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Meet the (anti) heroes of ‘Black Adam’ | CNN

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Meet the (anti) heroes of ‘Black Adam’ | CNN



CNN
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Simply while you thought you lastly dedicated a lot of the names of the ever-growing Suicide Squad to reminiscence, DC goes and casts a brand new crew of antiheroes in “Black Adam,” its newest bid for field workplace domination.

Meet the Justice Society of America (JSA), a crew of superheroes who need to tamp down, or a minimum of higher management, the titular antihero Black Adam. You received’t keep in mind these of us from movies previous (save for one cameo by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), however they’ve been comedian ebook stalwarts for many years.

Earlier than you see “Black Adam,” familiarize your self with the brand new solid of morally ambiguous super-humans. From Physician Destiny to Adam himself, listed here are the recent faces you’ll meet in “Black Adam.” (“Black Adam” is distributed by Warner Bros., which shares mum or dad firm Warner Bros. Discovery with CNN.)

Performed by: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

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Powers: Tremendous velocity and energy, magic, flight, lightning bolts, extended life, amongst many others

Black Adam is the morally ambiguous predecessor of Shazam, the gangly teen-turned-adult superhero. Adam was born centuries in the past as “Teth-Adam,” a daily man who turns into the “champion” of a wizard named Shazam, who instills in him the facility of a number of gods, in response to DC. In contrast to Shazam the superhero (a unique man from the wizard – sure, it’s complicated), Teth-Adam didn’t use his newfound powers for good. He’s exiled by the wizard who gave him his powers and given a brand new title that matches his corrupted coronary heart – Black Adam.

We meet Adam when he returns from a 5,000-year-long imprisonment. He’s set on liberating his homeland, a fictional North African nation known as Kahndaq, Johnson advised the New York Occasions. However Marvel Lady, he’s not – Adam “straight-up murders folks” to ahead his trigger, mentioned Empire Journal in its three-star evaluation of the movie. He believes he’s the “proper individual to guide humanity,” says DC, and typically which means making selections that prioritize the nice of the numerous over the lives of the few.

Performed by: Pierce Brosnan

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Powers: Sorcery, uber-intelligence, flight – the works!

Nerd by day and sorcerer by night time, Kent Nelson is a “kindly educational” who evolves right into a formidable hero when he wears the golden “Helmet of Destiny,” which can also be imbued with godlike powers, says DC. In an interview with the AV Membership, Brosnan defined that the helmet is each a “curse and a blessing” that the character lives with as a result of his father, an archaeologist, found the artifact.

Physician Destiny helped discovered the Justice Society, a superhero supergroup that, within the movie, is tasked with tamping down Black Adam’s antiheroic antics. Onscreen, Brosnan-as-Destiny is the seasoned veteran of the JSA, preserving the newbs in line whereas taking over Adam – however he’s obtained secrets and techniques of his personal, too, Brosnan teased.

Hawkman's costume is fittingly avian-inspired.

Performed by: Aldis Hodge

Powers: Flight, tremendous energy, general grasp of fight

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Add one other bird-themed superhero to your psychological rolodex and meet Hodge’s Hawkman, a hero who flies with huge golden wings and dons a golden helmet full with a golden fowl beak – DC describes him as “a fierce warrior the ultimate.” Good luck, Adam! Within the movie, Hawkman leads the JSA to cease Adam however nonetheless leans on Physician Destiny for fatherly recommendation.

The character has “been by a lot,” Hodge teased in an interview with Self-importance Honest, and people experiences have influenced the colourful fashion by which he fights. Hawkman, a.ok.a. Carter Corridor, can also be a foil to Adam, Hodge mentioned, who each crave justice however have totally different, uncompromising concepts about easy methods to obtain it. Finally, he mentioned, they discover a “mutual respect” inside one another – two supers of spectacular energy.

He’s additionally motivated by love – all through his life in DC Comics, he’s been in a loyal relationship with, natch, Hawkgirl.

Performed by: Quintessa Swindell

Powers: Controlling wind

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It’s one factor to be gifted powers by an amulet or cursed artifact; it’s one other to easily harness the weather. Meet Cyclone, a teenage hero whose thoughts can manipulate the air and weaponize excessive climate to fend off foes (she obtained her powers after being a take a look at topic for nefarious scientists). Per DC, she brings a “social justice perspective” to the Justice Society.

Swindell, a nonbinary actor, has mentioned that their character is influenced by ballet, and whereas Cyclone, a.ok.a. Maxine Hunkel, is the most recent addition to the JSA, she’s unafraid to embrace her truest self: “Very hardly ever have I seen a job that paints a younger woman in a method that provides her the power to stay authentically and in truth in her weirdness,” Swindell mentioned in an interview with Leisure Weekly.

Performed by: Noah Centineo

Powers: Rising into a large at will after which shrinking again

Don’t name him Ant-Man: That is Atom Smasher, a younger JSA recruit whose powers you’ll actually acknowledge – he’s a “mass manipulator,” which means he can flip right into a Godzilla-sized model of himself – however with out the size-changing tech. Atom Smasher is a “metahuman,” like Cyclone, and the method of rising big is a painful one, Centineo advised Syfy: His muscle tissues “break after which type,” after which break and re-form once more when he returns to his customary dimension.

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He’s additionally a little bit of a “nepotism child”: His grandfather, “pressured into villainy,” Centineo mentioned, was the primary to obtain the powers Atom Smasher inherited, so although he lacks the expertise of his fellow JSA members, he “comes from this pedigree” that makes him a assured, if conceited, addition to the group.

Movie Reviews

Movie review: Using film to ask the right questions – Addison Independent

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Movie review: Using film to ask the right questions – Addison Independent

Arts & Leisure

THE VERMONT PREMIERE of “The Teachers’ Lounge” will be screened as part of the MNFF’s year-round Cinema Selects Series — at 7 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 21, at the Middlebury Town Hall Theater.

“The Teachers’ Lounge” was one of this year’s Best Foreign Film nominees — though its closely observed drama set inside a contemporary seventh-grade German classroom could have easily been American.  The film’s protagonist, idealistic young teacher Carla Novak, is new to the school, but she soon finds herself pressured by other teachers to identify which of her students might be responsible for a series of thefts from the teachers’ lounge.

We’re glad you’re interested in this valuable content! Please understand that in order for us to be able to fund reporters covering local news, we need your help! For full access to this story and all online content, please log in or subscribe to the Addison Independent.
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U2 made a concert movie of its Sphere show. Sphere is the only place you can see it

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U2 made a concert movie of its Sphere show. Sphere is the only place you can see it

Nine months after U2 wrapped its 40-date residency at Sphere, the veteran Irish rock band is back at the dome-shaped venue just off the Las Vegas Strip.

Well, sort of.

“V-U2” is a new concert movie that documents the group’s high-tech “U2:UV” show, in which singer Bono, guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Bram van den Berg (filling in for Larry Mullen Jr.) revisited U2’s media-obsessed 1991 album “Achtung Baby” as they inaugurated the $2-billion building outfitted with the world’s highest-resolution LED screen. U2’s stay at Sphere was a critical and commercial success, blanketing social media with eye-popping video clips and raking in nearly $250 million, according to the trade journal Pollstar — and at a moment when the show’s stiff competition included Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour.

So it’s no wonder that U2 followed Swift and Beyoncé in bringing its show to the screen. Unlike those pop superstars’ films, though, this one you can see only at the place where the band filmed it — at Sphere, that is, where “V-U2” plays on that massive wraparound screen on nights when the Eagles aren’t there for their residency. (Between U2 and the Eagles came gigs at Sphere by Phish and Dead & Company.) Directed by the Edge and his wife, Morleigh Steinberg, “V-U2” opened in September and was just extended through the end of February; tickets to see the movie are pricey, starting at around 100 bucks a pop.

Looking back at “U2:UV,” the Edge, 63, says a Sphere production is “its own distinct kind of art form — a new art form, I think, not just for music but for narrative film, for documentary, for all kinds of presentations. It’s the ability to translocate the audience to a new place, be it real or imaginary.” (Among the vignettes in U2’s show were ones that put the crowd in a pre-Strip desert landscape and amid a menagerie of endangered wildlife species.) “You can’t divorce the scale of the imagery from what you might want to do with it,” the Edge adds. As inspirations, the guitarist cites Christo and Jean-Claude’s 2021 wrapping of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe as well as Culver City’s Museum of Jurassic Technology, which he calls one of his favorite places in Los Angeles.

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“All those tiny miniatures that fit on the head of a needle — I think it’s so beautiful,” he says in a Zoom call from his place in Malibu. “Again, it’s the scale that makes it unique.”

I get the desire to preserve an ambitious live show for posterity. And I get the impulse to sell tickets to folks who didn’t pay to catch the show in person. What was the creative opportunity you saw in making this movie?
You’ve got to understand that there was a huge amount of risk associated with signing on to be the first band [to play Sphere]. It’s all untried and untested technology, and the building — when we first went to see it, it was half-built, OK? So opening night arrives and we literally walk onstage, no idea if it’s going to work. It’s kind of a white-knuckle ride. Coming out of the first few shows, we realized that not only is it working, it’s like all our ideas have landed. That was such a relief.

Then we pivot quite quickly to the thought of filming it, and what does that mean? We go through a process of consideration and elimination as we realize the show is so bespoke to this venue that to try and capture it for a small screen just wouldn’t make any sense. So then we start thinking, Well, what about capturing it for the screen it happens to be on right now? What was here in potential was an immersive experience — maybe the first of its kind — where you can faithfully represent your live performance so that there’s only a few giveaways that it’s not actually happening live in front of you. That was the thrilling proposition.

U2 performs at Sphere in Las Vegas in September 2023.

(Kevin Mazur / Getty Images for Live Nation)

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The goal was to get an audience member to buy the illusion that U2 is onstage.
Yes. The combination of visuals and the audio and the haptics of the seats — all of those things were brought to bear to try and basically turn on its head the whole idea of suspension of disbelief, so that you’re having to remind yourself that it’s not real, as opposed to pretending that it is.

There’s something very U2 about a concert film that you can see only in the place where the concert happened.
I’d love if [media theorist] Marshall McLuhan could see it. What would he think? Since the beginning of touring “Achtung Baby,” we were riffing on this idea of “even better than the real thing.” That wasn’t lost on us. And I have to say: Finally getting to see U2 live was genuinely shocking. It gave me goosebumps. We’re not half-bad.

The first few songs are shot from a steady position in the audience. Then the camera starts moving around.
You don’t want to give that up too soon. You want people to enjoy the show as it was first designed and imagined. Then you give them a tab of acid and it goes in a completely different direction. We wait until “One,” our fifth song [in the set] — that was a good moment to start deconstructing the show to some extent.

A good moment in an emotional sense?
I think that’s always the leading metric for us — the emotional connection. We had [director] Mark Pellington come in, and he was the one who suggested the close-up of Bono in “One,” which was a great call. It breaks the movie out of the conceit of it actually being a live show, and suddenly you shatter the fourth wall.

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That close-up of Bono is startling to behold.
I haven’t actually had it measured, but it must be the size of a building.

Did Bono get to approve such a revealing shot of his own face?
Oh, yeah [laughs]. His word to us was: “It can’t be just spectacle — you’ve got to capture the humanity of what’s happening.” So, like, mistakes: Bono stumbled over some of his banter in the introductions, and he wanted to keep that in. This is not overly polished.

U2's concert movie is scheduled to play at Sphere through the end of February.

U2’s concert movie is scheduled to play at Sphere through the end of February.

(Sphere Entertainment)

My instinct is to scoff at that idea. The whole point of Sphere is polish! But there actually is something kind of raw about the movie.
Part of that is practical. With modern post-production, it’s super simple to alter 35-mill format. But since this is such a massive amount of data, to really do anything too fancy would take months and an eye-watering amount of computer processing to achieve. I’m sure future projects will be able to make that possible. But for us, it was kind of straightforward. We knew there wasn’t an awful lot we could do beyond just make cuts and showcase the moments that we thought were the best representations of the show.

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Does this movie pose a threat to live music in any way? You think about this or you think about ABBA’s hologram show in London — both enable bands to offer fans a concert-like experience without having to be there in person.
I don’t see it as a threat — no more of a threat than any concert film. The ABBA thing, which I’ve seen, was really fun, given the fact that no one’s seen ABBA perform in the flesh for generations. But I don’t think any of this negates what exists in live concerts — it’s in addition to those offerings.

How did the Sphere experience shape U2’s live ambitions going forward?
I wouldn’t rule out doing something for the Sphere in the future. But we’re itching to get back to regular concerts. Next thing we have to do is a new record, of course. This project was a celebration of “Achtung Baby,” so we’re anxious to do something that’s about new work. We’re already actively developing new material for what will become a U2 album in the future, and we’ll be back to touring. As much as we loved being able to rely on the sound being great every night, there’s a great momentum to being on the road. And seeing local fans, as opposed to relying on them coming to us — it’s different. We miss it.

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A Real Encounter Movie Review: The blurry line between truth and propaganda leaves much to be desired

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A Real Encounter Movie Review: The blurry line between truth and propaganda leaves much to be desired
Story: A college student gets caught up in a terrorist attack and is killed in a police encounter. Was an innocent soul slain, or is there more than meets the eye?

Review: A Real Encounter attempts to intertwine real-life inspiration with a fictional narrative, drawing from Gujarat’s controversial anti-terrorism operations in 2002. The film centers around a dramatic encounter in which four terrorists are killed, including Muskan (Bratuti Ganguly), a seemingly innocent college student from Mumbai. The plot raises the pivotal question: Was Muskan an innocent victim of the circumstance, or was she unknowingly or willingly caught up in a terrorist plot?

The film’s premise is intriguing, exploring the blurry line between truth and propaganda surrounding police encounters that often remain shrouded in controversy. The central question about Muskan’s involvement—and whether she was a manipulated pawn, or complicit in the terror plot—has the potential for a nuanced exploration of the socio-political climate of the time. However, the execution leaves much to be desired.

While the film’s first half focuses on the intense police encounters, the second half shifts to a more personal, character-driven narrative about Muskan’s gradual descent into radicalism. This shift feels awkward and unconvincing, as the pacing becomes disjointed and struggles to maintain emotional engagement. There is little exploration into Muskan’s motivations or the external forces that may have shaped her decisions. A more thorough examination of her character and the socio-political pressures of the time could have made the film more impactful.

Sabir Shaikh’s direction lacks the necessary polish to carry the weight of the narrative. There is an overuse of close-up shots and shaky camera work that undermines the intensity of key action sequences. The poorly choreographed gunfights and lack of realism further detract from the dramatic tension. Additionally, abrupt jump cuts between scenes disrupt the flow, creating a disjointed viewing experience. The background score is another problem—loud and intrusive, it often clashes with the mood of the scenes, further intensifying the discomfort of watching.

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Bratuti Ganguly, in her debut role as Muskan, delivers a competent performance but struggles to fully embody her character due to an underdeveloped script. The police officers—Ehsaan Khan (ADG Rathore), Shahbaaz Khan (Arjun Ranade), and Rishikesh Tiwari (Varun Barot)—are convincing but are constrained by their lack of complexity. Even Waseem (Akhilesh Verma), who befriends Muskan and plays a key role in her involvement with terrorism, follows a predictable character arc that lacks intrigue.

Supporting characters like Muskan’s uncle (Mushtaq Khan) and Raza Murad (the advocate seeking justice) are left underdeveloped, overshadowed by the film’s uneven pacing. Their presence feels more like an afterthought than integral parts of the narrative.

In conclusion, A Real Encounter is a missed opportunity. While the concept could have made for a thought-provoking and gripping film, the lack of cohesive storytelling, shaky cinematography, and overblown background score detract from its potential. This is definitely not the film you want to encounter this weekend.

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