The fame machine is a distinctly American invention. In what other country is it wired into people’s heads from the moment they can coherently string together five words that they, too, can be a star if they work hard enough and dream big enough? Here, “fame” doesn’t merely suggest flashy movie-star celebrity; it’s a status you can attain in any industry, so long as you climb to its upper ranks. Fame is a bedfellow of the newer, more modern American dream, which promises not only contentment, but success, as a reward for ambition, ravaging the lifestyles of millions of people in the process. It’s getting harder to be happy with what one has, and even more difficult to stop destroying ourselves — either with contempt for others or regret for what we perceive as imperfection — in striving for more. America might not have a monarchy, but that doesn’t mean most of us won’t try to bow at fame’s feet at some point. Each trade has its kings and queens, its princes and princesses.

When news broke of actress Hayden Panettiere’s death at the age of 36 late last week, the immediate aftermath felt like watching the fame machine go on the fritz, rumbling and sputtering before outpouring a swath of both genuine grief and rubbernecking greed. Those who grew up watching Panettiere light up screens both big and small were devastated. Others — maybe even a subset of the same people — jumped to alarmism and misinformation. After an extended hiatus from acting, Panettiere was returning to work and primed for an even bigger comeback. Earlier this summer, she detailed her struggles with postpartum depression, abuse, child stardom, addiction and recovery in her memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning.” Many assumed her death was a result of any one of these. (First responders found Panettiere in cardiac arrest, but no exact cause of death is known at the time of writing.) 

Within hours, conspiracies about Panettiere being killed for speaking out about Hollywood appeared online. A TikTok search for her name brings up ghoulish videos with thousands of views: “Last video of Hayden Panettiere alive”; “Nobody realized Hayden made three unusual moves before her death.” CBS News posted audio of the 911 response call to their TikTok page just this morning. It’s as if, in the untimely death of a famous person — especially a former child star — particles of their fame dissipate into the air, leaving the desperate and discontent to try to snatch a piece of their own before it dissolves completely.

Some of Panettiere’s most notable roles point back to this phenomenon, with her TV arcs in series like “Heroes” and “Nashville,” at their cores, tracking the effects of the whole world watching and depending on you. But it’s her 2005 Disney film, “Ice Princess” — one of my first experiences with Panettiere’s work — that’s most illustrative of both fame’s pitfalls and the culture that cosigns them in the name of success. In the movie, Panettiere plays Gen Harwood, an archetypal most-popular-girl-in-school and less-than-standard teenage ice-skating prodigy. Though her form and marks in the sport are good, real success is just out of Gen’s reach. That is, until physics geek Casey Carlyle (Michelle Trachtenberg, another child star gone far too soon) begins studying the science of Gen’s skating in hopes of scoring a college scholarship. 

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Casey and Gen’s journey from competitors to confidantes is the film’s familiar emotional center, but tucked into an unfamiliar narrative. Beneath its Disney dialogue and some smoothed-over depictions of the harsher realities of competitive sports, “Ice Princess” boasts winning messages about the pressures put on young people to achieve greatness at an age when they’re too young to define personal success. That the film is led by two young women who accomplished such greatness in their childhood and teenage years at the risk of their privacy and potentially their well-being is a tragically meta asterisk that will now hang over the movie forever.

But that doesn’t mean “Ice Princess” doesn’t still come loaded with hope and pertinent themes of personal choice, active listening, and cheering young people on in whatever they choose to do (within reason). Considered alongside its stars’ tragically brief lives, “Ice Princess” conveys the critical need to give teenagers both stalwart encouragement and the tools to speak up when they need help. And while the movie’s legacy looks a little more macabre now, Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s glimmering performances are enough to push through the darkness.

Casey and Gen are, for a Disney movie, as different as they come. Casey lives with her mother, Joan (Joan Cusack), in a cozy, rural house outside of town, where Casey skates for fun on the frozen pond in their backyard. Gen is your typical blonde suburbanite who wishes she could spend her Saturday nights at parties or with her friends, instead of in intensive training on the ice, coached by her mother, Tina (Kim Cattrall). Gen and Casey aren’t enemies, but they’re not exactly friends, either. But when Casey’s science teacher encourages her to apply for a college scholarship that could change her entire life — and make the project she submits as part of her application personal — Casey’s affection for ice skating becomes a thorn in Gen and Tina’s side.

The two girls are thrown together by their mutual commitment to their passions, science and skating. What Gen and Casey want is to enjoy these things for the personal thrills they offer. Fame or excellence in either field seems to be the desire of their parents and other adult figures in their lives. “People wait their whole life to find their calling,” Casey’s teacher tells her about the scholarship, asserting that a natural fluency in science means it must be her destiny. These sentiments are reflected by Joan, who desperately wants more for her daughter than she’s been able to provide on her own teacher’s salary.

Tina, on the other hand, gets to the point with candor. “You’re not like other girls,” Tina tells Gen when her daughter asks why she can’t take a half-hour break from training to be with her boyfriend. “Winners make sacrifices.” For Gen, those sacrifices come at the expense of joy. Gen knows the exact measurements of her salad order and is strictly forbidden from eating any bread. Her practice doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. And attending a high school party is entirely out of the question. There is something genuinely quite heartbreaking about watching Panettiere, a young woman just coming to understand Hollywood industry standards, repeat the sickly refrains of a similarly demanding profession. When Gen orders cheese (in a strict one-quarter cup measurement) for her salad one afternoon, her friends poke fun at her. “It’s Saturday,” she replies, “I can pig out if I want to.”

With its focused screenplay, “Ice Princess” quickly cultivates an atmosphere that’s sympathetic to Gen and Casey. The film frames their lapses in rigor as the joys of being a teenager, rather than imperfections — or worse, weakness in the pursuit of glory. No 16-year-old should be so strictly confined to a routine that prevents them from actually living their life.

But that’s not the message that America is selling. The same tracks to success still exist for young people gifted in sports or science. But fame as a general concept also seems much more attainable than it did 21 years ago. Teenagers want to grow up to be influencers or TikTokers, spending a significant portion of their youth creating content about life instead of actually living it.

It’s a lifestyle not entirely dissimilar to the rigorous training of an ice-skating prodigy, putting in the work at all hours to hone their skill. But it does strike me as odd that, in the aftermath of Panettiere’s death, so much of the response was about the lack of protections offered to child stars in the film and television industries, and not the rapidly booming content creation field. How ironic that social media is the new breeding ground for the kind of toxicity that the people mining Panettiere’s death for views purport to abhor.

That dissonance is a big part of why “Ice Princess” holds up today. One could even argue that it’s now an even more critical part of Panettiere and Trachtenberg’s legacies. The film is no longer just a tender-hearted story of fame and all its drawbacks, but also a look at two women who bravely wrestled with those flaws, making a major impact in the short time they were here. When they’re on screen, Panettiere and Trachtenberg shine through all the Disney conventions, their characters pointing back to their real selves. 

Each one has her singular presence — Trachtenberg plucky and inspiring; Panettiere charming and bold — but together, they’re beautiful complements. Panettiere’s grounded presence helps untether the film from its somewhat corny conceit, giving it authentic complexity. She deviates from the one-note mean girl role, supplying Gen with dimensionality and kindness that characters like these were rarely afforded. That Gen’s growing discontent with skating is so closely linked to Panettiere’s real-life trajectory — trying to figure out where she fits in a ruthless industry — is a sour cherry on top: unexpected, but worth embracing. Though the importance of “Ice Princess” is obscured by histrionic high school drama and feel-good fluff, it remains a vital work for teaching parents and kids of all ages that success is what you make of it. And none of that would be possible without its two forever-shining stars.

The post “Ice Princess” quietly defined Hayden Panettiere’s whole career appeared first on Salon.com.

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Beneath the shadows of indigo-streaked clouds, a young woman strolls through a fog-covered city, stopping at the base of a skyscraper. She looks up, eyes following every square inch of the structure until the point where it juts past the clouds and into the dark atmosphere above, beyond where she can see. She is the princess, and this is the castle she’ll be locked in, an indomitable beast of a citadel fittingly titled the Tower Hotel. 

“How hokey,” you might say, “a modern princess trapped in a luxury high-rise.” But really, everything in “Her Private Hell” is contrivance. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn — “NWR,” as he’s taken to branding himself — isn’t exactly known for his subtlety. His previous feature, 2016’s love-it-or-hate-it loony toon “The Neon Demon,” was a modeling industry semi-satire that featured beauties quite literally gobbling up their ingenue competition. It’s really no surprise that his first film in 10 years would arrive with its thematic commentary just as legible.

But that’s where the fun begins. Once the viewer understands where Refn is headed, they can submit themselves to his grotesque neon visions. His appeal as a filmmaker lies in his stylistic flair; the joy comes from watching him marry the aesthetically manicured with the ideologically bizarre. Whether it’s a union of love or force is another matter. NWR’s high concepts and their abrasive execution don’t always coalesce. But when they do, it’s like watching a magic trick play out before your eyes, leaving you so stunned you’re stammering, unable to utter even a single “How?”

“Her Private Hell” is Refn’s greatest trick yet: A beguiling fairy tale for a lost lamb named Elle (Sophie Thatcher). In this story, Elle is the archetypal royalty figure, thrust through a kaleidoscope of Refn’s signature bright pinks and blues and spit back into the tower where she passes her days, waiting for her savior to arrive. But as she greets her fate and rides the elevator to her penthouse prison, Elle strolls past Hunter (Kristine Froseth), a real-life Sleeping Beauty, napping on the lush chairs in the hallway outside. Elle and Hunter are due to shoot a movie together, which Elle’s father, the filmmaker Johnny Thunders (Dougray Scott), will produce. “The airline lost my luggage because of the Mist,” Hunter tells Elle. Ugh. Of course. The Mist seems to be screwing up everything these days.

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In the extraordinary abstraction that follows, Thatcher finds her ideal role as one of NWR’s stilted avatars, gussied up in couture and spouting riddles. Her energy rises and falls alongside the mysterious mist, which has engulfed the city and brought whispers of a mysterious ancient entity lurking in its haze. Thatcher performs as if this was the part she was born for, and it very well may be. 

Refn’s cold, theoretical violence and Thatcher’s knack for affected, high-glamor drama are a match made in DayGlo heaven. Her work is unlike anything I’ve seen this year, a ruthless and surprising turn from someone who’s struggled to find the right type of script for her unique style and physicality. If there is a God, somewhere amid all this mist, “Her Private Hell” will be Thatcher’s entrée to a new era of hyper-ostentatious, Elizabethan — Taylor, that is — cinematic elegance, a large void in the once-plentiful pool of subgenres that only she can fill.

Thatcher has been searching for her niche for a moment, but the delay hasn’t been for lack of trying. Since her breakthrough in Showtime’s “Yellowjackets” in 2021 — where she plays the troubled teenager Natalie, fighting for survival in the Canadian wilderness alongside her high school soccer teammates after their plane crash-lands — Thatcher’s had more than a few substantive roles. In 2024’s “Heretic,” she played a Mormon missionary lured into a violent theological maze by a wicked Hugh Grant. And in 2025’s “Companion,” Thatcher scored a decent turn as a sex robot with her programming on the fritz after she’s implicated in a murder plot. If those films sound preposterous, it’s because they are. “Heretic” was underbaked and half-thought, while “Companion” tried to create big laughs and bigger action from minuscule ideas. Thatcher, though, was far and away the best part of both films, bringing a striking depth to her thinly sketched characters. 

But one gets the sense that Thatcher’s worried about being pigeonholed. “Yellowjackets,” “Heretic” and “Companion” are all horror-thrillers. And Thatcher’s other film roles in 2023’s “The Boogeyman” and a bit part in the following year’s “MaXXXine” certainly don’t help Hollywood’s perception of her as a wannabe scream queen. The perennial problem with horror, even contemporary horror, is that it’s an extremely difficult genre to migrate from. But Thatcher’s talents extend past genre confines. She conjures a bewitching onscreen presence that many of her contemporaries could only dream of, pulling the viewer’s gaze with a single glare from her steely eyes or the quiver of her chin. The same grin can look menacing or jovial, depending on how Thatcher contorts the rest of her features. What’s more, there’s an ease to all of these things — a soft tenderness that counterbalances the frigidity — as if such intensity comes casually. And maybe it does.

With “Her Private Hell,” Thatcher has found an auteur who matches her refreshing self-assurance. Here, Refn lets it all go and indulges in his every artistic impulse, drenching a Brian De Palma-inspired deception in neon (and bringing in De Palma’s longtime collaborator, Pino Donaggio, for a resplendent score better than anything you’ve heard this decade). Thatcher isn’t so different from De Palma’s muses either. The naive exuberance of Nancy Allen, the innate sex appeal of Melanie Griffith and Michelle Pfeiffer, the informal immorality of Amy Irving; Thatcher has it all, rolled into one captivating package. When Elle and Hunter witness the brutal murder of a neighbor across the way — presumably by the mist’s fabled entity, The Leatherman — Refn completes the thread that ties his violent vapidity, where pretty girls do ugly things, to De Palma’s voyeuristic dreaminess. If you’re a fan of film and all the places it can take you, you can’t do much better than this. 

That is until Thatcher ratchets up the eerie tension tenfold while Refn builds his gorgeous fantasy around her. When Elle’s father unexpectedly departs, leaving her to finish shooting her movie in the care of her not-so-wicked stepmother, Dominique (Havana Rose Liu), the pair’s psychosexual strain further complicates matters. Before Dominique married Elle’s father, the two were the best of friends. As strange as it is, their dynamic seems to alter everything around them, as if their mutual destiny were written in the stars — not that anyone can see the stars with all this mist, that is.

For a director who’s staked a name on films and television shows that are narratively impenetrable, “Her Private Hell” may feel like a big ask for some viewers. And I get that, I do. The movie sways almost imperceptibly between Elle’s quest for the truth and the haunting story of Private K (Charles Melton), a soldier who lost everything to the mist and its monstrous entity the last time it immersed the city. It can occasionally feel as if Refn is playing a game with you, softly whispering if you’re still there. But though some have complained about what they call “a total lack of plot,” I simply must object, and not just on behalf of Thatcher, whose work is worth seeking out even if you don’t jive with Refn’s aesthetic obsessions. 

There is so much to admire with “Her Private Hell” — too much for just one go-round. It’s not only gripping, but extremely intricate if you’re brave enough to get on its level. Two women witness the strange murder of a neighbor and begin to believe that something could be lurking in the mist that’s enveloped the Earth. When they start shooting a movie together, they begin to understand their connection to this ancient evil, and their place in a cyclical inferno wrought by absent parents and bad weather. They soon understand that to be heartbroken is to be damned to know the exquisite pain of being alive. This film is not merely glittering debris, as some have posited, nor is it style over substance; it’s a campfire story told by Thatcher’s unearthly orator.

As the night grows black and the last embers start to dull, “Her Private Hell” sends you off to bed wondering if it could all be true. Thatcher’s warbly voice hangs in the air; tales of the Leatherman and lost daughters spinning around your brain as you try to fall asleep. “None of this is real,” you tell yourself, turning off your brain for a good night’s rest. But just then, a piercing pink light appears outside, and a low, opaque mist begins to creep through the seams of your tent. As it turns out, the fantastical has much more grounding in reality than we ever want to imagine.

The post “Her Private Hell” belongs to Sophie Thatcher appeared first on Salon.com.

From a fan perspective, seeing the Knicks at Madison Square Garden, attending the US Open and sipping on Honey Deuces, and getting a seat to Olivia Rodrigo’s Unraveled Tour and sing-screaming to “Stupid Song” couldn’t be more different. But they do have one thing in common: They’re all expensive. 

Attending a live event has become a luxury purchase. Not that long ago in 2019, the average price of a concert ticket was $92. Maybe your seats weren’t great, but you could afford to be in the room. Now the average price has risen to around $133 for face value, and you’re likely spending way more to see the biggest names in music and sports. And thanks to Live Nation’s grip on the music and sports ticketing industry, ever-increasing service fees, and features like dynamic pricing and a ruthless secondary resale market, it certainly feels like we’re not seeing any relief from these sky-high costs anytime soon. 

For those who, say, can’t afford a $1,845 nosebleed ticket to see the Nova Knicks or a $2,000 Olivia Rodrigo resale seat, that means watching at home, or, if something isn’t eventually streamed, just missing out entirely. 

Looking at a seating map and seeing exactly how much ticket prices are changes your perception of the people lucky enough to attend. Like, what kind of person is spending that much money to sit in the very last row? How do they move through this universe with that much money to spend on bad seats? Is everyone secretly rich? Is this just a matter of fiscal irresponsibility? What is going on????

While Vox cannot speak to how everyone in attendance is paying for their tickets, we did talk to one person who was willing to share.

Enter: Craig, a 44-year-old living in the Bay Area, who makes roughly $180,000 per year. Craig spent more than $15,000 seeing Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour six times. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I want to know, are you a secret heiress? A billionaire oligarch? How does one afford to see Beyoncé six times? 

No, I’m not an heiress. I’m not unfortunately a billionaire — well, no, billionaires are bad, so don’t quote me on that. But it’s funny, one of the first things that comes to mind is my fandom for so many artists is expansive, but also I just spend money on certain things and not other things. My mom’s big motto in life was, “We’re making memories.” And so for me, I’m never going to regret going to Beyoncé six times. I’m going to regret only seeing her Renaissance tour twice.

One of my big regrets is not going to the Renaissance World Tour. 

I realized a lot of it is — it’s the only place where you can really have this communal experience with people that are in your same delusional mindset. With Cowboy Carter, I was at the very first show in LA, and then I had planned to go to three shows. But then it just became this thing that got into my soul and was like, “I need to keep going.” 

I don’t mind putting this into print or whatever, but I’m an addict, an alcoholic who’s been in recovery for decades, and so it’s easy for me to get hooked on things, but this is such a pure, very expensive way to have joy.

What was it about Cowboy Carter that compelled you to keep going? Was it because you knew Renaissance was amazing? Was it because you saw the movie?

Yeah, I saw the movie four times, but I just kind of knew. And my big three are Björk, Fiona Apple, and Beyoncé. And so Björk is in Iceland most of the time, thank God. Fiona Apple as much as —

Wait, wait, thank God because of your wallet?

Yes.

And Fiona Apple, I’ve seen her many times, but she just doesn’t tour. As much as I’d love her to, she just doesn’t. And I will see Robyn three times this year. I’ve seen Carly Rae Jepsen as many times as I can. But with Beyoncé, it’s like I know there’s a limited amount of how much she’s going to be doing what she’s doing. And with Act III at some point coming up, there’s a real push that I need to get as much as I can. And it sounds greedy, but I don’t feel bad taking up a ticket or space, when I enjoy it as much as I do. 

Take me through Cowboy Carter. You said you were going to initially see it three times.

Right.

You ended up seeing it how many times? Six?

I saw it six times.

Take me through that mentality — from three, how’d that balloon six?

I knew that I was going to see the first three shows. I had planned with a boyfriend who’s now an ex that was part of this whole process. I was going to go to the first show, the second show, and the third show, and then I was going to be done. But I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn’t probably done. And it’s so funny because my first outfit was pretty homegrown, a just-barely-put-together cowboy hat that I bought at the show. And then by the time I was at the fifth and the sixth show, I had a custom-made gold outfit.

It became this thing where I can’t quite explain how I ended up going to six shows other than it was this snowball rolling downhill.

What kind of tickets did you have? Were they all the same? 

I was in the section right by the catwalk. So it was like, Oh shit, I have to go do this again in the same spot. What I would’ve done differently is I would’ve seen it from way up above. I would’ve seen it from cheaper seats.

What was your more expensive ticket? 

I mean, honestly, my most expensive ticket was the last show and I paid $2,200. And at that point, it had built so much that there was no way I wasn’t going to not be where I wanted to be. It just was like, “Nope, this is happening.”

Tell me about that. You have amazing tickets. You’re up close… 

The last show, I was alone in Club Ho-Down. The amount of friends that I made and the amount of celebrities that I saw — to be in that environment with people that are on your same level and people are screaming and crying and know exactly what’s going to happen. And then when Shaboozey comes out or Jay-Z comes out or Destiny’s Child comes out — I’m getting chills just thinking about it. I can’t explain how I led myself to going to six, but once you’ve got $8,000 on your credit card, what is $12,000?

I — well, $4000 more? 

I know. 

Did you buy them all at one time or was it after you saw the first two?

I had planned the first three and then I had a friend who I went to New York with and we talked ourselves into going to New York. And then in the back of my mind I was like, “I have to go to the last two shows.”

I don’t regret it. I honestly probably will go to eight for Act III. But I will also be more strategic and I will get a seat that is a lot cheaper for a couple of shows. 

Now I’m going to ask you about the painful stuff. So you said if you’re already $8,000 down, what’s $12,000. But did you plan for it? Can you talk me through the financial planning of this?

There wasn’t really any. The breakup that I had happened after my New York show. And so I think my delusional sort of mania kicked in and I was like, “Fuck it, I’m going to spend $800 on an outfit that’s custom-made.” I’m going to go to both shows at the end and just — it got me through a really tough summer, and it was something that I don’t regret.

How does that work on a credit card? You said that you recently paid it off, right? Is that two years later?

It’s a year later. I live in San Francisco. I have a pretty good job, but also I work in education, and I’ve worked in education my whole life. So it was a lot of my interest, I paid a lot of fees, I’m sure, it takes so long to pay it off, and I was adding to it the whole year. I am not good with money. I wish I were. But again, I don’t have aspirations to own property yet, and I don’t have children.

Beyoncé is your big expense of the last couple years. 

Yeah, pretty much.

And again, I feel embarrassed about that a little bit because I have friends where one spouse, their entire salary goes to childcare. And I’m like, oh, that sounds not fun.

But think of it this way: that’s so much Beyoncé that you could be experiencing instead of having a kid.

Yeah. 

So Act III is rumored. Would you do it again?

Oh, absolutely. Like I said, I’m going to possibly go to, I think, between five and eight shows depending on. And one of my work friends, we talk about what’s happening in the world and we kind of decided that 2026 is Jay-Z’s year.

He has his shows. He has a show on her birthday. So I’m hoping that means the album doesn’t come out until 2027, which means the tour would be 2028, which means I have enough time to save, enough time to put some money away and be a little bit more strategic.

Do you have a limit of how much you’re willing to spend? 

On Beyoncé? I think the gay math, the boy math, that I do in my head is if I see it in chunks, it’s not as bad. The first time I looked at the whole thing was yesterday, and I looked at hotels and flights, merch, and tickets. But if I see it in little bits, I’m like, “Well, that’s not that much.” And I don’t think about how it adds up.

If Beyonce was like, “Oh, here’s my last show.” Is there a limit?

Anything up to $5,000 probably if it was a super important show or last show and I had the opportunity to do that. My parents have seen a lot of shows. That’s something sort of that I had grown up with — going to see artists.

And the real problem is Beyoncé has set this financial bar that now I almost feel like I could spend that kind of money on anyone. The fact that I’m seeing Robin in LA for $300, I’m like, “Oh my God, of course I’m going to go to three shows that week.”

Can I ask you, when was the first time you saw Beyoncé?

I mean, this is embarrassing to admit, but it was Renaissance. 

Oh my gosh. 

I know. And one of my big regrets is not going to see her earlier. 

It was 2016, and I just was like, “I can’t afford $1,000.” It’s ridiculous to say that now. And I’ve always been a fan. I had mix tapes in the ’90s with “Say My Name” and all the Destiny’s Child songs, and I’ve always been a fan of hers, but it really kicked into gear at self-titled or Lemonade. And that makes me sound like a fake fan, but that’s not true. It’s just seeing her live, it really brought it to a new level.

I was going to tell you that I saw her when she was touring that album —  the “Love on Top” album…

4.

4. I saw her at Barclays and it was only, I want to say, $200 for the lower bowl right off the floor. It’s obviously a lot more now. 

I honestly don’t know how some people afford it. I know some people save and save and save to go to one show and they don’t have a credit card or they don’t want to put things on a credit card. I know how privileged I am to have the ability to put something on a credit card, pay it off eventually — I live in the Bay Area and have a job that’s a pretty good job, blah, blah, blah.

@angelbuckens

We made it !!! Hey Chicago !! Cow boy Carter !!! #beyhive #beyonce #cowboycarter #chicago #cowboycarterbeyonce #tickets

♬ original sound – VicBlends

For a normie, what you spend on Beyoncé is mind-blowing, but I’m sure there are people that you met at Cowboy Carter that may have spent a lot more than you, right?

Oh, yeah. There was some video that popped up, I think it was from Renaissance, but it was like, “This is my 26th show.” And Beyoncé read the sign and stepped back a bit. I don’t remember what the exact number was [it was 35]. When I was in the pit at the very last show, it wasn’t abnormal to be where I was, and be like, “I’ve seen her six times.”

So when it comes to the most serious Beyhivers, some may consider you a casual fan?

Yeah. I mean, I’m in it, but I also feel like I’m a person that always goes to a lot of shows, and this is a little bit of a light year for me just because no one huge is touring for me, but she’s coming.

Hayden Panettiere, the former child actor who became a household name as an indestructible cheerleader on “Heroes” before starring as a troubled country singer on “Nashville,” has died. She was 36.

Panettiere’s representative confirmed her death to ABC News on Sunday. A cause and other details surrounding her death were not immediately disclosed.

Born Aug. 21, 1989, in Palisades, New York, Panettiere began appearing in commercials before her first birthday. She went on to roles in “One Life to Live,” “Guiding Light,” “A Bug’s Life,” “Remember the Titans” and “Ice Princess.”

Her breakout role came in 2006 as Claire Bennet, a high school cheerleader with regenerative powers, on NBC’s “Heroes.” The character inspired the show’s signature slogan: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”

Panettiere later starred opposite Connie Britton as ambitious country singer Juliette Barnes on the ABC and CMT drama “Nashville.” The six-season role showcased her acting and singing abilities and earned her two Golden Globe nominations.

Her other credits included “Bring It On: All or Nothing” and the “Scream” franchise. Her return as Kirby Reed in 2023’s “Scream VI” marked her first major screen role after a long acting hiatus.

Panettiere spoke candidly about her experiences with addiction, an abusive relationship and postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter, Kaya, in 2014. Her younger brother, actor Jansen Panettiere, died unexpectedly at 28 in 2023.

In May, she released “This Is Me: A Reckoning,” a memoir about child stardom, motherhood, addiction and recovery. She also publicly came out as bisexual while promoting the book. She was also battling back from a severe lower back injury that left her almost paralyzed last year.

Panettiere is survived by her 11-year-old daughter and her parents, Lesley Vogel and Skip Panettiere. She died just five days before her 37th birthday.

The post “Heroes,” “Scream” and “Nashville” actor Hayden Panettiere dies at 36 appeared first on Salon.com.

Nicholas Brendon, the actor best known for playing Xander Harris on the late-90s cult classic tv show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” has died at age 54. His family announced he passed peacefully in his sleep on March 20, 2026. In recent years, Brendon was plagued with medical health issues. By 2023, he had a heart attack and was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect and cauda equina syndrome, the latter led to several spinal surgeries.

We are heartbroken to share the passing of our brother and son, Nicholas Brendon. He passed in his sleep of natural causes. pic.twitter.com/DqVQfVL8Xk

— Nicholas Brendon (@NicholasBrendon) March 21, 2026

Brendon’s portrayal of Xander — the everyman of the Sunnydale crew, who navigated a world of vampires and slayers armed only with wit, loyalty, and heart — earned him a devoted following and a lasting place in television history.

Costars quickly paid tribute on social media. Sarah Michelle Gellar, who played Buffy, wrote a heartfelt post invoking one of Xander’s comforting lines, a nod to the actor’s warmth both on and off screen. Alyson Hannigan, who portrayed Willow, shared: “My Sweet Nicky, thank you for years of laughter, love and Dodgers … I love you.” David Boreanaz, Buffy’s vampire love interest Angel, praised Brendon’s authenticity and spirit, emphasizing the depth of their personal friendship beyond the show.

Just last year, the “Buffy” cast and fans said goodbye to Michelle Tractenberg, Buffy’s younger sister “Dawn” to many fans.

Fans also expressed grief online, remembering Xander as the heart of the group, a character whose vulnerability and humor made him relatable in a world of supernatural extremes. Many reflected on Brendon’s candidness about his personal struggles, celebrating his humanity alongside his talent.

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Though Brendon faced challenges in his life and career, his work on Buffy remains a testament to his ability to connect with audiences through humor, loyalty, and emotional honesty. Xander Harris may have been the “normal” one in a cast of extraordinary characters, but Brendon’s performance ensured he was unforgettable — both to fans and to the colleagues who mourn his passing.

The post Nicholas Brendon, “Xander Harris” of “Buffy,” dies at 54 appeared first on Salon.com.

Germany’s political parties have converged on an unusual point of agreement: A law penalizing citizens for insulting politicians needs to change, following controversial investigations of people who mocked Chancellor Friedrich Merz as “Pinocchio” and “Lying Fritz.”

But while politicians across the spectrum agree the law needs fixing — they just can’t agree how, or when, to change it, according to a POLITICO survey of the lawmakers responsible for the issue from each of the parties represented in the Bundestag. 

“We take seriously the criticism that, in practice, it may have created the impression of a special legal privilege for politicians,” said Susanne Hierl, a lawmaker from Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU). “Such preferential treatment was never the intention of the legislature.”

Moritz Oppelt, the CDU justice minister of Germany’s southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg echoed the sentiment, arguing the law should serve only its original intent of protecting local politicians, who are often subject to particular vitriol.

“Top politicians can and must be able to withstand tough criticism,” he said. “It is fundamental to our democracy, and part of our understanding of democracy in Germany, that people are free to discuss political decisions at the federal and state levels and criticize them very harshly. That does not mean that insults in the political sphere should become normalized. There are, of course, limits.”

Variations of this view find consensus across Germany’s fractured political spectrum. The far-left Left Party and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party want the law abolished outright, while the CDU, Greens and center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) all support revising it. 

“Politicians like Friedrich Merz insult ordinary people in this country every day by calling them lazy or malingerers,” said Luke Hoss, a Left lawmaker, referring to the chancellor’s remarks that Germans should work more to boost economic growth. “The provision creates a special criminal offense that applies only to politicians and should be abolished.”

Tobias Peterka, an AfD lawmaker, said tough criticism comes with the job. “Anyone who voluntarily enters politics and exercises public authority must — as Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has repeatedly emphasized — tolerate harsher criticism than private citizens, not less,” he argued.

While a version of the law giving special protection to politicians, Section 188 of the criminal code, has existed since 1951, former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in 2021 strengthened the legislation as part of broader efforts to combat right-wing extremism and hate speech.

The reform came after the 2019 murder of CDU lawmaker Walter Lübcke by a far-right extremist and amid verbal and physical attacks on local politicians amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Lübcke had been an outspoken supporter of Germany’s refugee policy under Merkel.

The law applies to insults made publicly or through social media posts when they are linked to the politician’s public role and are deemed to significantly impede their work. Offenders face up to three years in prison or a fine for insulting politicians; defamation and “malicious gossip” carry stronger penalties.

But opinion has turned against the law following several recent investigations and prosecutions of regular people for insulting politicians. One man was fined for calling Merz “Lügenfritz,” or “Lying Fritz,” another for calling him “Fotzenfritz” (“pussy-hound Fritz”), a defamatory nickname coined by a satirical magazine. “Fritz” is a common nickname for Friedrich.

Andy Hüttner, a 66-year-old retiree from southwestern Germany, was investigated for writing “Pinocchio is coming” on a local police Facebook post about security measures for a planned visit by Merz.

“I thought calling Mr. Merz ‘Pinocchio’ was absolutely fitting because he promised so much and delivered so little,” Hüttner told POLITICO. “It never crossed my mind that anything could happen because of that comment.”

After the news of the investigation kicked off a media furor — and condemnation from U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers — the case was dropped.

Under German law, insulting any person (Beleidigung) can be a criminal offense, but the law for politicians makes the potential punishment for insults and defamation more severe.

But there’s growing agreement that the law attempting to provide extra protections for politicians has gone too far.

CDU lawmaker Hierl said local politicians still need protection. “We will therefore carefully review both the wording of Section 188 and the way it is applied,” she said.

The opposition Greens agree that the law should focus on protecting local politicians.

“Repealing Section 188 of the German Criminal Code would send the wrong signal,” Lena Gumnior, one of the party’s lawmakers, wrote in a statement. “I could, however, envision reforming Section 188 so that it applies only to elected officeholders at the municipal level.”

SPD Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig said in June that politicians must be able to bear more criticism than regular citizens, broadly echoing the position of the Greens and CDU. In June, Germany’s state justice ministers called for the law to be narrowed so that it applies to municipal officeholders. 

For the moment, however, neither Merz’s governing CDU nor the opposition Greens are preparing a legislative push for after the summer recess. 

An AfD bill to abolish Section 188 was voted down by the Bundestag, and while the party has since introduced another bill, centrist parties have vowed not to work with the far right, maintaining a so-called “firewall” around the party.

The Left party has also introduced a parliamentary motion addressing Section 188, more evidence of the broad consensus around changing the law — even if mainstream politicians haven’t gotten around to it yet.

ROME — In the barns where the milk for Italy’s most famous cheese is produced, the fans have barely stopped whirring for two months. As temperatures across northern Italy push close to 40 degrees Celsius, cows stand almost motionless, tongues lolling, while automated sprinklers soak their backs.

Italy is now enduring its fourth major heat wave of an exceptionally brutal summer. The prolonged heat is piling costs on the €4 billion industry behind Parmigiano Reggiano, forcing farmers to spend heavily on cooling their animals while drought and dwindling water supplies make it harder and more expensive to grow the forage needed to feed them.

Farmers have received support from regional authorities, the EU and a producers’ consortium to help them adapt to the heat, but they say the funding falls short of the investment increasingly required.

For producers of the protected cheese, there is no possibility of escaping somewhere cooler. Under the strict rules governing Parmigiano Reggiano’s EU Protected Designation of Origin — that secures its added value on the market — the cows, their milk and the cheese must remain tied to a defined area of northern Italy. At least 75 percent of their forage must also be grown locally.

Dairy cows can begin suffering from heat stress at around 25C, depending on humidity, according to Giovanni Buonaiuto, a vet with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which defends producers’ interests. Their digestive system generates considerable heat as they break down food, while cows have relatively few sweat glands with which to disperse it. “It’s as if the cow has a radiator inside her,” Buonaiuto told POLITICO.

As temperatures rise, cows eat less and stand for longer to expose themselves to moving air. They rest and ruminate less, milk production falls and prolonged heat can also affect fertility.

Buonaiuto said milk production has fallen by about 10 percent on average during the summer, although the impact varies sharply between farms depending on their cooling systems.

Overheating herds

Federica Dall’Aglio, who raises 400 cattle on the plains near the city of Parma, said each cow was producing five to six kilograms less milk a day, a fall of roughly 20 percent, despite fans and water sprays installed to protect her herd.

The cows now spend much of their time beneath the fans and water sprays, she added, as they’re reluctant to move away from the cooling systems.

Outside the barns, farmers are reorganizing their working days around the heat too. Some now cut and collect hay at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., Buonaiuto said, before the morning heat causes the hay to crumble. By 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it can already be too hot.

Keeping the cows cool comes at a high cost.

Luca Cotti, a sixth-generation dairy farmer and president of farmers’ association Coldiretti in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, said electricity consumption in barns can double or even triple during extreme heat as cooling systems run almost continuously.

He recalled worrying about winter 20 years ago, with the weather freezing drinking water and other systems in the barn. Now investment is directed toward surviving summer.

The new normal

Extreme summer heat was once exceptional and might last a week before temperatures eased, Cotti said. Now, he said, “it’s normal.” This year, “since June, it has never let up.”

For some smaller producers with older facilities, the question is whether the investment is still worthwhile.

Dall’Aglio’s family has been investing in cooling systems for around 15 years, recently adding solar panels to help offset their growing electricity needs.

Across the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain, such technology is becoming commonplace. Around half of its dairy farms, responsible for 70 percent of its milk, have invested in advanced cooling systems, including fans, motion-sensitive water sprays and automated temperature monitoring, according to the consortium president, Nicola Bertinelli.

The remaining 30 percent of milk comes largely from farms in the cooler hills and mountains, he said.

With persistently high temperatures, insufficient rainfall and water levels in major Alpine lakes approaching historic lows, authorities in the Po River basin, which supports agriculture across northern Italy through a network of tributaries and canals, have declared a high level of drought severity.

Alfalfa, an important source of forage for the cows, is relatively resistant to drought because of its deep roots. But Dall’Aglio said her family had already been irrigating heavily to ensure a good hay crop this year.

When rivers run too low for irrigation, some farmers have to pump groundwater instead, which can make irrigation around five times more expensive because of the energy required to extract it, according to Lorenzo Catellani of farmers’ association CIA Agricoltori Emilia-Romagna.

Coldiretti is calling on politicians to treat water storage as infrastructure rather than emergency relief.

Cotti said regional and national authorities need to invest in reservoirs and other water-storage infrastructure, arguing that individual farms cannot solve the growing problem of water scarcity alone.

Paradoxically, Parmesan producers normally worry about producing too much, not too little — and had sought to curb output this year. “We always have the brake on,” Cotti said, adding that high prices mean farmers have little difficulty increasing production when needed.

Despite the strain, producers insist there is no danger of Italy running short of Parmesan.

The cheese’s strong global market gives farmers greater scope to invest than producers in more fragile agricultural sectors.

For now, those investments are keeping Parmigiano production stable, although smaller farmers with aging barns may eventually choose to close rather than spend the money needed to adapt. For now, there is little to do but wait for the temperatures to fall. “We keep going like this,” Cotti said. “We hope it ends as soon as possible.”

Back in 2007, long before the MasterClass franchise was a thing, Jane Espenson, one of television’s most respected and imaginative writers, wrote an essay/tutorial for The New Republic that breaks down the embraceable genre formula she calls the Chosen One.

It’s a catchy idea that explains why figures like Peter Parker, Luke Skywalker and Harry Potter have a lasting hold on their fans in ways that other heroes don’t.

Although each occupies a distinctly separate universe, Espenson says they all fit the same pattern. “They’re living a life, sometimes a fine one, often a troubled one, but certainly one governed by ordinary rules, when suddenly the curtain is pulled back and a whole new world, or a new set of rules of this world, is revealed,” she said. “And what’s more — and this is the important part — in that new world, they are something special.”

Once I read that simple recipe, it changed the way I thought about every kind of genre fiction, including superhero tales like HBO’s “Lanterns.”

The Green Lanterns don’t neatly fit into the Chosen One mold, you see. And that may explain why they seem to be less popular than other DC heroes.

I can imagine diehard Green Lantern fans firing up their rebuttals as they read this. After all, the very nature of how Green Lanterns obtain their superhuman abilities involves cosmically empowered rings choosing their wearers. Once the selected become official members of the Green Lantern Corps, they can wield their rings to create astronomical constructs. The top members of the Lantern Corps are only limited by their imagination.

But mainstream culture’s best-known Green Lanterns aren’t orphans or troubled. Hal Jordan and John Stewart are both military men. John is also an architect. They aren’t living drab or depressing lives when the Guardians of the Universe activate them — they’re faring pretty well, all things considered.

Hal and John also stand apart from other test pilots, Marines and field experts in ways that make them not merely suitable choices for superheroic duty but worthy of it. This, I think, is the difference between Espenson’s Chosen Ones and heroes like the Green Lantern. Hal, John and the rest must work to be worthy of their power.

 

Worthiness is a tougher bar to clear than being chosen for greatness. The Chosen Ones Espenson cites are part of a destiny ordained either by their bloodline or some greater lineage. What makes a Chosen One common in their society marks them as extraordinary once they cross the threshold into the fantastic.  

And some heroes are Chosen at random. That radioactive spider that transformed Peter Parker into Spider-Man could have bitten the class moron just as easily. The tornado that transported Dorothy Gale from dusty Kansas to vibrant Oz might have swept up the village idiot instead.

The idea that anyone can suddenly be endowed with superhuman specialness simply by being in the right place at the right time is a little like daydreaming about winning the lottery. So it’s entirely understandable if most of us aren’t into the labor aspect of the Lanterns’ audition process.

If the box office is a fair, measurable indicator of how the public feels about these superhero archetypes, guess what? Espenson’s theory still holds: Chosen One stories still rule.

Looking at a BoxOfficeMojo.com ranking of all the Marvel feature films to date, the only solo act to appear twice in the “Avengers” dominated top five is Spider-Man, by way of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

Meanwhile, the introduction of the Worthiest of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in “Captain America: The First Avenger” ranks #52 on a very long list.

About that. Two caveats, and they’re big ones, have to do with the quality of certain heroes’ movie introductions and America’s longstanding genuflection before elites.

Mainstream culture’s relatively lower esteem for the Green Lantern is absolutely related to cartoonish interpretations of his power in live-action depictions. Comic book versions of the Green Lantern toss around the power of the cosmos. When Lantern Corps members unite their rings’ powers, they can move planets. That has never been adequately portrayed in theatrical features.

In animated renditions streaming on HBO Max, the Green Lantern fares much better. Avid “Justice League” and “Justice League Unlimited” viewers recognize John Stewart as being held in equal esteem to the Big Three (i.e., Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), especially in a crisis.

In the most recent “Superman” and 2011’s “Green Lantern” starring Ryan Reynolds, the way that Guy Gardner and Reynolds’ Hal Jordan toss around cartoonish CGI bubbles or massive green mallets falls short of conveying the Lantern Corps’ two-fisted punch of willpower and vision.

Also, not all heroes neatly fit into the Chosen vs. Worthy popularity equation. Superman, Wonder Woman and Thor were born to greatness. America’s most-loved fictional titans, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, have bottomless wealth to fund their vigilante adventures, making them especially mesmerizing to an audience raised on rags-to-riches fables.

To a man and woman, they made themselves Earth’s protectors because they have the means and muscle to take on the job. And once Stark Industries and Wayne Enterprises bankroll their respective super-squads’ fortified headquarters, they attract the universe’s talent. By their nature, Earth’s Green Lanterns are a natural fit to serve the Justice League’s governing inner circle. They’re also the only leaders who answer to other bosses. (Boo.)

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But what some perceive as a negative makes the Green Lantern legend appealing to others, especially those driven to ascend through ambition and hard work.

HBO’s “Lanterns” is the first series to explore how that idea unfurls in a society that functions like our own — that is, one in which all things aren’t equal, and superheroes have a reputation for doing as much harm as good.

Maybe “Lanterns” can inspire us with its portrayal of worthiness. But it may take more than one good show to turn the tide of the Green Lantern’s reputation. Much as we respect that with great power comes great responsibility, it’s a lot dreamier to imagine what we could do with all that might if it were simply handed to us.

“Lanterns” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16 on HBO and HBO Max.

 

The post Here’s why we like some superheroes more than others appeared first on Salon.com.

Your AI Slop Bores Me is brilliant in its simplicity. There are two tabs: human and LARP as an AI. On one side you enter a request. On the other, you submit an answer. But the important thing is that there's a human on both sides of the equation. Prompts can request a response as text or image, and then whoever is roleplaying as the AI gets 150 seconds to respond.

Just like a real LLM, Your AI Slop Bores Me works on a sort of token system. Requests cost credits, and to earn credits you have to jump onto the AI side and answer some of your own. You can also just wait as you get one free request every two minutes. But, as fun as it is to drop …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Students returning to a Kentucky middle school this year learned something surprising on their first day of class: They don’t live in Kentucky.

Apparently, they live in “Venecky.”

The bizarre geography lesson appeared in student agendas distributed at Farnsley Middle School, part of Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville. A U.S. map in the planner transformed Kentucky into “Venecky,” Louisiana into “Lookoong,” Alabama into “Alotome,” Illinois into “Vitoiis” and South Carolina into “Sorth Cuanto.”

The mistakes didn’t stop at state lines. The agendas also contained a distorted periodic table, unreadable phases of the moon and other garbled educational material that parents suspect may have been created using artificial intelligence.

JCPS has not confirmed whether AI was used or identified who produced the agendas.

It took a student just one day to notice.

“Mom, did you know that we live in Venecky?” Stacey Morris recalled her son joking after school, according to Louisville’s WDRB.

Morris contacted the school about the errors. Administrators later warned teachers there were a “LOT of mistakes” on pages 19 through 36 and instructed students to tear the pages out of their planners before taking them home.

For parents, however, the problem goes beyond bad geography. Families pay a $10 annual instructional fee for the agendas.

“Someone did not look at what they were handing out to the students,” Morris told WDRB.

The mishap also comes at an awkward moment for Kentucky’s largest school district.

A nearly 500-page special examination released by Kentucky State Auditor Allison Ball in June raised broader concerns about JCPS’s management and finances. The audit found the district lacked a cohesive strategic plan, had begun spending more than it brought in despite receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal COVID relief and suffered from a workplace culture in which employees reported fear of retaliation.

The report also identified gaps in financial and budgeting knowledge among district leaders and school board members.

New Superintendent Brian Yearwood, who took over JCPS last year, has said the district is taking the findings seriously and called the audit an opportunity to strengthen the system.

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Against problems of that scale, a $10 student planner is a tiny expense. But for families already questioning how their school district is managed, an educational resource riddled with errors obvious enough for a middle schooler to catch on his first day has become another highly visible example of failed oversight.

Whether artificial intelligence created the mangled pages remains unanswered.

The students, at least, appear to have learned one useful lesson from them: Always check the source — even when the adults hand it to you.

The post Welcome to Venecky? appeared first on Salon.com.

In the dog days of summer, there’s no better place to escape the heat than inside the air-conditioned paradise of a movie theater. Perhaps you’ll even find yourself there with a romantic companion, their uncovered leg grazing against yours as you both tuck your feet in to make room for the annoying person who came in late and is now trying to find their seat in the dark. Your skin touches theirs, trading the dewy moisture of perspiration. How electric; erotic, even. For just a second, the spark between you two is so powerful that it melts away every care outside of that place and time. 

And then, your film — a romantic comedy or dramedy that seems like the perfect date movie — begins, and you’re quickly reminded that no amount of desire can remove you from the context of the world you exist in. The fantasy comes crashing down. Even the fluffy rom-coms are steeped in real life’s anxieties about the social and political, the wars and the wages. But the passion was there; it was real. Maybe the moment was even more charged by the knowledge, somewhere in the back of your head, that these unexpected, carnal joys arrive far less often when so much of our time is spent just trying to make it from one day to the next. Sex, even just the lingering thought of it, can feel like an extravagance. I’d wager that’s a big part of why this summer’s theatrical slate has been so overtly horny: Everyone is trying to figure out how sex fits into this strange modern life.

No film makes that more clear than Will Gluck’s new romantic comedy, “One Night Only,” where, brace yourself here, premarital sex has been outlawed except for one outrageous annual holiday. Think “The Purge,” but for sex — “The Urge” was right there, but whatever — and just as dystopian, though with quite a bit more charm and fewer dead bodies. In the movie, unlucky-in-love strangers Owen (Callum Turner) and Allie (Monica Barbaro) find their paths repeatedly crossing during the 12-hour sex purge window, as both of them seek partners to get it on with. We know the pair will inevitably end up together. But it’s their journey and all the bizarre autocratic municipal rules they have to dance around that make “One Night Only” a clever, peculiar and head-scratching standout from the rom-com crowd.

“One Night Only” also happens to be the discourse darling du jour, with some suggesting that its unusual fusion of genre tropes and political overtones is an insidious embrace of our backslide toward fascism. Indeed, Owen and Allie quibble less about living under a punitive abstinence edict than one might expect, and the film doesn’t have nearly as much fun with, or fury for, the civic regime as it should. 

But like this summer’s “The Invite” and “I Want Your Sex,” Gluck’s film encourages a compelling and multilayered dialogue about the role of sex and intimacy amid terrifying political fury. How can we find the joy in all of this? Is, say, one hour of fleeting sexual pleasure enough to combat the 14-some others that we spend in waking dread? The solutions won’t, ahem, come easily, but there’s really no more appropriate time to ask these questions and search for their answers than summer, when the heat makes us alternate between f*cking furiously and f*cking furious.

Curiously, “One Night Only” is more of the former than the latter. As the film’s title card tells viewers, the movie takes place three years into “the mandate,” as the characters refer to it. “It’s been . . . a lot,” the card continues. Opaque and jokey as it is, this is the only bit of tangible backstory the film provides about the average American’s response to the forbiddance of fornication. Though a few ideological asides do provide some additional color as the night goes on. Owen’s mother (Molly Ringwald) and her partner (LeVar Burton) get into a spat about the mandate’s legislation — “That’s what happens with single-issue voters!”; “No one voted for it, it was passed by Congress!” — that soon turns hot and heavy. 

It’s a silly but reasonably shrewd way to depict how many of us have landed at some level of complacency in a political atmosphere where, most of the time, we have little direct control and negligible impact over the laws that dictate our lives, no matter how oppressive. We bicker about them, but the majority of Americans aren’t in the streets protesting. As neo-fascist as the country’s become, we still live under capitalism, and the ability to regularly protest is somewhat a luxury. But, then again, so is living in America at all (at least to some extent), even when it’s awful. 

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I realize I’m probably giving Gluck and screenwriter Travis Braun too much credit when I say these are the kinds of questions they wanted viewers to ask. But I find “One Night Only” to be a far more interesting film because it doesn’t answer everything up front or take the blanket optimist’s route. These characters know that the mandate is awful, but they’ve found screwed-up ways to live with it. Anyone who says that doesn’t reflect the modern American way has their head in the sand. And frankly, a film as pleasant but ephemeral as this isn’t going to push democracy any further into the dark.

What “One Night Only” makes so apparent is that our personal pleasure is at stake in this environment. Constant federal surveillance and deeply rooted institutional corruption are simply not sexy, even if being cognizant and fearful of them absolutely is. (Caring is still hot!) And I’ve always said that there is no better place to work out thorny, complex ideas — the kind that are sometimes difficult to devote time and energy to amid the stress of our day-to-day lives — than at the movies. 

Gluck’s film arrives on the heels of a pair of sweltering summer peers that already laid quite a bit of thematic groundwork in the sex space for audiences to traverse. The stickiest of them all, Olivia Wilde’s terrific chamber dramedy, “The Invite,” just landed on VOD after steadily working its way up from limited to wide theatrical engagements — sort of like cinematic release-schedule foreplay. The film navigates ideas large and small, moving between the casual intimacies, or lack thereof, that make up long-term relationships, and the baseline human carnality that points us toward sex even when those relationships aren’t working. 

Put simply: It’s more difficult to maintain the true intimacy than it’s ever been. The prevalence of dating apps and our ability to follow someone else’s every move on social media have zapped the honeymoon period’s lifespan. Throw in demanding jobs, expensive rugs, rapidly changing social mores, the desire to start or maintain a healthy relationship with your neighbors, and the nagging feeling that everyone in the world is having sex but you, and life gets overwhelming fast. Sex shuffles to the back burner. But though the flame might be small, it remains lit. And “The Invite” attests that it’s never too late to dial up the heat, so long as we’re honest about what we want and what we need from our partners. 

“The Invite” is all about communication and open conversation. And that’s a critical strength in both relationships and in the ways we watch and digest art. That this summer has been replete with dialogues not only about our sexual neuroses and compulsions, but real, steadfast love in all its forms, is a sure sign that love and sex are on our minds more than they have been in a few decades. Much like the influx of grief-laden horror movies that followed the 2016 election, one can trace our preoccupation with intimacy back to political rot. Our government directs so much of our lives that it’s impossible to remove its influence completely. Now, we’ve moved past grieving the lost hope and have the chance to create our own using the spark of romance and physical connection.

As Gregg Araki’s playful comedy “I Want Your Sex” asserts, crafting the transient delights of the flesh into something stable and meaningful will take some trial and error, perhaps even some sacrifice. We’re living in a moment where people can easily choose to void sex from their lives or pursue it as a ritualistic part of their existence, and the space in the middle is murky and treacherous. If you have questions about sex and where it fits into your life, Araki’s ardent message is to explore them. The answers may come with regret or heartbreak, but they may also come with glorious satisfaction and unbelievable revelations. More often, the resulting discoveries will sit somewhere in between those two emotional polarities. We can’t live our lives to the extreme all the time, but we can do ourselves a favor and become better acquainted with exactly what we want and how to get it. 

That’s the glorious thing about going to the cinema: You’re bound to leave any movie with both questions and answers. Occasionally, one such question might be, “Does this movie covertly support fascism by making totalitarian sex mandates cute and manageable?” And those are queries that must be addressed because, whether we like it or not, even dystopian rom-coms might point us in the right — or even new — direction. The federal government certainly isn’t trying to orient us toward a brighter, more consistently pleasurable future. Why not take matters into our own hands? Or better yet, put those hands on someone we love and care for, even if only for a night.

The post “One Night Only” and the summer of rom-com sex talk appeared first on Salon.com.

A new Apple documentary explores the life of Aziz “Zyzz” Shavershian, who rocketed to internet fame in an age before influencers, then died at age 22 in 2011.

Avatar Aang, Heartstopper Forever, and Exit 8 are among the films deserving of your eyeballs this month.

If and when you find yourself in need of music that will meet you at the intersection of I love you more than oxygen and I hope you become a ghost in a house that I can burn to the ground and then build and burn again, Phoebe Bridgers will most certainly have something for you.

On “Lost Weekend,” Bridgers’ third full-length solo release and her first major release of original material since wrapping up her work with boygenius, the musician’s name is one of many in the stacked liner notes that include everyone from her partner Bo Burnham (who co-wrote seven of the album’s 16 tracks) and Maya Hawke (co-writer of two tracks) to Jack Antonoff (who produced the album), American Football’s Mike Kinsella, boygenius bandmates Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus and Conor Oberst, who adds harmonica to the song “I Can’t Wait” — but it’s still all her.

While standout tracks “I Can’t Wait,” “Kill Me” and “Haunted” are different in tone than the album’s main single, “Lost Boys,” that’s to be expected on an album that isn’t just about heartbreak or grief or the persistent search for joy, but all of that and more. In this one album, Bridgers not only mourns the loss of her father (who died in 2022) and the end of her highly publicized relationship with Paul Mescal, she sings of the everyday pain and pleasure that comes with just living. 

“I have no secrets, only feelings/And I know those go away/There is a difference/Between lying and deciding what not to say,” she sings on “Haunted,” and that just hits so hard, as her songs are known to do and do especially well here, regardless of what mood you need them to help you through, which is the sign of a musical success. 

The post Phoebe Bridgers has a song for every feeling appeared first on Salon.com.

Before we glimpse the opening title card for “Lanterns,” co-creators Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof and Tom King establish the stark disparity between what qualifies Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler) to wear the Green Lantern’s ring versus what’s expected of John Stewart (Aaron Pierre). As with every comic book superhero, it’s all in their origin stories.

Hal Jordan, who became Earth’s first Green Lantern decades ago, exudes the confidence and charisma of a white man whose exceptionalism has been validated by the universe. Back when Hal was still a novelty to the public, we see 10-year-old John disobeying his father’s TV ban to watch the hero’s first-ever interview on “60 Minutes.” And Hal knows how to play to his audience – especially kids like John and his brothers.

“I’m a regular person, like you,” Hal says, gazing directly through the fourth wall at the tiny people he assumes are worshipping him from afar.

“In many ways, Hal Jordan was born for the role he would eventually play,” says his interviewer in a voiceover, listing all boxes of American heroism that he checks: Hal is an Air Force veteran. A test pilot. He’s fearless.

Then John’s father gets home, takes him outside to the family’s garage and shows us, most shockingly, that fearlessness is not inborn. It’s forged.

“Lanterns,” which unfolds across two timelines, is the boldest entry so far in James Gunn’s remade DC Universe. That must be a relief for longtime DC Comics fans, given its emergence on the heels of the lukewarm critical and audience reception for “Supergirl.” But out of all the co-creators and producers’ names listed in the drama’s credits, it’s Lindelof’s that heightens our expectations, owing to his outstanding success with his 2019 reinterpretation of “Watchmen.”

Where “Watchmen” indicted America’s addiction to white supremacy, “Lanterns” skeptically spotlights the durability of our meritocracy myth.

Lindelof’s involvement, along with that of “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow” series author Tom King, signals a seriousness of intent amplified by the placing the series’ showrunner stewardship under “True Detective” and “Ozark” producer Chris Mundy.

And as Lindelof did with “Watchmen,” he and his co-creators place this fable in the universally recognizable framework of a cop drama, casting Chandler’s Hal Jordan as the grizzled veteran reluctantly training Pierre’s John Stewart to succeed him eventually.

Those familiar with this mythology know this trainee dynamic isn’t how the Green Lantern’s succession usually works. Those who trust these writers’ capabilities with using comic book properties as springboards to examine thornier issues can probably deduce that “Lanterns” is employing it for a specific reason.

Galactic power and privilege literally placed themselves on Hal’s finger simply because he answered one question correctly.  Meanwhile, John was raised knowing he must be three times as good as everyone else to get a foot in opportunity’s door, let alone a place in the front passenger seat of every vehicle Hal insists on driving. John is an ex-Marine with a reputation as one of the top snipers in the world – the best of the best. But as Hal arrogantly reminds his trainee, John won’t be ready until the ring says he is. Even then, Hal says, he doesn’t plan on giving up that piece of jewelry any time soon. And Hal taunts John about his second-class status every chance he gets.

But John knows he doesn’t have the luxury to reveal his frustrations. As his father reminds John during a venting session that occurs after Hal nonchalantly almost kills him, “They’re allowed to have tantrums. We’re not.” So it goes, even when Hal uses his ring to zip into the sky at supersonic speed from California to Rushville, Nebraska, leaving John to fly coach and rent a car to meet him there.

In Rushville —  population 1,001, says the sign on its city limits — Hal and John find a mystery that seems to be out of their jurisdiction as intergalactic law enforcers, the town’s sheriff, Kerry Kane (Kelly Macdonald), testily reminds them. But the present and possibly future Green Lanterns were summoned there for a reason best left unsaid here, and in keeping with HBO’s extensive spoiler embargo.

In Chandler and Pierre, “Lanterns” has an extraordinary pairing that sustains enough frustration, humor, passion and regret to keep us rapt through the episodes provided for review. Chandler flexes the charisma that made his “Friday Night Lights” father figure Coach Taylor such an indelible figure, while Pierre’s buttoned-down smolder slowly simmers the tension between them.

Teaming them up as a testy odd couple allows “Lanterns” to both highlight Hal’s insecurity and use the Green Lantern universe’s rules to interrogate systemic imbalances. Even when intergalactic forces take pains to make the Lantern Corps’ selection process fair, Earth’s unspoken dictates about worthiness make that impossible.

Exhibit A is Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner, who also appears in this season. Guy is probably the worst human to be granted the Green Lantern’s powers: He’s pompous, ill-mannered and insecure. But since the rings select their bearers by asking whether they’re afraid during an ambush designed to create dread, the test favors those for whom life never presents anything to fear.

By keeping the action and themes largely Earthbound and removing the interstellar glamour associated with flying supes and suits, “Lanterns” reignites our consideration of a superhero long written off in the live-action realm.  Among comic book readers, the Green Lantern is on par with his Justice League peers Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman and The Flash, each of whom has anchored culturally significant live-action films and TV shows over the last 50 years or so.

In contrast, Hal Jordan’s Green Lantern was immortalized on the big screen in 2011 by way of a laughable debacle that’s considered one of the worst career decisions Ryan Reynolds ever made. John Stewart’s legend fared better in the animated “Justice League” and “Justice League Unlimited” series, which established him as a favorite among newcomers to the franchise.

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Pierre’s Stewart holds the gravitas of that portrayal while also capturing the original intent of his character’s co-creator, Neal Adams, to have him evoke a young Sidney Poitier. While he’s a terrific scene partner with Chandler, he also shares a torrid chemistry with Poorna Jagannathan’s Zoe, one of the very few nonwhite Rushville residents who’s immediately drawn to John. Once we meet Rushville’s unofficial power broker, William Macon (Garret Dillahunt), we understand why. Dillahunt’s Macon embodies the sinister darkness lurking beneath the surface of any American small town, especially for outsiders.

But the writers don’t paint Macon as a simple villain, or anyone else as a cut-and-dried protagonist. Not John, certainly not Hal and not even the Guardian of the Universe tasked with watching them (played with a sunny headmistress’ formality by Laura Linney).

The world of “Lanterns” prefers to be bracingly honest about our false assumptions about heroism and whether the people we deem to be noble really are. One unquestionable element is its success in raising the low estimation of Green Lantern created by a particularly clumsy movie, simply by imagining possibilities in much bigger terms. That is what makes a Lantern a hero, and this adaptation one of the best of its kind in a long time.

“Lanterns” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 16 on HBO and HBO Max.

 

 

The post HBO’s “Lanterns” questions what makes a hero—and who gets to be one appeared first on Salon.com.

I like Bright Eyes. There, I said it.

That’s no small confession for someone who prides herself on listening to serious music. I’ve evolved from preteen grunge aficionado to high school punk fan to college indie rocker and finally become a somewhat omnivorous 20-something with ears for everything from noise-rock to tropicalia. As a woman who writes about music, I’ve worked extra hard to distance myself from teeny-boppers and groupies and drippy sentimentality.

This is all to say that nothing embarrasses me more than my secret love of Bright Eyes, once the drippiest act in all of indiedom. Primarily a vehicle for singer-songwriter Conor Oberst, whose new album, “Conor Oberst,” came out this week, the ever-rotating group of musicians known as Bright Eyes formed when he was only 15. Unlike most celebrities who are supposed to have “grown up in the public eye” — child actors, teenage pop stars, offspring of the rich and famous — Oberst was the rare young artist who wrote his own songs and found a sizable audience while still in high school.

Much of that audience was made up of teenage girls. A few years younger than the now 28-year-old Oberst, I fit right into that demographic, catching on to Bright Eyes around the turn of the millennium. It wasn’t his musical talent — which consisted at the time of some rudimentary guitar arrangements — that attracted me. And while I’ll concede that Oberst’s brooding, elfin good looks didn’t hurt, it was his unmediated laments on loneliness and heartbreak that won me over. I reveled in Bright Eyes’ earliest material, “A Collection of Songs Written and Recorded 1995-1997,” “Letting Off the Happiness” (1998), “Fevers and Mirrors” (2000) and a raft of singles and EPs.

Even then I recognized Oberst’s melodramatics for what they were, but couldn’t deny that they affected me. When he feebly insisted, on “Kathy With a K’s Song,” “Love is real/ It is not just in long distance commercials,” he vocalized my own desperation to believe it was true. The summer I turned 18, I sublet a sleeping loft in midtown Manhattan and his phrase “the coffin you call your apartment,” from “Something Vague,” permeated the space. The teenage Oberst, who attended a private high school just like I did, perfectly articulated the sorrow and angst that seem trivial to the adult world but feel epic to adolescents blessed with intact, financially comfortable families.

Of course, serious indie-rock fans — a group I would have liked to belong to — dismissed Oberst as a pretentious whiner, and cooler-than-thou critics at publications like Pitchfork grouped Bright Eyes among the most syrupy and hackneyed of emo bands. At first, even I joined in trashing him, so ashamed was I to admit to my male music-nerd friends that I was yet another girl who had fallen for Bright Eyes’ self-pitying histrionics.

Around the same time, Oberst must have started to feel as embarrassed by his reputation as I was. Too smart and self-aware to stagnate among mediocre acts like Dashboard Confessional, he did some serious growing up between “Fevers and Mirrors” and his 2002 breakthrough, “Lifted, or the Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ears to the Ground.” Less emotionally assaultive but just as personal as his earlier albums, “Lifted” embraced American roots music with an instrumental sophistication Bright Eyes had never even hinted at before. Songs like “Lover I Don’t Have to Love” and “Let’s Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and Be Loved)” diluted the extremes of emotion with the college-age apathy and detachment that I was also growing into. Oberst had learned how to stop being a teenage train wreck and start becoming a flawed but functional human being.

With its toned-down theatrics and newfound songwriting chops, “Lifted” launched Oberst’s career. His audience widened beyond disgruntled high schoolers, and he delved deeper into country, folk and blues, expanded his lyrical repertoire to include politics (a move that earned him premature comparisons to Bob Dylan), and even unsuccessfully experimented with electronic music on 2005’s “Digital Ash in a Digital Urn.”

But just when it became socially acceptable to like Bright Eyes, I found myself falling out of love with him. Though Oberst’s intimate lyrics couldn’t have been more nuanced, surprising and uncannily accurate, his political stuff was painfully literal and disappointingly simplistic. His most famous protest song, “When the President Talks to God,” sounds more childish than even his most narcissistic teenage material. “Does he ask to rape our women’s rights and send poor farm kids off to die? … Does he ever smell his own bullshit, when the president talks to God? I doubt it,” Oberst rasps, in an obvious and futile attempt to evoke Dylan, who would surely shudder at such graceless lyrics. By the time “Cassadaga,” another foray into lefty dogma, came out last year, I could barely bring myself to listen to it.

As the first widely distributed album he has recorded under his own name, “Conor Oberst” must be yet another stab at a new beginning. I had hoped it would herald a return to introspection — a close-up portrait of the artist post-“Lifted.” Though Oberst thankfully obscures or dispenses with the grating political appeals, the persona he replaces them with is almost as annoying.

Oberst’s rootsy style has begun to bleed into his lyrics, an affectation that doesn’t work for someone who wrote an entire song (“Loose Leaves”) about prep-school summer vacation. His compositions are about what they’ve always been about (isolation, memory, love and lack thereof, fear of death), only Oberst isn’t singing in his own voice anymore — he’s weaving together scraps of Bob Dylan and Neil Young and Johnny Cash. He’s trying to sound as old as the hills when the main virtue of his lyrics has always been their youthfulness.

It isn’t that I always crave confessional music. Some of my favorite artists, such as David Bowie, have made entire careers on assuming and casting off personas. Bowie’s kind of artifice works, though, because he’s aware of it, and his talents have more to do with character creation than introspection. And at a moment when the indie buzz band of the year, Vampire Weekend, is both exploiting its upper-crust image and disguising it under layers of filched African pop, it’s easy to see why Oberst may be ambivalent about his own, privileged voice. But nothing reeks of entitlement like the unearned authenticity he attempts to assume in lines like, “And it’s such a long way back/ To all the fun I had/ When nothing ever seemed to bother me/ But what can you do?/ Sleep ‘neath the stars and toil in the sun” and “There’s nothing the road cannot heal.”

Oberst is so determined to show us that he’s no longer a self-pitying teenager that he has replaced all semblance of self with the image of a smooth-talking drifter who dispenses cowboy clichés. Only at rare moments — such as on “Danny Callahan,” a song about a boy who dies of cancer, and “Lenders in the Temple,” which pleads, “I’d give a fortune to your infomercial/ If somebody would just take my call” — does the sensitive, perceptive lyricist make an appearance.

This is frustrating because, musically, the new album may be Oberst’s best. Backed by the Mystic Valley Band, which includes several Bright Eyes alums, he balances an impressive variety of moods and styles, from sad, tranquil guitar ballad (“Milk Thistle”) to carefree foot stomper (“NYC-Gone, Gone”) to loud-quiet-loud singalong (“Get-Well-Cards”). In fact, I was so enchanted by Oberst’s melodies it took me a few listens to realize how shallow I found his lyrics. And though I’m not about to throw “Conor Oberst” out the window, it won’t join his early releases in the relatively large canon of records that have personally impacted me.

For a few years Conor Oberst was the older brother I never had — he experienced everything first and left me a detailed map of the empty apartments, serious breakups and unquenchable longings that define late adolescence. These days, my anxieties involve repaying school loans, carving out a professional life and fitting all of my responsibilties into roughly 17 wakeful hours a day. While these concerns are surely less romantic than what preceded them, I can’t help wondering what Oberst would have to say about early adulthood. If he has half the insight and descriptive power at 28 that he had at 16, I can only hope the dust and tumbleweeds clear so we can hear what’s really on his mind.

The post Turn around, Bright Eyes appeared first on Salon.com.

Tim O’Reilly built a publishing empire that AI is helping to destroy. Yet he loves AI—as long as it’s open source.