Entertainment
Elton John says a 'severe eye infection' has left him with 'limited vision' in one eye
![Elton John says a 'severe eye infection' has left him with 'limited vision' in one eye Elton John says a 'severe eye infection' has left him with 'limited vision' in one eye](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/29375d6/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3328x1747+0+0/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc3%2F54%2F3ab6ca52461cbc759235f1f078b1%2F1216285-et-1117-elton-john-concert5-wjs.jpg)
Elton John — he of the bedazzled spectacles and dazzling spectaculars — has been “quietly” spending his summer recovering from a “severe eye infection” that has affected his vision.
The “Crocodile Rock” and “Bennie and the Jets” singer shared the health update Tuesday, explaining his subdued presence on social media over the past few months.
“Over the summer, I’ve been dealing with a severe eye infection that has unfortunately left me with only limited vision in one eye,” the EGOT winner said in a statement on Instagram. “I am healing, but it’s an extremely slow process and it will take some time before sight returns to the impacted eye.”
The 77-year-old rocker said that his doctors, nurses and family have been taking care of him over the last several weeks and that he’s been “quietly spending the summer recuperating at home.”
“[I] am feeling positive about the progress I have made in my healing and recovery thus far,” he added. John, who was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, did not further elaborate on the condition or what caused it.
Representatives for John did not immediately respond Wednesday to The Times’ requests for comment.
The legendary singer-songwriter has been dogged by health issues over the past few years.
John — who retired from touring last year — was briefly hospitalized last summer after falling at his home on the French Riviera, where he had been spending his summer with husband David Furnish and their children since wrapping his record-breaking Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour that July.
Photos of the “Rocket Man” crooner in a wheelchair also alarmed fans in 2022, but John later explained on Instagram that he was using the chair to rest his hip after a “blockbuster show” in Bern and while being transported through the Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany. In 2021, he underwent hip surgery after he “fell awkwardly on a hard surface,” and his recovery postponed several of his tour dates.
The British superstar was also among the many musicians whose live performances were scuttled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2022, just after re-launching his farewell tour and despite being vaccinated and boosted, he had to cancel shows in Dallas after experiencing “mild symptoms” when he contracted COVID-19.
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Movie Reviews
‘2073’ Review: Samantha Morton Leads Asif Kapadia’s Bold but Bleak Docu-Fiction Hybrid About Future Crisis
![‘2073’ Review: Samantha Morton Leads Asif Kapadia’s Bold but Bleak Docu-Fiction Hybrid About Future Crisis ‘2073’ Review: Samantha Morton Leads Asif Kapadia’s Bold but Bleak Docu-Fiction Hybrid About Future Crisis](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/2073-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1)
2073, writer-director Asif Kapadia’s sui generis feature, is nothing if not ambitious. It offers viewers a numbingly bleak vision of the future 51 years from now, illustrated by a fictional framing device starring Samantha Morton, then explains how things got/will get that bad through actual recent archival footage and original interviews with an assortment of thinkers, journalists and activists. By comparison, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 looks as jolly as a Peppa Pig picture book.
You can’t help but admire Kapadia’s commitment to feel-bad cinema, his refusal to end on any false note of hope. It’s all part of a deliberate strategy, according to an interview in the film’s press notes, to motivate the audience to do something, anything, to stop all this happening. But given how sinister the forces sowing the seeds of our future destruction are — rising autocracy, unregulated technology and looming climate catastrophe — some might wonder if watching this might cause more people to feel even more helpless, freezing them like dodos startled in the glaring lamplight of invading hunters. Those who might be able to put aside despair and absorb this strictly as a work of persuasive rhetoric will be impressed with its intellectual scope, the economy of the storytelling in its fictional narrative, the bravura editing and visual panache as it builds a world full of dust, detritus and debased morals.
2073
The Bottom Line Watch the world burn.
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition)
Cast: Samantha Morton, Naomi Ackie, Hector Hewer
Director: Asif Kapadia
Screenwriters: Asif Kapadia, Tony Grisoni
1 hour 22 minutes
In the movie’s present, the year 2073, a woman known only as Ghost (Morton) lives deep in the subterranean levels of what was once a shopping mall in or near San Francisco but is now a squatter’s camp. Aboveground, the atmosphere is just about breathable in the arid climate, but surveillance cameras everywhere invigilate everyone’s every move. This is now a police state where people are suddenly “disappeared.” Traumatized by events from her childhood — particularly the disappearance of her own mother, and all the suffering since — Ghost is selectively mute. But her voiceover acts as a guide to recent history as she explores forbidden spots on the surface, like libraries or rooms full of taxidermy and redwood tree trunk slices that visually echo the natural history museum in Chris Marker’s La Jetée, a clear touchstone here.
When the film shifts into micro slivers of archival footage (montaged together by editors Chris King and Sylvie Landra) to explain how, for instance, the global rise in autocracies made this future possible, it makes for a somewhat awkward narrational adjustment. Interviewees like Nobel Prize-winning Filipino journalist Maria Ressa or Indian investigative reporter Rana Ayyub speak as if addressing someone just offscreen, Kapadia or a surrogate presumably, as in a more conventional doc. Some contributors are heard only in voiceover, such as pundits Anne Applebaum, George Monbiot and Ben Rhodes, pitching in with pithy observations that barely have a chance to reverberate before we’re on to the next thing.
Whereas many doom-docs of late tend to focus on just one bad thing happening in the world, like the climate crisis (An Inconvenient Truth), the unregulated rise of social media and dodgy but legal tech (The Social Dilemma, The Great Hack), or stupid evil billionaires and AI (acres of YouTube shorts), 2073 tries to pull them all together. It’s hard to argue that these issues aren’t indeed interrelated, but the film never slows down enough to draw out the connections clearly for the slower viewers in the back row. That makes the final triumph of a repressive state apparatus feel as inevitable as the predictable martyrdom of Ghost — a fate foretold in some of the clips spliced in from Morton’s earlier movies, including Minority Report, as if they were part of Ghost’s backstory.
In that latter movie, Morton played a “pre-cog” who could see crimes as yet uncommitted. But as with the prophetic Cassandra of ancient Troy, to see the future is a kind of curse if no one believes what you say. One can only wish that 2073 will at least help a few people reconsider how they vote, how they consume and where it’s all going, but our hopes are thin.
Full credits
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Out of Competition)
Cast: Samantha Morton, Naomi Ackie, Hector Hewer
Production companies: Lafcadia Productions
Director: Asif Kapadia
Screenwriter: Asif Kapadia, Tony Grisoni
Producers: George Chignell, Asif Kapadia
Executive producers: Farhana Bhula, Chris King, Ollie Madden, Dana O’Keefe, Dan O’Meara, Tom Quinn, Emily Sellinger, Eric Sloss, John Sloss, Nicole Stott, Emily Thomas
Director of photography: Bradford Young
Production designer: Robin Brown
Costume designer: Verity May Lane
Editors: Chris King, Sylvie Landra
Music: Antonio Pinto
Casting: Shaheen Baig
Sales: Neon Rated
1 hour 22 minutes
Movie Reviews
Reagan movie review: A flawed portrayal of the 40th US President | The Express Tribune
![Reagan movie review: A flawed portrayal of the 40th US President | The Express Tribune Reagan movie review: A flawed portrayal of the 40th US President | The Express Tribune](https://i.tribune.com.pk/media/images/Dennis-Quaid-as-Ronald-Regan1725436388-0/Dennis-Quaid-as-Ronald-Regan1725436388-0.png)
Sean McNamara’s “Reagan” biopic, starring Dennis Quaid, has sparked controversy with its distorted historical narrative and lackluster execution. While attempting to portray the iconic president, the film falls short in terms of accuracy and cinematic appeal.
The film’s hagiographic approach to Reagan’s life and achievements raises concerns, omitting crucial historical events and glossing over Reagan’s complex legacy. Critics argue that the movie’s depiction of Reagan as an anti-racist trailblazer is particularly problematic, given his controversial record on civil rights.
The film’s narrative also simplifies complex events such as the Cold War and Reagan’s role in it, failing to acknowledge the contributions of other factors. The insertion of a fictional KGB agent as the narrator further adds to the confusion and misrepresentation of historical events.
Beyond the historical inaccuracies, “Reagan” suffers from poor pacing, questionable artistic choices, and bizarre casting decisions, resulting in a tedious and forgettable cinematic experience.
While the film may appeal to dedicated Reagan supporters, those seeking a historically accurate and nuanced portrayal of the 40th president are likely to be disappointed. “Reagan” serves as a reminder of the delicate balance between historical storytelling and creative license, with the latter overshadowing the former in this instance.
Entertainment
Disney-obsessed couple loses lawsuit to get back into exclusive Club 33
As members of Disney’s exclusive Club 33, Scott and Diana Anderson visited the two Anaheim theme parks 60 to 80 times a year.
The private club, with its wood-paneled trophy room and other amenities, was the center of their social life. They brought friends, acquaintances and business associates. As a couple, they went on the Haunted House ride nearly 1,000 times.
The club’s yearly dues were $31,500, and with travel and hotel expenses, the Arizona couple were spending close to $125,000 annually to get their Disney fix.
All of it came to an end in 2017, when Disney revoked their membership in the club after an allegation that Scott Anderson was drunk in public. Diana Anderson, a hardcore Disney aficionado since childhood, called it “a stab in the heart.”
The Andersons, both 60, have spent the years since then — and hundreds of thousands of dollars — trying to get back into Club 33. On Tuesday, an Orange County jury rejected their claim that Disney ousted them improperly.
It had taken the Andersons more than a decade to gain membership in Club 33, which includes access to exclusive lounges, dining, VIP tours and special events.
They finally made it off the waiting list in 2012.
Scott and Diana Anderson in front of Club 33 in June 2017.
(Courtesy of Anderson family)
“They finally became part of this special place,” their attorney, Sean Macias, told jurors in the civil trial. “That was their spot. That was their happy place, their home.”
At about 9:50 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2017, security guards found Scott Anderson near the entrance of California Adventure displaying signs of what they took to be intoxication, including slurred speech and trouble standing, according to trial testimony.
“His breath smelled of alcohol quite a lot,” one of the guards said in court.
The club swiftly ousted them.
Macias said Scott Anderson had 2½ to 3 drinks and that Disney did an incomplete and slipshod investigation, with no Breathalyzer or blood tests and no videos of Anderson’s behavior that night.
“They have not established that Mr. Anderson was intoxicated,” Macias said. Instead, he argued, Anderson’s symptoms were the result of a vestibular migraine, which can be triggered by red wine — among the drinks Anderson consumed that day.
In effect, Macias argued, Disney was punishing Anderson for a medical condition.
A medical expert testified for the Andersons that the symptoms of a vestibular migraine could be confused with intoxication, with a neurologist hired by Disney countering that Anderson’s behavior was more likely the consequence of drinking.
The September 2017 incident was not the first time the Andersons had run afoul of Club 33 management. The year before, Diana had been briefly suspended for “using some salty language … a couple F-words,” as Macias put it.
Macias told jurors that the Andersons filed suit against Disney to vindicate their reputation. “He doesn’t want to be known as a drunk,” Macias said. “They love that place. They took the fight to Disney because it’s his name.”
In their complaint, the Andersons asked to be reinstated to Club 33, with a $10,500 reimbursement for four months of unused membership in 2017. They also wanted $231,000 — the equivalent of seven years in the club.
Jonathan E. Phillips, an attorney representing Disney, said that Club 33 membership guidelines forbid public intoxication.
“They did not want to pay the consequences of failing to follow the rules,” Phillips told jurors, adding that Scott Anderson’s conduct “cost his wife of 40 years her lifetime dream of having access to Club 33.”
The security guards, who no longer work for Disney, were more credible than the Andersons, Phillips said — “What possible reason did the security guards have to lie to you?”
In their original complaint, the Andersons alleged that Club 33 targeted them for retaliation because they had complained about a club member harassing other members and staff. But Superior Court Judge Deborah Servino curtailed that line of evidence, which the Andersons saw as the death knell for their case.
“My wife and I are both dead set that this is an absolute wrong, and we will fight this to the death,” Scott Anderson, who owns a golf course in Gilbert, Ariz., told The Times. “There is no way we’re letting this go.”
He said the lawsuit has cost him about $400,000.
“My retirement is set back five years,” he said. “I’m paying through the nose. Every day, I’m seeing another bill, and I’m about to keel over.” He said he will appeal.
His wife said she wants to keep fighting.
“I’ll sell a kidney,” Diana said. “I don’t care.”
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