmaster with the Bergen Philharmonic in Norway.

Additionally, Fehling was an active chamber musician and played bluegrass and western swing with the CSO’s country-western swing band, the CSOkies.

In The Best of Technique you’ll discover the top playing tips of the world’s leading string players and teachers. It’s packed full of exercises for students, plus examples from the standard repertoire to show you how to integrate the technique into your playing.

In the second volume of The Strad’s Masterclass series, soloists including James Ehnes, Jennifer Koh, Philippe Graffin, Daniel Hope and Arabella Steinbacher give their thoughts on some of the greatest works in the string repertoire. Each has annotated the sheet music with their own bowings, fingerings and comments.

The Canada Council of the Arts’ Musical Instrument Bank is 40 years old in 2025. This year’s calendar celebrates some its treasures, including four instruments by Antonio Stradivari and priceless works by Montagnana, Gagliano, Pressenda and David Tecchler.