While successful Disney franchises are nowadays expected to go on for as long as the executives can keep flogging the horse, few people would have expected the return of Jack Sparrow. Although the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise is one of the most successful in history, earning a total of over $4 billion at the box office, many pundits had already called time on the series.
While the first four films were (mostly) critical and commercial successes, the most recent installment to hit the screens, Dead Men Tell No Tales, was an absolute dud, with the New York Times calling it “the perfect opposite of entertainment.” Since that ill-fated voyage, it was thought that plans for a sixth film had been shelved, until recently.
We now know that Pirates of the Caribbean 6 (name yet to be released) is slated for a release in May 2019, just in time for the blockbuster season. Whether it will prove to be a hit remains to be seen, but let’s look at what we might be able to expect from the next edition of one of the greatest franchises ever made.
What We Know… and Don’t Know
The sudden announcement of the sixth film leaves more questions than answers. The ending of the fifth film included a post-credits clip which alluded to a sequel, featuring the franchise villain Davy Jones, suggesting that Bill Nighy will be back to reprise his acclaimed role in Dead Man’s Chest. We also have it confirmed by Movie Web that the screenplay writers Jeff Nathanson, Terry Rossio, and Ted Elliot, who wrote the previous installments, will be back for this one.
Facts are thin on the ground right now, with the frigate-sized elephant in the room currently being the question of whether Johnny Depp will be returning as Captain Jack Sparrow. The actor has recently become Hollywood’s biggest liability following a string of scandals, gaffes, and criminal charges, so it remains to be seen whether the most famous character will be allowed back into the fold.
Will It Succeed?
Whether PC6 will be a success is not so much related to whether or not it is actually good – rather whether demand will still be there in 2019. The franchise ignited a global interest in the culture and history of the golden days of piracy, so this interest will be key to deciding the final box office numbers.
Since the premiere of the first film back in 2003, everyone has been cashing in on pirate fever. There’s the best-selling Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag video game by Ubisoft, and a number of PC video games licensed by Disney. That’s before you include the Emmy-award winning TV series Black Sails – the show’s own creators thanked Jack Sparrow for drumming up interest in the subject matter.
A number of historical biographies of famous pirates such as Black Bart and Captain Kidd have also gone onto becomes bestsellers thanks to the franchise, which just goes to show that pirates have been a reliable money maker for the past ten years.
Whether pirate fever has finally waned remains to be seen. One thing that is certain is that while pirates continue to fascinate and entertain, Disney will still have a lot of work to do in order to convince audiences that the franchise is still worth a watch.
“I think everybody’s real sad right now,” Michael B. Jordan, the star of “Black Panther” and upcoming “Creed II” said looking out of a New York City hotel window referencing the passing of Marvel legend Stan Lee who died the previous day. Naturally, we’re here to talk about the “Creed” sequel which opens Wednesday, but the actor is preoccupied this dreary Manhattan day.
“The sky’s crying a little bit for Stan,” he said. “It’s been all the things he’s contributed to. Marvel changed the face of entertainment in a lot of ways. To be part of ‘Black Panther,’ one of the last movies he got to see come together, I felt really honored to be part of that.”
The success of “Black Panther” would not have been possible without Lee, who co-created the comic book character. It’s also unlikely the film would have been the smash hit it was without director Ryan Coogler, either.
Jordan and Coogler have been working together since “Fruitvale Station,” the acclaimed 2013 indie movie about Oscar Grant III, an unarmed black man who was killed by a white police officer in Oakland. Jordan said that Coogler showed him a person of color could succeed behind the camera in Hollywood.
“He was my representation,” Jordan said. “Being able to work with Ryan from a small independent film all the way to the biggest budget, to a Marvel film, he kind of showed me what was possible.”
Jordan shakes his head and turns his back on the gray New York City skyline to discuss “Creed II.”
“Okay,” he says, sitting down across from us ready to talk shop.
If Michael B. Jordan’s path to this moment was condensed and edited, it might look, appropriately, like a training montage.
Images of Jordan cutting his teeth on the Baltimore streets of “The Wire” and the Texas football fields of “Friday Night Lights,” followed by hints of a soaring talent (“Red Tails,” ″Chronicle”), shattering breakthroughs (“Fruitvale Station”) and setbacks (“Fantastic Four”) before reaching, with a pair of haymakers (“Creed,” ″Black Panther”), heavyweight status.
Parallel to Jordan’s steady rise has been the 31-year-old’s expanding sway behind the scenes in Hollywood. His production company, Outlier Society Productions, was among the first to embrace the inclusion rider, adopting the pledge to seek diverse casts and crews just days after Frances McDormand referenced it at the Oscars. Jordan was also influential on a similar agreement by WarnerMedia, making Warner Bros. the sole major studio thus far to sign up.
Michael B. Jordan, Ryan Coogler
“He’s always been a big-idea guy,” says Ryan Coogler, who directed Jordan in “Fruitvale Station,” ″Creed” and “Black Panther.” ″He’s always been conscious of his own responsibility.”
“Creed II,” which opens in theaters Wednesday, finds Jordan’s character, Adonis Creed — like the actor, himself — adjusting to his newfound prominence: reaching the pinnacle of his profession while still having to fight for what he believes in. As Steven Caple Jr.’s boxing drama prepared to open in theaters, Jordan went door-to-door in Georgia urging people to vote in the midterm elections.
“You’ve been doing one thing for 20 years. Constantly working at it, trying to grow and become successful, or whatever your version of success is. And then you have a moment in time where everything seems to be coming together at the same time. Everything seems to be happening. But you live in a society, in a world that’s kind of going to s—,” Jordan said in a recent interview. “So to be able to use one to help the other, is something. To try to find your voice.”
It’s an answer with shades of Jordan’s typical performance: earnest, thoughtful, tinged with pain. Then he exhales.
“I don’t know, man,” says Jordan. “Honestly, there’s a lot going on right now, and I’m trying to find my place in all of it, professionally and personally.”
A big part of Jordan’s quest was “Black Panther,” in which he played Erik Killmonger. The part is ostensibly a villain, but in Jordan’s hands, Killmonger — a wounded, fatherless warrior bent on reparations through violence — has a depth uncommon if not outright alien to comic-book films. Between Killmonger and the Wakanda leader T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) is a larger dialogue, one fraught with history, between African identity and the African diaspora.
“Making a movie, you rarely come out the other side the same. You either grow or regress. I came out a different man,” says Coogler. “The conversation that was had between T’Challa and Killmonger, what it means to be African — I didn’t know I needed that movie as much as I did until after I made it. I look back and I say: ‘Man, I really needed that. I needed that conversation.’”
The performance has made Jordan one of this year’s leading supporting actor contenders for the Academy Awards. Coogler praises his friend’s vulnerability in a complicated role.
“He was one of the few African-American characters, and he was carrying the weight of that cultural representation,” says Coogler. “Mike brings a lot of the empathy with him, as a person and as a performer. That’s one of the things that makes him special. Almost as soon as you see him, you empathize with him.”
Just as “Creed II” is opening in theaters, “Black Panther” is returning to them. On Nov. 27, it screens for free in arthouse theaters nationwide, a few months after wrapping up its $1.35 billion run worldwide. “Black Panther,” the year’s biggest domestic blockbuster and most resonant cultural event, left a mark on Jordan.
“Playing Killmonger, carrying that oppression, that feeling of being a representation of the African diaspora, I felt a certain pressure and responsibility to get it right. That was a very maturing process for me,” Jordan says. “To be very unapologetic, I had to play that role.”
A sequel to the acclaimed 2015 spinoff (it grossed $173.6 million worldwide on a $35 million budget), “Creed II” was fast-tracked by MGM in part to capitalize on the success of “Black Panther” and Jordan’s growing profile. Caple, whose feature debut was the 2016 indie film “The Land,” had his first meeting with producers around Thanksgiving last year. By the first week of January, he was in Philadelphia getting ready to shoot.
Caple preserved and expanded upon Coogler’s naturalistic approach, and the film’s best scenes unlock raw intimacies outside the ring. Especially notable is the chemistry between Jordan and Tessa Thompson, who plays Adonis’ girlfriend (“Mike feeds off of Tessa a lot,” says Caple), and the surprising pathos of the father-son relationship between Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) and Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu). In an echo of “Rocky IV,” the younger Drago is Adonis’ foe this time.
Caple credits Jordan for the film’s emotional authenticity.
“He’s genuine. Then you meet him in person, and you realize he’s the same way in real life. You can’t act that or fake that. He used that as a vehicle to get where he is today,” says Caple. “Right now, he’s expanding on that with his business, with his production company, with his brand, and still being for the people in many ways.”
Jordan recently finished shooting “Just Mercy,” in which he stars as civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson. The Warner Bros. production was the first Jordan made with the inclusion policy in place.
“The set, the crew was very diverse, all very capable. It was a great experience. Hopefully, other studios and other productions will follow our lead and demand the same thing from their sets,” says Jordan. “Change takes time. It’s a small step, but it’s the first step. I’m not expecting Rome to be built in a day.”
In September, Jordan and WarnerMedia announced that they were launching a company-wide inclusion rider with the film “Just Mercy.” Jordan stars in and executive produces the upcoming movie.
“Being a person of color, you always try to reverse-engineer or find ways to make things easier to give more opportunities for yourself and other people who look like you,” he said. “To be part of ‘Black Panther’ was just a monumental move, to shift the needle, to get people to look at things a little differently, to bust through these glass ceilings that were in place or the way people used to think about projects like that and also being able to work with the inclusion rider to be able to push that narrative forward.”
The actor is excited for fans to see a more grown-up Adonis Creed, and the evolution of the relationships from the first film, “especially between Adonis and Bianca, Adonis and Rocky.”
He continued, “He’s becoming a father now. He’s creating his own family and I think that’s something he’s been longing for for a really long time and the revenge element of it all — the fact that Drago is back in town, it makes you feel a little bit like ‘Rocky IV’ — that closure of ‘Rocky IV,’ you know — so you get that grudge match feeling. It’s action-packed.”
Jordan said being on set with Sylvester Stallone and Dolph Lundgren made him want to prove himself and get physical.
“I’m competitive,” he admitted. “You get me and Florian [Munteanu] — we both are very competitive. When you’ve got Sly and Dolph sitting over there and they’re talking about the good ol’ days, when they used to get in there and slug it out and get hit. They went through it and we kind of wanted to go through it, too.” Jordan said he was careful not to go overboard, but let his hands and knees take a lot of “wear and tear” while filming.
“Just Mercy” is set for release in 2020, but right now, Jordan is busy promoting “Creed II,” the sequel to the 2015 hit. He admitted that it was strange not to have Coogler direct.
“It was a little weird at first, but he was finishing ‘Black Panther’ at the time and he couldn’t do both,” he explained. “It was a really big deal; it was a lot of work for him on ‘Black Panther,’ and he was still able to produce [“Creed II”] but put it on Steven Caple, who is an amazing young director from Cleveland, Ohio.”
Jordan said working with Caple was similar to working with Coogler in his early career.
“Ryan came out of Sundance, did a small independent film and then he did ‘Creed’; Steven Caple did a small independent film and then did ‘Creed’ so they had a similar trajectory and path, so [the movie] was perfectly spot-on.”
Jordan is making sure to give back what he can on Thanksgiving and has teamed up with Honey Nut Cheerio’s Good Rewards program which helps raise money for Feeding America. This is one charity that hits very close to home for the actor.
“I’ve always been around food,” he explained. “My dad worked for a food bank; he used to manage one in Newark, New Jersey. I always saw the need to help people; my mom’s a social worker. And they’re all very good cooks, so food has always been a very big staple in my life.”
In fact, Jordan said his family had a home catering business, and he grew up cooking. He said he’s still trying to figure out what to make for his Thanksgiving brunch this year.
President Donald Trump shocked many Americans and Republicans Tuesday when he chose to believe Saudi Arabia over his own intelligence agencies like the CIA regarding the death of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. We break down fact from fiction on how he made his choice.
Trump vastly inflated the value of planned Saudi investments in the U.S. on Tuesday, as he explained why he’s “standing with Saudi Arabia” despite the conclusion of his intelligence officials that the kingdom’s de facto leader ordered the murder of a U.S.-based journalist.
“Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event — maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!” Trump said in the statement, which featured a subheading that read “America First!”
“That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi,” he continued. “In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”
Trump cited a $110 billion arms package that he said is part of $450 billion in planned Saudi investments in the U.S. Actual orders under the arms deal are far smaller and neither country has announced or substantiated Trump’s repeated assertion that the Saudis are poised to inject $450 billion overall into the U.S. economy.
Trump’s economic argument was part of his case for deciding not to punish Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or cut arms sales to Saudi Arabia for the killing of columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Saudi Arabia’s Istanbul consulate.
An official familiar with the U.S. intelligence assessment said bin Salman is considered responsible for ordering the murder; others familiar with the case believe the crown prince was involved in the killing but are not sure to what extent. All spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive intelligence findings publicly.
Although it’s up to Trump whether to believe his officials’ conclusions and whether to give primacy to the broad benefits of the U.S.-Saudi alliance, the economic pillar of his argument does not hold up. A look at his words:
TRUMP: “After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries — and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business.”
THE FACTS: There’s less than meets the eye to the arms package. Partly negotiated under the Obama administration, it mixes old deals, some new business and prospective purchases that have not been worked out.
The Pentagon said last month that Saudi Arabia had signed “letters of offer and acceptance” for only $14.5 billion in military purchases and confirmed Tuesday that nothing further has reached that stage.
Those letters, issued after the U.S. government approves a proposed arms sale, specify its terms. Much of that $14.5 billion involves a missile defense system, a contract that appears to have advanced more than other significant investments but not been completed.
Moreover, the State Department estimated last year that if the full $110 billion in prospective business is fulfilled, it could end up “potentially supporting tens of thousands of new jobs in the United States.” That’s a far cry from the 500,000 to 600,000 jobs that Trump has said the arms deal is worth.
Details of the package have been sketchy, with no public breakdown of exactly what was being offered for sale and for how much.
The government’s Congressional Research Service has described the package as a combination of sales that were proposed by President Barack Obama and discussed with Congress and new sales still being developed.
“Very little has changed hands,” says Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution and former CIA and Defense Department official.
Meantime there has been no verification from either country that “the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States,” as Trump put it in his statement. White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters did not respond to a request to explain the figure.
The U.S. exported only $16 billion in goods to Saudi Arabia last year, and imported even more. Saudi Arabia’s entire annual economic production is valued at $684 billion. A $450 billion Saudi investment in the U.S. would amount to about 6 percent of its entire economy going to the U.S. if spread, for example, over 10 years.
During bin Salman’s visit to the U.S. in March, he spoke vaguely of the possibility of Saudi investment opportunities in the U.S. that could be worth $400 billion, saying “A lot of things could be tackled in the close future,” according to the Arabian Business website.
The U.S. earlier sanctioned 17 Saudi officials suspected of being responsible for or complicit in Khashoggi’s death. Members of Congress want the U.S. to follow the lead of countries that have taken stronger action. Germany, for example, has banned new weapons exports to Saudi Arabia and halted previously approved arms exports.
Full Statement by Donald Trump on standing by Saudi Arabia:
The world is a very dangerous place!
The country of Iran, as an example, is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq’s fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens), and much more. Likewise, the Iranians have killed many Americans and other innocent people throughout the Middle East. Iran states openly, and with great force, “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” Iran is considered “the world’s leading sponsor of terror.”
On the other hand, Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism.
After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries – and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!
The crime against Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible one, and one that our country does not condone. Indeed, we have taken strong action against those already known to have participated in the murder. After great independent research, we now know many details of this horrible crime. We have already sanctioned 17 Saudis known to have been involved in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and the disposal of his body.
Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that – this is an unacceptable and horrible crime. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!
That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran. The United States intends to remain a steadfast partner of Saudi Arabia to ensure the interests of our country, Israel and all other partners in the region. It is our paramount goal to fully eliminate the threat of terrorism throughout the world!
I understand there are members of Congress who, for political or other reasons, would like to go in a different direction – and they are free to do so. I will consider whatever ideas are presented to me, but only if they are consistent with the absolute security and safety of America. After the United States, Saudi Arabia is the largest oil producing nation in the world. They have worked closely with us and have been very responsive to my requests to keeping oil prices at reasonable levels – so important for the world. As President of the United States I intend to ensure that, in a very dangerous world, America is pursuing its national interests and vigorously contesting countries that wish to do us harm. Very simply it is called America First!
Did Donald Trump really foresee 9/11?
In an echo of his campaign rhetoric, President Donald Trump is back to portraying himself as the Paul Revere of the terrorism age — the one who told the country Osama bin Laden was coming. There was less to his foreshadowing than he states.
Trump’s tweet about bin Laden on Monday has some truth to it: “I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center.”
But the book, with only a passing mention of bin Laden, did not do more than point to the al-Qaida leader as one of many threats to U.S. security. Trump’s book, “The America We Deserve,” came out more than 1½ years before al-Qaida’s deadly attack on the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, not just before.
Trump’s reason for resurfacing the matter: persistent criticisms from retired Adm. William McRaven, who has branded Trump’s laceration of the news media “the greatest threat to democracy” in his lifetime. As commander of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command in 2011, he oversaw the raid that killed bin Laden in Pakistan.
Trump accused McRaven in a Fox News interview broadcast over the weekend of being a “Hillary Clinton backer and an Obama backer.” McRaven said he did not endorse anyone in 2016 and told CNN he is a fan of both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, having served under them. “I admire all presidents, regardless of their political party, who uphold the dignity of the office and who use that office to bring the nation together in challenging times,” he said pointedly.
TRUMP’s tweet: “Of course we should have captured Osama Bin Laden long before we did. I pointed him out in my book just BEFORE the attack on the World Trade Center. President Clinton famously missed his shot. We paid Pakistan Billions of Dollars & they never told us he was living there. Fools!”
THE FACTS: There was nothing original or clairvoyant in the reference to bin Laden in Trump’s 2000 book. As part of his criticism of what he considered Bill Clinton’s haphazard approach to U.S. security as president, he stated: “One day we’re told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin Laden is public enemy Number One, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it’s on to a new enemy and new crisis.”
Trump’s book did not call for further U.S. action against bin Laden or al-Qaida to follow up on attacks Clinton ordered in 1998 in Afghanistan and Sudan after al-Qaida bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The U.S. attacks were meant to disrupt bin Laden’s network and destroy some of al-Qaida’s infrastructure, such as a factory in Sudan associated with the production of a nerve gas ingredient. They “missed” in the sense that bin Laden was not killed in them, and al-Qaida was able to pull off 9/11 three years later.
In the campaign, Trump boasted even more expansively about being a soothsayer. He stated that his book said of bin Laden, “you better take him out,” which it did not say, and that he “predicted Osama bin Laden” back when “nobody really knew who he was.” Bin Laden was well known by the CIA, other national security operations, experts and the public long before 9/11; the debate is over whether Clinton and successor Bush could have done more against al-Qaida to prevent the 2001 attacks.
In passages on terrorism, Trump’s book correctly predicted that the U.S. was at risk of a terrorist attack that would make the 1993 World Trade Center bombing pale by comparison. That was a widespread concern at the time, as Trump suggested in stating “no sensible analyst rejects this possibility.” Trump did not explicitly tie that threat to al-Qaida and thought an attack might come through a miniaturized weapon of mass destruction, like a nuclear device in a suitcase or anthrax.
Christmas comes but once a year, and many of us dwell a great deal on it whilst others not too much. Some just long for it to pass because it places on them the burden of finding the right presents, whether it be for the kids or for other members of the family. And, of course, many don’t even know what the true meaning of Christmas is about! Every year, we get reminders earlier and earlier – reminding us that Christmas is ‘just around the corner’ – 3 months before it is even upon us.
Look around you, and you will see that Christmas is in the air already for 2018. There are many temptations out there and suggestions, letting us all know that our children or loved ones are going to be disappointed if we don’t remember the right gifts to give them. Whether we pre-plan or only start preparing a couple of nights before the big day, the preparations and wrapping presents and preparing meals can be very appealing for many.
Naturally, every year, you will hear from many sources, just what the latest and greatest hot gifts are to give your kids and loved ones too. And many parents don’t know where to even start. But there are some guides when it comes to Christmas, that if you follow them step by step, you could get through a stress-free Christmas; where you might even save a bit of money. It doesn’t have to be that big a struggle every year, wondering what to get the kids or teenagers and then wondering how you are going to afford it all. Parents, often in desperation, buy left, right and center and then come home with even more gifts that their children might even need or what the parents had even planned on.
You can download the 2018 Hot Toys for Christmas to keep with you. It includes links for all the gift ideas so you can find the best deals this holiday season.
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The 4-gift rule idea might be just what you need
Somebody, nobody knows who, did once plan what is known as the “4-gift rule” for Christmas, and it has turned out to be an excellent guide for Christmas shopping, as well as to save money. Whether you are budgeting this year, or whether you want to discourage the idea of materialism in your family for Christmas 2018, consider this plan, and you might well be thinking about it every Christmas into the future. The “4- gift rule” has been around on the Internet for a few years already, so you might well know of it – nobody knows the origin of it, and there are even a few variations on it.
The idea behind it
You buy your children no more than four gifts for Christmas – this really simplifies shopping and does not overwhelm you or your children. Let’s look at it a bit more closely to see how you like it. Here’s how it all works:
Rule 1. You buy something your child really wants
Rule 2: you buy them something they really need
Rule 3 You buy them something to wear
Rule 4: you buy them something to read
And that’s it! That’s all they get for Christmas – it is broad and specific enough and it won’t break your budget either. If your kids are older, you could encounter a bit of disappointment, particularly if they are used to heaps of gifts coming their way or if they have friends who receive far more gifts than what they will now be getting under the tree. But you can use the opportunity to encourage thankfulness too, and help them to understand how important it is, also, to work to a budget.
It is helpful for them to realize that you are still giving them gifts, in fact, four, but it should be explained to them that you are being responsible with your money so that you are able to help them even later in their lives, like for their college fees or a car. The beauty of the “4-gift rule” is that you can modify it to suit your family.
So for instance if you have a baby in the home you could do it like this:
Rule 1: something they want: could be a wooden toy, or ball or doll or train
Rule 2: something they need: could be like starting a little investment account for them – you will know what to put in
Rule 3: Something to wear: could be socks, or a special hat, or a special jersey – you will know
Rule 4: something to read: could be a lovely book for a baby where he can interact with you, singing or counting or where the pictures pop out and interact
If you have teenagers, for example:
Rule 1: something they want: maybe a cellphone to keep in touch with their friends
Rule 2: something they need: maybe they need something for school, like a Tablet, or a Laptop, or special sports equipment, etc.
Rule 3: something to wear: could be like a gift card at their favorite clothes store
Rule 4. Something to read: a new book series you know they’ve had their eye on, or a magazine subscription, etc.
Are there benefits of using the 4-gift rule for Christmas 2018?
1. A real benefit you get out of the 4-gift rule for Christmas is that it takes away the stress, and makes shopping much simpler, particularly if your family is larger.
2. Another benefit is that it makes it easier for the child to receive the gifts because if everybody else is also buying presents, children often become overwhelmed – now they can enjoy each one more.
3. Another benefit is that it saves you money too. The 4-gift rule gives you motivation too, to keep your money spending in check, within your budget. If you don’t budget, it simply becomes easy once again to overspend and that means carrying debt into the New Year.
4. You can apply this rule too, to somebody in need – you and your children together could choose a person who really is in need of something. You could give the gift to a child who is in an orphanage or someone who is old and housebound and has no family or friends. Helping someone in need can make a great difference in their life as well as your own.
In giving you those few ideas, it’s time to watch out because Christmas is now around the corner! The first rule is about buying something your kids want, and so we have found some of the most bestselling games and toys for your kids and teenagers with the best prices too. It will just give you a basic idea of what is hot this Christmas 2018. Kids are already writing down what they want and this year’s picks include robotic balls, interactive unicorns, still the famous Lego and not forgetting the Hatchimals, and the list goes on!
Sphere/Sphero Mini
Apparently, this is a wonderful toy; this programmable robotic little ball. With its bright colors, it appeals to both boys and girls. It is controlled by a connected app, and full of fun. It has many different functions. You operate it in a 10 m radius. It goes for around $49.99. Check it out here.
The kids will adore Zoomer, the enchanted unicorn
Zoomer promises to bring magic to any child, as she can dance and prance around in figure-eight rounds when you press the button on her heart and she also makes sounds like she is eating if your child wants to ‘feed’ her. She can also be programmed so that she will play certain songs so children are even encouraged to sing along. She has LED eyes and kids will also love brushing her mane. She is for the over 5-year old group. She sells at around $143.95, but with Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 coming up, expect some great deals. Check it out here.
Jurassic Park Lego toys
Coming in from Lego, they have provided a full line up of Jurassic toys, aiming to enthrall those who have seen the movie. Dinosaurs are definitely taking a hot spot on the Christmas wish list of thousands of children across the globe. Lego knows this, of course, and has released action figures, off-roaders, helicopters, and all sorts of intriguing toys for children to relive the exciting story. Check them out here.
Scruff-A-Luv’s to love and pamper
This abandoned pet comes with matted fur that when bathed and dried, will be brushed out, discovering just what a real beauty it is, just like many real abandoned pets that are fortunate enough to find good homes. By pampering them, you reveal who they are, a doggy, kitty or bunny. It encourages children to be responsible for caring for animals. By purchasing your Scruff-a-Luv, you are helping to donate to the ASPCA, towards the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the USA – a very worthy cause. They sell for about $59.99m for boys and girls from 5 upwards. Check out these adorable pets here.
Hatchimals
Hatchimals are furry robot-like creatures that will hatch from an egg, costing around
$59.99 each and very difficult to get hold of. These are a real hot craze, still, and just continue to be a favorite with the kids of today. A hatchimal will squawk and waddle and hatch and only once hatched, will be revealed what the creature is inside. And whoever gets to own a hatchimal will love listening to the snoring and sighing inside the egg. This toy pet is petted and fed and taught things to say. These are for the over 5’s. Check them out here.
FurReal Muchin’ Rex
An adorable baby dinosaur, Muchin’ Rex sells for around $49.99 and is for the 4-year olds and upwards. Children will love this furry friend because he makes dinosaur sounds and the kids feed him and wave at him. He comes with his bottle and his broccoli and even a caveman biscuit and he loves to be fed these snacks, hopping along and begging for them. Sometimes he doesn’t even like his snacks and spits them out! Check out Muchin’ Rex here.
Pet Vet Playset
If you have animal lovers in the family they will love this, for the over 3-year olds, selling at around $29.99. A real-life vet set consisting of 24-pieces and includes things like:
Most little boys at some time want to be the firefighter hero. And now he gets a chance to play with a life-like truck as it’s equipped with water launchers at the back and front and comes with a fire ladder, a mini fire cart, and a lookout cab. It will require 2 AAA batteries to operate it. It’s ideal for little boys from 4-years old and sells from around $12.99 and up. You can check them out here.
K’nex Bionic Blast Roller Coaster Building Set
There aren’t many kids who could pass up on the thrills and sheer fun that come with roller coasters. And this one is for boys over the age of 9. He will spend hours at this toy, all 809 pieces of it, and it comes with a coaster track, a coaster car, a motor, 2 Ferris wheels, as well as the virtual reality viewer. It goes for about $99.99. You have to check out this here as you’ll wind up wanting to play with it too!
Peel off nail polish set
If you have daughters, any little girl from 3 years to around 6 years will adore this peel off nail polish because it is absolutely safe to use and it peels off so easily. Little girls love painting their nails in all the different 18 rainbow colors which smell so fruity too; this gift will never cease to tantalize and amuse, and polish remover isn’t even required. They sell for about $20.99. You can check it out here.
Don’t forget the Christmas Books
Kids usually love reading books about reindeers and Father Christmas and snowmen, and there are excellent ones that will appeal to many children under the age of 12. Find the right one for your children here. These are excellent titles that your kids will love:
The Polar Express
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Christmas in the Manger
The Biggest Christmas Tree Ever
36-Pack of Play Doh
We know that play dough has been around for a long, long time, but it is never outdated. Kids, who are curious and creative, love it and never get bored of it, loving to sink their hands and nails into it. This play dough comes in a 36 pack with all the rainbow colors to entertain; suitable for children from 2 upwards. It can be a bit on the messy side, so make sure you are prepared for that. It sells from around $24.99. Get a great deal here for the holidays.
Harry Potter Hogwarts Great Hall Building Kit
Lego has outdone itself once again and kids will find the Hogwarts Great Hall building kit the biggest fun ever. These are moving spiral stairs and it is assured that once the construction is completed, playing with it is just as much fun. There are even 10 figurines that come with this set and it includes Harry Potter and a whole lot of others. Kids will love recreating the science from the movie or creating their own memories. This game is recommended for children from 9-14. Apparently, the details in this set are amazing, selling at around $99.99. You can find a great holiday deal here.
Radio Flyer Busy Buggy
Highly active kiddies will enjoy this ride-on ‘buggy’ that goes quite a way in helping them to develop their gross and fine motor skills. It comes with 17 interactive features, which includes sliding beads, a horn to blow, a moving windshield, and adjustable dashboard. It has four wheels plus a spare wheel on the back and it makes a noise when it is pushed. They will love the extra storage under the seat and a favorite toy can always be stacked away there. This toy is ideal for those smaller tots from 1-3. It sells at around $34.97. Prices are already dropping in time for the holidays.
What’s hot with the teenagers?
Teens know exactly what they want; all of them have their particular and unique sense of what they believe in and dream of at the time – which can change as quickly as their moods. They know for sure what’s in and what is not. But there are some really cool gifts for trendy teenagers. Like what about a waterproof speaker? Or the latest in cameras; or high action games that they can play with their friends? Look at these:
Best Retro: Fujifilm Instax Mini 9
Even though the Polaroid photos are kind of retro, today, that is what is making them so cool and chic! Fujifilm has reinvented this old camera and packed it into the fun-sized Instax Mini camera. It will spit out tiny little 2” x 3” instant photos, so cool, and you can find it in all the bubble gum type colors. It’s the perfect choice for hip teens who want to make cool memories with their friends. It sells for around $16.31. Find your best deal on this here.
Spikeball 3 Ball Game Set
For sheer outdoor entertainment, teens will love this fast-paced athletic game that is a mix of tennis, volleyball, and basketball. It’s lightweight and portable, ideal for when amongst all the friends. The set will have 3 balls, a net that has collapsible legs; it’s got a drawstring bag and an instruction book. The teens can even download the app to play with other nearby players. It sells for around $59.99. Check out your best deal here.
A2S Paracord Bracelet K2-Peak
These hip paracord bracelets trended a few years ago already and just continue to grow in popularity. They consist of 12-feet of paracord which is capable of holding up 550 lbs. of weight. They come with an excellent compass, a flint fire starter, an emergency knife, a fire scrapper, and an emergency whistle. There is a pack of two of them and it makes fantastic survival gear as well. It sells at around $8.45. Find the right one for your teen here.
Cinemood Portable Cinema Projector
These are so cute, and it’s a gift that everyone will love. It’s a portable cinema projector which allows a teen, let alone everybody else, to enjoy Netflix in a 3” size, which projects images from about 12’. It has a 1080p resolution and the projector is fabulous for when you travel or camp or sleepover. There is content already downloaded but teens can add all their favorite stuff too. It sells for about $188.05. Find it here.
Conclusion
Last year, all the local toy fairs were scoured so that the real scoop on the hottest toys could be sourced. This year, the search has gone onto an even deeper level of inside information, to source trend experts for their top opinions on which toys will hit the holiday Christmas charts. It means that planning ahead for Christmas is vital, even more essential for shopping for the holiday getaway. Remember the 4-gift rule and you might just get away with less spending, less stress, less overwhelmed children but way more fun and Christmas cheer. Happy Christmas!
It’s easy to get hooked on that online game or to feel compelled to check your social media accounts every ten minutes or so, but those habits are now being passed down to children and teens. What used to seem like a funny compulsion has now become a problem that affects young adults and trying to cut down on their screen time usage isn’t as easy as it sounds.
It is Saturday morning, and 10-year-old Henry Hailey is up at the crack of dawn. Still in PJs, his microphone-equipped headphones are glowing blue in the dim basement, he fixates on the popular online game “Fortnite” on a large screen.
“What?! Right as I was about to finish it, I died,” he calls out disappointedly to his friend Gus, a fellow fifth-grader playing the game from his home just a few blocks away. “Dude, I should NOT have died.”
The digital battles resume, and Henry’s enthusiasm never wanes. Would he play all day if his parents let him? “Probably,” he concedes with a slight grin.
But they do not. Like many other parents, the Haileys are on a reinvigorated mission to limit screen time for Henry and his 15-year-old brother, Everett. For some parents, it feels like an exercise in futility. They are busy, overwhelmed and tired of the fight against increasingly omnipresent screens.
Getting Henry off screens has been a constant battle, his parents say. “Then once he’s off, there’s a lot of complaining and grumpiness for a while as we try to coax him to do something else,” says his mom, Barb Hailey. “He’s upset. Mom is a crank. What is it all for?”
The goal, experts say, should be to help kids learn to manage their own time as they get older and to stay physically active and socially connected as much offline as on. But parents in many American households are finding the power struggles — tantrums, withdrawal and, in some cases, even school and discipline problems — difficult, especially as more kids get access to screens at younger and younger ages.
A survey of 13- to 17-year-olds released this fall by the nonprofit Common Sense Media found that 95 percent of U.S. teens have their own mobile device. Seventy percent of them check social media several times a day, up from 34 percent in 2012. More than half say that their devices distract them from homework or the people they’re with.
Some tech companies now at least acknowledge concerns about over-use and outright abuse of digital media. Apple instituted a “Screen Time” function in its latest iPhone software. It monitors app use and allows users — or their parents — to establish limits. Google For Families and Google Play, found on Android phones, and various independent apps also allow parents to monitor and set some restrictions.
But those features aren’t enabled by default, so new limits can come as a shock to those on the receiving end.
That happened late this summer in the Hailey household on Chicago’s North Side after dad, Allen Hailey, began watching the amount of time elder son Everett was spending on Wi-Fi. The teen was clocking more than four hours a day on sports videos, games and chats with friends on social media.
“I don’t think he had any idea how much time he was spending online,” says the father, who decided to block both boys from Wi-Fi during certain hours. He tested it out one night without warning.
One minute, Everett was talking to a friend on social media. “Then it went out,” says the teen, who immediately complained aloud about the injustice of it all. Dad held firm and told him he needed to read a book or go outside to shoot hoops.
“I didn’t do anything wrong to deserve that,” Everett still insists. “If I get my work done, I think I should have my own time.”
Researchers who study these trends generally refrain from using the word “addiction” when it comes to screens, as it’s not an official diagnosis in the mental health world. But this summer, the World Health Organization added “gaming disorder” to its list of afflictions. That is gaming that severely interferes with relationships, school, and work. The diagnosis is still under review by U.S. health authorities.
Sometimes, experts say, digital immersion exacerbates an existing condition, such as depression, anxiety or issues with body image. That’s why teens who attend treatment at Newport Academy, a residential rehab and mental health program with sites across the country, must check their digital devices at the door when they arrive.
“Almost always, one of the symptoms is an excessive amount of time on smartphones,” says Heather Senior Monroe, a Newport Academy administrator and licensed clinical social worker. “And it’s usually a large symptom.”
A small number of facilities have sprung up or added programs to specifically address the abuse of digital media. And in Washington state, a hub of high tech, there’s a 12-step group called Internet & Tech Addiction Anonymous.
From Henry and Everett’s perspective, the real problem is that their parents seem stricter than most.
Like a lot of teens, Everett often uses multiple screens in the evening. He saved his own money to buy himself an older-model iPhone — “to fit in,” he says — and also uses a Chromebook laptop for homework. At his age, his mom says, his screen habits may be “a lost cause.”
But she keeps working on limits for Henry. Games are not allowed on weekdays. And he gets screen time only if all his homework is done.
Experts say time limits can help but are sometimes a moot point given how deeply technology is “embedded in our daily life,” says Sarah Domoff, a psychologist at Central Michigan University.
Instead, she asks parents: How are your children doing in school? Are they active and physically healthy? Are they connecting with others in positive ways?
She does have a few basic rules, including limiting screen time for younger kids to the educational stuff. She also suggests making bedrooms “screen-free zones,” even for teens. (Other experts, at the very least, advise keeping devices out of rooms overnight to avoid late-night shenanigans or other sleep interruptions.)
The Haileys sheepishly note that Everett routinely multitasks in his room with one eye on the Chromebook and often the other on his phone. “I think we’re kind of wimps,” Barb Hailey says. Henry doesn’t have a phone — yet.
But phones and other screens are not allowed during meals — a limit both boys seem to appreciate. Everett says when they go out to eat, he happily leaves his phone in the car and marvels at the number of other families who are at the table with screens. “That just looks bad,” he says.
Managing all this is no easy task, even for experts such as Sierra Filucci, executive editor of parenting content at Common Sense Media, an organization that helps families navigate the digital world.
Her own 12-year-old son, like Henry, is a fan of “Fortnite.” She’s witnessed the “bad attitude” when he’s asked to get off the game and take out the garbage or find something to do that doesn’t involve a screen. But she also sees the positives — connections he’s made with new friends at school, for instance. For her, the question is: “How do we help him self-regulate?”
Some parents simply put off getting their kid a phone. Jacqui Koch, a college professor and mother in Wilmette, Illinois, had her sixth-grade daughter sign a pledge to wait until eighth grade for a smartphone — part of the national ”Wait Until 8th ” movement. Her daughter didn’t put up much fuss, in part because mom has limited tech use for years.
“We are definitely not the norm of what we’re surrounded by,” Koch says, noting that she saw a “huge uptick” of kids with phones in fifth grade. Now some parents she knows are trying to backpedal, “and that’s hard,” she says.
The idea is that Wait Until 8th and events such as the National Day of Unplugging, an annual event in March, will make screen limits more socially acceptable and less like an adult-world imposition on kids.
Another key: Parents setting limits with their own devices.
When Allen Hailey is on his phone while watching a football game, Everett is quick to tell him that he’s on his phone too much. “He gets really mad,” Everett says.
When mom comes home, she says she tries to put down her phone, though it’s hard not to check emails for work. “Let me just check in,” she’ll say — and before long finds herself on Instagram and Facebook.
“You can go down the rabbit hole so easily,” Barb Hailey says. “Then you get it thrown back in your face.”
It’s not an easy balance to strike, but all the Haileys are trying. “We may not like it,” Everett says, as his little brother nods. “But we know it’s for the best.”
Their dad still wants his boys to read 30 minutes a day. After he put the limits on the Wi-Fi, Everett went out and bought two books, then texted Dad photos of them to prove he’d done it.
The boys do regularly hang out with friends in person, and both play soccer. Everett plays the saxophone. Henry plays trumpet and recently took up the drums.
Mom laughs: “So when we say, ‘Get off the screen’ and he goes and plays the snare drum, we have to live with that decision.”
Now that Amazon is taking over New York City and Washington, D.C. with new headquarters, you can be sure bosses in the area are getting nervous about losing valuable employees to the retail giant. It’s enough to worry about losing business, but losing staff can create just as many headaches.
Some of the industries that have defined New York City and the Washington, D.C. area will face increased competition for talent when Amazon sets up shop in their territory, with plans to hire 50,000 new workers amid the tightest job market in decades.
The expansion comes at a time of fierce demand for computer programmers, mobile app developers, data scientists, and cybersecurity experts. Salaries keep rising as companies from banks to retailers seek new technology professionals to expand their online presence and automate operations. Particularly in demand are software developers, with many switching jobs each year. Even some banks have eased up on their dress codes to project a hipper image.
“It’s a very competitive market in New York,” said William Lynch, president of the New York-based fitness tech company Peloton. “It really requires you to be smart about how you are reaching the new hiring pipeline.”
Tech employment in the U.S. has grown by an average of 200,000 new jobs each year since 2010, a trend that is expected to continue for at least the next decade, according to an industry report from Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA, which analyzes data from the Labor Department and other sources. The figure includes all people employed by tech companies, as well as tech professionals in other industries.
In New York, big banks are among the biggest employers of computer technology professionals. J.P. Morgan Chase employs 50,000 people in technology and hired its first artificial intelligence research chief in May. Goldman Sachs has said one-quarter of its employees work in engineering-related roles. Amazon’s traditional retail rivals are striving to expand their online business and develop new technologies to improve operational efficiency.
But young professionals are flocking to tech companies, lured by the idea of changing the way people do everything from buying homes to exercising.
“In the past, the traditional career path has been to go into financial services, investment banking and consulting. What we see now is a surge of interest in tech companies,” said Dan Wang, a professor of Business and Sociology at Columbia University.
Amazon will begin recruiting in a few months for its two new headquarters in New York’s Long Island City and the Washington suburb of Arlington, seeking talent to support an empire that has expanded to include cloud computing services, advertising and, video streaming and TV production. The company expects to hire about 25,000 people over several years for each location. The average salary will be about $150,000 a year.
Amazon’s move is only the most dramatic example of technology companies expanding their presence in the East Coast. Instagram opened a new office in New York over the summer and plans to hire hundreds of engineers. Google is reportedly looking to add 12,000 more employees in New York City.
Amazon, now 24 years old, will have to contend with New York’s thriving startup scene, where companies flush with venture capital offer young people big roles and the chance to upend new industries.
That’s the kind of pitch prospective employees hear from Peloton, which announced plans Monday to move into bigger headquarters in midtown Manhattan in 2020. The fitness tech company, which received $550 million in new investment in August, will be hiring thousands of people across locations in the next years, especially in technology, marketing and sales, said Lynch, the company president. It currently has nearly 100 positions open in New York City.
“We are aware of Amazon, and it’s amazing for New York City. But Google has been here. We’ve been recruiting against Google for a long time,” Lynch said.
The scramble for talent goes beyond tech workers. Technology companies employ more than 3.7 million people in supporting roles like marketing and financing, according to CompTIA.
That panorama is top of mind for people like Dimple Bansal, a business graduate student at Columbia University who is focusing her studies on technology strategy. Last spring, she took an internship at Airbnb and over the summer she interned at Google.
“Tech is a growing landscape. I think it’s exciting to bridge the divide between pure technology skills, and to bring the business mindset to these companies that are touching so many lives,” said Bansal, 27.
Financial institutions have stepped up their recruiting strategies, trying to present their companies as innovation hubs for products from mobile apps to AI solutions for fraud reduction.
J.P. Morgan announced plans earlier this year to open a financial technology campus in California’s Bay Area. Goldman holds online coding challenges as part of its recruitment efforts and launched an in-house incubator to allow employees to develop ideas.
Wang, the Columbia professor, said startup fashion brands could benefit from partnerships if Amazon leverages its New York location to venture into the luxury market. But Wang said that could mean a competition for workers from rivals like Walmart-owned Jet.com, which currently has job openings for dozens of engineers in its New Jersey headquarters, across the Hudson River from New York.
“If I were working at Jet.com, I would be very tempted by Amazon,” Wang said.
As technology firms spread out, young professionals can be choosy about where they live, another incentive for companies like Amazon to set up shop in in trendy urban centers.
Based on an analysis of the revisions in job listings made on its online professional network, LinkedIn calculated 13 percent of the workers specializing in software leave their employers for another job each year.
Mathew Calkins, a 25-year-old machine learning engineer who works in Washington, D.C., for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, is moving to New York to work at Google later this year. He saw New York City as a thriving technical hub with more diversity than many of its West Coast counterparts.
“I didn’t want to move to San Francisco and have everyone I hang out with be other engineers making six figures,” Calkins said.
Calkins said recruiters who reach out to him nearly every day on LinkedIn rarely focus on “what’s important to me and a growing number of folks in the tech market” — the chance to make an impact. Instead, employers tout compensation and perks.
“They all sound the same,” Calkins said.
Even if they can retain their employees, some of the smaller companies might struggle to attract new talent needed to expand, said Carrie Duarte, a Partner and Workforce of the Future Leader at PwC. Their best bet is to tout the chance to be a big fish in a small pond, she said.
Kestrel Linder, CEO of the Washington, D.C., startup GiveCampus, said has learned that he can lure prospective employees to his online educational fundraiser by offering comparable salaries and more autonomy.
“Working at a startup while it is still growing is a perishable opportunity,” Linder said. “The giant companies aren’t going anywhere.”
Throughout his career, Donald Trump isn’t one that people expects to keep his word, and even as president; he isn’t committing to a previous pledge to keep chief of staff John Kelly for the remainder of his term, part of widespread speculation about staffing changes that could soon sweep through his administration.
Trump, in a wide-ranging interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday,” praised Kelly’s work ethic and much of what he brings to the position but added, “There are certain things that I don’t like that he does.”
“There are a couple of things where it’s just not his strength. It’s not his fault. It’s not his strength,” said Trump, who added that Kelly himself might want to depart.
Asked whether he would keep Kelly in his post through 2020, the president offered only that “it could happen.” Trump had earlier pledged publicly that Kelly would remain through his first term in office, though many in the West Wing were skeptical.
Trump said he was happy with his Cabinet but was thinking about changing “three or four or five positions.” One of them is Homeland Security chief Kirstjen Nielsen, whose departure is now considered inevitable. Trump said in the interview that he could keep her on, but he made clear that he wished she would be tougher in implementing his hardline immigration policies and enforcing border security.
The list of potential replacements for Nielsen includes a career lawman, two military officers, and former acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement head. But her eventual replacement will find there’s no getting around the immigration laws and court challenges that have thwarted the president’s agenda at every turn — even if there’s better personal chemistry.
Trump also discussed the removal of Mira Ricardel, a deputy national security adviser who is being moved to another position in the administration after clashes with the East Wing culminated in an extraordinary statement from first lady Melania Trump that called for her removal. The president said Ricardel was “not too diplomatic, but she’s talented” and downplayed the idea that his wife was calling the shots in the White House.
″(The first lady’s team) wanted to go a little bit public because that’s the way they felt and I thought it was fine,” Trump said.
He also dismissed a series of reports that he had been fuming in the week after the Democrats captured the House, claiming instead that the mood of the West Wing was “very light.”
The president also addressed a series of other topics:
— He said he “would not get involved” if his choice for acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, decided to curtail special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into 2016 election interference and possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Whitaker was previously a fierce critic of the probe, and Democrats have called for him to recuse himself from overseeing it. Trump said that “It’s going to be up to him” and that “I really believe he’s going to do what’s right.”
— He downplayed a federal judge’s decision to restore CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s White House press pass but derided an alleged lack of “decorum” among reporters who cover the administration. Trump also reiterated that the White House was going to write up rules of conduct for reporters at news conferences, adding, “If he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference.”
— He also defended his incendiary attacks on the press, which include labeling reporters the “enemy of the people,” a phrase more closely associated with authoritarian regimes. Trump suggested that his interviewer, Chris Wallace, was no “angel,” and bristled when the host from Fox News, which generally gives him favorable coverage, said that the media was in “solidarity.” Trump declared, “I am calling fake news, fake reporting, is what’s tearing this country apart because people know, people like things that are happening and they’re not hearing about it.”
Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker probes begin
The Senate’s top Democrat is asking the Justice Department’s watchdog to open an investigation into communications between acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker and the White House.
Sen. Charles Schumer says Tuesday the Justice Department’s inspector general should look into communications beginning when Whitaker was appointed chief of staff to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Schumer says he’s concerned about contact Whitaker had with the White House and wants the inspector general to look into whether he had access to confidential grand jury information in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
He also wants investigators to examine whether Whitaker shared any information with President Donald Trump or others in the administration.
A spokesman for Inspector General Michael Horowitz and a Justice Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sometimes picking a movie to watch is like digging in a dumpster. There are so many pointless films which claim to be philosophical that it is better to write one by your own than to choose which one to watch. Most experts know where to start, what skills to have and how to end your screenwriting. Let’s create something special.
Skills of a True Screenwriter
Strange as it sounds, screenwriter should be a psychologist in a way. You are going to take a character through a journey, that is why you need to understand the psychology of people. For example, if I think I am ugly how do I walk through the world? How does a character overcome the belief that she or he is ugly? You want to know that so you can create characters that are deep and interesting. You want to be a great observer of your friend, parents, people who annoy you. So that you can document who they are but also understand them from another perspective.
Be Able to Show, Not Tell
It is one of the main skills of a bestselling writer as well as a screenwriter. You have to be able to ground all of your scenes in moments that are visual, that extent and give all the information but do not tell the audience “and then this happened, and then this happened” at the same time.
Speak from Your Authentic Voice
You probably want so much to be seen and to be heard as a screenwriter, but that desire and longing can pull you out of yourself. When you get pulled out of yourself, you are trying to imitate “Breaking Bad,” “Scandal” or some movie that you love. It means you have lost the sense of what it is you are bringing to the world, what you have seen in the world. So, finding that authentic voice and saying “What I know is valuable” is a skill in itself. It is a practice of affirming your unique vision.
The way you order the Starbucks, the way you like your pasta, the way you like to drive is unique and valuable. The more you anchor into the sense of your own value and the importance of your voice in the world, the more powerful that voice is going to be.
Where to Get the Story
Where does the inspiration come from? They say it all happens naturally and it does take a long time. There are little ideas percolating around all the time; you just have to notice them. But there is a trick.
You should never write for the market. You have to write with passion. The screenwriters who are professionals write from what they love, what embarrasses them, write from their core wounds. Every screenwriter is wounded, and they are trying to write the story to heel it. “My mother did not love me,” “I am badly socialized,” “No one understands me,” “I am alone,” “I can’t be myself,” etc. There are so many questions that are tearing us apart, so write from your core wounds.
Establish the Character Weaknesses
The audience thinks that the story is all about the hero achieving his goal, but that is not what the audience is most interested in. It is all about overcoming the great weakness of a hero. That is what makes us care about that character. Show in the very opening pages of your script the great internal weakness of the protagonist. You want also give him likable qualities that the audience can also hook on to, but those are not nearly as important as establishing the weakness upfront in the story.
Create Flawed Character
Know why your villain is right and why your hero is wrong. Your protagonist can’t be 100% right. People are multi-dimensional, so to find the good in the bad character and the bad in a good character are critical to making a three-dimensional hero. That is a tough thing for a lot of new screenwriters. Their hero usually is a perfect projection of themselves. But the problem is a perfect person is dull; we like flawed people. Dig into yourself and find the bad parts of you and deal with those on paper. Basically, you are taking the things you would not tell your best friend and tell a hundred million people worldwide.
Remember, the point is that the inner journey the character takes has exactly the same structure. The intertwining of the outer and inner journey is where it gets fascinating.
How to Write First 10 Pages: 5 Key Elements
The script reader is the first mandatory test for your screenwriting. A reader might have to evaluate 3 to 4 scripts a night – hundreds every year. In most cases, a seasoned Hollywood reader can tell whether your script is any good within the first few pages. That is why it is essential that you move your story forward quickly because you only have about 10 pages to accomplish 5 major components. Establish the genre, introduce your protagonist, show the world, hint at the theme, and set up the dramatic situation.
Establish the Genre
Action flicks like “Iron Man,” “Die Harder” or “X-men” have one-liners. Fantasies like “The Hobbit,” “Harry Potter” or “Star Wars” are said in supernatural often magical worlds. In R-rated comedies like “The Hangover,” “Bridesmaid,” “40 years old Virgin” use off-color jokes and adult humor. Clarifying your script genre or sub-genre early on is essential because this will set your audience with clear expectations. Although many indie films defy genre, most studio films fit within at least one. Nobody goes to a romantic comedy to see the happy couple die in a car crash at the end. And in a slasher film audience is actually rooting for the killer.
It is important that you understand the rules of the genre you are working in so you can deliver those expectations to your audience. That is why you must clarify the film genre immediately, ideally in the very first scene.
Introduce the Hero
It is one thing to present your character – the mad scientist, the reckless cop, the drunken neurosurgeon, but it is another thing entirely to move beyond stereotypes and introduce a complex, unique, and memorable protagonist. The main character’s introduction should be some of the most powerful scenes of your first pages. Describe your character through an action or situation. Create complexity by adding flaws and quirks to your character’s personality.
Take, for example, the guy in the “Big Lebowski.” The Coen brothers present a man in his 40s wearing Bermuda shorts and sunglasses feeling quarts of milk from the dairy aisle at a deserted supermarket. We learned so much about this hero in this one scene. In a few concise lines, his die is cast, and we move into the meat of the story. You do not have to illustrate every facet of the protagonist, but this introduction is the audience’s first impression of your character, and you must present an interesting and flawed individual.
The other must-have is to create empathy with that character. You have got to connect with this character psychologically. So, you either get the audience feel sorry for the hero or make the character the victim of some undeserved misfortune. In “Avatar” at the beginning, we find out that he has been crippled in the war and he has just lost his brother who was killed, and that is why he is there taking his place. All of that is designed to immediately get us to sympathize with this character. Another way is to create jeopardy for your character, put their lives in danger if it is an action movie, put their job or their love life in danger if it is a drama you are writing. The third way is you make them a nice, good-hearted, and generous person.
So, you have to have at least one or two of those as you introduce the hero so that your audience will actually become that character psychologically. The movies are participatory. They are not something we observe; they are something we step into. So, in Titanic, we are the ones on the sinking ship, we are the ones falling in love with Leo DiCaprio.
Show the World
The world of your story is a crucial piece of the screenwriting. A new rich world is one of the best ways to set your screenwriting apart. Build your world with details and characters, be specific, be exact, take us to a place we have never seen before, make the audience experience something new.
Hint at the Theme
Your theme is a general idea or insight the story reveals. Often theme is obvious, illustrated in a larger or more general sense. For example, in “Armageddon” or “Jurassic Park,” it is a man versus nature. In “Godfather” or “Scarface,” it is the man versus self. In “American Beauty” or “Juno” the theme is the loss of innocence. But a theme is often more specific. Take, for example, individual versus society. “Schindler’s list” explores self-sacrifice while “Erin Brockovich” battles social injustice. “The Elephant Man” is about societal acceptance. In “Fight Club” it is an attack on consumerism and authority. The theme is often overlooked and can be the element missing that “you can’t put your finger on.”
Set up a Dramatic Situation
The dramatic situation is the first indication of what your story is going to be about. It is the essence of your story without plot or character. It is possible for it to occur immediately even before we meet any principal characters.
In the first few scenes of “Jaws,” for example, we see a water lump approaching as a girl swims under the night sky. A ferocious attack, savage violence and then calm. Immediately the audience understands what this world is in for. But just as often the dramatic situation shares screen time with a major plot point. In “Little Miss Sunshine” we do not understand the situation until the dysfunctional family agrees to take a cross-country road trip in order to get their 7-years-old daughter to the finals of a beauty pageant. Six incredibly flawed and tragic characters trapped in an absurd situation.
There is no absolute order that these 5 elements need to be applied. As long as these 5 core elements are executed well and established early on, your screenwriting is one step closer to achieving success.
Our weekly roundup of the most popular but completely untrue stories and images/videos of the week. None of these stories are remotely true, but they were believed by many and shared widely on social media. We gave them a closer look, and here are the real facts behind these fake news stories:
THE CLAIM: Stacey Abrams’ sister handled election case
THE FACTS: U.S. District Judge Leslie Abrams, sister of Georgia Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams, did not preside over a complaint related to the too-close-to-call governor’s race, as reports circulating online suggest. The Georgia Democratic Party’s lawsuit against Dougherty County was filed in the Middle District of Georgia’s federal court, where Leslie Abrams was confirmed to the bench in 2014. Most federal courts assign cases to judges randomly, including the Middle District of Georgia. Judge Abrams was randomly assigned to the case Nov.8, but it was reassigned to U.S. District Judge W. Louis Sands on the same day, and before any action was taken on the case, court records show. The shift was in keeping with the court’s procedure when there is a conflict of interest, according to David W. Bunt, the clerk of court for the Middle District of Georgia.
THE CLAIM: Aerial photo shows clouds over California wildfire
THE FACTS: A photo of a blanket of gray clouds over a glowing red background was not taken over the recent California wildfires, despite reports identifying it that way on social media. The photo was actually taken in July by Nathan Province over Honolulu and shows altocumulus clouds during a sunset. Province told The Associated Press that the photo was taken about 7 p.m. from an altitude of around 30,000 feet while he was on a flight to Hawaii. Province said he took the photo with his cellphone about 30 minutes before landing and later posted it to social media. “I think it’s nice that people like the scenery and the beauty of Hawaii, but it is sad that people are using it continually for fake news,” Province said in a text message.
THE CLAIM: Planned Parenthood releases ad saying a baby ‘deserves to be a choice’
THE FACTS: Planned Parenthood did not release a video advertisement featuring a baby with text saying she deserves to be a choice, despite numerous reports being shared online. Social media users are creating false captions and recirculating the video, released by The Agenda Project Action Fund in 2015, to make it appear as the work of Planned Parenthood. Erica Sackin, Planned Parenthood Federation of America spokeswoman, said the organization did not produce the video, nor is it associated with it in any way. In the ad, a baby in a stocking cap coos and smiles between sentences stating: “She deserves to be loved. She deserves to be wanted. She deserves to be a choice. #StandWithPP.” The video was created by a branch of The Advanced Project, a progressive activist organization, and uploaded to its YouTube channel. Erica Payne, founder of the organization, told the AP that she put out the video after she had a baby at the age of 45. Payne said it was her way of expressing how children are miracles. “They deserve to be loved, wanted and a choice,” she said.
THE CLAIM: Time magazine cover states toxic vaccines are ‘Poisoning of An Entire Generation’
THE FACTS: A Time magazine cover circulating online that claims an entire generation has been poisoned by toxic vaccines was fabricated. The false cover has a headline stating “The Poisoning Of An Entire Generation,” along with text that says, “Toxic vaccines. Sick kids. And the incompetent leaders who betrayed them.” The false cover was taken from Time’s Feb. 1, 2016, issue which featured a story on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, with the headline, “The Poisoning Of An American City.” Both covers use the same photo of a young child, but the original does not include a syringe with needle in the photo. The subtitles on the real cover say, “Toxic water. Sick Kids. And the incompetent leaders who betrayed Flint.” A Time spokesperson confirmed to the AP that the cover was not the work of the magazine, and provided a link on how to identify false Time covers.
NOT REAL NEWS: FLASHBACK: Obama kicks out reporter at press briefing
THE FACTS: Former President Barack Obama did not throw a reporter out of a press conference for asking a question in 2015, as a claim circulating widely online suggests. The false claim surfaced after a heated exchange Wednesday between President Donald Trump and CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, whose White House press pass was suspended afterward. Some social media users then circulated a video they said showed Obama kicking a reporter out of press briefing. As reported by the AP, Obama was actually responding to a protester who was heckling him during a gay pride month reception at the White House in June 2015. “Shame on you, you shouldn’t be doing this,” Obama told the protester, adding he had the option of staying quiet or being removed. The protester was removed.
NOT REAL NEWS: CNN anchor shown laughing as American flag burns
THE FACTS: An image circulating online that shows CNN anchor Don Lemon laughing during an apparent segment about Democrats burning flags on Election Day was fabricated. A CNN spokeswoman told the AP on Tuesday that the image of Lemon, which was paired with a banner claiming “Dems celebrate ‘blue wave’ burning flags on Election Day,” is false. The banner identified the show as “Reliable Sources,” which Lemon does not host. He is the host of “CNN Tonight.”
NOT REAL NEWS: Voting machine rigged in Ohio precinct
THE FACTS: An Instagram video shared widely online Tuesday showed a voter selecting Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine on a touch screen, but then receiving a paper record reflecting a vote for Democratic candidate Richard Cordray. The video was circulated on social media as evidence that a machine was rigged. Aaron Sellers, a spokesman for the Franklin County Board of Elections, told the AP in an email that the machine in question had a paper jam that showed a previous voter’s choice. Sellers says the voter who experienced the problem got a poll worker to cancel out the vote on the machine in question and then voted successfully on another machine.
ATP Finals 2018 has left many asking the question, “Did the ball boy do it?” in regard to Roger Federer losing the title to Alexander Zverev.
After pulling off one of the biggest wins of his career, Alexander Zverev was left apologizing for an unforced error he didn’t make.
Zverev denied Roger Federer a shot at a 100th career title by beating the Swiss great 7-5, 7-6 (5) at the ATP Finals on Saturday to advance to the championship match against Novak Djokovic.
Federer was leading the second-set tiebreaker 4-3 and in the ascendancy of a rally on a Zverev service point when a ball boy at the back of the court dropped a ball. Zverev immediately signaled for the point to be stopped and the umpire ordered the point to be replayed.
Zverev served an ace before going on to close out the match moments later.
“I want to apologize for the situation in the tiebreak,” said Zverev, who was booed by some of the crowd during his on-court interview. “The ball boy dropped the ball, so it’s in the rules that we have to replay the point.
“I’m a little bit upset about the whole situation because this is not how I wanted it to end.”
Zverev is the youngest player at 21 to reach the final since 2009 and the first from Germany since 1996. He will face five-time champion Djokovic, who defeated Kevin Anderson 6-2, 6-2 to extend his semifinal win-loss record at the tournament to 7-1.
Federer, 37, was seeking a record-extending seventh title but was unable to cope with the pressure created by Zverev’s power and precision at the O2 Arena.
“He (Zverev) apologized to me at the net,” Federer said. “I was like, ‘Buddy, shut up. You don’t need to apologize to me here. Congratulations on a great match and a great tournament so far. All the best for the finals.’ And you move on.”
An inspired series of shots earned Zverev the first break points of the match in the 12th game, and Federer sent a forehand wide to fall behind.
Federer willed himself to a break for 2-1 in the second set, but Zverev quickly composed himself to hit straight back in the following game.
Zverev overcame the freak interruption to establish a 5-4 lead in the tiebreaker, and Federer netted the simplest of forehand volleys to bring up match point.
He saved the first, but Zverev confidently put away a backhand drive volley to set up a shot at the biggest title of his career and leave Federer waiting until next season for his 100th title.
“Overall, I’m happy how the season went,” said Federer, who picked up his 20th Grand Slam title at the Australian Open. “There’s many positives. So I’m excited for next season.”
Federer tried to accept as most as possible with the smile the ball boy’s mistake during the 4-3 point on the second set tie-break. Federer was asked if he spoke to the ball boy after the match. ‘No.
Maybe he’s coming to dinner, I don’t know’, said Federer smiling. ‘Give me a smile, don’t be too serious, please. It was a joke. I just asked him, Did you drop the ball? I didn’t understand what he said.
I said, Did you drop the ball? He said, Yes, I did drop the ball. From that standpoint, it’s, Okay, no problem, that happens. It’s all good. It’s all good. I hope he doesn’t have a sleepless night. It’s not a big deal at the end of the day.
It could have been if maybe I win the next point. Whatever happened, this is life, this is sports. I’m definitely not mad at him. It’s all good from my side.’ Asked if as ball boy he never lost the ball, Federer – who covered this role for two years as the Swiss Indoors in Basel – replied: ‘I don’t remember.
Despite having reached only one Grand Slam quarterfinal this year, Zverev is the only active player outside the Big Four of Djokovic, Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray to have won three Masters titles. But victory at the tour’s flagship event would exceed those achievements.
“Novak right now is the best player in the world,” said Zverev, who lost to Djokovic in the round robin. “You have to play your best game to even have a chance. I hope I’ll be able to do that tomorrow.”
The Serb maintained his record of having not lost a set — or service game — at the tournament as he thrashed debutant Anderson to give himself the chance to join Federer on six titles.
“I played very well in the group stage against Sascha (Zverev),” Djokovic said. “But I don’t think he was close to his best.”
Djokovic won 20 out of 27 points on Anderson’s second serve as he broke the South African twice in each set.
“It was the best match I’ve played so far this week,” Djokovic said.
Having ended a two-year Grand Slam title drought by defeating Anderson in the Wimbledon final, Djokovic went on to win his 14th major trophy at the U.S. Open and has already sealed the year-end No. 1 ranking.
The victory extended Djokovic’s record to 35-2 since the start of Wimbledon, a tournament he began ranked 21st after a right elbow injury interrupted his first half of the season.
“It’s remarkable what he’s done since Wimbledon,” Anderson said. “It seems like he’s definitely right back playing some of the best tennis of his career.”
Warner Brothers did a stellar marketing job for over four months to generate interest in “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” but while the hard sell worked great overseas, not so hot reviews kept audiences away in the United States and Canada. The studio spent over $150 million just for the marketing campaign alone. The budget for the film was about $200 million, so the studio heads are grateful that worldwide audiences will keep it from losing out.
“Bohemian Rhapsody” was also at a 40 percent like “Fantastic Beasts” on Rotten Tomatoes, it did the unusual of rising to 62 percent. Audiences came out in droves for two weeks to see the Freddy Mercury biopic, but critics are already saying that the magic of J.K. Rowling is tiring after ten films. This is only the second of the studios five Harry Potter prequels.
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” crawled, slithered and flew its way to the top of the weekend box office with a $62.2 million opening in the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The latest offering from the Harry Potter multiverse fell short of the opening of the first film in the Warner Bros. series, 2016′s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which debuted with $74 million in a similar November release and went on to earn $234 million in the U.S. and Canada.
But all the Harry Potter films have had a broad international reach, and “Fantastic Beasts” had a hearty worldwide weekend gross, bringing in $191 million internationally for a total of $253 million, according to the studio’s estimates.
“Clearly it’s a huge phenomenon globally,” said Jeff Goldstein, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros.
Last week’s top film, “Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch,” was second with $38.1 million, bringing its domestic tally to $126 million for Universal Pictures after two weekends. It took in $9.4 million more internationally.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” 20th Century Fox’s Freddie Mercury biopic, is still rocking, taking third place with $15.7 million for a total of $127 million. It remains a global hit, bringing in an additional $45.5 million internationally.
“Fantastic Beasts,” the second film in the series of Potter prequels written by J.K. Rowling and starring Eddie Redmayne, Johnny Depp, and Jude Law, had a budget of $200 million. Its reviews were largely lackluster, with critics saying Rowling’s magical world is wearing thin after 10 films.
Globally the first nine films have earned $8.5 billion, a total that this one’s worldwide take will inflate.
“This is yet another example of a movie whose opening weekend skewed heavily into the international territories,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. “This happens a lot with bigger franchise movies. For many of these blockbusters, it’s the international component that comes in and saves the day.”
In the U.S., Warner Bros. is hoping young devotees who are out of school will keep “Fantastic Beasts” in flight through Thanksgiving.
“It’s a big week coming up,” Goldstein said. “Friday is one of the biggest movie days of the year.”
It will have a major challenger in Disney’s “Ralph Breaks The Internet,” which opens Wednesday, as does “Creed II.”
“Fantastic Beasts” continues a year of high points and hits for Warner from a diverse string of movies, including “The Meg,” ″Crazy Rich Asians,” ″The Nun” and “A Star is Born.”
“Warner Bros. is on a roll that every studio would envy,” Dergarabedian said.
Two new wide-release movies had underwhelming starts in fourth and fifth place. “Instant Family” (Paramount), a well-reviewed PG-13 comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne that cost roughly $48 million to make, sold an estimated $14.7 million in tickets. Steve McQueen’s R-rated crime thriller “Widows” (Fox), which also received mostly positive reviews, arrived to about $12.3 million in ticket sales. “Widows,” with a diverse ensemble cast led by Viola Davis, was independently financed for about $42 million.
Overall, the weekend was down 14.5 percent in the U.S. and Canada from the same timeframe a year earlier, when “Justice League” made for a major pre-Thanksgiving weekend.
Here are estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Where available, the latest international numbers for also are included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
Instant Family, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Widows
“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” $62.2 million ($191 million international).
“Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch,” $38.1 million ($9.4 million international).
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” $15.7 million ($45.5 million international).
“Instant Family,” $14.7 million.
“Widows,” $12.3 million ($2.8 million international).
“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” $4.7 million ($6.7 million international).
“A Star Is Born,” $4.3 million ($5.5 million international).
“Overlord,” $3.8 million ($2.6 million international).
“The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” $2.5 million ($2.8 million international).
“Burn The Stage: The Movie,” $2.3 million ($5.2 million international).
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at international theaters (excluding the U.S. and Canada), according to comScore:
“Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindelwald,” $191 million.
“Venom,” $55 million.
“Bohemian Rhapsody,” $45.5 million.
“Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch,” $9.4 million.
“A Cool Fish,” $8.1 million.
“The Nutcracker and the Four Realms,” $6.7 million.
“A Star Is Born,” $5.5 million.
“Burn The Stage: The Movie,” $5.2 million.
“Intimate Strangers,” $4.6 million.
“Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer,” $2.8 million.
Last week’s Supernatural episode, hopefully titled ‘Optimism,’ was one of those episodes that fandom didn’t agree on. And that’s okay. Like most episodes of this show, there were things I liked and things I didn’t. I’ll get to the elephant in the room thing in time, but first, a look at some of the things that worked for me and what didn’t.
Richard Speight Jr. directed the episode, and I tend to really enjoy his directing, so that was a point in this episode’s favor. I like his pacing, and his editing, and I really really like the way he embraces the quirkiness of Supernatural that has always been one of my favorite parts of the Show. Writer Steve Yockey is a good partner for that quirkiness, and the two worked well together here. From the first frame, the weirdly upbeat music presents the small town as too-good-to-be-true, including Harper, the perky town librarian. She’s got at least two quirky suitors, one of whom seems dangerously jealous and slightly unhinged, so we immediately are suspicious that something bad is going to happen to the too-good-to-be-true librarian.
Sure enough, it does. Winston, the nice guy suitor who Harper clearly isn’t into, saunters down the street feeling good about himself after Harper agrees to dinner, and the familiar strains of Stayin’ Alive start to play. Speight mimics the view of John Travolta’s iconic walk in the opening of Saturday Night Fever, which comes off as amusingly ironic when applied to Winston.
And also announces to us that poor happy Winston is probably not long for this world. Yep. Splat.
I loved that whole opening, and it had Speight’s directorial touch all over it.
Back to the bunker, where Jack is piling a ton of sugar into his coffee (ewww), and Dean is looking for Sam. We find out that Sam and Charlie have gone off on a stakeout because Dean was somewhere else and that means we’re not getting Sam and Dean hunting together for a little while. Not something that makes me particularly happy, but I’ll roll with it.
Jack about Sam and Charlie: They’re probably doing something really exciting…
Cut to Sam and Charlie, sitting in a truck and looking bored to death.
These are the edits that Speight is excellent at, the juxtaposition and Jared Padalecki and Felicia Day’s acting skills making just that little bit hilarious. It was the first time I laughed out loud during this episode but not the last.
Back to Dean and Jack. Sam isn’t there, but I appreciate that writer Steve Yockey addresses that fact and the fact that Dean would comment on it.
Jack: Sam wanted someone around when you came back. He’s worried about you.
Dean: (wryly) That sounds like him.
Jack tries to tell Dean what Sam tried to tell him last week – nobody blames him for Michael.
Dean: Yeah, well I blame me.
That was a poignant line, Mr. Yockey. That’s Dean in a nutshell. He’s not freaking out, he’s coping, but he still – deep down where he has trouble getting to it – blames himself for saying yes to Michael. He may even realize it’s a tad irrational, but it’s how he feels nevertheless. How often do we feel something and know it makes no sense, but it’s stuck there anyway?
Meanwhile, Sam and Charlie are still in the truck, and Sam is playing with – a fidget spinner?? I laughed, and Jared did a fabulous job making that scene funny with his great comedic instincts, but I also scratched my head. Sam with a fidget spinner?
clairvoyantsam
We’ve never seen him struggle with boredom, that’s more Dean’s thing. So while I appreciated the moment and it was well done, I couldn’t help but see it more as Jared than Sam, and I saw a lot of other people comment the same. It threw me out of the story a bit.
Back to the bunker, where Jack has a case and is trying to convince Dean to let them work it.
Dean: Sam’s trying to keep you safe. He’s a smart guy.
Jack: But we could be hunting buddies!
Dean: Don’t call it that.
Jack prevails, though. He’s smart and perceptive, sharing his own feelings of guilt and responsibility for not killing Michael when he had his powers. Jack and Dean are both carrying the weight of that guilt, both feeling stupid for the choices they made. Jack has realized that, and he uses that knowledge to get through to Dean.
Dean: You didn’t do anything wrong.
Jack: Neither did you!
Touche, Jack. (And Yockey and Speight)
Back to the truck, where Charlie gives Sam some background on the people who went missing at the bus stop they’re staking out – and shows him the jar of black goo that she found. (That’s a lot of goo to scoop up from the ground – was it a pond?)
Back to Dean and Jack, who get dressed up in fed suits and head out to Winston’s favorite spot, Dick’s Red Rooster Diner. I burst into laughter when I saw the sign – kudos Richard for that perfect name and for putting your stamp on this episode! (Cue lots of dick and cock jokes…)
They interview the uncooperative (and sassy) waitress while Jack is rather adorably awkward and clueless. Alex Calvert pulls this off perfectly, and Jensen Ackles’ reactions to it are equally on point.
Jack: What is courting?
Dean: What you do before dating.
Jack: And before the sex!
Sassy waitress: Sometimes you just have the sex…
In the middle of this discussion about sex, Dean surreptitiously angles the prominent red cock (rooster, rooster, sorry) in front of him on the counter away from him. I laughed out loud again, because Ackles’ expression and gesture were spot on.
Honestly, the humor was the best thing about this episode. All the actors are more than capable of comedy, and Yockey and Speight together infused little moments throughout the episode that kept making me laugh.
Dean and Jack find out more about the town librarian who Winston was courting; Speight does this in a crisply edited montage of their conversations with townspeople that I enjoyed very much. At one point, Dean looks over to Jack like he so often looks to Sam for corroboration, but Jack is just looking straight ahead.
A little thing, but a reminder that Dean is used to hunting with Sam and misses that familiarity (and I miss it too). Ackles is so good at those small nonverbal gestures.
Back to the truck, where Charlie and Sam are STILL sitting. Sam chews nervously on his fingernail, and Charlie tries to reassure him.
Charlie: He’ll be fine….your brother, I mean.
She says he must have other friends who can be his wingman, and Sam responds that she – Charlie – was his wingman.
Sam: That guy was you.
Charlie: No. It wasn’t.
Me: Huh?
That made no sense to me from what we’ve seen of Charlie and Dean’s history. It’s not like they regularly hunted together, and Sam himself is Dean’s wingman the vast majority of the time. I really don’t know what to make of that conversation, which left me scratching my head.
However, I really liked part of Charlie and Sam’s conversation, because it addresses one of the elephants in the room of this season – that the familiar people from the AU are not, in fact, the beloved characters who were killed off. I’m glad the show decided to acknowledge that and appreciate Yockey’s dialogue that tackles how difficult it is for Sam and Dean to not treat them as if they’re long lost friends instead of strangers. It’s also difficult for Charlie and Bobby, who keep getting treated like people they are not.
We get a little AU!Charlie backstory, including that she was also a programmer and lived with the love of her life, Kara. The original Charlie Bradbury, created by Robbie Thompson and beloved by most of the fandom, was important as a queer character as well as a hero, so it’s nice to have clarification that this Charlie is as well. Felicia Day is a wonderful actress, and she makes you feel for this Charlie as she tells the story of what happened in the AU. I find apocalypse stories like the one she’s telling truly terrifying – the reality of what would happen to a society if the food and energy and water did run out – so again I appreciated Yockey’s dialogue here. Charlie paints a Revolution-esque picture, perhaps as an homage to the creator of both shows, Eric Kripke.
That said, this is still not our Charlie, and I still don’t feel the same about her. Perhaps I’m not supposed to, but it also means I’m not as thrilled to have her on the show as I was about the original and I don’t care about her as a character the same way I did the Charlie I fell in love with. She gets some good lines though.
Charlie: It all falls apart.
Sam: Not here.
Charlie: Not yet.
Loved those lines. Nicely done. Nicely written, acted and directed.
Back to Dean and Jack, with Dean in full dad mode reminding Jack that pie is important and promising to give him “the talk” when they get back to the bunker.
Dean concocts a plan to get romance-novel-fan Harper (well played by Maddie Phillips) to see Jack as a romantic hero, but Dean gets more than he bargained for as Jack responds to Dean’s “back off, kid” with “No you back off – old man!”
itsokaysammy
Clearly, this wasn’t part of the plan, and Dean’s reaction is priceless. Ackles nails the comedic beats of Dean’s reaction, surprised and slightly hurt by Jack’s low blow. He goes out to the car and immediately inspects himself in the rearview mirror, muttering “Old man, my ass.”
Gotta say, I agree.
Jealous Miles confronts Harper and Jack as they leave together, and Dean follows Miles while Jack goes to Harper’s apartment. This whole Harper and Jack romantic interlude could have been played seriously, and I think that would have turned my stomach. Instead, Speight plays it tongue in cheek and a bit over the top, with cheesy music and an apartment decorated with a gigantic ‘AMORE’ sign on the wall. Jack is adorably awkward once again, spilling holy water all over as he plants a silver coin on the floor to test her, and then mutters “Christo” under his breath.
Entire fandom: WHAT THE HELL, DID HE JUST SAY CHRISTO?? FROM SEASON ONE??
I’m not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, the fandom has been asking why the hell they don’t ever use that anymore ever since Phantom Traveler. On the other hand, the fact that it’s now back on the show makes it difficult to explain why it took them 13 years to remember to use it!
Meanwhile, STILL in the truck, Charlie tells Sam she wants out of hunting. She hates it, only did it because she had no other choice. She tells him this is her last case, that she plans to get away from both monsters and people and live on a mountaintop somewhere.
Personally, I don’t blame her one bit after what she’s been through! The post-apocalyptic disaster, Kara’s death. Why would she want to stick around and keep risking her life? It’s not hunting that the AU people really are driven to do, it’s killing Michael. For them, it’s personal.
Sam and Charlie somehow figure out that what they’re hunting is a “Musca,” a man-fly hybrid male who abandons his nest when he can’t find a mate, which makes him sound like some incel weirdo – and oh yes, he uses human bodies to nest. I’m not really sure how they figure that out from what they know, but okay. And just at that moment, up to the bus stop strolls a man in black with a giant box on his head. Sam and Charlie stare … and do nothing.
Me: Ummm, guys, that looks kinda suspicious, don’t ya think? And also oddly amusing.
Weird guy intimidates two elderly women into getting up and leaving, then strolls away. Sam and Charlie …. Do nothing.
Me: WTF?
More head scratching. Head scratching is usually not a good thing when I’m watching Supernatural.
Back to Jack and Harper, who are bonding over their shared trauma history and attempts at staying optimistic nevertheless. Dean keeps calling Jack on the phone, because when he followed Miles it was to find Miles dead (Weirdly, when Dean first hears Miles scream, he starts to walk away instead of going over to investigate. Head scratch.)
Calvert and guest star Maddie Phillips had great comic rhythm together. They both do awkward and quirky so well, and their (faked in Harper’s case) earnestness is the icing on the cake.
Harper: Do you believe in love at first sight?
Jack: Do you … mind if I use the bathroom?
This is one of my favorite moments; Jack holed up in Harper’s bathroom telling Dean that he thinks Harper is in love with him.
Jack: So I need to know everything about sex. Go!
I laughed out loud again. Alex Calvert has a real flair for comedy, as does Speight for directing it. Their phone call gets interrupted when Dean gets attacked, and Jack reappears from the bathroom. More awkwardness ensues, then Dean comes bursting in the door followed by a Riverdale-esque zombie (also Harper’s ex-boyfriend).
Jack and Harper make a run for it, while Dean confronts the zombie dude (who he calls Archie, because Riverdale…)
Dean: Let’s dance.
I liked that scene, and that was a typical Dean thing to say. Dean smashes him with a chair, but zombie dude just turns and leaves, clearly more focused on Harper and Jack than Dean.
Meanwhile, Sam and Charlie are STILL in the truck.
Sam is oddly focused on trying to convince Charlie not to be a hermit.
Sam: You can’t just go live on a mountain. People need people. It’s not so easy to walk away.
It’s clear to all of us watching that Sam is in a sense talking to himself. There was a time when he thought he could walk away and he wanted to walk away, but that time is long past. Sam has come to terms with being a hunter and accepted that as his identity, and it gives him pride and satisfaction and a sense of doing good in the world that’s of utmost importance to him.
That part of it I get, and it’s nice to get that confirmation about Sam. But it rubbed me the wrong way that Sam tried so hard to talk Charlie out of leaving the hunting life. It works for Sam and Dean, but that doesn’t mean it will work for everyone. They were happy to see Jesse and Cesar retire from hunting – why isn’t it okay for Charlie? She’s been through a lot; maybe she deserves time to heal. She certainly deserves to make her own decision about it. I just didn’t feel like Sam would try to influence her like that.
Box-on-head guy in black returns to the bus stop, and once again Sam and Charlie do nothing.
Me: WTF? No really, WTF??
I also don’t think Sam would let box-on-his-head guy just sit there on the bench while a bus came by.
Sam: We don’t wanna tackle some guy for his weird fashion.
Charlie (and me): Don’t we?
I mean, YES! Is there really a chance this could be a coincidence that he’s at this very bus stop with a box over his giant head when they’re looking for a fly-man??
Of course not. They belatedly get out of the truck and run after fly-man and the hapless guy at the bus stop who he took thanks to Sam and Charlie waiting so long.
There’s a search by flashlight scene and a tiny discussion of how a brass nail dipped in sugar water will kill the fly-man, but they don’t have that, so they’ll have to “get creative.” What?? Getting creative turns out to be stabbing and then shooting the fly-man, which seems way too easy. What’s the point of lore if you can just blow something away with bullets?
This episode was two separate story lines and two separate cases, and Sam and Charlie’s was definitely the less fleshed out one. There wasn’t enough build up for me to feel much sense of fear as they tried to find it, and when the fly-man himself finally popped up, instead of being scared, I burst into laughter. It was a little too B movie and camp for me to take seriously – I’m not sure if that’s how I was supposed to feel? Maybe, because Sam gets gooed on and then when he blows its head off, Charlie gets splattered with a ton of the black goo. Ewww.
This is the scene that Jared talked about at a convention recently. He has a thing about spit and can’t stand being spit on, so he had to have a stand in do some of this scene for him. Can’t say I blame him – it was pretty disgusting!
The other story line plays out with Harper opening the library door to let zombie dude in, which I didn’t see coming until a little while before that point. Dean and Jack get much longer to wrap up their case, with a nice scene of zombie dude chasing Jack through the library while Harper waxes poetic about love (and makes a confession in the process) on the PA system. Seems she’s been the mastermind all along, a necromancer who killed her boyfriend to keep him with her and then brought him back so he can kill her other suitors and eat them. Lovely. Dean hatches another plot to try to make Harper fall in love with Jack so that zombie boyfriend will turn on her. It doesn’t entirely work, but Dean gets zombie dude restrained in silver handcuffs anyway. Harper escapes.
In her final scene, we see her writing a love note to Jack and planning on coming to find him – so I guess maybe Dean’s plan worked a little too well? Also I find it hard to believe that Dean didn’t try harder to find her – she was pretty much the evil mastermind here, so….. yeah. Head scratch.
Sam and Charlie are back in the truck and have a little more conversation, feeling good about saving bus stop guy.
Sam says he feels kinda bad for the Musca, that he didn’t have to go out on his own…
Charlie: Your nifty metaphor has holes.
Me: I’ll say!
While they talk, we see the rest of the Musca come and scoop up fly-man’s body. I assume this is supposed to be a commentary on community, but it’s also just plain B movie weird.
Sam: Not all people are good, maybe not even most of them. But if we help people, then maybe they’ll help other people… it’s worth it.
Again, he’s talking to himself and about himself as much as to Charlie. This has been Sam’s journey, and he 100% believes it now.
Charlie: Let’s be clear. I am not like the fly monster. But I’ll think about staying.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, because I don’t think she should stay if it’s not what SHE wants. I think the Show has decided that it should bring back some of the popular characters it killed off because it wants to make Supernatural more of an ensemble show, and that worries me. That’s not the show I particularly want to watch, no matter how much I love Felicia Day or Jim Beaver or DJ Qualls or whoever.
At any rate, that ends the Sam and Charlie story line of this episode.
Dean and Jack are back at the bunker, once again sitting across the table.
Dean: You did good, kid.
I do love the way Dean has taken to calling Jack “kid.” He’s a natural nurturer, drawn to kids and to mentoring. He likes to use nicknames, same way he calls his 6’5” brother “Sammy.”
Jack: I was right (about hunting).
Dean: It’s not about being right. You’ll make mistakes; I make them all the time. It’s how you learn from them.
Jack: And how to not beat yourself up for them.
Dean: Jack, you’re pretty smart sometimes.
It’s true. Dean gives in, promises that when Sam gets back, they’ll talk about some hunts.
Nice moment over, Jack has a coughing fit and collapses on the floor, bleeding.
Dean drops to his knees, looking up helplessly like he’s done many times before over a fallen Sam or Castiel. (Speaking of Cas, I’m confused as to why Cas hasn’t noticed Jack’s illness, since they’ve been hunting together?)
Some of the gravity of that scene was also impacted by the stories I’ve heard Jared, Jensen, and Misha Collins tell about how when Alex had to collapse, they all dogpiled on top of him – and then Ruth Connell climbed on top. Poor Alex!
Caps by kayb625
So that’s where we end. I was hoping for an ending scene that wrapped up the two story lines and brought their messages – and the brothers — back together, so I was a bit disappointed. I’m not averse to Sam and Dean spending time with other characters, since that’s part of how we get to know them better, as Eric Kripke explained early on in one of our first conversations with him. But Kripke also wrote the Winchesters as each other’s hunting partners who always have each other’s backs – that’s the show I fell in love with, and that’s the dynamic that has kept me watching. Will they sometimes hunt with someone else? Sure. But when that happens, it doesn’t feel as much like Supernatural to me. I miss the dynamic that hooked me on the show and keeps me watching.
People watch the show – any show – for different reasons. For some viewers, Sam and Dean not hunting together or interacting during an episode was a change – that part is just a fact – but not an unwelcome one. Maybe you have a favorite character, and as long as that character is onscreen and you’re getting some insight into that character, it’s all good. Maybe you love being scared so you watch for the horror, or you love having to think hard about a complex mystery so you watch for the make-you-think twists and turns. Maybe you like to imagine a romantic relationship between two characters and that’s the lens you watch through. Maybe you like the dynamic and chemistry between two characters and that’s why you watch, so of course, you want to see that. For that last group, if those two characters are Sam and Dean, the change in this episode was a bit difficult.
Here’s why. When you find a show that ticks whatever psychological and emotional boxes that need ticking, you understandably don’t want that show to change and those boxes to become un-ticked. That takes away the very reason you enjoy the show so much. If you watch for the dynamic between the brothers and it doesn’t happen, un-ticking happens! Nobody likes un-ticking.
On the otherhand, if a show only ticks your boxes every now and then, you understandably want more of those box-ticking times, so you’re all for change when it makes that happen more often. None of those feelings are incorrect or bad or wrong, they’re just different. They are also sometimes mutually exclusive, or at least they seem that way when you’re very passionate about getting your own individual boxes ticked (and we all pretty much are). Wanting change isn’t wrong. Not wanting change isn’t wrong. Change in and of itself isn’t always good or always bad, even in real life. Sometimes it’s healthy, sometimes it’s regression or dysfunction or avoidance. In fiction, even that consideration isn’t relevant. There’s no right or wrong, there’s only what ticks your boxes. So all those invectives hurled around of wise up or grow up or shut up make no sense.
I’m well aware I have my own boxes that want ticking, and anyone who’s going to review the show should probably do some soul searching if they aren’t aware that they have them too. We all do, or we wouldn’t be fans. It’s a lot easier to understand someone else’s box-tick-driven emotions (and not lash out) if you’re not defensive about your own. I started watching Supernatural when the show was all about Sam and Dean Winchester. That unique relationship and the chemistry between Jared and Jensen hooked me on the show and has kept me watching for 14 years. I don’t want it to change; it doesn’t feel like Supernatural to me when it’s not about Sam and Dean working together to save the world.
That said, there are other characters who I’ve come to love and who enrich the narrative and deepen my understanding of Sam and Dean as Kripke intended, especially Cas and Jack (and Rowena because look, she just ticks my boxes, okay?). In a practical sense, I’m also well aware that there are real life realities that sometimes don’t line up with my desire for fiction that ticks my boxes. A writer gets a cast of characters to play with for an episode, and actors who are only available for X days, and you do what you can with the chess board within those parameters. So I’m not going to judge an episode solely on whether or not Sam and Dean had any interaction, but I’m also well aware that I didn’t feel as satisfied as I do when I get to see the Winchesters hunting together like they have for fourteen seasons. Your mileage may vary!
So congrats to Richard Speight Jr. on another well-directed episode and to writer Steve Yockey for some priceless scenes, and to the best cast ever for always bringing it. I did enjoy this episode, despite some lack of box-ticking, and am hoping for more of that when we return in two weeks!
Best Retro: Fujifilm Instax Mini 9
NOT REAL NEWS: FLASHBACK: Obama kicks out reporter at press briefing
Cut to Sam and Charlie, sitting in a truck and looking bored to death.
These are the edits that Speight is excellent at, the juxtaposition and Jared Padalecki and Felicia Day’s acting skills making just that little bit hilarious. It was the first time I laughed out loud during this episode but not the last.
Honestly, the humor was the best thing about this episode. All the actors are more than capable of comedy, and Yockey and Speight together infused little moments throughout the episode that kept making me laugh.
A little thing, but a reminder that Dean is used to hunting with Sam and misses that familiarity (and I miss it too). Ackles is so good at those small nonverbal gestures.
Dean concocts a plan to get romance-novel-fan Harper (well played by Maddie Phillips) to see Jack as a romantic hero, but Dean gets more than he bargained for as Jack responds to Dean’s “back off, kid” with “No you back off – old man!”
Gotta say, I agree.
Meanwhile, STILL in the truck, Charlie tells Sam she wants out of hunting. She hates it, only did it because she had no other choice. She tells him this is her last case, that she plans to get away from both monsters and people and live on a mountaintop somewhere.
I laughed out loud again. Alex Calvert has a real flair for comedy, as does Speight for directing it. Their phone call gets interrupted when Dean gets attacked, and Jack reappears from the bathroom. More awkwardness ensues, then Dean comes bursting in the door followed by a Riverdale-esque zombie (also Harper’s ex-boyfriend).
I liked that scene, and that was a typical Dean thing to say. Dean smashes him with a chair, but zombie dude just turns and leaves, clearly more focused on Harper and Jack than Dean.
There’s a search by flashlight scene and a tiny discussion of how a brass nail dipped in sugar water will kill the fly-man, but they don’t have that, so they’ll have to “get creative.” What?? Getting creative turns out to be stabbing and then shooting the fly-man, which seems way too easy. What’s the point of lore if you can just blow something away with bullets?
This is the scene that Jared talked about at a convention recently. He has a thing about spit and can’t stand being spit on, so he had to have a stand in do some of this scene for him. Can’t say I blame him – it was pretty disgusting!
I’m not sure how I feel about that, because I don’t think she should stay if it’s not what SHE wants. I think the Show has decided that it should bring back some of the popular characters it killed off because it wants to make Supernatural more of an ensemble show, and that worries me. That’s not the show I particularly want to watch, no matter how much I love Felicia Day or Jim Beaver or DJ Qualls or whoever.
It’s true. Dean gives in, promises that when Sam gets back, they’ll talk about some hunts.
So that’s where we end. I was hoping for an ending scene that wrapped up the two story lines and brought their messages – and the brothers — back together, so I was a bit disappointed. I’m not averse to Sam and Dean spending time with other characters, since that’s part of how we get to know them better, as Eric Kripke explained early on in one of our first conversations with him. But Kripke also wrote the Winchesters as each other’s hunting partners who always have each other’s backs – that’s the show I fell in love with, and that’s the dynamic that has kept me watching. Will they sometimes hunt with someone else? Sure. But when that happens, it doesn’t feel as much like Supernatural to me. I miss the dynamic that hooked me on the show and keeps me watching.