DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ ‘Twisters’ Is a Fantasy Version of What Climate Collapse Looks Like - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-07-18 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I first saw the trailer for “Twisters” — which opens in theaters on Friday — in May at a movie theater in Houston, where I live. “You ride ’em.”Yee-haw, I thought in the theater, as I wondered if my air-conditioning at home was back on. Last week, another powerful storm battered Houston, as Hurricane Beryl had a brief but eventful landfall on the South Texas coast. A blockbuster romp like “Twisters” is a safe and sanitized way to experience a natural disaster: as a fantasy. But we can’t let an escapist version of the climate crisis blind us to how woefully unready we are for the effects of the real thing.

Persons: —, I’d, ”, Glen Powell, Daisy Edgar, Jones, ” Yee, Beryl Organizations: Atlantic, Hollywood Locations: Houston, Texas

☆ Being a Sports Fan Means Learning to Live With Losing - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-25 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

I may have muttered the phrase “I hate sports” several times over the next few days. As a sentient being who happens to be a passionate sports fan, I have had ample opportunity to grapple with this question. Yet our emotional well-being rises and falls with their success on the field, on the court and on the baseball diamond. I believe it’s because, in a world in which tribalism is pulling us apart, the completely imaginary tribalism of the sports fan is a necessary balm. And this simulated losing helps prepare us for the worst that life can dish out.

Persons: I’m Organizations: 49ers, Kansas City Chiefs, San Francisco Giants

☆ ‘The Buccaneers’ Arrives With More Arrivistes
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-08 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“The girls’ mothers are coming over to London in order to effectively sell their girls into the aristocracy,” Katherine Jakeways, the series’s creator, said in a video interview from her London home. “And the aristocracy are welcoming them with open arms because they’ve got roofs to mend.”Added Beth Willis, an executive producer, from her home in Scotland: “How lonely that would be for so many of them. In America they might speak up a bit more at the dining table. In “The Buccaneers,” Mabel (Josie Totah) is torn between a marriage of convenience, to a man, and a romance of passion, with her friend Conchita’s new sister-in-law (Mia Threapleton). (In a refreshing twist, the most avid gold diggers in both series are men.)

Persons: ” Katherine Jakeways, they’ve, Beth Willis, Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duke of Marlborough, ”, Hannah Greig, ’, ” Mabel, Josie Totah, Conchita’s, Mia Threapleton, Oscar Van Rhijn, Blake Ritson, John Adams, Gladys, Taissa Organizations: Vanderbilt, The Buccaneers, ‘ The Buccaneers Locations: London, Scotland, America, England, ‘ The, The

☆ In ‘Lawmen: Bass Reeves,’ Fiction Fills In Where Tall Tales Leave Off
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-05 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Burton heard stories of Reeves when he would visit relatives in Oklahoma, and he became determined to learn more. Reeves wasn’t the first or only Black marshal of the period, but he became the most famous. Sidney Thompson caught the Reeves bug when he saw Morgan Freeman describing Reeves as his dream role in a TV interview. (It was widely reported last year that Freeman was developing his own Bass Reeves series, “Twin Territories,” for Amazon.) Burton’s book is deeply researched, yet its most memorable lines ring like tall tales passed down through generations.

Persons: Burton, Reeves, Reeves wasn’t, Sidney Thompson, Morgan Freeman, Freeman, Bass Reeves, ”, Thompson, Thompson —, Freeman —, Jewel Coronel, Coronel, Taylor Sheridan, Delroy Lindo, Jamal Akakpo, ” Burton, “ Organizations: ”, Amazon, Texas Christian University, Netflix, Coronel Locations: Oklahoma, Twin Territories, Virginia, Muskogee, Okla

☆ ‘Wrestlers’ Is Greg Whiteley’s Latest Underdog Tale
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Greg Whiteley was 19 he ventured from his hometown, Bellevue, Wash., to spread the word of the Mormon Church on Navajo reservations in the Southwest. At first he would come in hot, as the kids say, eager to knock on doors and proselytize. “Frequently the thing I’d ask was, ‘Do you have time to hear a message about Jesus Christ today?’” he recalled during a video interview earlier this month from his Southern California home. “I was amazed at how quickly people would disclose the most vulnerable things at a doorstep within 90 seconds of meeting them,” Whiteley said. He didn’t realize it at the time, but he was preparing himself for a successful career as a documentary filmmaker.

Persons: Greg Whiteley, Jesus Christ, ”, “, ” Whiteley Organizations: Mormon Locations: Bellevue, Wash, Southern California

☆ Two Documentaries on School Integration Offer New Views of an Old Problem
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-02 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Both underscore what has changed — and what hasn’t — in the almost 70 years since Brown while also questioning tidy presumptions. By putting the films together, it just challenges your assumptions in a really interesting way.”Both films also grapple with an unavoidable question: Why has the process been so difficult? Today, when segregation is rife in even some of the country’s most ostensibly liberal enclaves, the reasons aren’t always plain or openly acknowledged. A lot of white parents, in the supposedly enlightened North as well as the historically segregated South, were willing to go to great lengths to keep their children away from their Black peers. And a lot of politicians were happy to help them make it so.

Persons: ”, Douglas A, Oscar, Sam Pollard, Brown, Cameo George Organizations: U.S . Department of Education Locations: Mississippi

☆ In ‘Twisted Metal’ Series, Killer Clowns Come With Class Commentary
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-20 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When Stephanie Beatriz likes a script she enjoys reading it aloud at home to get a better feel for the character and story. She warmed up quickly to “Twisted Metal,” the new Peacock mayhem machine based on the popular PlayStation game series that first burned rubber in 1995. But as she turned the pages, encountering psycho clowns, murderous religious cults, cannibalism and other manner of good times, she had to pause. Premiering July 27, “Twisted Metal” is nothing if not extreme. One of them is sprinkled with a generous portion of lemon pepper spice as a human foot dangles from a line; Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” (“Ooh, baby, I like it raw”) blares on the soundtrack.

Persons: Stephanie Beatriz, “, I’m, blares, Anthony Mackie, John Doe, Beatriz, Max ” Organizations: PlayStation, wiz Locations: America

☆ Opinion | What ‘The Bear’ Revealed About My Grief
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-24 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The pilot episode of “The Bear,” FX’s frenetic series about a high-end chef who takes over his family’s blue-collar sandwich shop, opens with an unsettling image. The man swings the door open wide and confronts a great, angry bear. At first, he tries to soothe the beast, whispering, “I know.” But the bear lunges at him. The bear is grief. The kind of trauma that grief imposes has become a popular subject on buzzy TV shows.

Persons: Carmen, Berzatto, Jeremy Allen White, —, “, he’s, Kate, I’d, “ Severance, ”, Adam Scott, Jason Segel, upended, Ted Lasso, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Coolidge, Edward ”, Colin O’Brien Organizations: “, Apple Locations: Chicago

☆ Stream These Five Cormac McCarthy Film Adaptations
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The Coen brothers return to the Texas noir roots of their first feature, “Blood Simple,” for the most successful McCarthy adaptation to date. It won Oscars for best picture, directing and screenwriting, as well as Javier Bardem’s supporting turn as one of McCarthy’s nihilistic villains, an implacable killing machine who speaks in riddles and engages his prey in fatal rhetorical jousts. But the heart of the movie, about a briefcase full of money and the in-over-his-head opportunist (Josh Brolin) who pilfers it, is Tommy Lee Jones as a small-town sheriff who wants out of the game, which seems to get more sinister and incomprehensible by the minute. He is the old man of the title and the author’s surrogate, a poetic soul just trying to wait it out until it’s all over. ‘The Road’ (2009)Stream it on Tubi, Vudu and Freevee.

Persons: Coen, McCarthy, Javier Bardem’s, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones Locations: Texas

☆ The Spies of ‘Citadel’ Have Big Plans: Global Domination
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Chris Vognar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“But those were Hollywood-centric narratives that traveled. “It really is like riding a bucking bronco,” Joe Russo said. (The Indian and Italian productions have different showrunners.) According to The Hollywood Reporter, reshoots pushed the cost of “Citadel” to more than $200 million, which would make it one of the most expensive series ever made. (Amazon did not respond to multiple queries about the show’s budget.)

Search resuls for: "Chris Vognar"

10 mentions found