Lifestyle
Late ‘Power Rangers’ Star Jason David Frank Fight Scene Clip From Final Movie
Bat within the Solar
Jason David Frank exhibits off his blended martial arts expertise in his final film function … and we received unique video of him kicking ass in what turned out to be the late actor’s ultimate gig.
JDF is the star of the upcoming motion flick “Legend of The White Dragon” … enjoying a fugitive attempting to clear his identify within the metropolis he as soon as fought to guard.
The late ‘Energy Rangers’ star goes from the White Ranger to the White Dragon. The film can be launched this fall, lining up with what would have been Jason’s fiftieth birthday.
On this preview clip, obtained by TMZ, Jason’s character squares off with Mark Dacascos, one other well-known blended martial artist recognized for his work in kung fu motion pictures.
TMZ broke the story … Jason died by suicide again in November, with a detailed buddy telling us Frank was combating psychological well being points and battling melancholy.
Producer Sean Schoenke tells TMZ … “Regardless of the great loss, the manufacturing group has labored tirelessly to finish the movie and be certain that it meets the excessive requirements that Jason set for himself. The result’s a robust and shifting tribute to his expertise and dedication.”
Along with appearing in ‘White Dragon,’ Jason was additionally one of many producers … and his daughter, Jenna Rae Frank, has a supporting function.
When you or somebody you recognize is struggling or in disaster, assist is accessible. Name or textual content 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.
Lifestyle
So how do you 'accurately' speak English in ancient Rome?
Gladiator II doesn’t come out until November. But the recent release of the trailer has prompted a lot of online chatter about the actors’ accents — especially Denzel Washington’s. The actor plays a powerful mercenary who keeps a stable of gladiators. His character, Macrinus, is based on a real historical figure.
“I love me some Denzel,” wrote Sophia Johnson on X.com. “But his masterful acting skills cannot erase his vernacular and no amount of adoration can make it fit for a film depicting ancient Rome.”
If there was EVER a need for a “Dislike” button…it would be now!
🤦🏽♀️
Nope.
I love me some Denzel…
But his masterful acting skills, CANNOT erase his vernacular and NO AMOUNT of adoration can make it fit for a film depicting ancient Rome.
So please—stop it.
“…those who… https://t.co/oiL6lA25Ux
— Sophia Johnson (@Pattyfree) July 11, 2024
“What accent is he supposed to have?” countered treythekage in a TikTok video. “Are you going to make Denzel Washington do a goofy-ass British accent to seem noble? Or are you going to let him be his noble-ass self?”
This debate about whether it’s OK to play ancient historical figures with an American accent instead of a posh English one highlights how longstanding conventions around accents persist in movies — even when they defy logic.
Ancient Rome: A linguistic melting pot
Gladiator II is set in ancient Rome. Far from being a single-accented monoculture, it was a linguistic melting pot.
“The Roman citizen body had people who came from an enormous number of different places — tons of Africans, tons of Greeks and tons of Gauls,” said Eleanor Dickey, a classics professor at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.
Dickey said we know about speech variances in ancient Rome because of writings by grammarians like Pompeius.
“There were a lot of Greek speakers, not everybody spoke Latin” said Dickey. “And of the ones who spoke Latin, many of them were not native speakers of it. And the ones who were native speakers of it, didn’t all necessarily speak the same kind of Latin.”
There were some people in Rome from the country that centuries later would become known as England. Dickey said most of us wouldn’t recognize the language those people spoke.
“There was no such thing as English in the third century,” she said. “What you would have had is Celtic speakers.”
Where history and Hollywood part ways
But Hollywood has never concerned itself too much with the facts.
“We simply expect to hear characters in a film set in ancient Rome speaking in RP — Received Pronunciation — that sort of Queen’s or King’s English accent,” said dialect coach Erik Singer. “It’s just a convention, though.”
Singer, whose resume includes helping California native Austin Butler perfect his Mississippi accent in the 2022 Elvis biopic, said RP English is a prestige accent. So it’s obvious for filmmakers to associate it with colonial power.
“Roman Empire, British Empire — there’s something there that sort of makes sense,” he said.
As a result, RP has been standard issue for movies set in the ancient world, from 1963’s Cleopatra to 2009’s Agora. (The original Gladiator movie from 2000 also made much use of this accent.)
But Singer said some filmmakers are becoming more thoughtful about what accents to use for movies set in faraway places and times.
“There’s no one way to handle a situation where you have a story set in ancient Rome, or another country with characters speaking a language other than English, and we’re just hearing it in English because it’s an English language film for an English language audience,” Singer said. “You can have everybody speak RP. You can have everybody speak a variety of accents and kind of try to match them to the class. And then there’s sort of no plan at all.”
The danger of judging a film’s accents by its trailer
It’s hard to know how much thought went into the accent choices for Gladiator II. Neither the production company nor the dialect coach responded to NPR’s requests for comment.
Judging by the trailer — and that’s not ideal, since it’s noisy, action-packed and only features a few lines of dialogue — the accents do seem to be all over the map.
Irish actor Paul Mescal is speaking a version of RP English — though some viewers of the trailer have said the actor lapses into his Irish accent at points. Lior Raz appears to be using his native Israeli-inflected speech. Singer said when he listened to Chilean American Pedro Pascale’s most discernible line in the trailer — “Rome has so many subjects; she must feed them” — he didn’t hear enough to make a judgement about what accent he was using.
“What are we to make of this?” the dialect coach wrote in an email. “Without consulting any of the artists involved, and without more to go on, it isn’t responsible to even speculate here.”
As for Denzel Washington, Singer said the actor’s voice and delivery are so familiar, people tend to tune-out subtle changes.
“His voice is likely to be perceived as being ‘Denzel’s normal accent’ even when it’s not,” said Singer. “This is the sort of perception trap that leads a lot of movie stars, past and present, to avoid big accent risks, as they feel they can’t win — they’ll be mercilessly criticized either way.”
This story was edited by Jennifer Vanasco for air and digital. The audio version was produced by Isabella Sarmiento-Gomez.
Lifestyle
Sinéad O’Connor Exact Cause of Death Revealed as Respiratory Issues
Sinéad O’Connor’s cause of death has been revealed one year after her tragic death … with her death certificate listing multiple respiratory issues, according to reports.
The Irish Independent reports O’Connor passed away from COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — exacerbated by bronchial asthma. She’d also been suffering from a respiratory tract infection, a contributory factor.
While British authorities announced back in January O’Connor passed from natural causes — no foul play suspected — we didn’t know the exact cause until this week.
As we told you … Sinéad was found unresponsive in her Southeast London apartment last year. Efforts were made to revive her, but it was too late.
O’Connor suffered from mental health issues for years … telling Dr. Phil she’d tried to take her own life at least eight times. Her 17-year-old son Shane committed suicide in early 2022 with Sinéad tweeting out she’d “Been living as an undead night creature since.”
However, it seems mental health ultimately played no role in her death.
TMZ Studios
Numerous stars — including Conor McGregor, Pink and Brandi Carlile — all paid tribute to the controversial singer in the weeks after her death. She was 56.
RIP
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.
Lifestyle
A bookstore named for James Baldwin is counting down to his 100th birthday
Baldwin & Co. opened only three years ago, but the bookstore was packed on a recent summer afternoon. Over the past year, the Black-owned shop has featured a splashy countdown to what would have been the 100th birthday of its namesake. James Baldwin, the bookstore’s website says, is “a literary giant whose work on race, identity, and social justice continues to resonate today.”
Baldwin was born on Aug. 2, 1924, in New York City. Baldwin & Co. was born in a gleaming white building of around the same vintage in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. The bookstore is the brainchild of DJ Johnson, who grew up in the city among a family of avid readers.
“We never had much of anything else, but we always had books in the home,” he recalled. “And my dad was a huge proponent of us reading Black literature.”
Johnson remembers his childhood as defined by the tensions of a racially segregated neighborhood. Suspicions between Black and white residents ran high. His family lived on a street with only Black families. “There was a literal wooden fence,” he said. “And on the other side of that rickety wooden fence was what we called ‘the white people lane.’”
If a friend or family was foolhardy enough to venture there, police were called, Johnson said. False accusations, violence and injustice often followed. “As I’m witnessing that, I’m reading James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time,” he said. “It spoke to me.”
As an undergraduate at Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black institution, the young Johnson studied technology, rather than literature. But his favorite memories include late-night rap sessions with Daniel Black, a Baldwin scholar. “It was electric,” he said. “The energy was so vibrant.”
Johnson became a tech executive and real estate developer in Washington, D.C., but he always visited independent bookstores while traveling. In Paris, he sought out the legendary Shakespeare and Company, where literature nerds sometimes stand in line to get in. While waiting, Johnson dreamed, for the first time, of opening someplace similar.
“If I was ever to open up a store … I would call it Baldwin and Company, and I would want people to stand in line like this,” he recalled. “I would want them to stand in line just like they’re standing here, [but at a bookstore] that pays homage to a Black literary great.”
Soon after that, Johnson moved back to New Orleans to care for an aging parent.
“I got bored,” he admitted. “As I was walking around the community and talking to people, talking to the young kids, I always had a book in my hand. People would ask me, why do you always have a book in your hand? And I was like, why don’t you have a book in your hand?”
That question helped fuel the bookstore’s creation. Although he says he wasn’t motivated by financial success, Johnson is now convinced that his independent bookstore sells more books by Baldwin than any other, anywhere. “They’re our No. 1 seller,” he said. “Every single week, we have recurring orders. Every single week, we are ordering large shipments of James Baldwin books.”
Baldwin fans visit from all over the world, with a notable number from China, but Johnson said his primary goal is for Baldwin & Co. to serve as a community hub.
“We do book festivals where we give away thousands of books for free to kids,” he explained. “We just held a banned-book festival. The books they’re banning, we’re giving them out for free. At our book festivals, we provide free food, free drinks and free entertainment.”
“We allow local authors to come in and set up tables,” he continued. “They can sell their books. There’s no commission. Whatever the authors sell the books for, they get to keep. We allow vendors to come and sell their personal handicrafts. We don’t charge anything. We also do free summer literacy tutoring services and financial literacy services, because we are dedicated to ending generational poverty and building financial wellness within our communities. We also offer community meetups where individuals can come to Baldwin and discuss issues from health care to childhood obesity, young parenting and needs for new mothers.”
Every child who attends the store’s monthly story time gets a free book, he added. “Because we’re dedicated to building home libraries.”
Along with all his celebrated novels, essays, short stories, plays and poems in print, Baldwin’s book for children, Little Man, Little Man, is available at the bookstore.
“James Baldwin has changed my life,” Johnson said. “His literature, his perspective, his insight. They have changed my life. And I wanted to give that opportunity to others.
“The first week, we had lines three blocks long every day, the entire day, to get in,” he added. “And I was like, ‘Oh, this is like Shakespeare and Company. That’s what this is like.’”
A place of pilgrimage for readers from all over the world who find in James Baldwin truth, beauty and guidance for how to bear being in this world.
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