Who can’t wait to live on other planets? Second thoughts may be in order after seeing the woolly sci-fi-horror trip “Ash” from Grammy-winning L.A. music guru-turned-director Flying Lotus (a.k.a. Steven Ellison), who spins a bare-bones game of cosmic survival with true sound-and-image flair and an unbridled enthusiasm for the strange beauty of mutant gore.
That this modestly budgeted freak-out was assembled by a fusion artist, someone expert at scoring your daydreams and nightlife, is never in doubt. In fact, as we become oriented to the movie’s space station on the titular planet, where crew member Riya (Eiza González) awakens bloodied and confused by the grim reality that her colleagues have been brutally murdered, the sputtering fluorescent hues, jarring memory flashes and woozy electronic tones that accompany her tour of the premises suggest the remnants of a bad rave night as much as they do an interstellar mission gone terribly wrong.
Early on in Jonni Remmler’s screenplay, there’s a brief flashback to the outpost’s five-person team hanging out, teasing each other about what their Neil Armstrong-like statement is going to be and hinting at their exploratory aims for humankind. (Surprise, surprise: Earth’s becoming uninhabitable.) The men — stoic Capt. Adhi (Iko Uwais) and good-natured Kevin (Beulah Koale) and Davis (Ellison) — seem to take their task seriously, while hard-edged Clarke (Kate Elliott) appears to be the wisecracker and Riya appears simultaneously no-nonsense and cynical.
That’s it for movie chitchat, however. The director, in sync with his cinematographer, Richard Bluck, would much rather spend his energies pulling you through a moodily lighted, otherworldly gauntlet of aftermath menace, kaleidoscopic starscapes and flashbacks that hint at a suddenly amnesiac Riya’s role in the slaughter, than let you get too caught up in portrayal details or plot mechanics.
Still, the mystery of what went down increasingly animates Riya (and us), especially after a guy named Brion (Aaron Paul, reliably grave) suddenly shows up, having answered the distress call sent to his orbiting spacecraft. He wants to convince her to pay more attention to worsening oxygen levels and to salvage the mission by getting the hell out. But as her memories start to return, more is revealed about the real threat, which turns out to be very much the kind of penetrative threat an in-his-prime John Carpenter would have mightily enjoyed turning into the stuff of our crunchy, squishy nightmares.
The legacy of “Alien” is there, of course, in the Ripley parallels, but Carpenter nods are too — especially “The Thing” and a “Halloween”-like emergence from an out-of-focus background. (It may be why the terror titan warranted a place in the end-credits thank-yous.) The thrumming score too is decidedly influenced by the pulsating synth themes of Carpenter, with some of Angelo Badalamenti’s melodic melancholia thrown in for good measure. But the soundtrack is also its own evocative work of intoxicating techno-brood, one that could be piped from your car speakers to readily turn any routine neighborhood errand into a suddenly ominous excursion. (Just as playing parts of Bernard Herrmann’s “Vertigo” score instantly gives you the feeling you’re tailing the car ahead of you.)
“Ash” is categorically a vibe more than it is an especially unique story or illuminating character study, even if González’s steely beauty conveys plenty about the psychological stakes at hand. But in this age of expensive and overwrought world-building, it’s Ellison’s experiential care with well-worn material that delivers the goods. There’s also something resonant in an Afrofuturist take on colonialist sci-fi, one that marks its narrative space with such a potent mix of planetary wonder, identity peril and alien violence. It’s refreshing to be reminded by movies like this that we should always be asking: Who’s doing the invading, again?
‘Ash’
Rated: R, for bloody violence, gore and language
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Playing: In wide release Friday, March 21
Lady Gaga was all about the Mayhem Ball on Wednesday, making the tour announcement a day after she was sued for allegedly infringing on a surf company’s “Mayhem” logo.
“I wasn’t planning to tour this year after my shows in Singapore but the incredible response to the new album inspired me to keep things going,” the singer said on social media. “It came together super quickly … and honestly, I can’t wait. This show is designed to be the kind of theatrical and electrifying experience that brings MAYHEM to life exactly how I envision it.”
The Mayhem Ball, which Gaga said was planned with Live Nation in “just a few weeks,” will hit arenas instead of stadiums. That’s because she wanted “to control the details of the show in a way you simply can’t in stadiums.” Intriguing.
The tour will hit only major cities, and at the moment, there are no Los Angeles shows on the docket — perhaps because the “Joker: Folie à Deux” actor is already playing two headliner dates in April at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio.
Planned stops include Las Vegas, Seattle, New York City, Miami, Toronto, Chicago, London and Manchester in England, Stockholm, Milan, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Lyon and Paris in France. The Mayhem Ball part of the tour begins July 16 in Vegas and closes with three shows in Paris between Nov. 16 and Nov. 20.
Regarding the legal mayhem, Lost International LLC filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Stefani Germanotta in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. The nine allegations include, among other things, trademark infringement, false advertising, trademark dilution and unfair business practices.
Team Gaga attorney Orin Snyder seemed to take the lawsuit in stride. “Lady Gaga’s MAYHEM soared to No. 1 and shattered records, a testament to her unmatched talent and global impact,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “It’s disappointing — but hardly surprising — that someone is now attempting to capitalize on her success with a baseless lawsuit over the name MAYHEM. This is nothing more than an opportunistic and meritless abuse of the legal system.”
Lost’s “Mayhem” logo, like the logo on Gaga’s “Mayhem” album and other merchandise, arcs slightly, and both feature a scruffy, irregular font suggesting, well, mayhem. The lawsuit alleges Gaga’s logo is “a nearly identical design as used by Lost on its own products.”
“Lost began using the [logo] in 1986, and in January 1992 in interstate commerce. Since then, Lost has used the [logo] in connection with surfboards, surf equipment, clothing, accessories, and surf videos, in over 30 countries worldwide,” the lawsuit says. Lost says it registered the trademark “Mayhem” in the U.S. in 2015.
Mayhem is also the nickname of Lost co-founder Matt Biolos.
“Lady Gaga’s actions are likely to mislead the public into concluding that her goods originate with or are authorized by Lost, which will damage both Lost and the public,” the lawsuit says. “Lost has no control over the quality of goods sold by Lady Gaga and because of the source of confusion caused by Lady Gaga, Lost has lost control over its valuable goodwill.”
That said, tickets for the Mayhem Ball tour come available April 3 through AXS, with several presale options — think fan club, Citi cardholders, luxury seating and more — going live for before that general on-sale date hits.
1 of 5 | Jason Statham is “A Working Man,” in theaters Friday. Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services LLC
LOS ANGELES, March 25 (UPI) — A Working Man, in theaters Friday, never quite reaches the magnificent heights of last year’s Jason Statham vehicle, The Beekeeper. Nevertheless, it delivers a satisfying action movie with Statham as a new hero.
Statham portrays Levon, a former Royal Marine now working for Joe (Michael Peña) and Carla Garcia’s (Noemi Gonzalez) Chicago construction company. When the Garcias’ daughter, Jenny (Arianna Rivas) is kidnapped, the desperate parents hire Levon to find her.
Adapted from Chuck Dixon’s novel Levon’s Trade by Sylvester Stallone and director David Ayer, the story has familiar but reliable tropes. Levon’s set of skills are as particular as those of Liam Neeson’s character in Taken, enabling him to succeed where basic law enforcement fails, and no matter how many enemies attack him.
The Beekeeper elevated the genre with its cryptic explanations of covert agents and the flamboyant villains Statham’s Beekeeper faced. The baddies ranged from cyber scammers to outrageously high levels of authority, which made it even more fun.
The kidnappers in A Working Man are basic human traffickers funded by the Russian mob. They do their best to add flourishes in costume and demeanor, but no generic Russian villain is as memorable as the rogue Beekeepers who came after one of their own.
Human trafficking is also a much more real and unsettling crime. While cyber scams are real and devastating, The Beekeeper took it to a wonderfully absurd degree.
Still, it is undeniably satisfying to watch Levon shoot rapists and send them flying to the back wall of the room. He employs extraordinary interrogation on equally deserving targets, especially when he scolds them for unrelated but equally unsavory offenses.
There are fewer fights in A Working Man. Levon rescues one of his crew from gangsters as an appetizer, but the plot does not lead to as many scuffles. It still has a big finale with Levon taking on the mob and a biker gang at once.
The supporting characters exhibit maybe 1% more color than their plot functions require. Levon is fighting his late wife’s father (Richard Heap) for custody of his daughter (Isla Gie), so it’s nice to see Levon prove his worth to his father-in-law later in the film.
Jenny misses a piano recital when she’s kidnapped, so when she finds a piano in captivity and plays, it has earned that poignancy. In addition, Levon’s war buddy Gunny (David Harbour) is so lovable as a blind marksman that it is a shame he only babysits, rather than joining in the action.
Even though he’s a working man, the film does get Levon in a suit for one scene. Levon cleans up as well as Statham in The Transporter.
It is clear A Working Man was made by people who know what fans come to see in a Statham movie. Both Ayer and Stallone are frequent collaborators.
Perhaps the source material kept Working Man more grounded, or maybe adding the Statham elements made it far more outrageous than Dixon’s version. Though it’s not the best, it is the Statham movie that’s in theaters right now, and that’s not a bad thing.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.
Cindyana Santangelo, a philanthropist, model and actor who made memorable appearances in music videos for Young MC and Jane’s Addiction and had roles in “ER” and “CSI: Miami,” died Monday at a hospital near her Malibu home, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to The Times.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department was called to a home on Westlake Boulevard in Malibu for a medical emergency around 7:15 p.m. Monday, the sheriff’s department said in an alert. She was taken by paramedics to a hospital where she was pronounced dead. The cause of death is unknown; an autopsy is pending. Sheriff’s homicide investigators are assisting deputies from the Los Hills Sheriff’s Station with the continuing investigation, as is routine when the cause of death is unknown.
Born Cindy Lehrer in 1967 in Manhattan, per IMDb, she was raised in Los Angeles. She started out as a dancer, appearing in various music videos in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Young MC’s “Bust a Move” video. She also delivered the Spanish-language introduction to the “Juana’s Adicción” tune “Stop” in a Jane’s Addiction video, leading frontman Perry Farrell to later describe her to Spin magazine as “the Latin Marilyn Monroe.”
As Cindyana Lair, she appeared on “Married … With Children” as Jiggly Room dancer Sierra Madre.
She married Frank Santangelo in 2001 and was the mother of two boys. Her LinkedIn page lists her as the director and chief executive of Mermaids Cove Malibu, described as an all-women’s luxury sober living facility. In what appear to be documentary or reality-show promos based on Mermaids Cove, Santangelo described herself while discussing why she chose to help others.
“I’m Cindyana. I’m a great mommy, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a CEO — and a recovering addict,” she says in one video, adding later, “I had kind of the party rock star life, but I ended up as sort of, everybody knows, a low-bottom junkie.
“When I had the blessing to get clean and sober this time,” she says, “I realized that there was a niche in this market of recovery for people like me. That someone like me could touch only a certain ilk of women, that they would believe it and hear it only from me.”
Santangelo spoke with The Times in 2008 when she was offering up what was then her home in Malibu Cove Colony as an August rental, asking $55,000 per month. Regis Philbin and his wife, Joy, were interested, she said at the time.
Cindyana Santangelo sits in the ocean-view primary bedroom of her Malibu Cove Colony home in 2008.
(Los Angeles Times)
Santangelo’s friends remembered her online Tuesday and Wednesday.
“My heart aches as I write this. I’m still in shock and disbelief. How can you be gone??? … Malibu was your paradise, where your soul danced with the tides and your laughter blended with the sound of the waves,” Cynthia Banuelos wrote on Instagram in a post mourning Santangelo’s passing. “You had a heart as vast as the ocean, a spirit as free as the wind, and a love that ran deeper than the blue depths you adored. Frank and the Boys (Dante & Lucci), were your reason for living.”
“Swim free, my beautiful mermaid. Until we meet again,” she added.
“Head of the Class” actor Kimberly Russell chimed in on Banuelos’ post, writing in comments, “my beautiful Cindyana …. an angel in life …. this is shocking rest in peace …”
“No no no! This is impossible,” German actor Xenia Seeberg wrote in comments. “We just spoke a few days ago and planned together for Thailand and Istanbul and how we would see each other again much more often…! I am in complete shock. What happened to my beautiful sister??? Much too early to rest in peace.”
“I am devastated of this horrific news,” Samantha Bennington, wife of the late Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington, said in comments. “We were just about to celebrate her for her birthday!!!! This is a huge loss, not only for us as her family and friends, but for the entire community!!!! You will forever be in our hearts and we’re here for you all Frank and the kids. We are here for you.”
Bennington also put up her own Instagram post where she thanked Santangelo, saying, “you wrapped your arms around me and accepted me and loved on me as a friend the very first moment you met me I’ll never forget you for welcoming me into your tribe … heartbroken.”
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