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Review: In the Olympics closing ceremony, Paris' inspired story sputters with a Hollywood ending

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Review: In the Olympics closing ceremony, Paris' inspired story sputters with a Hollywood ending

And so the two weeks when I become interested in athletics every four years have drawn to a close, with a ceremony to mark the occasion. There were many ceremonies along the way, of course, and the Olympic Games are themselves a sort of ceremony writ large, a ritual against which the athletes of Earth measure their worth — though obviously they are busy with international competitions in the years between games, winning medals and trophies and setting world records. But the world has agreed that this is the Big Show, as the world agrees on little else.

Since this is technically a television review, let me just say, before we get to the spectacle, that what came between the opening and the closing, as something to see, was exceptionally well presented — at least if you were watching via Peacock. (I can’t speak to NBC’s broadcast coverage, apart from the opening ceremony, where the commentary was intrusive and uninformative, and the closing, about which more below.)

It was a platform one could dive from in any direction, a well-executed interface that allowed one to follow any sport in any number of ways — everything, anytime, from before the beginning of an event until well after the end, into what I think of as the hugging round. So many hugs! All that goodwill and affection, not just among teammates but between competitors, who represented diversity among and within nations, whatever the peculiarities of their individual governments and nativist movements. It’s a world you want to live in. (The Olympic spirit: It’s not just about the gold, silver and bronze.) An illusion, perhaps, but as Marlene Dietrich said, “You can’t live without illusions, even if you must fight for them.”

One of five giant Olympic rings moves into place during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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As for Paris, the staging of the games — and “staging” feels like the right word — in and around the central city felt inspired, somehow at once very old-fashioned and brand new. To be sure, there were parts and people of Paris that remained unseen, if not intentionally hidden. But erecting temporary open-air stadiums below the Eiffel Tower, in the Place de la Concorde and in the gardens of Versailles demonstrated that a host city might have something to show the world outside — literally outside — its big arenas, something essential to the spirit of the place. (Though, with its many parks and large public spaces, it might be better fitted to the task than any other city.) Putting swimmers in the Seine might not have been the healthiest idea, but it had a look. Races run over crooked cobblestone streets, crowded with spectators, were doubly exciting for being run over crooked cobblestone streets, crowded with spectators.

At last to the closing ceremony: It was almost by definition an anticlimax, given that the games were over — if not yet “officially” over — and every race had been run, if only just barely. (The women’s marathon winners received their medals during the ceremony.) But given artistic director Thomas Jolly’s idiosyncratic opening show, set upon the Seine, one would have expected something interesting, if not on its own explicable. If the opening was an often confusing but certainly stimulating cavalcade of images and events, the closing was presented as a single, stately, snail’s-pace theater piece — something like Robert Wilson directing the Cirque du Soleil. It was bookended by a prelude in the Tuileries — where a choral rendition of Edith Piaf’s apropos “Sous le ciel de Paris” accompanied French swimming champ Léon Marchand taking a bit of Olympic flame to pass on to us — and a Gallic version of a Super Bowl halftime show, anchored by the band Phoenix.

Alain Roche plays a piano hanging vertically during the closing ceremony.

Alain Roche plays a piano hanging vertically during the closing ceremony.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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The central piece had to do with the founding and revival of the Olympic games, and began with a golden winged figure descending to an abstract Earth to meet, after a solo dance passage, the silvery rider and still-mysterious hooded torch-runner we saw in the opening ceremony, the latter carrying a pole from which the Greek flag unfurled. The Voyager discovered the long-lost Olympic rings. Opera singer Benjamin Bernheim, in a robe made from recycled VHS tape, sang the “Hymn to Apollo” accompanied by Alain Roche, playing a piano suspended in the air, perpendicular to the ground. Numerous gray figures exhumed giant rings, which rose into the air, one by one, while performing tricks upon their interior scaffolding. An (inflatable?) replica of the “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” as famously found in the Louvre, rose from the floor. Lights in the stands — from wristbands worn by the audience — produced giant animated athletic events as one might find painted on a Greek vase. The five airborne rings arranged themselves in the familiar Olympic pattern.

Then came pyrotechnics, the pop show and the protocol — speeches (lovely, generous), declarations, lowering the Olympic flag and turning the games over to the 2028 host. H.E.R., sporting a white Stratocaster like the one Hendrix played at Woodstock, performed “The Star-Spangled Banner,” demonstrating once again that it’s a song best handled by an R&B singer. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo handed the flag to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, accompanied by America’s gymnast sweetheart Simone Biles, and the show went jarringly Hollywood.

Tom Cruise holds on to the Olympic flag as he talks with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and U.S. gymnast Simone Biles.

Tom Cruise takes the Olympic flag from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and gymnast Simone Biles during the closing ceremony.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Tom Cruise, whose status as an international superstar was enough to excuse his presence, abseiled into the stadium, took the Olympic flag from Bass and Biles and drove off with it on a motorcycle, out of the Stade de France and into a filmed piece in which he rode into a cargo plane, skydived into the Hollywood Hills and affixed three extra O’s to the Hollywood sign to create an image of the Olympic rings. He passed the flag on to a series of Olympians: first, cyclist Kate Courtney, who passed it to Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson, who passed it to skateboarder Jagger Eaton, who arrived at Venice Beach. Then the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Billie Eilish and Olympics ambassador Snoop Dogg performed in another filmed piece — recorded in Long Beach, actually — that looked like nothing so much as an MTV “Spring Break” special. (I’m pretty sure those palm trees were trucked in.) Aesthetically, it was like leaving a dark theater after a mysterious foreign film and walking to bright sunlight in a noisy American mall.

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Happily, things did not end there. We returned to the darkness of the Stade de France, where the French singer Yseult performed an unusually subtle, sensitive version of “My Way,” whose English lyrics are by Paul Anka, but whose music, by Jacques Revaux, is French. (The original, “Comme d’habitude,” has lyrics by Gilles Thibaut and Claude François.) In case you wondered, why “My Way”?

The commentary was no less inessential with the addition of Jimmy Fallon, who also has a show on NBC.

Yseult performs "My Way" during the closing ceremony.

Yseult performs “My Way” during the closing ceremony.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

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Universal Music invests $80 million in Bollywood production company

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Universal Music invests  million in Bollywood production company

Universal Music Group is investing $80 million for a stake in one of India’s biggest Bollywood production companies, Excel Entertainment Pvt.

Universal Music India, a division of Universal Music Group, will acquire a 30% equity interest in the Mumbai-based movie studio. In the deal, announced Monday, the companies will work together on forthcoming films, series, music and emerging formats.

While getting involved in India’s local film industry, Universal Music will also now receive global distribution rights for all future original soundtracks attached to projects produced or owned by Excel. There are also future plans for the companies to launch an Excel-linked music label that will allow UMG and Universal Music India artists to appear in various Excel titles.

The investment underscores the rapid growth in the Indian entertainment industry.

India is the 15th-largest recorded-music market globally.

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Founded by producers Ritesh Sidhwani and Farhan Akhtar in 1999, Excel is responsible for making over 40 different films and scripted shows. Its most popular titles include “Dil Chahta Hai,” “Don” and “Talaash.” The company is currently valued at approximately $290 million.

“India’s entertainment landscape continues to grow from strength to strength, and this is the perfect moment to build meaningful global collaborations,” said Sidhwani and Akhtar in a joint statement. “Together, we aim to take culturally rooted stories to the world.”

Universal Music Group, with its corporate headquarters in the Netherlands and another office in Santa Monica, was founded in 1996. The music giant behind artists like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish is valued at roughly $48 billion on the U.S. stock market, with shares selling around $25.80.

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UNTIL DAWN Review

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UNTIL DAWN Review
UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats. One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town implied to be in Pennsylvania. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they’re murdered again and again. They must work together to survive without losing themselves in the never-ending time loop of gruesome murder.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot of UNTIL DAWN puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

(HH, Pa, C, O, Ho, LLL, VVV, S, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong humanist worldview that twists the concept of modern psychology into a supernatural hellscape with unexplained time loops and reoccurring nightmarish horror filled with excessive violence and gore, but with unexplained pagan supernatural elements (such as a storm circling a house, the appearance of more buildings, the time loop itself, and many more), the time loop perverts the laws of mortality and implies that the consequences of violence, murder, suicide, etc., don’t apply, the psychologist controlling the time loop discusses the situation with modern psychology in vague circles meant to confuse and disorient the nature of the reality in which the victims are trapped, religion or God is not explicitly discussed, but there’s an unexplained cross in front of a house that isn’t explained and a character references the belief that a possessed person cannot become possessed through contact but rather weakness of faith, and some occult content where one woman is a self-described psychic and is into “woo-woo” stuff as another character describes it, she tries to amplify her psychic abilities with help from the others by holding hands and meditation, and she often has strong feelings and seems to have a sense the others do not have, but no worship or symbols are shown, plus a girl dating a guy is said to have previously dated a girl as well as other men;

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Foul Language:

At least 101 obscenities (including 62 “f” words), two strong profanities mentioning the name of Jesus, and four light profanities;

Violence:

Very severe violence and gratuitous blood and gore throughout including but not limited to dead bodies, monsters, scarred masked psychopath, stabbing, beating, and people spontaneously exploding;

Sex:

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No sex shown, but a person puts on a VHS tape and a pornographic movie is heard playing briefly but not shown, and a woman is said to date a lot of people and one time dated another woman;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

No alcohol use;

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Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

No smoking or drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

A psychologist is a callous antagonist whose motives are relatively unknown beyond having a morbid curiosity that led to awful experiments and playing games with other people, he purposely keeps people trapped for no known reason other than his sick and twisted observations that end in gruesome murder and unnecessary torture.

UNTIL DAWN is a horror movie based on a video game about a group of friends who find themselves trapped in a time loop, reliving the same night repeatedly with increasingly terrifying, fatal threats.
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One year after her sister Melanie vanished without a trace, Clover and her friends look to find more information about her disappearance. Clues lead them to an abandoned mining town. This place of unimaginable horrors traps them all in a horrifying time loop where they will be murdered again and again.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances, but it has a strong humanist worldview overall with some occult elements is filled with gruesome violence, gore, lots of strong foul language, and a time loop that leads to an increasing amount of horrific murder and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

The movie begins with a woman named Melanie clawing her way through the dirt with an unknown monster chasing after her. Digging her way out, she looks up to a masked psychopath standing over her with a scythe. She begs him, “No! Please not again. I can’t!” He fatally stabs her without a thought. It cuts to the main title, and an hourglass is shown with a ticking clock sound and unsettling music.

Cut to a group pf people in a red car driving up a winding mountain, an obvious nod to THE SHINING. It’s been one year after Clover’s sister Melanie vanished without a trace. The group consists of Max, Nina, Megan, Abe, and Clover. Shortly after their mother died, Melanie had decided to start a new life in New York. Clover decided to stay, which created tension between the sisters before Melanie left.

Clover and her friends are looking for more information about her disappearance. Their last stop is the last place she was seen in a video message taken in front of a middle-of-nowhere gas station. Megan, a proclaimed psychic, wants to join hands outside and see if they can feel any mystical energy regarding Melanie. Their attempt is cut short when an RV blares its horn and almost hits them, scaring them all.

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Clover goes inside the gas station for a cup of coffee while the others talk outside. Clover asks the man behind the register if he worked here last year. After confirming he’s been working there for years, she shows him a picture of Melanie from the video. He asks if she was missing and clarifies saying that Clover is not the first to come asking. When she asks if many people around here go missing, he says people “get in trouble” in Glore Valley. As their only lead, the group decides to go there and stick together.

Nervously driving to the valley in an increasingly dangerous storm, the group begins to question what they are doing. Suddenly the storm stops but is still raging behind them. They park in front of a house with a “Welcome Center” sign, with the storm circling around the area but leaving the house dry. Confused, they get out of the car and look around. Nina decides to see if there’s anyone inside so they can come up with a plan. Everyone goes in except Clover, who walks up to the strange rain wall.

Inside the house, they find a dated and dusty interior. The power and water don’t work, and they conclude that they are the first people to come there in years. There is a strange hourglass with a skull on the wall. Checking the guest book, Nina finds Melanie’s name signed multiple times, with increasingly shaky handwriting. In another room, Abe finds many missing posters with faces on a bulletin board and finds poster with Melanie’s face.

Outside, Clover thinks she sees a person in the rain. She also hears Melanie’s voice and runs after it. Concerned, Max calls after her and he pulls her back in. As Nina signs the guestbook, the sun suddenly sets and the clock starts ticking.

Inside the house now with the hourglass turned over, they try to understand what’s happening. The car is out in the rain now with someone revving the engine threateningly. Some of them go to the dark basement, where the lights don’t work. There is an eerie sense of dread as Abe goes to check out a noise, and Nina finds a scarred and masked psychopath standing in a room as the top half of Abe’s body falls to the ground.

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Hearing the commotion upstairs, the others go to see what happened and Max spots the killer. They run to hide, and the apparently invincible psychopath horrifically stabs each of them as they try to fight back. The sand in the hourglass runs back, as each character returns to where they were when Nina originally signed the book (she now signs it a second time). They remember what had just taken place, and how they were all murdered. Clearly stuck in this time loop escape room situation, they will now have to figure out how to escape this terrifying hellscape as the situations get worse with every loop.

UNTIL DAWN is nicely shot and paced well, with believable performances. However, the movie has a strong humanist worldview featuring gruesome violence, lots of strong foul language, and excessive gore. The violence includes psychopathic killers, people spontaneously exploding, stabbings, kidnapping, demonic possession, and more. The frequent dying over and over in the plot puts the sanctity of life into question. It forces the characters to conduct abhorrent and unacceptable immoral actions for survival.

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