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MrBeast Jimmy Donaldson gets engaged to influencer Thea Booysen

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MrBeast Jimmy Donaldson gets engaged to influencer Thea Booysen

Today I’m going to … get engaged: YouTube star MrBeast is engaged to fellow influencer Thea Booysen, a.k.a. the future MrsBeast.

The “Beast Games” host, 26, who is the most-subscribed-to YouTuber, proposed to his girlfriend of two years on Christmas Day and revealed on New Year’s Day that they were affianced.

“Ya boy did a thing,” he wrote Wednesday on Instagram, sharing a photo of himself down on one knee presenting an engagement ring to Booysen in their living room. The online content creator, whose YouTube channel boasts more than 341 million subscribers, shared additional photos of the proposal, which included the couple wearing matching MrBeast holiday sweaters and family members looking on.

Booysen, 27, also posted about the engagement, sharing a post-proposal video clip and showing off her new ring — a round-cut diamond on a rose gold band with additional diamonds on each side.

“Jimmy ❤️💍” she captioned the clip, referring to her fiancé’s birth name, James “Jimmy” Donaldson.

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In an interview with People, the couple said Booysen’s family flew to North Carolina from South Africa to celebrate Christmas with them. Donaldson said he wanted to include Booysen’s family in the “momentous occasion” because she’s very close to them.

“We were opening presents, and then for the very last present he asked me to close my eyes because it was a surprise,” Booysen said.

Donaldson said that he intentionally dropped a large box to make noise before presenting Booysen with the real gift with the ring inside.

“And then I went down on a knee and proposed,” he said. After Booysen opened her eyes, she “of course said yes” and was “extremely excited,” she told People.

Donaldson, best known for his viral challenges, affinity for blowing things up and elaborate and exorbitantly priced stunts, flouted expectations with the intimate proposal.

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“My friends thought I would want to propose in a very public way, like some sort of spectacle at the Super Bowl or somewhere else really big like that, but I knew that I wanted it to be the opposite, to be really private and intimate,” he said.

Likewise, the popular public figure is planning to make their wedding a private affair.

“I don’t take much vacation because of how hard I work, so I definitely want to make sure that the wedding will be a time to celebrate with her and spend time with friends and family who we really enjoy being with. It will be the ultimate way to take some time away and enjoy things,” he said.

Booysen, who said that getting married at this point is “just a formality,” suggested having their nuptials on an island “far away from just about everybody.”

“We’re not going to try and have a big, extravagant wedding. It’s going to be nice, but it’s certainly going to be intimate [with] close family and friends,” she said.

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Donaldson and Booysen met in 2022 while MrBeast was visiting South Africa. The two had dinner with a mutual friend and she was disarmed by the YouTuber’s down-to-earth nature and intelligence. They “vibed instantly,” he told People.

They made their red-carpet debut at the Kids’ Choice Awards in April 2022. Although Donaldson planned to propose in 2023, the couple opted to wait until Booysen — who has a bachelor’s degree in law — completed her master’s program. Booysen posted in November about fulfilling her dream and graduating with a master’s degree in human cognitive neuropsychology from the University of Edinburgh.

The couple’s engagement, which comes weeks after the premiere of Donaldson’s much-maligned Prime Video reality series “Beast Games,” capped an eventful but controversial year for the high-earning content creator. Donaldson last year was blasted for using “inappropriate language” in his early videos and faced scrutiny over his channel’s philanthropic efforts, the Associated Press reported. The YouTuber also was criticized over the workplace culture on his show and hit with allegations of dangerous on-set conditions, which he has denied.

In September, “Beast Games” contestants sued his production company and Amazon for sexual harassment, failure to pay minimum wages and negligent infliction of emotional distress, among other allegations.

In late December, Rolling Stone reported that Donaldson, along with singers Kelly Clarkson and Jennifer Hudson and celebrity chef Guy Fieri, were among the celebrities with whom the Pentagon entered production deals to boost the military’s image with Gen Z.

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House committee report questions distribution of FireAid’s $100 million for L.A. wildfire relief

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House committee report questions distribution of FireAid’s 0 million for L.A. wildfire relief

The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released a report after its own investigation into FireAid, the charity founded by Clippers executives that raised $100 million for wildfire relief efforts in Los Angeles last January.

The investigation — led by Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin) under committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — began in August when Kiley “sent a letter to FireAid requesting a detailed breakdown of all non-profits that received money from FireAid.” Kiley expressed concern that the money had gone toward local nonprofits rather than as more direct aid to affected residents.

FireAid promptly released a comprehensive document detailing its fundraising and grant dispersals. After reaching out to every named nonprofit in the document, The Times reported that the groups who successfully applied for grants were quickly given money to spend in their areas of expertise, as outlined in FireAid’s public mission statements. A review conducted by an outside law firm confirmed the same.

The new Republican-led committee report is skeptical of the nonprofit work done under FireAid’s auspices — but cites relatively few examples of groups deviating from FireAid’s stated goals.

Representatives for FireAid did not immediately respond to request for comment on the report.

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Out of hundreds of nonprofits given millions in FireAid funds, “In total, the Committee found six organizations that allocated FireAid grants towards labor, salaries, or other related costs,” the report said.

The committee singled out several local nonprofits, focused on relief and development for minorities and marginalized groups, for criticism. It named several long-established organizations like the NAACP Pasadena, My Tribe Rise, Black Music Action Coalition, CA Native Vote Project and Community Organized Relief Efforts (CORE), whose activities related to fire relief they found “unclear,” without providing specific claims of misusing FireAid funds.

The report — while heavily citing Fox News, Breitbart and New York Post stories — claims that “FireAid prioritized and awarded grants to illegal aliens.” Yet its lone example for this is a grant that went to CORE, citing its mission for aiding crisis response within “underserved communities,” one of which is “undocumented migrants” facing “high risk of housing instability, economic hardship, exploitation, and homelessness.”

The report said that $500,000 was used by the California Charter Schools Assn., Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, LA Disaster Relief Navigator, Community Clinic Assn. of Los Angeles County and LA Conservation Corps “towards labor, salaries, or other related costs,” which the committee said went against FireAid’s stated goals.

Yet the examples they cite as suspicious include NLSLA using its FireAid grant to pay salaries to attorneys providing free legal aid to fire victims, the Community Clinic of Los Angeles “expanding training in mental health and trauma care” through grants to smaller local health centers, and the L.A. Regional Food bank allocating its funds to “mobilize resources to fight hunger.”

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The report singled out one group, Altadena Talks Foundation, from Team Rubicon relief worker Toni Raines. Altadena Talks Foundation received a $100,00 grant from FireAid, yet the report said Altadena Talks’ work on a local news podcast, among other efforts, “remains unclear” as it relates to fire relief.

The report’s claims that “instead of helping fire victims, donations made to FireAid helped to fund causes and projects completely unrelated to fire recovery, including voter participation for Native Americans, illegal aliens, podcast shows, and fungus planting” sound incendiary. Yet the evidence it cites generally shows a range of established local nonprofits addressing community-specific concerns in a fast-moving disaster, with some small amounts of money possibly going toward salaries or overhead, or groups whose missions the committee viewed skeptically.

FireAid still plans to distribute an additional round of $25 million in grants this year.

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Movie Review: A Home Invasion turns into a “Relentless” Grudge Match

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Movie Review: A Home Invasion turns into a “Relentless” Grudge Match

I’d call the title “Relentless” truth in advertising, althought “Pitiless,” “Endless” and “Senseless” work just as well.

This new thriller from the sarcastically surnamed writer-director Tom Botchii (real name Tom Botchii Skowronski of “Artik” fame) begins in uninteresting mystery, strains to become a revenge thriller “about something” and never gets out of its own way.

So bloody that everything else — logic, reason, rationale and “Who do we root for?” quandary is throughly botched — its 93 minutes pass by like bleeding out from screwdriver puncture wounds — excruciatingly.

But hey, they shot it in Lewiston, Idaho, so good on them for not filming overfilmed Greater LA, even if the locations are as generically North American as one could imagine.

Career bit player and Lewiston native Jeffrey Decker stars as a homeless man we meet in his car, bearded, shivering and listening over and over again to a voice mail from his significant other.

He has no enthusiasm for the sign-spinning work he does to feed himself and gas up his ’80s Chevy. But if woman, man or child among us ever relishes anything as much as this character loves his cigarettes — long, theatrical, stair-at-the-stars drags of ecstacy — we can count ourselves blessed.

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There’s this Asian techie (Shuhei Kinoshita) pounding away at his laptop, doing something we assume is sketchy just by the “ACCESS DENIED” screens he keeps bumping into and the frantic calls he takes suggesting urgency of some sort or other.

That man-bunned stranger, seen in smoky silhoutte through the opaque window on his door, ringing the bell of his designer McMansion makes him wary. And not just because the guy’s smoking and seems to be making up his “How we can help cut your energy bill” pitch on the fly.

Next thing our techie knows, shotgun blasts are knocking out the lock (Not the, uh GLASS) and a crazed, dirty beardo homeless guy has stormed in, firing away at him as he flees and cries “STOP! Why are you doing this?”

Jun, as the credits name him, fights for his PC and his life. He wins one and loses the other. But tracking his laptop and homeless thug “Teddy” with his phone turns out to be a mistake.

He’s caught, beaten and bloodied some more. And that’s how Jun learns the beef this crazed, wronged man has with him — identity theft, financial fraud, etc.

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Threats and torture over access to that laptop ensue, along with one man listing the wrongs he’s been done as he puts his hostage through all this.

Wait’ll you get a load of what the writer-director thinks is the card our hostage would play.

The dialogue isn’t much, and the logic — fleeing a fight you’ve just won with a killer rather than finishing him off or calling the cops, etc. — doesn’t stand up to any scrutiny.

The set-piece fights, which involve Kinoshita screaming and charging his tormentor and the tormentor played by Decker stalking him with wounded, bloody-minded resolve are visceral enough to come off. Decker and Kinoshita are better than the screenplay.

A throw-down at a gas-station climaxes with a brutal brawl on the hood of a bystander’s car going through an automatic car wash. Amusingly, the car-wash owners feel the need to do an Idaho do-si-do video (“Roggers (sic) Car Wash”) that plays in front of the car being washed and behind all the mayhem the antagonists and the bystander/car owner go through. Not bad.

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The rest? Not good.

Perhaps the good folks at Rogers Motors and Car Wash read the script and opted to get their name misspelled. Smart move.

Rating: R, graphic violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Jeffrey Decker, Shuhei Kinoshita

Credits:Scripted and directed by Tom Botchii.. A Saban Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:34

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About Roger Moore

Movie Critic, formerly with McClatchy-Tribune News Service, Orlando Sentinel, published in Spin Magazine, The World and now published here, Orlando Magazine, Autoweek Magazine

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Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas breaks out in ‘Sentimental Value.’ But she isn’t interested in fame

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Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas breaks out in ‘Sentimental Value.’ But she isn’t interested in fame

One of the most moving scenes in Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value” happens near the end. During an intense moment between sisters Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), who have both had to reckon with the unexpected return of their estranged father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgård), Agnes suddenly tells Nora, “I love you.” In a family in which such direct, vulnerable declarations are rare, Agnes’ comment is both a shock and a catharsis.

The line wasn’t scripted or even discussed. Lilleaas was nervous about spontaneously saying it while filming. But it just came out.

“[In] Norwegian culture, we don’t talk so much about what we’re feeling,” explains Lilleaas, who lives in Oslo but is sitting in the Chateau Marmont lounge on a rainy afternoon in mid-November. If the script had contained that “I love you” line, she says, “It would’ve been like, ‘What? I would never say that. That’s too much.’ But because it came out of a genuine feeling in the moment — I don’t know how to describe it, but it was what I felt like I would want to say, and what I would want my own sister to know.”

Since its Cannes premiere, “Sentimental Value” has been lauded for such scenes, which underline the subtle force of this intelligent tearjerker about a frayed family trying to repair itself. And the film’s breakthrough performance belongs to the 36-year-old Lilleaas, who has worked steadily in Norway but not often garnered international attention.

Touted as a possible supporting actress Oscar nominee, Lilleaas in person is reserved but thoughtful, someone who prefers observing the people around her rather than being in the spotlight. Fitting, then, that in “Sentimental Value” she plays the quiet, levelheaded sister serving as the mediator between impulsive Nora and egotistical Gustav. Lilleaas has become quite adept at doing a lot while seemingly doing very little.

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“In acting school, some of the best characters I did were mute,” she notes. “They couldn’t express language, but they were very expressive. It was freeing to not have a voice. Agnes, she’s present a lot of the time but doesn’t necessarily have that many lines. To me, that’s freedom — the [dialogue] very often comes in the way of that.”

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas in “Sentimental Value.”

(Kasper Tuxen)

Lilleaas hadn’t met Trier before her audition, but they instantly bonded over the challenges of raising young kids. And she sparked to the script’s examination of parents and children. Unlike restless Nora, Agnes is married with a son, able to view her deeply flawed dad from the vantage point of both a daughter and mother. Lilleaas shares her character’s sympathy for the inability of different generations to connect.

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“A lot of parents and children’s relationships stop at a point,” she says. “It doesn’t evolve like a romantic relationship, [where] the mindset is to grow together. With families, it’s ‘You’re the child, I’m the parent.’ But you have to grow together and accept each other. And that’s difficult.”

Spend time with Lilleaas and you’ll notice she discusses acting in terms of human behavior rather than technique. In fact, she initially studied psychology. “I’ve always been interested in the [experience] of being alive,” she says. “Tremendous grief is very painful, but you can only experience that if you have great love. I’ve tried the more psychological approach of studying people, but it wasn’t what I wanted. Acting is the perfect medium for me to explore life.”

Other out-of-towners might be disappointed to arrive in sunny Southern California only to be greeted by storm clouds, but Lilleaas is sanguine about the situation. “I could have been at the beach, but it’s fine,” she says, amused, looking out the nearby windows. “I can go to the movies — it’s perfect movie weather.”

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleeaas poses for a portrait at the Twenty Two Hotel in New York City
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas.

Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. (Evelyn Freja / For The Times)

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Her measured response to both her Hollywood ascension and a rainy forecast speak to her generally unfussed demeanor. During our conversation, Lilleaas’ candor and lack of vanity are striking. How often does a rising star talk about being happy when a filmmaker gives her fewer lines? Or fantasize about a life after acting?

“Some days I’ll be like, ‘I want to give it up. I want to have a small farm,’” she admits. “We lived on a farm and had horses and chickens when I grew up. I miss that. But at the same time, I need to be in an urban environment.”

She gives the matter more thought, sussing out her conflicted feelings. “Maybe as I grow older and have children, I feel this need to go back to something that’s familiar and safe,” she suggests. “I think that’s why I’m searching for small farms [online] — that’s, like, a dream thing. I need some dreams that they’re not reality — it’s a way to escape.”

Lilleaas may have decided against becoming a psychologist, but she’s always interrogating her motivations. This desire for a farm is her latest self-exploration, clarifying for her that she loves her profession but not the superficial trappings that accompany it.

“Ten years ago, this would maybe have been a dream, what’s happening now,” she says, gesturing at her swanky surroundings. “But you realize what you want to focus on and give value. I don’t necessarily want to give this that much value. I appreciate it and everything, but I don’t want to put my heart in it, because I know that it goes up and down and it’s not constant. I put my heart in this movie. Everything that comes after that? My heart can’t be in that.”

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